The Project

The early 1990's saw the creation of one of the most lasting legacies of childrens television programming.  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers aired for the first time in 1993 after the release of the original line of action figures - which retailers were finding difficult to keep on the shelves due to their overwhelming popularity.  The show had big expectations going into the first episode - and as time has shown, MMPR did not disappoint.

original Bandai release of MMPR action figures

Problem: After the 18th season reinvention of MMPR, I was inspired to revisit the original series and see what the makings of the show were.  What are the primary drivers in their team dynamics?  Who is the leader, really?  Did Tommy deserve to become the leader as White Ranger?  These and many questions needed to be answered.

Hypothesis: Not only do I aim to figure out who the most important (statistically) member of the team is, I will discover who the most popular ranger is in terms of episode focus and air-time.  There's the obvious hypothesis that Jason was the initial favorite and then Tommy the dark brooding ranger usurped that role.  There's also the obvious hypothesis that Kimberly was clearly the most popular of the initial five (this hypothesis could also be clear only to me since she was my favorite). 

Methodology: I'll keep track of certain pieces of information in an MS Excel spreadsheet to create data points to answer some of these questions (i.e. who says "it's morphin time" the most and who kills the monster of the week - are there any correlations?).  Once I'm finished, I will compile the data and conduct a statistical analysis of these data points to get to the bottom of this phenomenon.  I'll look for trends in how many character-focus episodes each character has, who gets to kill the monster, etc and perform a correlation/covariance analysis to look for a relationship between that and importance/power. 

While I'm working through these episodes, I'll post regular updates on the most recent episodes I've gone through and any interesting observations.

I hope you're ready for the ride, cos guess what?  It's morphin time.

First Ten Episodes - Phase One Sneak Peek
Phase One of the Morphinominal Project - Complete