Power Rangers Zeo
"Mr. Billy's Wild Ride"
Original Air Date:5/11/96		Featuring Footage From: Ohranger #04- - Kaiki!! Tetsujin Papa (Grotesque!! Iron Man Papa)
*Regular Season 3 Continues (4th Season By Series) *Official Network Show Number PR-357 *14th episode of PRZ *169th total Power Rangers episode
Writer: Al Winchell		Director: Douglas Sloan
Starring Cast: Catherine Sutherland _AS_ Kat (Zeo Ranger 1, Pink) Nakia Burrise _AS_ Tanya (Zeo Ranger 2, Yellow) Steve Cardenas _AS_ Rocky (Zeo Ranger 3, Blue) Johnny Yong Bosch _AS_ Adam (Zeo Ranger 4, Green) Jason David Frank _AS_ Tommy (Zeo Ranger 5, Red) David Yost _AS_ Billy Cranston Paul Schrier _AS_ Farkas "Bulk" Bulkmeier Jason Narvy _AS_ Eugene "Skull" Skullovitch Gregg Bullock _AS_ Lt. Jerome Stone		Additional Cast: Bob Manahan _AS_ Zordon (voice) Donene Kistler _AS_ Alpha 5 Richard Wood _AS_ Alpha 5 (voice) David Stenstrom _AS_ King Mondo (voice) Barbara Goodson _AS_ Prince Sprocket (voice) Oliver Page _AS_ Klank (voice) Barbara Goodson _AS_ Orbus (voice) ? _AS_ Mechanizer (voice)

CAPSULE SUMMARY:
At Angel Grove High, Bulk & Skull have taken a course in Orienteering, by orders of Lt. Stone, as part of their special training. They wear safari-hunter outfits and wander around the halls, following a compass, bumping into Rocky & Tanya on their quest. They later end up in the middle of nowhere, where Skull digs into his bottomless backpack, pulling out everything but the kitchen sink.

At the Power Chamber, Tommy, Adam & Kat wait around as Alpha presses buttons repeatedly, until he finally gets a lock on Billy's spacepod (which looks nothing like the craft he left Earth in, this one being far more technologically advanced and space shuttle-like). Billy sends a successful transmission to his friends on Earth, exciting everyone, himself included. He admits to even missing Bulk & Skull. The first thing he wants when back on terra firma is one of Ernie's smoothies.

On the Machine Empire Skybase, Klank & Orbus also track Billy's location, planning to disable his ship and bring him to King Mondo, who believes that once they have him, the others will follow. A photon blaster (resembling the cog-port holes with flaming trails) is fired at Billy's spacepod by Prince Sprocket, frying much of the ship's systems. Communications go to static, and the situation in the Power Chamber turns worriedly anxious. As Billy announces into his headset, in reference to Apollo 13, "Zordon, we have a problem." Rocky & Tanya teleport to the PC to be with the others, where Zordon informs them Billy has lost all maneuvering capabilities in his ship. Alpha picks up a signal over the audio channel from Billy, allowing vocal communication both ways. Billy gets the ship stabilized, ceasing its flipping, but he's vented almost all his oxygen reserves, his thrusters are offline, and it's getting cold from the lack of heaters. Unable to navigate, he asks for their help in getting a directional fix on him. Zordon does so, saying he's headed for the Machine Skybase. Now within 5 minutes of the MES' gravity, Billy has a brainstorm, suggesting to Zordon that finding a way to push him out of his current trajectory will give him a chance. Alpha uses the remote tractor beam transmitter, which looks suspiciously like a C-Band satellite atop a rock. The whole Ranger Teen crew helps Alpha out in getting the beam up and running, with Tommy doing an Enterprise Captain impression as he stands back and exclaims, "On my command... FIRE!" The beam is sadly blocked by another photon blast from Sprocket. Billy's pod is thrown for another flip, the tractor beam is fried, and the Power Chamber gets shaken up considerably, along with its inhabitants (only Alpha isn't knocked off his feet). Once they recover, Zordon breaks the news to them: good news, Billy's ship is no longer headed for the Skybase! Bad news, it's on a direct collision course with the sun.

It's getting hot in Billy's spacepod, but he's not taking off any of his clothes. His heat shields will only last about 2 hours at best. Alpha tells the gang that the explosion crystallized the fuel cell of the remote tractor beam. The replacements, if Billy's memory serves him correctly, are stored in the Angel Grove University Warehouse. The Zeo Rangers morph, and rush to find the cells. Mondo has Klank set up an ambush, so that if our heroes get too close to what they're looking for, the whole building will be destroyed. He brings Mechanizer, who is supposedly good at this sort of thing. Cogs fight the Zeos in the warehouse. They then also fight Mechanizer, who sounds kinda like Ren Hoek. Explosions abound, all kinds of fire and destruction occurs. The warehouse, and fuel cells, and presumably Mechanizer (since he's last seen at ground zero) are wiped out. All Rangers but Tommy make it out. For dramatic effect, his missing in action is stretched out for far too long. Red Zeo Ranger leaps out of the smoking building, safe & sound, with an intact fuel cell in hand. The gang returns to the Power Chamber, and helps Alpha with the tractor beam again. But all their work may be for naught, as the earlier blast fused the motor on the dish. Tommy plans to turn it manually, teleporting up onto the mountainside and tapping in to a conveniently placed control box. King Mondo sends a squad of Quadrafighters, they fire upon him, sending Tommy rolling down the cliffs. He barely manages to get a handle on a ledge, as it's quite a steep drop to the desert floor below. He's continuously fired on, making getting back up even tougher. But he pulls it off, and avoids getting singed by the blasts. Tommy races back to the tractor beam, redirects it via a control stick, getting a lock, and allowing Adam to hit the button to fire the beam. Billy's spacepod is caught in the ray, and yanked away from the sun. Tommy teleports back into the PC, and tries to reach Billy on the comm-channel. There's a tense period where all they get is static, implying the team's intelligent former-teammate-turned-assistant is now a star-roasted pile of pudding. Zordon makes the gang feel even better by telling them if Billy doesn't reply in the next ten seconds, it's too late. At the last possible second, he replies. The Earth's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, thanks his friends, Tommy offers to buy the smoothies, and Billy says there's no place like home. Mondo demands the photon blaster be fired again, but seems now THEIR fuel cell is kaput, and as Klank puts it, "We dinnah have another one!" The King furiously demands that next time, inventory should be checked BEFORE going into battle.

Later, at the Juice Bar, the six Ranger Teens toast to Billy's safe return. He thanks them again, they modestly decline, and when Tanya wonders what it was like to be so alone out there, he reminds them that he wasn't alone since they were all with him all the time. Bulk & Skull show up, looking quite a mess, almost as bad as their crumpled up map. They learned the hard way that a compass never points the same way twice. Lt. Stone appears happy to see they succeeded in finding their way back in record time. An angry cabbie storms in, demanding one of them pay him for driving all the way down into Angel Grove Forest to pick them up. Lt. Stone is enraged at them for calling a taxi, prompting the bumbling duo to race off, planning to REALLY get lost, with their superior officer giving chase. Our heroes laugh it up, and Billy reiterates that it really IS good to be home.