The Art of Audio Drama with Karl Dutton

0:25ShareTom:Hello and welcome to Entertained. This is a podcast about movies, TV shows and video games. My name is Tom. With me I have Mitch and we don't have Hayden. We have Carl Dutton, the man behind the Power Rangers audio drama.

0:38ShareHello, not just the Power Rangers, you have X-Men. You have a Star Trek one.

0:45ShareMitch:I did. I started with a Star Trek one but, yeah, x-men and Power Rangers are the continuous ones that I make, and then now I've recently become Kevin Feige a little bit. But all these people are coming to me with ideas, starting spin-off shows that are set in my universes and stuff. So I'm just kind of overseeing some of that stuff now as well.

1:05ShareI've listened to all the Power Rangers and then I've listened to, I think, the first two seasons of X-Men so far.

1:12ShareMitch:Yeah, yeah, yeah, x-men is the longest running one , although we did take three years off, but you know that's the one that's been going for ten years now. They were on a break, yes, yeah , yes, I was very much on a break during that time. I actually came back with Power Rangers and then I had a thing of like I don't want to leave something unfinished. So people were wanting me to come back for X-Men and I was like, okay, I'll lay it together , the episode that I never released. And I did it and it was really well released. But I was like, guys, should we just do the Darth Enix saga, since we were building up to it? And they were like, yeah, we'll do the Darth Enix saga. And then that was really popular and I just decided I

1:54ShareMitch:didn't like doing the show again . So you know, x-men is not as consistent Power Rangers in terms of release schedule, but I put it out when I can. How did you get into the audio drama business? I did many years of doing just podcasts, where you know, 200 people listened, and as a spinoff of that because I did podcasts about wrestling, mostly as a spinoff of that we were doing like a fantasy bookend where we were making our own cards and stuff and we would put together the audio of it and like add all the crowd sounds and all the you know the music and all that kind of stuff. So I learned a lot of my skills doing it that way and I also had been to university for script writing and film studies

2:43ShareMitch:and stuff like that. But, you know, hadn't really found my way in skills doing it that way and I also had been to university for script writing and films to this like that. But you know, I hadn't really found my way in the industry and that kind of stuff and I always wanted to do kind of fan filmy type stuff. But I was like, you know, whenever you watch a fan film, it's like, yeah, you, the certain budget limitations that you, when you watch it, that uh, you know you can tell they're in just a regular old house and it's, you know that's oh, jean Grey is so and so's sister, because that's the only thing they could get. You know what I mean? Oh, the Darl Phoenix is. You know, this filter in After Effects and yeah, it just I

3:20ShareMitch:don't know you're limited by budget. And I realized that, hey, I've got these skills of doing these audio things. I was like, hey, why don't I do a Star Trek one? Because all the sound effects are available. You can just go to websites and get all the sound effects of Next Generation and Voyager and all that kind of stuff, so you can really just kind of immerse somebody in the world with doing that stuff. And that went well. And then stuff, and that went well. And then days future past came out. Uh, that year 2014, and I was really into x-men and I was like , hey, why has nobody ever done a show that is, it follows the original 616 continuity where you know, season one is the first class, season two is the second genesis team, you know

4:02ShareMitch:something that's more long form, and I feel like the X-Men is in its best version. Like that, as we've recently found out with X-Men 97, I feel like serialized storytelling is the best way to do X-Men. Um, so I was like, hey, nobody, nobody's going to make this show, and it was definitely in that time period. Fox were doing the movies, but uh were doing the movies, but Marvel had very much kind of distanced themselves from X-Men and were trying to push the Inhumans at that point, and if Marvel were going to do anything with it. I was like, hey, why don't I make that show? And I had the abilities to do the writing and the casting and the editing, and one thing led to another and I ended up making

4:40ShareMitch:the show that I made, took three years off when I got burnt out and then came back when I decided I wanted to do Power Rangers.

4:48ShareTom:What did you do for those three years? Was it like small time stuff?

4:53ShareMitch:It was a case of when I did the X-Men. Originally I was working part time and then I got a full time job and I kind of just got a case of I didn't think I had time to do it and because in the early days I was releasing an episode every three weeks, which I'm sure my fan base these days would love if it was like that these days. But yeah, I was churning out an episode every month, just consistently Bang, bang, bang, but you know obviously that pace . And then I did a Batman long Halloween adaptation where I edited it to like a motion comic kind of thing and I was starting to do an original one and the whole process of that was kind of a drag because I brought in other people and it just I don't know, just the whole thing got me burned out in

5:39ShareMitch:the whole process. So I just went. You know what? I've got a full-time job now I'm going to focus on that and focus on saving up money to get a deposit for a house, all that kind of stuff. But then three years later I just posted on my old group. I was like, hey, would you guys be interested if I came back and did something I kind of want to do Power Rangers and people were like hell, yeah, you know. And then it's gone insanely big ever since. Insanely big ever since. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. The X-Men show has got really good insane numbers. These days, our age is just getting there. Ever since I put it on Spotify especially, it's really really grown.

6:18ShareThat's where I found it. It was on Spotify. I found it after talking with Nathan and Michael on their. Power Trip podcast. I heard them talking about it and then we interviewed them and talked to them and stuff. They really pushed to listen to it. So that's when I started listening.

6:31ShareMitch:Yeah, nathan and Michael. I have a lot of my listeners too. I love that. They pushed my show and introduced it to a whole bunch of people. I'm a little grateful which Nathan's a big part of our shows these days um, we really kind of fought the friendship out of that.

6:48ShareYeah, he told us that he got one of his favorite parts that he gets to play. Is you get to play rito?

6:52ShareMitch:he loves doing that voice yes, absolutely yeah, yeah , like originally. I went with a different guy originally. Um, I was in the casting process and, for whatever reason , I hadn't downloaded Nathan's I'd like listen to, but I'd not downloaded it into the folder that I was listening through. So I cast Tom McCart, rochester , who's playing Gasket now. I cast him as Rito and then I listened to.

7:18ShareNate's again after we did the interview and I was like, oh yeah, I forgot about that one.

7:21ShareMitch:So Elizabeth Tibbets said oh no, that is better. So I went back to Thomas and said look, sorry, I'm going to have to go with Nate, but I will do. You want to play Prince Gatsby in the future? And that's how they kind of became rivals on and off screen at that point together. Because you have to remember, when I started these with the X-Men show, Apple Podcasts was the main podcast thing. When it was iTunes, that was the main way that people downloaded things onto their phones and stuff podcasts, whereas now Spotify is the main one.

7:55ShareSo yeah, well, what made you get into doing Power Rangers as an audio drama? Is that or were you a fan of the series, or is it just something that somebody brought up to you? I am a diehard from back.

8:05ShareMitch:Were you a fan of the series or is it just something that somebody brought up to you? I am a diehard from back in the day. I absolutely loved it. I am the typical 90s kid who watched all of Mighty Morphin, watched them off during Turbo, watched a bit of In Space and then grew out of it. I'm that generation. I'm the reason they keep remaking the Dino Megazord toys. I'm that generation and I just always was like you know all these different properties Transformers, teenage Mutant, ninja, turtles 10 million times. They all keep getting these reboots where they're taken more seriously and they're not as goofy as the original and I'm like why doesn't Power Rangers have that? And then they made it for the 2017 movie and it wasn't really

8:55ShareMitch:what I wanted. I enjoyed it, but it was not what I would have done. And you know, in I think 2009, I think 2009, I'd written a straight up, just written a fan fiction but I'd put up on fanfictionnet called Power Rangers A Legend Untold, and it was literally basically the treatment for what this show became. I put a whole fan fiction where you know, a serious reboot to the show it was full of typos. You know a series reboot to the show full of typos, you know, and definitely needed a proofreader. But when I thought, hey, you know, if I came back to these audio dramas, I'd love to do Power Rangers. You know what it was I started reading the Boom comics and was like, wow, this is the show that I want it to be, not the show

9:45ShareMitch:that actually exists. When I go back and watch it, you know what I mean and I'm like I wish this kind of existed . And then I got the idea of doing my own and I had obviously a fan base and a base of actor friends from where did X-Men? And so I just kind of put it out there that I wanted to do Power Rangers and I wanted to do this kind of. My signature line was Power Rangers the way you remember it, not the way it was, kind of like the Voltron show, and I basically just took the treatment that I made. The fan fiction that I made was the first episode and I just turned that into an audio drama. I just made like an audio book of it and then just continued to adapt going forward. You know, as I got, I'd say, past episode two, I stopped

10:31ShareMitch:following my original thing and started going off in a new direction as the show became what it became. And you know I don't there's not. I don't not regret some things, you know, looking back on season one, but I'm very proud of the work that we've done.

10:49ShareWell, you do a lot of mixing and matching of different characters coming in that weren't in the original stuff. So how do you pull from the lore or do you just kind of make it up and just use the characters? Because I know you had Alex from from In Space or not In Space Time Force show up at one point. So it's interesting how you've mixed and matched kind of stuff well, that's a lot of my collaboration.

11:14ShareMitch:Season one was me just writing the scripts. Season two is when I started doing a lot more collaboration. I brought Sadama Ken Shibola on board as my script editor and also I was speaking with Joey Saulis, who plays Tommy and his brother, and they were coming up with ideas that I hadn't even thought of and we were trying to figure out, like how do we do Drakken without, you know, just doing Shattered Grids? I didn't want to just do the comics. And we came up with this whole idea of what could we do with David. Because, you know, david was there because I needed a Blue Ranger for the Thunder team, because, like every other character, there was a second team of Mighty Morphin characters who could be the Thunder Rangers except for the

11:56ShareMitch:Blue Ranger. So I needed a character and then David kind of was perfect to go into that. But once Tommy was back, when the Blue pegasus ranger was not really a thing, his story would be done. So we thought, oh, what could we do to change all that? And then it was dom and joey came to me and said let's do something with time force, maybe because we could do this whole kind of time travel thing and that was my way of like hey, I can do shattered grid, but do it differently. Like you know, that did jen scott, so I'll do. Wes originally was the original concept. And then somebody came to me and said that doesn't actually make sense because wes isn't actually from the future. So I was like, well, I cast, I carried, I'd already cast lamar

12:37ShareMitch:as wes. So I was like, hey, you could just play alex, it's the same person, right, um, basically. So yeah, uh, that's how that came around and it's just same person, right, basically. So yeah, that's how that came around, and it's just a case of just having a bit of fun with it . Like, it's the same concept as what I applied to X-Men, where Moria Mataga is in the first X-Men episode and she wasn't invented until 20 years after that Stan Lee issue came out. But given the retcons that have happened since, it makes sense that Mor metagora would be there , in the same way, as it's weird that magneto and xavi never addressed each other as friends until after that retcon was put into place. Do you know what I mean?

13:13ShareMitch:It's like you know, you have the benefit of hindsight to go okay, this is what worked, this is what didn't work, so I'm going to make it the version that makes sense, but also have fun with it and be like almost hang a lampshade on. Yeah, this isn't the Power Rangers you remember, and maybe not only am I doing a completely different version, but also there's a character that could come back and say, hey, what the hell, tommy's not supposed to die, like you know, and I'd have some fun with- that it's like well what he does, because guess what I write the show, I can do whatever I want. Well, and that was me again drawing from the Sentai and deciding that I wanted to have some stakes with the whole green

13:53ShareMitch:candle thing and I liked the Bri story and that aspect. So I'm trying to bring in that. But obviously I couldn't keep him dead. So I'm kind of making the White Ranger power even more special by having it be like the resurrection power.

14:07ShareTom:I just got into those episodes and I really loved that whole little bridge because I mean we watched Power Rangers when we were kids. Yeah, you know, big fishy monster, you know, you know kicks over a building, real stakes, and you know teamwork and high five the abandoned warehouse district.

14:24ShareThere was never any other building that worked.

14:26ShareTom:They had all moved years ago.

14:28ShareMitch:Nothing was there and then now it's like people are dying.

14:31ShareTom:The whole city of Chicago just got nuked by Serpentera and I was a little worried. I don't want to say I was worried, I was a little apprehensive. Listening, I'm like, oh, it's an audio drama about Power Rangers and I'm sitting there, I'm driving to work, listening to it in the morning, and then the actor who plays Jason just goes like alright, guys, it's Morphin's time, tyrannus. And all of a sudden I had goosebumps running up my forearms and I was like, alright , yeah, they know what they're doing, they know what they're doing.

14:55ShareMitch:Well, that's the thing, right, you can tell, listening to it, that I'm a fan. My thing has always been like the 2017 movie didn't do the thing. Like it almost I don't want to say it seemed embarrassing with Power Rangers, but it kind of didn't embrace some of the stuff that just, you know, if they're morphing and the Ron Wasserman theme isn't playing, what the hell are you doing Exactly? Thank you, you know. Like it, just that's what you should be doing. Like, yes, you can add a lot more mythos and character and pathos and all that kind of stuff, but you've got to remember the things that people love about it. And you know, it's like making a Batman movie and he doesn't I don't know throw a bat-lang or something like that.

15:43ShareMitch:You've got to do the thing. People go oh, it's a thing, it's a thing. It's a thing you know, and you know it's both touching on nostalgia. But, like, at every point I was like, okay, I want to do the thing that was in the original show, but how do I make it make sense? Okay, tommy plays the dragon dagger, but I explain that like the mouth guard comes down so it actually makes sense now, and like just little things like that that I'm like I want to do the thing, but I'm going to make it make sense. Do you know what I mean? Like even to the point of, in the newest episodes, not to spoil for people who haven't got there but with Zeo we even go into a thing of explaining why the shapes are the shapes and

16:18ShareMitch:why more, why they have the range of one, two, three, four, five. You know?

16:24ShareTom:And that was like that was the first episode I ever listened to. It was the Zio one. Oh wow, I just I hit the podcast.

16:31ShareMitch:You were very confused because it was very continuity heavy. It was continuity heavy.

16:36ShareTom:I mean, zio was my, for me was always my favorite, for some reason, I just thought it was something about it was for me.

16:44ShareMitch:I think it stands alone enough that you can follow along and kind of you know, I didn't catch up in that episode that you could gather- what happened in season three.

16:54ShareTom:Luckily, having watched so much Power Rangers in my life, adam's like okay, yeah , adam, I know who he is.

17:00ShareMitch:All right, billy, yeah Tommy yeah, I know all these Rangers. And then you would have heard like he comes in in a wheelchair and you'd be like hang on, what ?

17:09ShareTom:Yeah, I was like what happened to him and I was like I'm sure there's probably. I was like they'll explain it, I'm guessing, in a later episode or an earlier episode. I was like I'll get to it eventually. And then they take off the helmets and the Zeo rift hits all of a sudden for the first time. I get goosebumps thinking about that one too.

17:33ShareMitch:And it's a kid's show . Even that it's like. I wanted to make everything make sense. Why do the Zeo Zords interface with this alien's pyramid? Why is he a Zeo Zords interface with this alien's pyramid? Why is he a Zeo Ranger, even though he's from a completely different planet and the Zeo powers are from this crystal? Those two things should connect . So making the crystal come from Triforia just fixes so many plot holes. Or even the case of. I wanted to have the moments of the Command Center blowing up, but I don't want to immediately undercut it like the original show show did. It's like you go to. You go to the command center's blowing up. It's running, it's harrowing. See, there's alphas yelling, literally.

18:12ShareMitch:I almost recreated it in my version bang, you know, and then they come back. Oh no, there's a command center downstairs, we're fine don't worry, we had this the entire time. Yeah, like we're going to be Power.

18:26ShareTom:Rangers and none of our suits are going to change, even though the animals have. Yes, that's one thing.

18:32ShareMitch:Yeah, that's. Another thing I fixed in season three was yeah, I kept the MMPR suits, but they changed the helmets, yeah.

18:39ShareTom:What? Because I know I just got introduced to the Shadow Rangers with the Ninjetti coins and I'm really just waiting to get to Ninjor.

18:49ShareMitch:Because, I want to know if he sounds like how he does in the show. He sounds like me because I play him.

18:54ShareTom:You play him yeah.

18:56ShareMitch:The power of Ninja. Yeah, that Ninjor is in our show. However, I do a serious Merlin Wizard version on the main show but on the Patreon Shane Cochran redid the lines as the original Ninjor voice and you can hear an alternate version of the scenes with the original Ninjor in and realize why I couldn't do the original Ninjor. It immediately undercuts any tension with that voice undercuts any tension with that voice.

19:27ShareWell, talking about the tension, I do like how different characters, like when Tommy and Jason had their differences, their feud and stuff on TV, but for your audio drama you really amped up the stakes where Tommy nearly kills him. It's a really good job of upping the stakes with everything, even, like you said, aging it up a little bit. It's a really good job of upping the stakes with everything, like you said, aging it up a little bit.

19:49ShareTom:It's a lot more going on.

19:51ShareCatherine. She's a lot more diabolical, until she finally is not working for Rita anymore.

20:00ShareMitch:Yeah, or just a case of the Jason-Tommy feud was kind of a thing for one episode in the Titanic episode, and then it wasn't really, and then all they'd get like a magic spell put on them because God forbid the characters have any bad traits without them having a spell on them. So you know, I just kind of played up to that. Just the idea of introducing Tommy as a supporting character to Kimberly earlier on and have her already be a love interest, have him already be a love interest for her and jason also already kind of be interested in her as well, immediately puts them at odds. And then like I'm just thinking , wow, like the green ranger thing was cool. But let me make it a little more logical and what would be

20:48ShareMitch:the most logical thing? It's like, well, you, you watch the episode and you're in your head you're like, okay, where did tommy get his morph from? If sword on made those? I'm like, well, literally tommy gets the powers and how to use the battle on the rangers. He literally takes everything he needs from them and then immediately turns around and stabs Jason. It's like that automatically makes him a much nastier villain . But also you still get that moment where he trashes the command center, but then he also stabs Jason with a heart. But then I'm thinking ahead because I'm like it drove me nuts in the Green Ranger saga episodes where Jason would be, he was in the Dark Dementia with Goldor or whatever and they'd

21:29ShareMitch:call the Megazord. And I'm like, well, I've observed they can't use the Tyrannosaurus, why, you know, I know they would just use the Zyuranger for whatever. So I wanted to have it be like no, they literally don't have Jason. He is down for the count. And again it's just taking that concept of of oh, jason was down for a couple of episodes and then going okay, what's the mature version of that? He's, you know, he's in the hospital, he's actually. It's life or death.

21:54ShareTom:You know he's sitting in the icu with visiting hours between the hours of two and four like he's not showing up to fight the dragonzord in russia or something yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

22:06ShareMitch:And then the Dragon Zord gets called and you know he trashes all the other Zords, which then makes sense as to why the fight in the finale is between the Tyrannosaurus and the Dragon Zord, like in the original show that's because of Duranger reasons, but in my show it's because the other Zords were damaged Even to the point of they used Dragon's Roar battle mode because Kimberly wasn't on the team at that point . She had left because of the stuff with her dad. So any time I did a different formation or I wanted to recreate a kind of a fight or something like that, I was thinking ahead of how do I make this make logical sense? Why would they form this other mode instead of just the regular Megazord?

22:48ShareMitch:Well, what if they didn't have access to the pterodactyl? There we go, you know.

22:51ShareWell, and as an adult , it's listening to your show. I like the way, the thought that you put into it because you know if you were watching the TV show. You're like we all love the show.

23:00ShareMitch:We love it because we were kids way very easily in the show where you use logic, you know reasoning on why what's happening. Yeah, I, I, um on the patreon. We have gone back and watched every episode of my morphin. We've watched all the, you know . We've watched all turbo, we're just about to start in space and um. A lot of those episodes where we go wait. What, why? What? Why one? Um, yeah, the show was made by people whose sole goal was to sell toys and they did not care about being having any logical consistency. And, as somebody who, as a kid, cared about this you know about continuity, canada and law and really thought this show did too growing up and realizing that none of it makes sense, was

23:44ShareMitch:really imagining so. So that's literally why this show exists. It's like I wanted to make sense the way I thought it did when I was a kid, you know, yeah , which is watching the show.

23:54ShareTom:You know we watched it as kids so it always lived in our hearts. As kids we all wanted to be Power Rangers. When you went to school and it was time for recess, if you had the name of a Ranger you had automatic dibs being Tom. I always got to be the Green Ranger. Every day I was always Tommy. We grew up, but Power Rangers never grew up with us Really until your audio drama, because it never hit our level of the Boom Studios got there a bit.

24:27ShareMitch:I love the studio stuff, but at least up until Shattered Grid. After that it kind of peeds off a bit. Yeah, the early stuff was very good and the reason it works, but my problem with that was they were hamstrung to the original continuity and they couldn't. There's only so much you could polish a turd. The original story didn't make sense. So you're making embellishment on that and make things make sense, but there's just some things you just cannot make make sense. So, like my, this was my idea of doing this show. It's like yes, we've got the Ron Wasserman theme, yes, we've got all the the, the Jew Ranger kind of things and the things that people are nostalgic for. But I'm also making this a good story.

25:19ShareMitch:Do you know what I mean? Like I'm telling the story, my version of the story, but it's also a version that you can enjoy as an adult and not have any logic problems with, or at least hopefully. I've been very even with all the time travel stuff. I've been very careful to make sure that all my continuity makes sense, even to the point of in later seasons with the bonus episodes, you'll literally hear dialogue be repeated when you realize that's where the bonus episodes slot in Okay.

25:47ShareSo I have one question for you. My favorite character is the Phantom Ranger, so when will he be part of this? He's going to be in Turbo. Right, he does show up in Turbo , but I mean, he's a character that he could fit in anywhere. I'm just saying.

26:01ShareMitch:Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes sense to have him in Turbo. I mean, yeah, it makes sense to have him in Turbo. I mean the Phantom Ranger was really nothing in the original show, though I mean I imagine that for you was a thing as a kid, because like he turns up for about four episodes he's just like I can't tell you who I am, I'm mysterious, and then leaves. I mean I would never see him again really, other than like Countdown to Destruction, destruction yeah, his best part is when he comes back in space. Yeah, exactly, I mean the problem is that the payoff was going to be either it's Billy, which they couldn't do because David Yost had quit the show, or the other idea which was interesting was the idea of it being like a ghost, a ghost soul

26:43ShareMitch:type, like a soul reaper kind of thing. Either of those would have been cool, but I, yeah, for whatever reason. They thought that the pizza episode was uh, they need to spend time on that instead.

26:55ShareI mean, I kind of like the way I kind of like the way the uh the comics did for him is where he's been around for a while, as opposed to just showing up in turbo.

27:04ShareMitch:I mean spoiler alert in season three I was going to kill Billy and the original concept was that he was going to come back as, like you know, the Phantom Ranger, as like a zombie kind of thing. But that's all kind of out the window because, you know again, spoiler alert Billy doesn't die in season three.

27:23ShareBut others aren't so special or aren't so lucky, but we won't reveal who yeah, we won't no.

27:31ShareMitch:The Ranger death count is. I mean, there's a couple that I undo, but the Ranger death count is quite low. But they're friends and family, oh they're all for the ticket.

27:41ShareTom:You guys never even appeared in the show. I don't give a crap who you were.

27:46ShareMitch:Well, it's like it give a crap who you were. The entire city is done. It's like it's a case of you just kind of. Anytime you watch the show you're just like why don't they just do this?

27:54Shareand in my show they just do this any other things?

27:57ShareMitch:people are like why don't they just do that? In my show they just do that. They go to their houses, they attack them with their houses, they blow up the cities, they reveal their identities. They do everything you wanted the original villains to do because it made logical sense and they just never did.

28:13ShareTom:Even like the putties , are a formidable fighting force. In the show it's like they're getting shot at and they're just absorbing the rounds. But in the TV show you remember them dancing around.

28:23ShareMitch:Yeah, and season 2 especially, they were just like the stunt team, were just being interpreted, dancers or something like that they really got bored.

28:32ShareWell, I do like, like . Like you said, you've aged it up, so the villains are a lot more diabolical, as opposed to just kind of goofy sometimes and serious at others.

28:44ShareMitch:I made Lord Zedd into the Lord Zedd that showed up at the start of the mutiny. Right, the problem is well, it's bad, but also the show had already ruined him because he had been beaten 30 times. You know like Lord Zedd's great when he first turns up, but within three episodes he's basically just Rita Because he keeps having to get beaten, whereas I use Lord Zed sparingly and when he came full force he wasn't sending monsters of the week. He was here on the sole mission to F some stuff up, yeah, and like you know, a lot of times they would show sentai footage of cool stuff like Serpent Terrors destroying a whole planet, and they'd be like, oh my god. And then they'd go oh, don't worry, it was like an abandoned

29:31ShareMitch:dimension planet or whatever, whereas I'm like whatever. No, I'm going to use Serpentarious, it's going to be the freaking Death Star. You know, I'm going to really make Lord Ved be like the bane of these Rangers' existence. It's like, oh no, when he comes , you're screwed. He's not just destroying your Zords man, he's burning me down.

29:50ShareWell, earlier you had mentioned that you used the Ron Wasserman song. Now, did you get these songs from somewhere? Or did somebody write these or not write them?

30:00ShareMitch:but play them. The main theme of the show is an original cover that I had made for the show, which was made by one of the actors, actually the guy who played Wolverine in X-Men up until this season and was Kimberly's dad. He was the guy who made it with his partner, his wife, who sung it, and then, more recently, because he's left the show now, I had to reach out to a third party. Luckily there was an awesome cover on YouTube and Spotify that I found, uh, but who were related to the Zio theme. Um, I mean later, I mean at the start, it's all original music and original covers of the songs . And then, as we go further along in the show, I started being a bit more liberal about putting in the like season three

30:48ShareMitch:, the several times where there's the mic drop, the kind of the not mic drop what's the word I'm thinking for Disc drop moment where the the go go Power Rangers cuts in and it literally is the Ron Wasserman version. But that was just me, you know, trying to keep things fresh.

31:04ShareWe do like. Sometimes we'll do trivia on our stuff and we'll, when you do like, theme song trivia, as long as they don't send you a cease and desist, you know go for it.

31:14ShareMitch:I mean the whole show is that the whole show is a cover, like, of Power Rangers and that's a cover of the theme. I knew the show, I realized that , like, if I'm, I got to a point where I realized well, if I'm using the characters, what's the difference if I use the music? Do you know what I mean? Right, so, like the Lord Zedd theme, for example, I can't make it any better unless I found somebody who did a really cool cover of it which I couldn't find so like actually used it, like John Williams uses the Imperial March, but at any time Zed came on screen and was dun dun dun dun.

31:51ShareTom:You know, I do like because it all starts out very different. Because I mean, for those of you who have not listened to it, or you have listened to it when you were introduced to Rita, it's not Rita Repulsa, it's Rita Bandora on the Repulsa, which is a nice little twist. I did like that Because Bandora's a callback to the Super Sentai stuff. Yeah, she also is kind of a silly name, you know. Yeah, she just shows up on a ship, finds Earth in the Milky Way galaxy, whereas when we grew up it was, you know. Two astronauts opened up a trash can on a planet and it's just like ah, 110,000 years, I'm free, and it's just like Earth and it doesn't look anything like Earth and then Alpha Rita's escaped yes, which.

32:33ShareMitch:The joke now is that after in space, the opening should be Alpha Rita's escaped. Break my tube, like end of show . But yeah, then there wouldn't be a show, but yeah again. And as the show progressed she started out as just a you know a ship commander and as the show progressed she became the magic witch, as she kept getting beaten by these kids and was like going mad, basically. And then she had her mother's staff that she'd been charging with the dragon power coin and was able to start using that power. And by the time we hit season two she's basically the Rita from the show, except not the Wicked Witch of the West.

33:17ShareTom:That's what? Because I hadn't seen the Super Sentai. And then we did another. We had met with Nathan and Michael and Nathan and I watched a couple of. I watched the green one, I watched the very first one. She's just riding on a bike over Tokyo like in a tricycle, and I was like what the fuck am I watching?

33:33ShareMitch:This isn't Power Rangers. Super Sentai, especially that season and those era, is just as silly as Power Rangers. But in its own way, the green Ranger one where they're trying to blow up the gnome kids, the grandfather's throwing grenades at him and we're like why is it?

33:49ShareTom:Yes, I relived for that episode, and then the Green Ranger shows up and beats up the kid and he's like look at him, like why? And it's just like this is all your fault, you idiot. Yeah, you don't even know him. Like. Yeah, Let me ask you this, though I know you've seen Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the movie. Yeah, who's the most useless ranger in that movie? I don't know.

34:15ShareMitch:In the original movie . Yeah, Rocky.

34:20ShareTom:I always want to say it's Rocky, but it's Aisha, for two reasons. There's two great scenes that give this, where they're chasing the ooze guys through the conveniently abandoned construction site and she's like , oh, we need light. And she's got the little big, lighter, high beams on her helmet. And then Rocky just immediately goes to infrared laser vision and goes there they are, it's like you know, big, lighter, high beams on her helmet.

34:40ShareMitch:And then Rocky just immediately goes to like infrared laser vision. Yeah, there they are.

34:42ShareTom:It's like whatever you did didn't mean anything. Rocky could have just done that and we would have been fine.

34:46ShareMitch:Yeah, I felt like the movie universe's conversation was like what really, Zordon, my special power is flashlight in my helmet.

34:55ShareTom:And no one else had anything.

35:00ShareLike we didn't know what Kimberly had, or Billy or no Kimberly had that special whip thing.

35:02ShareTom:Oh yeah, she did. Well, that was just like a weapon, not like a helmet mod. And then when they're fighting the Zords at the end and she's like I'm about to mess you up or whatever in the big bear, ninja Zord, and then it just pimp smacks her and launches her. It's like I need help. What were you useless?

35:23ShareMitch:The women are not very well written in that movie. The stereotype of Kimberly being a damsel in distress comes from that movie because she does Yalpatami a lot in that movie, Whereas in the show she's a badass. They keep insisting that she's a ballet girl, but it's like she's not though.

35:42ShareTom:Come on, she does have a great line in the movie where she's beating up the ooze guys and she's like have a nice trip. And then she like KO's the guy in the face and launches him. He's like see you next fall and he explodes.

35:51ShareMitch:It's like that was so corny, but I loved it and you can tell, I think, from my show I implemented elements I really obviously was into that movie as a kid. So you know Fados and Dulcia is in my show and it's all built into the White Ranger stuff.

36:08ShareTom:So I really liked how you incorporated the Dulcia and Fados bit and, like the Z-Fighters showing up, it made it more of a more of a moment, more of a better aspect of storytelling with how they got the white title.

36:23ShareMitch:They had to earn the power.

36:26ShareTom:Not just. Oh, we've been working on this secretly in the basement.

36:29ShareMitch:Yeah, which makes even less sense when you find out he didn't make the original coin. It's like this is sort of bootleg Power.

36:34ShareRangers. Well, if you say for the process of making an audio drama , you're obviously not all sitting down together recording at the same time. So how do?

36:46ShareMitch:you know, about this. It is literally everybody recording in their own setup at home, recording it like a podcast, sending me the raw, or sometimes they a lot of professional voice actors do a lot of cleanup on it and, uh, noise removal and stuff, but they'll send it to me. If I need to do any noise removal I will do it, I'll equalize it and make everything into mono and then I will edit the stuff together, uh, and edit the sound effects and the music and all that kind of stuff. So it's like, yeah, it's literally just everybody recording on their own. I will edit the stuff together and the sound effects and the music and all that kind of stuff . So it's like, yeah, it's literally just everybody

37:22ShareMitch:recording on their own home. I can send the game which you know, the early days of my podcast. You can tell that because there are some people who literally sound like they're on Apple iPhone. But once I got more professional at this, there's a certain level of quality that you kind of have to be now to be able to do that, to be on the show to be able to take everybody's, put them all together, edit them all you know , clean it all up.

37:46ShareHow long does that take for each episode?

37:50ShareMitch:a long time I mean back when I used to do this part time and I worked part time I could three solid days just get an episode done. But nowadays an episode usually takes me about two weeks to edit when I have the final lines , which, because obviously the voice actors are working for free, so I can't be too much of a pain about bugging them about it, and there's always extenuating circumstances of this guy's busy doing this or something's happened. So I always give a lot more leeway to people. So when I finally manage to rally everybody together and get all the lines to me, it takes time to put the whole thing together and especially fight scenes. I'm such a perfectionist. There doesn't need to be a sound effect every time there's

38:41ShareMitch:a punch, but for me there is. So I literally I am obsessive with and every time there's like one of those moments where, like they morph or there's like a Megazord thing, boy, you bet I play that several hundred times to make sure that I get that right, you know.

38:54ShareWell, I mean, to me, having all those extra sound effects really helps you visualize in your head, because this is like War of the World kind of radio You're listening, there's nothing to see, so it's all in your imagination. The more you hear, the more you can visualize.

39:11ShareMitch:And it goes back to the budget thing of I don't have to worry about budget. I can make this as big as I want it to be. I can make it so long as the sound is good and the music is good and the acting is good. The movie in somebody's mind can be whatever I want it to be, and you can create these incredible visuals without having to worry about budget, which?

39:29ShareTom:is why audio dramas are great. For that it's definitely great, because I've been late to work, sitting in the parking lot listening to the end of an episode and been like, oh there's two minutes left. I don't care if I'm late. I was like I want to know what happens here. I can't just leave off right now.

39:45ShareWell, you're on season four right now.

39:48ShareMitch:You just started with Zeo.

39:51ShareX-Men is on season three or four.

39:54ShareMitch:Well, technically five, but it's officially four. Okay, so yeah, four. Well, technically five, but it's officially four because Darfee uses his own miniseries. So yeah, four. Just because, again, x-men comes out a bit slower and we took the break and everything, whereas Power Rangers is much more kind of.

40:09ShareYou know, every two or so months we get an episode out well, do you have any other audio dramas that you're working on, like planning on to start later on?

40:16ShareMitch:yeah, I working on like planning on to start later on. Yeah, I well, there's ones I started and didn't finish that I need to get back to the uh, my original one, the east haven eight, which is kind of a ya plus um superhero teen drama. It's basically like why, if I did power rangers but my own version, or explain my own version with original characters and stuff and kind of take away all the IP trappings, is basically what that is. And then, of course, I did Trial of Bruce Wayne, which I only did two episodes of and I need to get back to that at some point. But it's literally a case of X-Men and Power Rangers are the big ones that everybody's looking forward, the ones I have to prioritize and they take care of enough.

40:56ShareMitch:I have a full-time job and between doing that and also doing all the extra podcasts for the Patreon and stuff, there's literally only so many hours of the day. So you know, two shows is enough for me right now.

41:12ShareYeah, because our schedule, you know, with our normal work schedule, so that's what we've kind of been reduced to record, once every two weeks pretty much.

41:19ShareTom:Yeah, roughly.

41:20ShareBecause we're lucky.

41:21ShareTom:We haven't played video games with each other in God knows how long Mitch hasn't been there.

41:27ShareMitch:I've had Baldur's Gate for a year and I just keep at the slow crawl because I've just been so busy with stuff.

41:33ShareTom:I don't think we have a third host on the show. He's currently overseas in Iraq , but he downloaded Baldur's Gate and his internet's so crappy they're mailing him each frame.

41:45ShareMitch:Wow Well, he's literally in the military.

41:47ShareYes, he's somewhere in Iraq.

41:50ShareTom:right now he's in northern Iraq, I think.

41:51ShareYeah, and he won't be back until December, so he's been gone for almost a year.

41:56ShareMitch:It's crazy that you don't even think about that. Stuff's even going on anymore with all the other stuff that's kicking off.

42:05ShareTom:He lets us know what's happening out there.

42:08ShareHe texts us because he'll listen to the podcast every so often when he can get them downloaded, and he'll let us know how bad or how good he thought we did Mostly bad.

42:16ShareTom:Yeah, mostly bad. He's actually out there as our foreign correspondent and he hasn't corresponded Only once he talked about the Godzilla movie . Yeah, he talked about a Godzilla movie. That was it. We can't get him to correspond. It's been like pulling teeth.

42:31ShareBut we've really enjoyed having you on. Whenever we get a chance to talk about Power Rangers, I always encourage people to try and check out your show. That's why I I kind of like force Tom into it.

42:44ShareTom:He's enjoyed it. You badgered me for like a year about like oh, this is Power Rangers audio drama and I was like okay, okay.

42:49ShareMitch:Okay, it was the same thing with the Tokusatsu guys. Riz Riz, who did the reviews of our shows, the podcast reviews of our shows he seems to be the one of them that finds it and then he badges the others into getting into it.

43:03ShareTom:I think he was saying with Nathan and Michael as well , and now I'm like towards the end of season 2 and I was like this show's awesome. I can't believe I wasted all this time.

43:14ShareMitch:I could have been listening well, once you catch up, then you've got to wait every two months. You've got to wait for two, three months for a new episode, like everybody else.

43:24ShareThat's what he was asking me. He was like, how often do they put episodes out? I said they're kind of spaced between yeah yeah, it's a case of everybody on the.

43:33ShareMitch:A lot of people on the are working pro voice actors . I mean, the guy who plays Tommy Joey was literally he lives in Asheville, north Carolina, so yeah, he's had a hell of a couple of weeks so yeah. But I am very much a case of it's done when it's done, okay, and like you said, I mean no one's getting paid, so it's kind of like you can't be badgering people.

43:54ShareTom:It's like hey, where's that? Like you said? I mean, no one's getting paid. So it's kind of like you know, you can't be badgering people. It's like hey, where's that stuff you said you would do for no money?

44:02ShareMitch:Yeah, exactly Exactly which I do do that. I do it every two weeks instead of two days.

44:19ShareWell, just wondering, have you ever considered doing like a kind of like a stop motion comic and do like a YouTube series?

44:23ShareMitch:You with the audio. I mean, I was thinking if I could like hire somebody on Fiverr or something and say you know, could you do you know 20 pictures from this episode and I could edit it together into sorts of like a, some sort of like the image of what's in the. Basically every scene would have an image of what's in the scene, sort of thing. I've thought about that before. It'd be pretty cool to do a kind of re-release like that. But uh, animation, um, is a whole like that's a whole process that would take forever so you stop motion at most. But but I'd imagine it'd be more the case of it's the command center scene. So here's a concept, our drawing of what that looks like, sort of thing.

45:09ShareIf you do that, I'd be interested. I'd re-listen to the whole thing there too.

45:13ShareTom:I'll definitely check it out again.

45:16ShareWe thank you, Mr Dunn , for coming and talking with us today.

45:19ShareTom:I have one more question. Okay, who's your favorite?

45:24ShareMitch:ranger. See, here's the thing. As a kid it was always Tommy um or, and I do love Tommy in a lot of ways. But as I've got older I've started to realize he's kind of a bit boring of a character. Now I've realized my favorite Ranger is actually Kimberly. Okay, kimberly, I wasn't expecting that?

45:48ShareYeah, I was.

45:51ShareMitch:I think you can tell, listening to the show, that those two are my favorites because those were, you know, like in the original show. Those two get a lot of the fun stuff Okay.

46:01ShareYeah, my favorite's always been the Phantom Ranger and then the Gold Ranger from Zeo.

46:05ShareTom:The Gold Ranger outfit's probably the best Power Ranger suit ever. It's so immaculate yeah.

46:12ShareMitch:Well, you know he's a big part of my show at the minute.

46:16ShareTom:One thing I mean. We kind of talk about the rivalry between Tommy and Jason, but in the show it's like they bring Tommy back. It's like and Jordan's like I introduced you to the new leader of the Power Rangers. I'm like and Jason's just standing right there like he hasn't been doing nothing for a year. Well, dubbing a new line because the actor quit I always thought that was kind of a bit of a slap I like the way you structure it of there's actual rivalry. Tommy did actually stab him.

46:44ShareYeah, he died.

46:47ShareMitch:But even you know, even to the, that even when he becomes good again, like, there's always this kind of a delight tension of the whole Kim thing. And then you know not to spoil it for anybody else who got to season three. But there's an episode in season three where Jason gets drunk and boy do they go at it.

47:04ShareTom:Don't spoil it too much for me. I haven't gotten there yet. I'm towards the end of season two. I'm very excited, though, for season three and see whenever it matriculates out.

47:13ShareMitch:Have you ever Like imagine Drunk Jason yelling at Jason David Frank? That's what I've seen.

47:24ShareTom:You took my team Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, I'm definitely on the page with it, but I mean, I think this is a really good interview, a good topic of talking just about Power Rangers , which is what me and Mitch always wanted to talk about. We've always wanted to just sit and talk about Power.

47:39ShareMitch:Rangers. I mean, if you could see my, if you could see my, the shells behind me, I am yeah, I'm with you guys on that one. My office room is basically just the.

47:51ShareTom:Power Ranger room. At this point I turn and look to my side to see my legacy morph with the Dragon Dagger, the five original coins, the Zeo Rangers the. Dinosaur, the Zeo, nisers, three Power Ranger helmets, the White Tiger, megasaur, okay, okay, how many Power Ranger helmets do you own Helmets?

48:11ShareMitch:Only the one. Well, I own the White Ranger one and Lord Vance the Lightning Collection ones, because they were super expensive. But I did get the Lightning Collection Dragon Dagger because that was like one of those things I'd always wanted.

48:25ShareI got that too.

48:27ShareTom:Mitch got me one.

48:29ShareMitch:If you want the Red Ranger or the Green Ranger helmet these days, forget about it. You may as well re-block your house for those these days.

48:40ShareTom:Well, man, I can buy a house because I have both. I'm looking at it Because I got the Green Ranger helmet. When it first came out it was like 80 bucks.

48:49ShareHe's got the legacy right under it.

48:51ShareMitch:Yeah, the legacy stuff was like if you were there when it originally came out fantastic originally came out.

49:00ShareTom:Fantastic if you weren't boy oh boy, those aftermarket prices. My whole family made fun of me for getting it. And I opened the box and like what's in this? Like what is it like? What's in the box? And I flip it open, I pull out the green ranger helmet. They're like are you kidding? Like you're 27 years old, like at the time or whatever. When I got it, like what's wrong with you?

49:13ShareMitch:and I was like we'll put it on and my mom my one of that was I bought the Soul of Chichoke in Megazord and like at the time it was 300 like dollars and I was like that's a lot of money, but if you want that, these days it's a lot more than that it's a lot more but you know, my mom takes the helmet, puts it on and then she just looks at me and starts doing like karate moves and she's like giggling.

49:39ShareTom:I'm like, yep, like that's. That's why this is still cool, it's because it doesn't matter, it's, it's still Power Rangers, it's still awesome.

49:45ShareMitch:You know that's my show very much. I mean he was in it as the evil but like as good Green Ranger he did it for like two episodes yeah but that's just because, yeah, 12 episodes a season and all that, you gotta keep the story moving. Yeah, we don't have time to dawdle on the Green Ranger as much as we want to. When you cut it out, you know.

50:14ShareTom:That's right, pudgy pig. I was wondering when that was going to pop up. I guess you just cut it out entirely, and for good reason.

50:21ShareMitch:I don't do Monsters of the Week that's the main thing that you know or having too much of a silliness. The Monsters of the Week had to go, unfortunately.

50:30ShareTom:I mean, you get monsters, but they're much more kind of kaiju things, yeah, which I think is more in line, I guess, to us now as adults, because the other stuff would almost be laughably comical.

50:41ShareWell, yeah, because it makes sense for the putties to be like the foot soldiers, and then you have the big monster that they summon, and then you have your main general.

50:46ShareTom:Instead of doing synchronized dancing.

50:48ShareYeah, yeah.

50:52ShareTom:But anyway, Carl, thank you so much for being on our little pokey show out here in America.

50:59ShareNo, it's a pleasure. So much for being on a little pokey show out here in America.

51:01ShareTom:We definitely had a great time talking with you and you know, for those of you who are listening, carl Dutton, who runs the audio drama for the Power Rangers, for X-Men, star Trek, there's one for Bruce, for Batman. The trial of Bruce Wayne, the trial of Bruce.

51:13ShareMitch:Wayne. Well, there's this too. I did Long Halloween back in the day. I did Long Halloween back in the day an adaption of that, and now we're doing Trial of Bruce Wayne. You can find everything. Just search for Scyther Audio Drama and you'll find my YouTube channel and my podcast pages on YouTube, on Spotify, on iTunes.

51:31ShareTom:I listen to the Power Rangers Audio Drama on iTunes. Can't recommend it enough and we hope you check it out once again. I'm Tom, I'm Mitch and we'll catch you on the next episode. We'll catch you on the next episode.