Production of Power Rangers moved to New Zealand after the Disney buyout. As such, many of the actors they hired were natives faking an American accent. Some actors were better at it than others. Given the circumstances, one would assume they’d introduce a Kiwi Ranger at some point just to spice things up and eliminate any awkwardness that may come from trying to mask an accent.. Besides Katherine and Xander, foreign Rangers were basically non-existent, and it was surprising that the show had never truly taken advantage of its new filming location.

That was until we got Chase Randall: the Kiwi so Kiwi he had a Kiwi on his skateboard.

NAME: Chase Randall
RANGER DESIGNATION: Dino Charge Black Ranger/Power Ranger Black, Power Rangers Dino (Super)Charge
BASE OF OPERATION: Amber Beach
FIRST APPEARANCE: “Powers from the Past” – Power Rangers Dino Charge
LAST APPEARANCE: “Here Comes Heximas” – Power Rangers Dino Super Charge
SIGNATURE WEAPONS/GEAR: Black Energem; Para Charger; Dino Steel/Para Chopper; Dino Armor X
ZORDS: Para Zord
PORTRAYED BY: James Davies

PROFILE

Chase was born and raised in New Zealand and lived with his mother and sister. He was a bit of a scatterbrain and would prefer talking to babes and skateboarding to doing anything that might challenge his brain. At some point, he picked up and moved to Amber Beach USA, where he landed a job as a custodian at the Amber Beach Dinosaur Museum. Even there he seemed to have trouble focusing, always listening to headphones and drifting off at work. Or flirting with the ladies and getting turned down.

While taking a stroll on his skateboard, Chase managed to save a cat owned by a local Maori fortune teller named Moana. Moana said You’re Welcome by bequeathing to Chase the Black Energem, infusing him with the power of the Parasaurolophus. He was later recruited by museum director Kendall Morgan and a weird alien named Keeper to become the Dino Charge Black Ranger, the first of a new team of Power Rangers.

After the team had been established, Moana came back to request his help once more, tasking him with protecting her antique voodoo shop from bad guys. As per usual, Chase slacked off and slept on the job, allowing the villain Spellbinder to steal a mystical pendant. Chase… err… chased after him but was put under a spell that convince him not to finish the monster off. This second-guessing allowed Spellbinder to get away.

The freaky plague monster took complete control of Chase and turned him against his teammates. Realizing that Chase became more focused and clear-headed when he’s on his skateboard, Shelby pushed a rolling board toward him that brought him back to his senses, finally firing at Spellbinder and proving to himself and his teammates that maybe he’s not such a blowoff after all.

Chase criticized Riley’s repetitive training regimine, causing a rift between the two Rangers that ended with a monster escaping. Their squabble got even more intense when Chase felt that Riley was overanalyzing things in pursuit of the evil Cavity. On a skateboard ride, he encountered the monster once again, but was incapacitated when Cavity struck him with a toothache. The Green Ranger protected him and they combined their Dino Chargers to defeat Cavity. From then on, Chase and Riley would be close friends in spite of their differences. Some would say even closer than friends, but uhh there’s plenty of fanfiction for that I’m sure. Not that I’ve looked. Have you?

Shelby happened to be a huge fan of the N-Zed Boys, a boy band group from, well, N-Z. Chase, being a native, presumably knew all about them and picked on her about it. While testing out the new Dino Armor X Charger on the monster Golddigger, he lost control of it and Shelby got trapped underground alongside Ivan and Tyler. Chase wasn’t being true to his heart because he was being a big ol’ bully to Shelby, so he needed to make peace with her and her fangirlism in order to harness the Armor X Jaws and save his friends. His big apology was winning a radio contest for some N-Zed Boys VIP tickets for her.

The Rangers’ pursuit of the Energems took them to New Zealand, which Chase made a great chaperon for. There he met a fellow Kiwi, Albert, who possessed the Purple Energem, but felt he was too cowardly and old to continue using it. Once Sledge was defeated, Chase headed back to New Zealand to be with his mom and sister. When he found out that Santa had been kidnapped and that his sister Chloe wouldn’t be getting any presents (yes really), he went back to Amber Beach to help the other Rangers save him. He returned to Rangership once again when the evil Snide took control of Sledge’s ship and continued the search for the Energems.

Chase had been seeing a girl named Kaylee, but she was growing tired of him showing off his skateboard skills. Probably because she’s not 12 and impressed by these things. What did impress her was the Black Ranger saving an old lady from a monster attack. So impressed, in fact, she pulled a Mary Jane Watson and broke up with Chase. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell her that they were one in the same. In his own words, he stole her from himself under his own nose.

Shelby helped him come to the realization that Chase made their relationship all about himself and his interests. In an attempt to get to know her better, he disguised his Kiwi accent and met up with Kaylee as the Black Ranger. Since nothing could really come of this without revealing his true identity, he broke up with her shortly after, but not before changing her mind about Chase. He wound up saving her from Singe, which further cemented her desire to give it another shot.

A food critic came to the Dino Bite Cafe because this is Power Rangers and this is the show where food critics visit overpriced gimmicky museum cafes. As the main cook, this induced lot of pressure on Chase, and he ended up blowing it in quite a literal sense when his dessert exploded in the lady’s face. To add insult to injury, his Energem also fell off his necklace while he was baking and wound up in her handbag.

Chase was able to retrieve it from her and also save her from some collateral giant monster battle damage. She offered him some advice about his recipe and not trying the same thing over and over again, which helped him out in battle by trying the new Dino Charge Ultrazord against Fortress. The food critic came back… yet again… to try Chase’s pavlova now that he had mixed up the recipe.

After the destruction of Sledge, Heckyl’s redemption, and the casual return of living dinosaurs returning to the current timeline, Chase presumably went back to New Zealand. Or he kept working at the Amber Beach “Dinosaur Zoo” cleaning up triceratops shit. Tough choice.

 

RANKING

Chase is cool and another great example of a comic relief Ranger. He still takes his duties seriously, but he’s got a bit of a self-serving streak that takes a while to go away. I think A Date with Danger is the last we see of it, which is good, but it’s a little late in the game for a guy that already saved Christmas for his friggin sister. He tends to learn the same lesson in all of his focus episodes, which is that he should be more empathetic and not such a dick. I like the presentation of his… erm… relationship with Riley in The Tooth Hurts and I wish that they’d played around with that some more considering how often they teamed up.

All in all, Chase normally has good intentions and he’s rather unique in being one of the only “foreigner” Power Rangers. I think that’s gonna put him just under Dom as the new number 9 on the Children of Zordon.

Make sure you follow me on Twitter (and also no context power rangers, of course) and check back every Monday (or some time throughout the week) for new entries on the list. I might do some other stuff in-between, and @childrnofzordon is probably the first place you’ll hear about it. As usual, I don’t make promises. If you wanna see where other Rangers stand on the list, make sure you take a gander at that link.

Next week is gonna be a big one as we focus on everyone’s first nerdy crush, Billy Cranston. It may take me a while because this dude has a lot of episodes. Like, I might actually announce another hiatus if my brain fries enough. But we’ll see.