Lord Zedd - a fictional character I've had a lifelong obsession with. ♥
Lord Zedd - a fictional character I've had a lifelong obsession
with. ♥
May 1995. I was 10 years old. We'd just moved house and it was a Bank Holiday Monday. But this would not be any ordinary Monday - this was the Monday that I sat in front of the television to witness the debut of a future Power Rangers legend: the arrival of Lord Zedd! (Okay, that sounds a bit too grandiose, and scoff you may, but I can still vividly remember my excitement in those days leading up to the start of the second series of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I was a huge fan of the show and my little life revolved around it!)
All I knew of Lord Zedd, before the airing of season 2 was his voice, featured on the short ‘song’ on the Power Rangers - The Album cassette that my mum had bought for me the previous Christmas, but Zedd's significance did not really become apparent to me until the trailer for his début episode was aired on UK television - and it said something like "Lord Zedd is here! And he won't stop until the Power Rangers are out of his way!" - and then, the very notion of a bad-ass super-villain kicking off Rita and coming close to destroying the Power Rangers thrilled me to the core! I couldn’t wait to see this guy!
And when the episode aired I was hooked. Zedd was everything Rita hadn’t been - and then some! He was intelligent, had a sharp but amusing tongue, was more powerful than any of his precursors, and was a very masculine male. (I think I had a rather strange crush on him, if truth be told.) From that day forth, I became obsessed and loyal to this Emperor of Evil.
Zedd pulls his Adonis-pose. XD Heheh.
I think it was the entrance that really did it - the sheer strength and (let’s face it) arrogance of Zedd astounded me and left a lasting impression (one that still returns to revisit me today). I’ve never known a villain be so egotistical as to claim themselves master over all they see (and have some justification for it, too), and Zedd's swift, no-nonsense trouncing of Rita was just too awesome for words. (We knew that this guy wasn’t going to have a headache at the end of every episode, if nothing else.) The whining and pettiness was gone, replaced with cold efficiency and a blunt practicality.
After Zedd's début in "The Mutiny", of course the old bad guy ritual returned: make a monster, Rangers arrive on the scene, a swift defeat follows, "I'll get you next time Power brats". There's clearly a lot wrong with the narrow thinking of the Power Ranger villains - so much so, it's almost embarassing to dwell on the matter. Never mind a "glass ceiling", these poor buggers are stuck in a glass box, unable to move left or right, up or down; unable to consider the chance of sending down, say, five monsters; of attacking maybe another city; of getting off their backsides and going down to earth themselves to do some damage. But no, they must follow the rules so that they can be defeated every week! :D
But this is a kid's show. Who needs coherence or common sense? (And it was because I politely ignored the gaping plot holes of this wonderfully zany, Japanese-sourced TV show that I continued to watch it until I was 14.)
But back to the story:
I was hit by my first bitter disappointed as regarded dear Zeddy when a school friend told me that he was going to marry Rita Repulsa. I thought my friend was joking!
She wasn't.
Zedd's marriage to Rita Repulsa during the latter third of season 2 rankled with me - I was distraught that my kick-ass Emperor was suddenly a soppy, devoted husband, and I waited for the day when that blasted love potion would be cured!
And that's when it got worse! The potion was cured and apparently Zedd liked Rita. (Well, storming Rita's palace and throwing her into a dumpster must have gone someway to endearing Zedd to Rita... WTF?)
Run for it Zedd... she's gonna blow!
Poor Zedd was reduced to complete comic relief by the time the Power Rangers were "Zeo" (because, oh would you have guessed it? An even more powerful villain came along! Wannabe Machine Empire...), and it looked very unlikely to ever get better.
The sense that Zedd had been betrayed by the PR writers has never left me. And so it was that when we finally came round to 2007, and Disney released the Power Rangers: Super Legends video game, I was over-the-moon to hear that Lord Zedd was back in bad-ass alien form and playing a major part in it! It was as if, suddenly, someone else had realised that this evil alien had been one of the best things to ever happen to Power Rangers and that the "Emperor of all he sees" needed to be restored to his rightful place as a real threat and menace. (Thank you, whoever you were! You were right!) Unfortunately they failed to give original voice-actor Robert Axelrod his dues and bring him back to do the voiceover, but I guess having Zedd back at all is something.
But now I'm rambling. Old-skool-fan-gripes aside, it appears that now is as good a time as any to return to the glory days of Power Rangers and dwell on what might have been; to take Lord Zedd, that skinless and skulless despot, and give him the freedom to achieve his full potential in a world of fan-fiction, where anything is possible! My fanfiction is a form of revenge on those treacherous screenwriters who irked me as a child so long ago and made my Lord Zedd into a ridiculous villain wannabe. XD (Though speaking as someone who owns that bizarre Lord Zedd plushy, I can't really talk...)
In my fanfic, I have tried to produce a version of Zedd who is devoid of any
of those characteristics which made him either weak, unintelligent or ridiculous
in the television series. Sure, my version is still Lord Zedd at heart, both
based-on and inspired by the character we saw on-screen, but with the menace,
ferocity, and integrity he should surely have maintained in the TV show long
after "The Mutiny" episodes. In short, my Lord Zedd is not child-friendly.
;D (And if you want to read more about my fanfic version of Zedd, jump
over here, or feel free to have a read of my
experimental, mature fanfics yourself, and let me know what you think.)
"regal... like Vader" - Axelrod on Lord Zedd
Having seen the footage of Robert from ACEN 2008, I have been so overwhelmed to hear that he is of a similar opinion to me as regards the character of Lord Zedd, saying in his question and answer session that he would have preferred that Zedd remained evil and kept his integrity. Mr. Axelrod also spoke of how he would have liked Lord Zedd to have broken free from the influence of Rita's love potion and for the character to have asked himself what he was doing. (You don't know how many times, even as a kid, I imagined that moment - the moment Zedd woke up! I was gutted by the revelation in series 3 that Zedd "really loved Rita".)
When asked about any particular favourite scenes, Mr. Axelrod made reference to those with Zedd in "Serpentera" - wahoo! We all loved Zedd-and-Serpy time! Robert also said that he felt it was "ridiculous" that Zedd got transformed into human in PRiS. I am on your wavelength, sir.
I get the impression that Axelrod became quite attached to the character of Zedd, which is really cool - it's nice that he cared. :D I do wonder if it was difficult at all for him to continue to give a convincing performance as Lord Zedd when he personally felt that the character was no longer true to his form... But I guess that's something actors can deal with well - it's their job to give a performance, after all. My heart was broken as a kid by Zedd's deterioration into comic relief; of his "marriage" and his apparent love for Rita all along. (And the less said about that campervan in Zeo, the better!) I have always sought vengeance for him, and for the betrayal he suffered at the hands of the PR writers & producers - so here it is, archived on this site: said "betrayal" has been the fuel for my imagination and made me, in retaliation, write my dark Zeddy fanfics and draw my Zeddy artwork.
It's so awesome to know that Mr. Axelrod respected the character's original wickedness and integrity and... well, what more can I say? I bow down to you, sir! Thanks for being such a huge part of my childhood.
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