This article is about an organization and set of villains in Power Rangers RPM. |
Alphabet Soup was a morally corrupt, top-secret government facility that abducts young geniuses, child prodigies, and utilizes their abilities for various military applications. They are indirectly responsible for the events of Power Rangers RPM, thereby making them the overarching antagonists of the series, and by extension, the events of Power Rangers Beast Morphers.
History
Past
Alphabet Soup's origins are unclear but, given the timeline, they must have been founded at least in the 90s, since after this (judging by Doctor K's age) there is a gap of around ten or more years before Venjix's release, as well as an additional three years after that since the virus needed to infect every computer to conquer Earth, and a year after that following The Battle of Corinth.
What is known is that Alphabet Soup was founded by the United States government to build futuristic weapons technology, essentially granted the freedom to do whatever they wanted as long as they got results. The geniuses captured by Alphabet Soup are deceived into believing they are allergic to the sun and thus cannot leave the facility, and steered into seeing their situation as a fun game to make and test state-of-the-art weaponry.
Doctor K
Sometime after they were founded, two agents of Alphabet Soup were searching the streets of Boston, Massachusetts when they found a 5-year-old girl writing advanced equations, showing prodigious intelligence in math and science. The agents then kidnapped her for their illicit purposes. Over the years, the girl grew to have genius-level intellect and became known as Doctor K, specializing in robotics and artificial intelligence, which Alphabet Soup exploited to its fullest degree. K was coerced into working "'round the clock" at Alphabet Soup growing up, to the point where she had no social skills and could barely express her emotions, as well as unable to remember her real name. In that time, Doctor K befriended a pair of genetically-engineered teenage twins called Gem and Gemma, whose development had been so hindered that they finished each other's sentences.
Although most of the think-tank's dealings are unknown, two of Alphabet Soup's main creations were Project Venjix, a sentient computer virus that was used to infiltrate secret military codes, and Project Ranger, an attempt to make exoskeletal robotic suits to amplify human strength and speed thanks to their recent discovery of a universal bioelectric energy grid that connects the life force of all living things. Project Ranger progressed with the creation of the Ranger Operator Series suits and Zord Attack Vehicles. Both the Paleozord and Turbo Falcon Zord proved unusable, and the former was dumped in a mountain range near the future site of Corinth City while the latter was simply locked away at a still-undisclosed location.
Eventually, Doctor K discovered that she and the other test subjects were being lied to about their sunshine allergy to keep them from leaving Alphabet Soup. She released Venjix into the facility's servers, planning to disable their security so she could escape with Gem and Gemma. Unfortunately, before K could install a firewall to prevent Venjix from spreading outside Alphabet Soup, the facility's overseers caught on to what she was doing and captured the trio.
Within three years, Venjix had infected every computer in the world and built an unstoppable robot army that he used to bring the human race to the brink of extinction. Venjix then attacked the Alphabet Soup facility with his Attack Drones, leveling it and killing all personnel in the building, which rendered the organization non-existent. Doctor K was confronted by two agents as she tried to leave with the Ranger Series, and they attempted to kill her for fear of Venjix being traced back to them. Gem and Gemma came to her rescue, but were seemingly crushed to death when a doorway collapsed on top of them.
Legacy
Doctor K managed to escape to the city of Corinth where she founded the Power Rangers to stop Venjix in Gem and Gemma's honor. She initially kept Venjix's origin a secret, but spoke freely of Alphabet Soup, most likely out of spite for them ruining her childhood.
Two years after Venjix annihilated the Alphabet Soup facility, the lush countryside around the facility had become a dead and barren desert thanks to his attack. After finding out about Doctor K's origins, the RPM Rangers went to the facility to try and find Dillon's memories but were attacked by Venjix, General Shifter and the Dyna Bot, though they managed to escape back to Corinth with the aid of the mysterious Gold and Silver Rangers. Said Rangers were later revealed to be Gem and Gemma, to Doctor K's delight.
Alphabet Soup's actions were undone later that same year when the RPM Rangers finally defeat Venjix (although it was revealed years later that Venjix survived and went into hiding), saving humanity and allowing them to repopulate the planet. What happened to the Alphabet Soup facility is unknown but it was presumably torn down as a remnant of the apocalypse.
Notes
- Alphabet Soup is named after the soup of the same name, which involves twirling letter-shaped cereal around to form words. This was clearly chosen to allude to the fact that the think-tank brought all types of children in to construct their weapons.
- The mobile video game Power Rangers All-Stars introduced another member of Alphabet Soup known as Professor Q. Professor Q was portrayed as a polar opposite to Doctor K, being kind and affectionate and was also said to be engaged to Scott Truman's brother.
References
Footnotes