Characters struggling to figure out how their powers work in Live-Action TV series.
- In The Amazing Extraordinary Friends, Ben has no idea how the Captain X insignia works and spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to control his powers (and occasionally discovering powers he did not know he had).
- Happens frequently to the witches in Charmed; in the first episode alone they had to learn which of them had which power (telekinesis, freezing time and prophetic visions), and in the course of the series they all receive a range of 'upgrades' at potentially inopportune moments (astral projection, blowing things up, flight and empathy). Even when they have to "replace" one of the original trio with their previously-unknown half-sister, her new parentage means that her power works differently from her predecessor, so they can't just adapt what worked before and take it from there.
- In a relatively unremarkable body switch episode of Farscape, Rygel (the tiny frog-like Napoleon) is occupying John Crichton's body when he finds himself needing to urinate. John leads him through the steps, but when it comes to zipping up... well, it didn't go well. Let's not forget that John was in Aeryn's body while giving the instructions, for added hilarity. Aeryn later hints that she did certain things in John's body as well.
- The Flash:
- The pilot of The Flash (1990) has Barry learn about his ability and limitations. The first time he accidentally activates it, he tries to catch a bus... and ends up miles away on a beach. He has a hard time stopping. The only thing that helps is running on water, which absorbs a lot of his momentum. He also faints frequently due to his metabolism going into overdrive, turning him into a Big Eater.
- The 2014 remake has Barry try to run after discovering his power, only to accidentally end up in a van that happens to be full of clothes to soften the impact.
- Vampires in the Forever Knight verse have to learn to control their powers right after being turned, especially the trick of not being overpowered by the hunger. That's why most of them have masters guiding them for a while.
- This is the entire premise of the show The Greatest American Hero. The hero lost the manual to his super-suit in the pilot episode, and as a result does not know how to use his powers or even what they are. It's worth noting that Ralph finally got a replacement instruction manual in one episode. He loses it when, experimenting with shrinking powers, he gets startled by an ant and returns to normal size... leaving the manual microscopic.
- Heroes:
- Peter Petrelli , both in Season 1 (where he learned how to control his empathic powers from Claude) and in Season 2 (where he got amnesia and forgot both which powers he had and how to use them). This seems to be one of the recurring problems which always almost brings about an apocalypse of some sort. Hell, in the beginning of Season 1 Peter didn't even know what his power was, having spent his life around five people with a power he could copy.
- Arthur Petrelli doesn't seem to have this problem. He has a pretty good handle on how to use the powers he stole from Peter despite not having seen him use them.
- There is also serial killer Sylar, who can use powers better than the person he stole from due to his power of "Intuitive Aptitude" which is the ability to analyse how things work, including brains (which is where powers manifest). However, Sylar seems to need a fair bit of training when he learns to take powers without examining the brain. Of course, we're still not sure how this works.
- The pilot of The Invisible Man involved Darian being implanted with a gland that can turn him invisible, after which he has to be taught how to activate it, and then he experiments with it and learns to do things the scientists who developed the gland didn't even think were possible. The first time they get him to go invisible is by releazing tarantulas in a locked room with him. Considering Darien has arachnophobia (and his brother would know), this is a good way to trigger a massive generation of adrenalin necessary to activate the gland. When Darien tries to spy on a nurse and a soldier getting in on, his excitement causes his adrenalin levels to drop... and he gets a black eye from the pissed off soldier. Learning yoga helps control it. In another episode, Kevin Fawkes's RNA is injected into the gland in order to "revive" Kevin's ghost in Darien's body. Naturally, Kevin has to relearn how to use the gland.
- Kamen Rider:
- In Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, Kit's first attempt to transform into Dragon Knight includes multiple inflections of his transformation phrase ("'Kamen Rider!' 'Kamen... RIDER'? 'Kamenrider'?"), similar to the Spider-Man film.
- Also, Kamen Rider V3 has to figure out all of his abilities due to Riders 1 and 2 being killed before they can teach them to him. (They get better.)
- Kamen Rider Super-1's powers were meant to be controlled remotely. When the base (and machines) went kablooey, he had no idea how to activate his transformation, and it took six months of study at the Shaolin Temple to be able to Zen up his transformation (it... uh, makes more sense in context).
- Kamen Rider Kuuga has to learn how to use the abilities of each form, usually with help from his friends. He also tends not to have a new form until it reveals itself to him. The Arcle actually does come with a manual, but it's translated only a very small amount at a time, and the Grongi ain't gonna wait for Yuusuke to figure out how the shiny suit works.
- Kamen Rider Faiz was not meant to have the armor but is one of few who can use it. There are a lot of features Takumi doesn't know about until he stumbles onto them. In one episode, Delta summons a rocket bike. Takumi summons the one he never knew he had by entering the same code. It gets destroyed in the same episode as he's not as good with it as his opponent is with his own. Of course, he still has a Cool Bike. Why Takumi is one of the few who can use it is something else nobody knows at first, and is a doozy when revealed.
- Kamen Rider Fourze literally struggles to transform and use his switch-weapons in the first episode. Yuki has to explain the transformation sequence to him, and Kengo communicates with Fourze mid-fight through his radar's built-in communicator in order to explain what gadget does what. Without all that help, Gentaro would've been flying around randomly and firing missiles everywhere without even touching the very first Monster of the Week once.
- Kamen Rider Zero-One
- Since the Zero-One system was a secret project almost no one knew about, the very first thing the it does when someone puts the belt on is put them through a tutorial of the suit's abilities at hyperspeed. Aruto still manages to freak himself out with the sheer height he can jump, and later trips and slams into a wall after his first Rider Kick. Looks like you can't grasp everything with theory alone...
- It happens again when Aruto gets an alternate form capable of Playing with Fire. He uncontrollably releases jets of flame from his hands and begins burning himself, while his fumbling around causes Kamen Rider Vulcan to begin Corpsing.
- The leads of Kamen Rider Revice get the hang of using their new powers well enough, but find out about a few of them through dumb luck. Notably, Ikki finds out that his axe doubles as a gun when he grabs it by the wrong end mid-battle and accidentally kills a mook, and the Remix Form ability is discovered when Vice decides to mess around with Ikki and inadvertently fiddles with his belt in just the right way.
- The Objects from The Lost Room have shades of this, when someone even knows what they do or how to activate them. This is doubly true for the abilities of Object combinations, which don't always have anything to do with combining the abilities of the individual Objects (for example, the Wristwatch can boil an egg if it's placed around the egg, but when used with the Knife it grants the user telepathy).
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- In Ms. Marvel (2022), Kamala's Training Montage starts with a lot of Epic Fail before she starts to get the hang of her powers. Even so, at the end of the second episode, where she saves a boy from falling to his death, she still doesn't know how her powers work so it also goes horribly wrong.
- She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: Much of the first episode is Bruce teaching Jen how to manage her Hulk powers. He is adamant that she learn properly to avoid accidentally breaking cities. She reluctantly agrees to learn "how to hulk".
- British superhero drama Misfits really goes to town with this trope. Of the five protagonists, only Simon (whose power is Invisibility) can exert any kind of deliberate control over his power, while the others remain baffled and exasperated by their ungovernable abilities. Both Kelly, who hates being telepathic and wishes she could just turn it off, and Alisha, whose "power" of pheromone manipulation — which causes anyone who touches her skin to experience such violent surges of lust that they will generally attempt to rape her — can do nothing to mitigate or restrain the effects of their powers. Curtis finds his power of time manipulation to be infuriatingly sporadic, and then there's Nathan, whose power of Healing (and effective Immortality), works so incredibly slowly that it's possible for him to die, and only come back to life several days later — to find himself buried alive, naturally. It is, however, a little early in the Series to deem them all truly power incontinent.
- Mutant X:
- One episode has a young boy kidnapped for ransom. It turns out that the boy is an Elemental New Mutant capable of throwing fireballs. However, he's young, so he's not sure how to control his ability. The first time it manifests is during the kidnapping, when he accidentally burns a hole in a kidnapper's hand. At the end of the episode, he finally learns to produce fireballs on demand by copying Brennan's Pstandard Psychic Pstance when he's charging his electric powers.
- There's also a bit of this when the team receives an upgrade. Brennan learns he can create a continuous blast akin to an ion engine with his hands, enabling brief flight. Shalimar becomes even stronger and can hear someone sneaking up on her while working out with loud music in her earbuds. Emma's Psychic Powers are boosted. Jesse learns to make other things intangible.
- The members of No Ordinary Family have to spend quite some time learning the strengths and limitations of their new abilities. It occasionally goes poorly.
- Power Rangers:
- There was a scene in the first episode of Power Rangers Ninja Storm where the Rangers try to figure out how to activate their morphers. And then when they actually go out to face the bad guys, they struggle for a minute to remember the By the Power of Grayskull! phrase.
- In Power Rangers Turbo, forming the new Megazord was difficult, and the Zords banged into each other a few times before someone got out the manual. What makes this one interesting is that, in The Movie, they could pull it off by being stationary. They just couldn't do it at high speeds.
- When Karone becomes the new Pink Ranger in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, she messes up the command to summon the Galactabeasts — calling "Galactabeasts, over here!!" when it should be "Galactabeasts, arise!"
- Raising Dion follows a seven year old boy, who is just discovering his superpowers. He has quite some trouble at first to keep them under control, or use them the way he wants.
- The Sentinel is about a cop who discovers he has Super-Senses. At first, they trigger instinctively, and sometimes to his detriment. A large part of the show, and the purpose for the character Blair, is Jim learning how to use and control his powers to help him fight crime.
- The Shannara Chronicles: Wil can't reliably trigger the Elf Stones, and even when he succeeds it's got its downsides for him.
- Used in Smallville a number of times as Clark's emerging powers make themselves known, most notably with his heat vision and X-ray vision. Clark spends all the way up to Season 10 unable to figure out how to fly, while Kara and other Kryptonians can do it in a few minutes — though it turns out that that's pretty much entirely psychological. Clark ends up accidentally firing off his Eye Beams (the first time he realizes he has them) by watching a sex ed video with a new hot teacher (Krista Allen). It's not difficult to see what the writers were trying to get across, especially since he triggers his second time by thinking of his crush Lana. By the end of the episode, he can trigger the beams on demand (such as by incinerating a bullet in flight).
- Star Trek: Voyager. The Emergency Medical Hologram can only operate in areas of Voyager equipped with holographic emitters. Then in "Future's End" he's given a mobile emitter than enables him to go anywhere. He quite enjoys this until he's told to go to another part of the ship to treat someone, and has to admit that he doesn't know how to get there, having never been outside Sickbay or walked from Point A to Point B before. Thinking on his feet, Chakotay promptly orders an ensign to escort him there.
- On Teen Wolf, werewolves do not have instinctive knowledge of how to control their powers, or even knowledge of all the potential powers that they might have. For example, Peter Hale has exhibited various telepathic powers as both an Alpha and a Beta that Derek and other Alphas do not seem to know how to use.
- Wonder Woman: Both Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl were shown learning how to transform into a super heroine while away from Paradise Island. The first time Drusilla changed into Wonder Girl, it took her multiple tries and a mental review to get it right.
