Time For Frax's Fury

Frax's origins. I mentioned before that I liked the idea of Gien and Dolnero's relationship in Timeranger; he was an innocent who helped Dolnero and was mortally wounded. Dolnero saved him by having him turned mechanical, and it's a sad twist of fate that that technology is warping the person that Dolnero thought was worth saving. I like that Dolnero, to his sadness, recognized the danger of Gien and tried to put an end to it.

Ransik is shown to be much more outwardly sinister. As a vagrant, Ransik was once attacked by the diseased mutant Venomark. He was found and brought back to health by a Dr. Fericks. A lonely genius who builds himself robot buddies, Fericks is kinda like Blade Runner's J.F. Sebastian, but looks like Tyrell. (That's right, Timeranger! A show about futuristic cops should do SOMETHING to remind one of Blade Runner!) Fericks has invented a miracle serum that can stave off Venomark's venom, but since Ransik is a mutant, it will never fully cure him, so he'll need to take it for the rest of his life.

Ransik looks down on this timid little guy, so fixated on robots (which Ransik has that inexplicable, hypocritical hatred of) and decides to attack the guy, steal his entire medical supply and leave him for dead. He burns the dude's place down and walks away from it in slow-mo, like he's Keyser Soze. A critically wounded Fericks saves himself by altering himself, changing himself into the robotic Frax. While I like the kind of sorrowful way the story plays for Dolnero, I like this twist Time Force makes, especially the twist in that Frax has made himself one of Ransik's top assistants, motivated all along by seeking a chance for revenge. And then add to that that Ransik has no idea who Frax really is; a robot's a robot to him. So Frax has just been counting the days, and he gets his revenge sweetly. First by letting Venomark out of prison to attack. Secondly -- and more importantly -- by denying Ransik his serum. Ransik returns to the base in immense pain, only to find all of his vials of the serum shattered. Frax holds the last one, taunting Ransik, before letting it go to break with all of the rest. It's a pretty vindictive move for a Power Rangers villain. Frax is pretty far from the days of Rita giving the dog Jason takes care of fleas just to fuck up his weekend.

The other interesting part of this episode is, when the four Rangers are infected by Venomark, Wes makes a tough choice. When he witnesses Ransik taking serum, leaving the broken bottle, he returns to find the bottle still holds some serum. Not knowing what else to do, he turns to his dad, knowing his dad's company will be able to analyze it and create more. The moral dilemma is that he knows his dad is going to just see the dollar signs, but he really has no choice if he wants to save the other Rangers, and the others in the city who have been infected. While I liked the way they handled this scenario in Timeranger -- Dolnero selling his blood for the cure to be cultivated from and all of the contingency plans made by all parties involved -- I also like Time Force's take and making it personal with Wes and his dad, Wes having to make a choice he knows isn't the greatest. (And is something that ends up messing with the timeline.) There's also Eric getting to be a bit more heroic, in making the call to let Wes see his dad and plead his case.

An episode that consolidates what's supposed to be two big episodes of Timeranger into one, while managing to be strong in its own right. The second part in Timeranger plays into Ayase's illness, but, again, I feel like Time Force basically transplanted Ayase's storyline over to Ransik.

On a sidenote, Venomark/Emboss is one of my favorite monster designs, just so appropriately creepy and gross (with his goiters or boils or whatever they are), a nice touch being when he wears a black hood like the Reaper.

In other news, Wes' dad gets a name! Sorta. The plaque on his desk reads "A. Collins." Are we to assume his name is Alex, as in the Collins descendant from 3000 is named after him? I kinda imagine his name being one of those rich-sounding names that just sounds like "asshole" -- Alastair or something like that.