Time For Reinforcements From the Future

You know what's funny, I remember watching this two-parter years ago -- and well after I finished Time Force in its entirety -- and thought it was pretty cool. But now when I watch it so closely with the actual series, I don't enjoy it so much and feel it's mostly pointless. There are still some cool things about it, but there's more I *don't* like about this two-parter...

It's an adequate enough way to involve the Time Force, and it at least feels eventful, unlike Time Force's team-up with Lightspeed Rescue. There are weirdo Orgs on the loose that the Wild Force can't quite handle and that the Silver Guardians are no match for. Wes contacts Trip in the future -- using the same equipment the Time Force used to contact Logan and Alex throughout their series -- and finds out that they're Org/mutant hybrids that the Time Force have been tracking. It's discovered that Jen was tracking them, but went radio-silent and they lost track of her.

To combat this Mutorg (that's what I'm calling them for convenience) menace, they need someone with expertise, so Lucas and Katie have to seek out Nadira and Ransik. It's a cool little idea to have Ransik in a Hannibal Lecter role, but Ransik's not bad anymore. He's genuinely remorseful, a model prisoner, a chill dude who wants to help. It's...disappointing. I guess Power Rangers was too safe to have Ransik, like, discover religion in the slammer, which would help a BIT, but I still wouldn't buy this coming from him, really. But this is nothing compared to what ends up happening to Ransik in the end of this team-up... (Yes, it gets even worse.)

I like that they make a big deal revealing Jen -- she's been on the hunt for the Mutorgs and she inexplicably has this really early-00s sci-fi-y uniform that's like a cross between Zeiram's Iria, Aeon Flux and The Matrix's Trinity. She gets a cool, over-the-top Sakamoto fight scene. Wes and Jen don't get to spend too much time together, since the Mutorg threat is on. They try to address this, but the feeling I get is that since this is Wild Force's show, they don't want to devote TOO much time to the old guys, which sucks.

Eventually, the other Time Force Rangers return -- along with Ransik and Nadira -- and after everyone puts aside their differences, like they've been mainlining Brady Bunch episodes in 3001 or something, the hunt's on for the Mutorgs. Ransik reveals he's responsible for their existence -- in the future, he found them as plain old Orgs and freed them, and they coursed through him, being altered by his mutant DNA and became these fancy Gingaman repaints -- er, Mutorgs! This scene also sadly explains that Ransik's neat little pulling-blades-from-his-skeleton trick was a "gift" given to him by the Mutorgs, which was an unnecessary explanation that robs Ransik of one of his cool little quirks.

I'll just get to it -- Ransik feels responsible for these three freaks and so he grabs 'em all and "drains the mutation" from them, making them plain old Orgs that are easy to fight. It looks as if he dies here, but he doesn't -- somehow, even though he just absorbed three times the mutant-stuff-and-junk from these monsters, it's wiped the mutant DNA from HIS own body and he gets up looking like plain old Vernon Wells. Our bad guy gets his happy ending! But that's not all! More as it develops.

Basically, the best part of this two-parter is Uber-Jen and I like just how sorrowful Eric seems in these episodes, and the thing he and Lady Gao Yellow have going. (I'm trying not to cheat and look up her name, but she seems cool, and would be one of the reasons I'd consider watching Wild Force, which otherwise looks mostly...ech.) Not having Eric die like Naoto, and then shuttling him off for all of the important stuff in the final episode robbed the character of a conclusion. He still doesn't really get one here, but there's something interesting about his sadness. Like, he might have mellowed, he might have mended things with Wes, but he still didn't find what he was looking for. He didn't find happiness. There's a glimmer with Lady Gao Yellow, but that ain't going to last. Naoto did find a bit of peace, even if he didn't survive the series. One could argue that Eric has the more tragic tale.

The team-up ends with a big pic-a-nic -- obviously a Wild Force idea, and they obviously just watched Gingaman VS Megaranger, which has a similarly stupid idea -- between the two teams. That's all of the Time Force and all of Wild Force. And Nadira. AND RANSIK! Again: AND RANSIK! He shows up dressed like the lead singer of the first and last Smash Mouth cover band, like everything's all right and always has been and always will be. And everyone's OK with it! Ransik's yukking it up and making funnies about anyone showing interest in Nadira. The two villains...having a picnic with the Rangers. This is kinda like PR's cowardice in a nutshell. It's pure Danny Tanner "he wishes Tim Burton's Batman ended with Batman and the Joker hugging." Villains having a picnic with the Rangers. That's it, this post is over.

F+

Time For The End of Time

This episode takes one of the strangest turns I've ever seen in a superhero show...

Ransik has everyone working for him out searching for Frax, including Nadira. Bored by the search, she stops off at a store. When her presence causes all of the shoppers in the store to panic, a pregnant woman goes into labor. Trip shows up to fight Nadira, pausing when he notices the pregnant woman. He then ignores Nadira to help the pregnant woman, before convincing Nadira to help her take care of the lady and deliver the baby while he goes and helps his buddies. And. Nadira. Listens. What the...

It's the beginning of this out-of-nowhere redemption for Nadira, and I see what they're going for, but it's staged in the clumsiest manner possible. Like...why didn't Trip call an ambulance? Why does he think Nadira, of everyone in the store, was the best choice? There were plenty of other options. It's not like she was Dr. Nadira in 3000... Nadira! The woman was better off delivering her baby herself like that woman in Liveman's second episode! And Nadira listens and helps! I don't know how I didn't remember this happening in the show, but it doesn't quite work for me, and Nadira's change is pivotal to the finale of the show...

We've never seen Nadira not be selfish or narcissistic. She always takes delight in the chaos she's caused. She was ready to kill a busload of kids in an episode way back. But helping deliver a baby is going to change her? Like I said, I see what the show wants to do, but it doesn't jibe with what we've seen from Nadira for the entire series. And Kate Sheldon's performance and the way all of these "Nadira questions her life" scenes are handled with the subtley of a purple elephant doing a bicycle kick. You have Koichi Sakamoto -- whose primary focus is on delivering a heightened, big-bang adventure -- directing, so he's not invested in the emotions of the scene. And to describe Sheldon's performance in these episodes as maudlin is too positive, because that suggests some genuine, raw emotion, and she just comes across as really phony and exaggerated. (I'm going to assume she thinks this about-face of Nadira's is as bullshit as I do and she just didn't find it playable.)

Helping the delivery, witnessing the miracle of birth, causes Nadira to question everything -- like why she and her father hate humans so much, why are they fighting. If Nadira had only been a minor threat in the show, maybe it would be easier to buy. If we had been shown that she's kind of innocent, but knows no better because this is the life her father's given her, that would be one thing. But we've seen her unafraid to get her hands dirty. So this redemption which leads to -- even harder to buy -- a Ransik redemption is just so phony and soft and wimpy even by Power Rangers standards. Time Force was trying to be gutsier than the usual PR show, but it slides right back to Nerdville with this one.

And I'd like it to work, because it gives the character depth. Lila ends Timeranger by just walking out on the Londarz when shit goes south, and it's unintentionally comedic and stupid. (Way to go protecting history there, Timeranger, the Keystone Cops of time cops, when you let one of the villains from 3000 just mingle about in the past and not even give her a thought. A shapeshifting villain at that!) Frustrating that it doesn't work, because there's a couple of moments that would have been really good had they played right...

One comes with Nadira's moment with Frax. Frax is found and caught by Ransik. Nadira tries to talk to him about her shifting views while he's imprisoned, and he doesn't buy it, and just spews more hatred for her to hear. When grunts come to get him to transport him to surgery, Nadira softly lets out a apology to Dr. Fericks for what her father did to him. This actually gets through to Frax, he's touched, and he tries to offer encouraging words to Nadira as he's hauled off. This scene is shot well -- Frax's frantic cries, the roughness of his being hauled away, the surprisingly decent and dramatic background music.

Nadira later finds Frax on a slab after being operated on, hoping he'd elaborate on what he was saying, only to find that Ransik had his memory wiped; he's rid Frax of his remaining humanity and he's now the obedient worker Ransik wants him to be. Frax spends the rest of the series as just Ransik's goon operating his giant robot creation, now serving Ransik's purpose. A sad end to a tragic character, and thankfully these scenes work more than some of the other scenes we'll see of Nadira questioning her life.

And thankfully all of the stuff on the Ranger side works, or else we'd be winding up with some dud finale episodes. But, as in Timeranger, after having nightmares about their deaths, Wes makes the decision to send the others back to 3000 against their will. While Wes is doing what he thinks is right, and he's acting out of desperation, it still feels like more of a betrayal here that he blindsides them. They're all such a functional unit that I find the emotions of the scene works more than in Timeranger. (I think I've hammered home how I don't think any of the Timeranger cast members ever feel like they've come to love one another as family; they really only have feelings for themselves.) The words of Jen's feelings are just about to hit her lips as the ship takes off and Wes is left alone in an unwinnable situation.

It's up to Wes and Eric to set aside their squabbles and save the day, as the four other Time Force Rangers awaken in 3000, confused and pissed off. Alex reassures them that it's for the best, that staying in 2001 would have been a losing battle where they would have pointlessly died. When they ask what happened to Wes, he tells them Wes didn't survive the attack. He then readies them to have their memories of 2001 wiped -- standard procedure to help time-travelers better reacclimate to their own time period. That's the breaking point for them and they decide to go back to 2001. Thankfully, the show had the guts to word Jen's line the way they did: "We can't live our lives here knowing Wes gave his there." She then returns Alex's engagement ring...cold! Maybe bold. Eh, Alex knew what was up.

Timeranger's scenario is a muddled mess, and I've never liked it. In Timeranger, they were told to return to 3000 and not to interfere -- Gien Megazord was meant to destroy the 20th century to give birth to the 30th. The four Timeranger return to 3000 and meet with Ryuuya, who's being his usual weasel-with-a-shit-eating-grin self. Ryuuya's glad they returned and tells them that history's changed for the better for them -- Yuuri's family is alive, there's a cure for Ayase, and Domon was never banned from his fighting career. Since Shion's the Last Son of Krypton, tough shit, nothing's changed for him.

It's supposed to be a weighty situation: the Timeranger are not only home, but presented with this dream scenario, a future that's even better than the one they left. But is it worth it? If the cost of this improved future was to just callously let so much destruction be caused in the past, is it worth it? The show needed to ask and answer this. It's pretty unclear just how much was changed due to Ryuuya's tampering. If the Londarz were always going to escape and Gien was going to build a robot that destroyed the 20th, paving the way for the 30th, then...anything Ryuuya did wasn't all that different. This causes a bigger hole to the show's central set-up in that this organization in 3000 that exists solely to protect the timeline and does a very, very shitty job of it by 1) letting the Londarz escape and 2) putting someone like Ryuuya in charge.

Of course, the Timeranger don't even mull it over. They want to get back and finish the fight and help Tatsuya. But nefarious Ryuuya wants to wipe their memory and is basically holding them hostage until it's done. We're supposed to find the Timeranger wanting to return to 2000, jeopardizing their own timeline and lives and very existence, to be peak heroism. And I just REALLY don't buy these particular characters to a) care enough about the 20th century to not only jeopardize their own time, but also their own supposed happily-ever-after or b) love Tatsuya enough to jeopardize all of that to go back and save him. Even if they came to the conclusion that there was a big conspiracy within the time cop organization and that their civilization is basically built on lies -- because it only exists as a result of people tampering with technology they didn't use properly -- that's still their own time period, their own home, their own people. I don't think they're going to just quickly brush all of that off to get back to 2000/2001. I'm not sure a person, let alone four people, a millennium away is going to care so much about 1000 years ago, and certainly not the narcissistic Timeranger asshats. Tangent ahead...

I really liked the first season of CW's The Flash. It wasn't perfect, but I thought it handled a time-traveling villain well. The Reverse Flash was a heartless bastard, but through his own villainy, he trapped himself in a predicament that he had to make the best of. He got stuck in the past and tried to speed up some history to suit his agenda in getting home, while not tampering with the timeline as he knew it. It was a juggling act, and he tried very hard to not do anything that would screw his era up. But he wanted back home as soon as possible. And it was a cruel irony that he needed his enemy, Barry Allen/The Flash, to help reach his goal. So he poses as a mentor to The Flash and actually gets close with the heroes of the show and becomes a bit of a better person. But he's still focused on getting home, to the future. He's not going to let anyone stop that or jeopardize the future he remembers in any way. (I like that he even tries to protect an ancestor, so as not to risk the future of his bloodline. Something Ryuuya doesn't care about, eh? He's fine with letting Wataru and Tatsuya get killed.) And when he's exposed and all of his plans come to light, some characters are like, "And you don't care that you're going to kill so many people in this timeline?" And Reverse Flash is basically like, "As close as I've gotten to some of you, remember this -- from my point of view, you've been dead for centuries."

And I basically think that anyone from a thousand years in the future would have that kind of thinking. If Timeranger's future was set in, like, 2150? OK, maybe they'd care more. But 1,000 years?! It sounds callous, but it's really just intangible, isn't it? It's hard to wrap your mind around. Is somebody so far in the future going to feel so strongly for people so far in the past? (Would you care about a peasant in 1018?) Even if they have a face to put to that past, in this case Tatsuya and Naoto, don't you think they'd choose their own period, the world as they know it, filled with the people they know and love? Even once they discover their world's basically built on lies, that it only exists as a result of tampering with timelines...it's still the world they know, the life they've lived, the one they've been fighting for and fighting to get back to.

The Timeranger don't even weigh the options and discuss it, which would have helped. We needed to see them take everything into consideration, like whether or not they even trusted Ryuuya's words. But, no, they're immediately planning to return to the past. It's a choice I especially don't believe the self-centered Timeranger to make; I don't believe they care enough to throw away their time period for the sake of Tatsuya and his era. Especially when it comes down to the one stranger and his people from a thousand years ago and his weird time period or EVERYONE in the 3000 as they know it. I just don't see the Timeranger making that call, but they do...

And I just don't buy it from them, and I think it shows a real disregard and selfishness that these four basically destroy their own timeline and all in it for Tatsuya's sake. It's meant to seem like a big sacrifice that they're giving up this dream-version of 3000, but it doesn't, because that's not all that they're giving up. Their supposed happy endings isn't all that's at stake, but their ENTIRE world. So, it doesn't come across as selfless or heroic the way it's meant to play, and the way most other viewers see it. Between Ryuuya's tampering with history for his own sake and the Timeranger's brazen disregard for 3000 -- not to mention Domon Jr and Lila still being out there -- I feel like the Time Cops of Timeranger are far more dangerous to history and the timeline than any Londarz. Timeranger are their own show's biggest villains, but they don't see it that way at all. You're supposed to love the heck out of these guys and think they're cool, but they're just hateable and lame.

Now, in Time Force, Alex is keeping an eye on events, but it's still being written by Frax's going renegade. All he knows is that there's going to be massive destruction in the 21st century and that it results in all of the Rangers being killed. It's not the scenario as in Timeranger, where the 20th NEEDS to be destroyed to create the 30th, and a piece of shit like Ryuuya's trying to work it all out in his favor. (Timeranger's a fookin' mess.) So when the four Time Force officers decide to abandon their time to go back and help Wes, they're really just risking their own lives. It's a suicide mission, but it's up to them and they're not jeopardizing anyone or anything else in their choice. (Not to mention, once again, that the Time Force seem closer than the Timeranger, so you believe they want to go help Wes.)

Meanwhile, back in 2001, Wes and Eric take a beating. After he's been injured and Wes has carried him off, we finally get confirmation on Eric's backstory -- that he was "dirt poor" and fought his way up -- and his whole problem with Wes. Naoto only ever mentioned his poor background in a couple of voiceovers, when it would have been stronger to bring it up directly to Tatsuya; Tatsuya was too oblivious to make the connection. But Wes tells him to forget all that crap, because there's one thing they have in common -- the desire to save people and right now they're the world's best chance. Wes takes Eric back to the clock tower to rest, but Ransik tracks them down and destroys the place. (It bugs the heck out of me that Wes doesn't even bother trying to retrieve the Polaroids of his pals from the future, or even seem to care that they're destroyed right along with the clock tower.)

I like how the choices Wes makes are building blocks, going towards changing history for the better, going towards victory. If he didn't send the others back to the future, they wouldn't have found the determination to get back and secure a victory. If Wes hadn't been alone because of that decision, he wouldn't have finally settled things with Eric, to the point where maybe they wouldn't have successfully taken back the Q-Rex and destroyed Frax's mecha. There's a lot of the Timeranger talk of taking control of destiny in these episodes, but there's also a lot of chance involved; it was by nothing but chance that Nadira witnessed the birth that changes her, and it's chance that leads her to where she finds herself in the finale...

And I suppose I should mention Eric. Nobody dies in Power Rangers -- not even bad guys -- so we knew he wasn't going to die like Naoto. But it would have been nice if his injuries looked a little more serious. He gets a generic CGI blast from a Cyclodroid and that's it, he's ready to hand over the Quantum powers to Wes? C'mon! This is Eric! You ain't getting that Defender unless you pry it from his cold, dead hands! Oh, well. At least he went out taking a hit for Wes and his dad, which was a nice touch, and a tad more meaningful in how it relates to the story than Zenitto gunning Naoto down as he protects that girl's bird. Naoto's death is really...for the birds. *puts on sunglasses*

Which brings me to this tangent. Why all of the Dragon Ranger homages with Naoto/Time Fire, anyway? Because he was the first sixth since Burai to be antagonistic? I find it a little odd and misplaced with this show. You have him being an outsider; you have him getting killed off; you have the (strange choice of) dinosaur mecha, which he controls from the ground (but rides the head of sometimes). It's obviously intentional. Now imagine on top of it if Naoto HAD been Tatsuya's brother like I suggested!

This episode quickly gets through the Timeranger portion, it's funny. The four return from 3000 and they take down Frax and his robot pretty easily. (One really nice scene I like is Nadira bursting out in emotion as she sees Frax crumble to death. Unlike Timeranger, you can kinda feel for Frax. And for as Gien being as important as he was, it was always strange to me that he just fell to pieces and nobody even really cared to find out whether or not he was truly a goner. For all the Timeranger knew, Miles Dyson scooped up some Gien parts.)

But the show can't rely on Timeranger anymore, because the head villain is an original, and the final showdown with Ransik takes up most of the time. (Gluto -- Dolnero, remember -- gets the Lila treatment of just "Eh, screw this stuff," and imprisons himself!) Despite Nadira constantly pleading with Ransik to just forget the destruction and move on, Ransik says he ain't leaving until he's wiped out humans. And he easily knocks all of the Rangers on their asses, just one hit unmorphs 'em. Wes uses that ugly Fire Armor stuff where he gets in some hits and Ransik tries to take him down in an explosion, but all that does is make Wes unmorph and knock Ransik's robotic mask off his face, revealing him to look like the Toxic Avenger. (Not a movie you want your work to remind people of. Just saying.) The fight has been big and nasty -- you can tell the show wants to evoke something like Superman fighting Zod Trio from Superman II, but just doesn't have the money to pull off -- at one point, Nadira notices a stroller in the line of fire and grabs the baby it contains, hauling it off to an abandoned facility she thinks is out of harm's way...

I like the kind of desperation at the end of this fight, as a dirtied and wounded unmorphed Jen tries to take Ransik on. They find their way to that abandoned facility, where Ransik eventually shoots Nadira, thinking she's Jen...

This causes Ransik pause, which is believable. (Yes, even after he kicks Nadira over when he's disgusted to find her saddened over Frax's dea-- er, destruction!) Nadira then offers up the baby she was protecting, asking Ransik if he finds it such a bad creature worth attacking, blah blah. He has the epitome that his hatred led him to nearly killi-- er, destroying! -- the one thing in existence (other than himself) he loves, so he then just willingly surrenders to the Time Force, who are all pretty chill just kicking back and watching this scene unfold in the background. (I would have directed it so at least a couple of them kept weapons drawn on Ransik. Jeez.)

Not that I think they should have killed Ransik -- they arrested everyone else, they're cops, so that fits. And the personal element, for Jen, of bringing Ransik to justice is no longer relevant since Alex survived, so it just makes our heroes seem like they're insufficient or something. They didn't get the main bad guy, he gave himself over. It feels like a wheezing victory in terms of succeeding their mission, even if the bigger picture was defeating Frax's robot and all of the timeholes it had been creating. This was a time Power Rangers just needed to find its guts and go for it -- Nadira should have died from the blast Ransik gave her (her dying breath for Ransik to turn himself in), he should have gone berserk and been taken down. (Whether that meant killing him or stunning him and locking him up, you decide.) Because now we have Ransik making an about-face, and if Nadira was already hard to swallow, Ransik is just...get the hell outta here with this Nerf storytelling. (I'm surprised Frax didn't survive to become a buddy of Circuit's.) And that doesn't even get into the stupid, stupid directions they go with these two characters in the Wild Force team-up.

(Or, another option if you're after a sugar-coated version of the storyline: have Nadira be critically injured, with the Rangers getting her to a hospital in the nick of time, where she's saved by 21st century humans and medicine. This would be slightly more believable in making Ransik suspending his hate long enough to consider turning himself in.)

Which brings me to the show's final scene and Timeranger. People always wonder why there wasn't a Gaoranger VS Timeranger. Well, Gaoranger VS Super Sentai was a more bad-ass and epic choice. That's reason enough. Would you rather see Big One kicking Org ass or Tock yukking it up with Tetom? Another reason is Toei trying to protect Timeranger's finale. To bring the four Timeranger back after their dramatic send-off would undo the point of that dramatic send-off. If the Timeranger can just easily bounce back to 2001 for the sake of some shitty VS movie, then they can just always visit their buddy Tatsuya and things will be awesome with a freeze-frame, CHiPs laugh for them, now won't it?

Only...do the Timeranger make it back to 3000? If you want to believe Ryuuya, saving 2001 erased 3000 as they knew it. One wasn't able to exist with the other. If you look at the way the farewell scene in Timeranger is filmed, it's not filmed with the usual green swirly stuff with which the show signified time travel -- it's shot in a completely white space, with the characters vanishing. As in being erased from existence. I've never seen much speculation about this, so maybe it's just me, but it seems almost like a question mark to me whether the Timeranger are going back to their time in this scene or basically dying. If their actions made their time no longer exist, it would mean they no longer exist, wouldn't it? TL;DR -- there's no Gaoranger VS Timeranger because the Timeranger are dead!

Of course, 3000 is still safe in Time Force, but the four need to leave in order to bring in Ransik. Also, obviously, they don't belong in 2001 and Wes doesn't belong in 3000, so they have to part ways. It's REALLY awkward that their farewells all take place in front of Wes' dad and the Silver Guardians, but...shit happens. While everyone gets some final words before teleporting to the ship -- poor Lucas, Wes basically tells him "Remember to wear your seatbelt and brush your teeth!" -- the focus, of course, is on Jen. Good performances from both Cahill and Faunt as they finally admit they love each other. Wes says he wishes he could live another 1,000 years so he could be with her, which is a nice thought, but has some problems. That means he'd live long enough to see her again and die right on the spot, doesn't it? A weird take on that Proclaimers song. "He would live a thousand years just to be the man who lived a thousand years and dropped dead at her door YADADA." She gifts him with her Time Force badge, which is cool, and a big and meaningful move for a dedicated cop, but since he thoughtlessly let those Polaroids of his buddies be burned in the clock tower, maybe some pictures of the friends he'll never see again would be nice? Something like a yearbook, basically? Geez.

As the time ship enters the portal, Wes' dad awkwardly asks him what's next. Great timing, Mr. A. Collins! Not taking the hint that it's great timing, he decides to then ask Wes if he'll lead the Silver Guardians. It's funny that the idea of Tatsuya becoming a bud of his dad's and choosing to lead the Silver Guardians would be a huge betrayal of his character, but this is one part where Time Force...well, grabbed its own destiny. Mr. Collins is a good dude now and there's really no problem with Wes working with the Guardians, who will protect the city gratis now. (I thought I remembered there being hints that the Silver Guardians were kind of the beginning of what would eventually become the Time Force, but I guess I was wrong.)

Time Force, and a lot of Power Rangers, has a problem with abrupt episode endings. This episode needed a little more of a breather. It's like...the Rangers part ways, Wes agrees to work with his dad, episode ends. At least I misremembered the end -- I thought the last shot was of Wes getting a Silver Guardian badge and looking at it, which I thought was a really bad note to end on. But it's thankfully not, it's him looking at Jen's badge, noting that the future looks bright. (A predictable line, but it works, and it also reminds me of the "Timeranger brightening hope" lyric that totally wasn't applicable to Timeranger, from that awesome opening theme the show didn't deserve.) It still feels like a rushed ending, though, in need of something a little extra. I don't have a suggestion here. And, no, I wouldn't have copied Timeranger's ending, either. I never liked that whole Tatsuya seeing the Timeranger doppelgangers, it's ridiculous to me. (Especially why we see a Naoto clone in Naoto's own timeline. Or...did Naoto just fake his death? Or is this "Naoto" actually...Lila in disguise? DUNDUNDUN!)

Rushed final scene and questionable villain motivations aside, I like these final three episodes. The Nadira/Ransik stuff...definitely could have been improved upon, been more genuine, not so damned heavy-handed, but I see what they're going for and just choose to look at it that way. (NOT the completely absurd stuff Wild Force does with them, though. I ignore that.) The Ranger stuff is all good and works and is what's the bigger priority. Timeranger's farewell scene is filmed better and is more personal, not taking place in front of so many other characters awkwardly, but the emotions are still felt in the Time Force take. These are just more likable people than the Timeranger.

Time Force isn't perfect -- it still has a lot of the problems I find in Power Rangers, including the kid glove handling of villains and fear of taking things too seriously. There's still some concessions that have to be made to enjoy it. But I do enjoy it. And I'm glad I decided to stick with the choice to rewatch it so close after rewatching Timeranger -- I thought the repetition would be a tedious chore -- because it gave me even more appreciation of certain things Time Force did. Like, to be honest, when I previously watched Time Force, I didn't really pay attention to Frax. I thought Gien was done in a more interesting way, seeming more diabolical. But now I'm totally flipped on that, I far prefer Frax and the sympathetic take on the character and think Gien is a bit of a disappointment that the show didn't know what to do with. I never really liked Eric when I previously watched Time Force, but really grew to appreciate him and Southworth's mercurial performance. (I still like Naoto more, though. The way Kasahara plays him and the character's tragic arc; Naoto finally found the power he sought, but it ended up costing him his life. Yuuri and Ayase warned him. And all because some selfish ass wrote it into history that Naoto would die in his place. Like I've said -- an interesting story there with Ryuuya, just executed all wrong.)

And, while Timeranger lacks Time Force's heart and heroics, I see where Time Force could have used some of Timeranger's sense of seriousness and coolness. Timeranger, to me, is basically Kotaro Tanaka from Jetman, in show form. Even though I came out of my last Jetman rewatch trying to let Tanaka off the hook, Timeranger is similar in that the ingredients are there for a very, very good show -- a damn GREAT show. But it's like everyone involved -- the actors, the directors, the writers, the designers -- they're all Kotaro Tanaka. They all think they're so cool and doing an amazing job, and if you don't think so...well, screw you, because it's just a dumb kids show. Well, actually, there's a HUGE amount of space for improvement. A better actor as Ryu would have truly let Jetman soar. Better casting, some tweaks to the writing, would have benefited Timeranger. And, in a way, Timeranger got a do-over in the form of Time Force, which had better casting and dropped some of the muddled writing that tripped up Timeranger. (There are some things Time Force would have been wise to keep, but for the most part, what it jettisoned was extraneous.)

Mostly, I think Timeranger is extremely boring. I struggle to stay focused on that show, and last time I rewatched it, I would tune out and have to rewind parts to catch them again. Timeranger is really, disgustingly in love with mecha -- more than Megaranger, more than GoGoFive, even. Like...so much of the show's big action, big storylines, involve mecha and mecha-caused destruction. For a show that wants to be so character-driven, turning everything into roc'em sock'em robots makes everything impersonal. Your eyes just glaze over when it comes upon the umpteenth big CGI mecha destruction scene. Time Force episodes run a few minutes shorter than Timeranger, bringing it closer to Sentai's glory days of 20-minute episodes, and that makes for breezy episodes. A lot of times, especially in the final episodes, it's the mecha stuff that's excised. As I've mentioned, Time Force will sometimes take multi-parters and condense them into lean, mean one-shots. That all gives more focus to the character stuff, gives it more room and makes an improvement...especially if you're not a mecha fan like I am. No wonder I've developed a preference for Time Force!

I like Time Force so much, I basically can look at the Timeranger suits and see the Time Force cast. That's always been something that's hard for me to shake as a Sentai fan who then goes on to watch some of the PR shows. Like, even though I was a big-time MMPR fan and I watched hundreds of episodes of that show repeatedly before I even saw Zyuranger, I never thought of the MMPR cast members when I finally saw Zyuranger. I didn't have to shake that image -- I just didn't even think about them. But it's funny...like, with how much I don't like Tatsuya, I also dislike the way Seiji Takaiwa plays Time Red in suit; his performance is really off and unnecessarily goofy and obnoxious. But with Time Force cutting around some of Takaiwa's goofier moments and having their own new footage with Hiroshi Maeda as Red, and with how much I actually like Wes more, I can not only tolerate Time Red, but see Wes when I see Time Red. But I especially see Jen and Erin Cahill when I look at Time Pink, no question. I could never picture Yuuri or Mika Katsumura being that character, even before I got into Time Force. Jen's cooler, more bad-ass and Cahill more believable. And it's easier to see Southworth's Eric as Time Fire; even if it's his just being a better physical match to Yasuhiko Imai than Kasahara was.

I like Time Force so much, I bought this piece of merchandise to represent my liking of it. I thought it was appropriate since I think it has a better handle on the cop side of the show:

Time For A Calm Before the Storm

Setting the stage for the final run, this episode bizarrely also tries to act as a brief clip show. Ugh... Well, at least it's kept brief. (However, we see yet again the scene of Wes' dad being attacked by Ransik. They've shown that so many times, it's practically to Time Force what the Asuka-being-gunned-down clip is to Zubat.)

There's a brief moment of joy for our heroes as they realize they've captured all of the mutants Ransik had access to in the prison ship, and that they should soon be able to head home. Maybe it's too early to celebrate, because they still have Ransik to deal with, and Frax fraxing with history! The renegade Frax has thrown a major wrench into things, by building robot destroyers and utilizing the crystal energy he forced into early existence episodes way back, so the Time Force ain't close to being finished.

What I like about this episode is the growth of Eric and Mr. Collins. When the chief Bio Lab guy finally cracks the power of the crystal, Eric recognizes it as trouble, and shows up at Nick of Time to warn Wes. Wes meets with his father to lay out the truth about the others and their equipment being from the future, and that it's dangerous to the timeline to mess with this crystal energy before its time. Not too long ago, Mr. Collins would have told Wes to piss off and that he wants to exploit the power for his own bank account. But this is the changed, happy Mr. Collins. He backs off, and rounds up all of the research and material to have Eric give it to Wes. Nice moments with character payoffs that Timeranger was too concerned with peacocking to bother with.

There are other nice character moments like that, like with a forlorn Jen sitting on the clock tower, joined by Wes, where they nearly finally come clean with one another, just more stalling, but...hey, at least they weren't interrupted in a sitcom-y way once again. I like that this episode is called "Calm Before the Storm" and a big chunk of it is devoted to quiet, nice little character moments; too bad they didn't have the confidence to write more, but instead rely on turning it into a partial clip show.

These last couple of episodes have some clumsy editing around a Timeranger plot but I think explain the situation well enough. For the last few episodes of Timeranger, Ryuuya's not sending their mecha back because he wants the past destroyed to ensure the future. Time Force, duh, has dropped the stupid Ryuuya stuff, but they're getting out of these suspiciously zord-free episodes by having one episode be that Circuit is too damaged to call the future, and in this episode, the five are in a rough battle with Frax and leave the zord stuff to Eric.

And I actually like Eddie Frierson's voice performance as Frax here, Frax is just going more and more crazy with power, he's meaner, more unhinged. That, of course, lines up with Gien in Timeranger, but...man, I just never liked Koji Tobe's voice acting. And Frax is just a little more sympathetic, more interesting; Gien basically acted nuts as soon as he became a robot. Frax was bitter after betrayal and just filled with resentment and was tired of being looked down on when he had a lot to offer and reached the point where he felt superior and needed to let it be known.

The episode ends with Alex seeing images of the timeholes opening over 2001's cities. He then warns the Rangers with the info he prevented Circuit from telling them last time...that history says they'll stop this disaster and save the future, but they won't survive unless they return to 3000. An interesting cliffhanger, and a nice cleaning up of what Timeranger does, but I guess I'll go more into that in the next few episodes.

Time For Circuit Unsure

It's funny, this episode is pretty much exactly the Timeranger episode, but it doesn't have the same urgency. What I think is interesting is that, when the others begin the episode by goofing around and asking Circuit for any piece of news about the near future, Alex wipes that section of his memory out. (Still a little creepy what close tabs Alex is keeping on everything from 3000.) It's the kind of suspicious and nefarious-seeming thing you'd expect from Ryuuya, but Alex says it's for the Rangers' own good that they don't know yet...

So we get an episode about Circuit losing confidence and the others not trusting him, and a building nearly getting blown up -- and the Rangers nearly getting blown up along with it -- by Circuit's not deciding to help until the last minute. And for what? To delay information that ALEX HIMSELF GIVES THE RANGERS BY THE END OF THE NEXT EPISODE. Way to go, Alex! Cause all these problems to spare a half a day's worth of pain.

One interesting thing about this episode is that a bored Nadira asks Ransik if they can finally leave the 20th century and go on to some other time to loot. So, the villains have had the ability to time travel all along? And they chose to stay in 2001. I guess that makes sense, since we saw them escape to 2001 with the prison ship on their own, not needing that cockamamie "trick the Timeranger into knocking them back into the past when they leave" scenario. It's kind of hard to keep things separated, especially when Time Force follows Timeranger's scenarios so closely, so I needed to note that this confirms that it's NOT the Timeranger scenario where each side is pretty much stuck in the past -- the prison ship in Timeranger wasn't meant for time-travel and the Timeranger's ship was, of course, destroyed, leaving them all stranded in the past. Time Force eliminates the "stranded from their home" storyline, instead seeming basically more like a military situation -- they miss home, but they're stationed away to combat a menace. By not keeping that part of Timeranger's story, Time Force plugs up some plotholes I always found that show to have. (If their mecha can arrive to and from the future in EVERY FREAKING EPISODE, why don't they wonder why a ship can't be sent back for them, or more people sent back to help them out?)

Too bad Time Force didn't have the budget and was too tied to what Timeranger did, because if Ransik had the ability to hop around time, that would have been interesting for him to do at some point. It's weird for a criminal who keeps getting bested to keep so still. But at least at this point in the series he has a reason -- he tells Nadira he won't leave until he tracks down Frax.

Time For Nadira's Dream Date

An episode that's meant to be funny, but is really just stupid. Who out there is crazy enough to write a love poem about their first car? (Who out there is crazy enough to write an episode about someone writing a poem about their first car?) Well, Lucas apparently is. (And Judd Lynn and Jackie Marchand are the answer to the second question.) And Nadira's stupid enough to find it and think it's about her. Ransik's stupid enough to try to get a Blue Ranger-Nadira romance to work.

Look, this episode COULD have worked and been funny, but too much comes at a character's expense and the typical fear of writers going too far. There would have been nothing wrong with Lucas maybe having a thing for Nadira and then it gets blown all out of proportion. It's believable the self-centered and narcissistic Nadira would dive into this scenario. But turning your head villain into a sitcom dad who's hand-wringing and lecturing the guy and giving him tips and coaching him on his date -- it's stupid! And Vernon Wells must think so, too, because he doesn't care how much he lets his accent slip through.

Ransik's not exactly a favorite villain of mine, but I liked him well enough. He was surprisingly good for Power Rangers, and good as a futuristic criminal and a face villain that Timeranger lacked. It's bad enough that Wells softens his performance as the show goes on, but then PR just can't refuse putting him in silly situations; more fear of taking things seriously, more fear of having completely villainous villains. (I'm trying hard right now to block out the stupid thing they end up doing with the character in the Wild Force team-up. Please, don't mention it. In fact, this stupid episode kind of paves the way for that, doesn't it?) The main villain, a supposedly dangerous criminal, a murderer -- I mean "destroyer" -- the freaking Clarence Boddicker of 3000 shouldn't be putting on muumuus or going Al Bundy on the boyfriend of Nadira/Kelly. In fact, I think it would have been funnier -- and actually stressful on Lucas -- if Ransik had been played completely straight in the scenario. That's a predicament for your hero! He really needed only one scene, where he corners Lucas and is like "I don't like you. You and your friends are out to get me, to ruin me. But Nadira likes you. Treat her well or I'll feed you your beanbag." (I checked with both broadcast standards and practices and the FCC and they confirm you can say that on a TV-Y7 show.) See?! Keep your villain villainous, man.

As is, it's just a bad sitcom script. Right down to the Time Force having seen a rerun of My Name Is Earl in 3000 and knowing the way to make Nadira dump Lucas is by having him make himself disgusting, just as Catalina did to make Randy lose interest in her.

Move over random episode about knights and dragons, I almost think this episode of the show might be the worst one, just for how dumb it makes Ransik. This episode is kind of like a throwback to what PR did to Sentai back in the day -- taking the footage and writing just nonsense goofery over it. Because, believe it or not, the Timeranger episode this one is based on...is the episode where the others find out about Ayase's illness. They take that episode and turn it into a dumb Three's Company! That's SO 1994 PR...

Seriously, though, a poem about a car? Only Ninninger would reach heights as dumb with that episode about Yakumo being in love with his lawnmower.

Time For Reflections of Evil

In this episode, Nadira comes up with a plan which puts to use all of the remaining available footage from the unadaptable episodes of Timeranger. Well, that's what this episode is! She gets a monster that hops into a mirror world to trap the Rangers and make them fight a variety of monsters they supposedly already defeated, but is really monsters from episodes of Timeranger that were too talky or pointless to be adapted. This thing's, like, eight Timeranger spliced into one.

The head monster, the main focus of the episode, comes from that Timeranger episode where Naoto is reliving the same "OCTOBAR" day over and over, Groundhog Day-style. It's kinda sad that Time Force didn't just adapt that. Eric, after having so much focus in the 20s, has really gone AWOL from this show, it's weird.

It's sad that they try to tie in Lucas' narcissism into this episode -- ha, ha, the dude who's obsessed with mirrors will come to regret it after this mission, eh? No. Ha-ha says the writers who were too lazy to ever come up with something meaningful for Lucas.

I'm not going to mention that I think it's weird that this show, based on a work by Yasuko Kobayashi, featured an original scenario taking place in a "Mirror World" one year before Kobayashi wrote Ryuki.

Time For Time For Lightspeed

Meh, mediocre team-up with Lightspeed Rescue. Not that Timeranger VS GoGoFive is any great shakes -- it's seriously one of the more underwhelming versus movies in a sea of underwhelming versus movies -- but this thing's just going through the motions in terms of story, but cranking everything else to 11. Villains are large and hammy, the action is Koichi Sakamoto going insane. A lot of noise, little substance. While I think the Lightspeed Rescue cast seems decent, I still wouldn't want to watch it since I like GoGoFive so much. It would be really difficult to get past how ingrained that show is on me.

A couple of things to note. In this, Trip recognizes the Lightspeed Rescue. In Time VS GoGo, only Tatsuya knew who the GoGoFive was, with the others being like "Who?" It made sense that the ones from 1,000 years into the future didn't recognize them, and that was actually kinda funny.

This episode ends with the Time Force gifting the Lightspeed Rescue their cop uniforms, with the Lightspeed Rescue gifting the Time Force their jackets in return. A little weird, but it beats giggling awkwardly at each other for the entire duration of the ending credits as seen in Time VS GoGo. Also: the Time Force uniforms are probably made from material not yet invented. Timeline tampering! Time Force, you're supposed to be fighting this stuff. Who do you think you are to be so reckless, the Timeranger?

Time For Beware the Knight

What a piece of cacadookie. Random. Stupid. What was the thinking behind it? It's one of the only episodes to not be based on anything Timeranger -- not a storyline, not a fight scene. It's all original. Was this episode an experiment to see how the PR production could fare without Sentai? Because the answer ain't pretty.

In tokudom, there have been some dumb ways that heroes have received power-ups. Some just grunt until the Bandai Gods hear them and grant them a new toy to fight with. If you're Faiz, your sworn enemy Kaixa will just throw it in your lap. If you're a loser like Blade's Dadebada, you're eagerly waiting for Karasuma to Fed-Ex it to Kotaro's place. If you're Time Force, you get some big fancy super armor by defeating a CGI dragon and a knight. Wait, WHAT?!

No explanation! No attempts at writing a story here. We just start with a couple of knights -- one white, one black, I don't know how the writers came up with that -- fighting over a box. Where the hell are we? WHEN the hell are we? If you're asking that, you care more than the writers. These two assholes are fighting over a box. The black knight wins and celebrates by going and attacking the city. The Rangers are involved, and Wes tracks down the black knight's cave clubhouse, where he beats the CGI dragon who's sleeping one off there. He finds the little Hellraiser cube that the black knight won in his battle and opens it, where the white knight appears and tells him that he has a pure heart, so he's earned the contents of the box -- the Power of an Ugly Power-Up. This thing out-uglies Quantum Ranger's power-up, all it needed was some rollerblades.

They really couldn't come up with a storyline here? Like...the fucking show is about time-travel, you can't slip in a line that these knights were fighting way back when and fell through some magic time portal into the present? Why the fuck am I having to watch and type about knights and a Power Ranger getting a power-up from them? To quote my frenemy Titsu from Dekaranger -- nonsense.

And sadly? As shitty as this episode is, it could have worked with some minor effort. The idea of a hero from the present who's fighting with technology from the future also getting assistance via armor from the past? That's kinda cool, and a fun thing a time-travel-related show should play with. (And that the scene with Red fighting using the Fire Warrior armor is filmed in a kind of samurai-way makes me think of how cool a design which would have implemented a samurai-esque look would have been.) Highlighting what we already know, that Wes has a big-heart, it makes sense to reflect that by giving him this power-up, which he earns.

On the bright side, there's a lot of cool night shooting and night battles, but something about the episode just feels like such a cheap, quickly-made afterthought. All of the actors look like they're in a rush and don't feel well. I'm really thinking this episode was shot over the course of one night, and I'm not even joking. I have a feeling the writing session went a little like this...

Producer: OK, so we're one episode short of the full 40 were promised the network. Whaddya got? What's left from that funny little Japanese show?

Writer: Well...we used all we could from that. All that's left is a crappy little clip show.

Producer: Clip show? What is this, the '70s? Who the fuck does a clip show in this day and age?

Writer: Apparently the Japanese.

Producer: Christ. Well, it's still too early for a clip show. And if that's not bad enough, we got Bandai wanting us to put in a toy.

Writer: What?! C'mon, man, we just wrote in that stupid looking origami motorcycle. Yeah, our boys in FX were up all night splicing that shit into the Japanese show's crummy CGI landscape to make it look like it belonged.

Producer: Well, guess what? We're all going to pull an all-nighter until we come up with something.

Writer: Shit...

Producer: Hey, you wanna hear the dream I had last night? I was back working on Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. I was in some weird white knight's outfit fighting some black knight over a box. You were there, actually, you did some sort of backflip over a dragon while delivering a pizza -- imagine that, a pizza in...

Writer: Hold it! That's our episode right there.

Producer: Get outta here...

Writer: No! That story of your dream was crazy, inventive. It gripped me. I don't want to let this feeling go, we gotta go do this episode ASAP! Do you believe in destiny?

Producer: Whatchu talkin' about?

Writer: Just yesterday, I was in the storage room. I figured we probably need to do one of those "We gotta save money, so some old monsters are coming back!" episodes soon. Anyway, in the corner, I found two boxes...Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog armor. Guess the colors.

Producer: Get outta here!

Writer: It's destiny! This is going to be an awesome episode! I want spontaneity, I don't even want to script it -- we're going to go out there tonight and film the whole thing! We're gonna show them we don't even need no stinking Japanese footage. Whoooooooooooooooooo, USA!

Producer: How much coke you on today, pal?

Writer: Not as much as our cast is going to need to film this little adventure all night long!

Producer: Right! I got some calls to make and...you promise you can get it all done in one night?

Writer: Where there's coke, there's a way.

Time For Undercover Rangers

An inconsistent episode. The strongest part of it is Jen, upon seeing a wedding, realizing she doesn't feel the same way about Alex as she used to. Both she and Wes come close to admitting their feelings for one another, but they're always interrupted by something in a tiresome, sitcom-y way -- at this stage of the show, just commit to the situation, writers. This interruption shit kept happening in episode 22 -- shouldn't we be beyond this type of stuff?

As in Timeranger, both are arranged to work an undercover case by the others so they can get closer, but the cases are both just wastes of time; in Timeranger, it's a forgettable one-off villain with a cult based on the fear of the millennium. Here it's a goofily-depicted case -- Frax just read a comic from the '40s, saw the Charles Atlas ad and based his whole plan of enticing-weaklings-with-promises-of-strength bit. He's really turning them into robots for his army, but it would have been better if Frax were taking the people hostage as human batteries for his robot, Toranza-style. Both are meant to be funny and lighthearted, the focus on the awkward undercover work by Red and Pink, but...in Timeranger it doesn't work because Nagai thinking he's amazing and Katsumura not playing comedy well, as well as the Tatsuya-Yuuri relationship never working, no matter how hard they force it. In Time Force, it doesn't work because they just go too far with the stupidity.

And in Bandai-pulls-stuff-out-of-their-ass news... This episode forces in the debut of a new, ugly toy that's exclusive to this show. When the Rangers are being beat up for no good reason, Alex transmits a message to Wes that he needs to protect Jen, so he sends him this really unimpressive, PR-can't-pull-it-off-with-its-no-budget-and-2001-CGI hover bike thing. Pink sees it and goes "Cool!" and, no, it's not. Isn't it a little late to be introducing new toys? (Guess not, because the next terrible episode brings in an even worse PR-exclusive.) Alex ex Machina does Bandai proud.

Wes and Jen infiltrate Frax's cover by posing as nerds -- it's kinda funny that Wes is basically wearing Tatsuya's outfit, the plaid shit. A secret dig? I like to think so.

In news that interests only horror nerds like me, the main musclehead goon of Frax's is played by Chris Durand, who was Michael Myers in Halloween H20 -- one of the best guys to play Michael Myers.

Time For Destiny Defeated

Wes takes over his dad's company, resulting in...Eric quitting? I don't know what that's about -- we get a scene where he gives his pet birds away to the little girl he lives by, with him saying he's going away for a while. They never really say what the hell this is about, so I'm assuming Eric's quitting the Silver Guardians and moving on. It's pretty unclear and, even if he hated the idea of working for Wes that much, seems a little out of character, because it's an unprofessional move. (He doesn't quit, though; as he's driving through town, he spots the trouble the Time Force are having and morphs and helps 'em out.)

Meanwhile, the Alex-led Time Force is still taking a beating from trying to stop Frax and his giant robot. (Alex is fixated on stopping an energy-dampening device Frax has set up, while the Time Force want to take down Frax. In Timeranger, Ryuuya was trying to protect Gien here, and I hated that whole subplot. Here Alex is just so focused on what he thinks is the best play that he ignores everyone else.) The others eventually turn on Alex and once Wes shows up and destroys the dampening device, they plead with him to just hand over the morpher to Wes. It's more believable that Alex gives in than Ryuuya. Ryuuya was meant to be more villainous and needed to be in complete control to drive his agenda. He's not going to be pushed out of having the power by the others pleading with him. (I kinda wonder if Kobayashi originally intended to make Ryuuya so evil-seeming, or if it was Nagai's smarmy, slimy performance that influenced her. Because there's just so much about Ryuuya that doesn't add up. And, no, that doesn't make him complicated.)

The biggest change this episode makes from Timeranger is...Mr. Collins flatlines. As the nurse scrambles for the doctor, we see a strange orb placed into Mr. Collins' hand, an orb that glows and dissolves into a light that's absorbed into his hand, running up his arm into his heart. It's Alex who, after giving the morpher back to Wes, decides to save Mr. Collins' life. I imagine a lot of Timeranger purists see this as another act of sugar-coating Timeranger by Power Rangers, but I like it. I think it works. I like that Alex seems like an actual person, that he, too, in a way was affected by Wes, seeing how he's made his colleagues better people. Alex had been kind of cynical, had seen history as already been written. Wes' genuine optimism that the future's a blank slate yet to be written spoke to him. It speaks to the Time Force officer he is, that he belongs to a force meant to prevent bad things from happening in the past as a result of time travel. It speaks to him as someone who very nearly died; I like to think Alex recognized the power a near-death experience could have and thought, like Doc Brown, "What the hell?" and rewrote the book by sparing Mr. Collins...

And a near-death experience certainly changes Mr. Collins, who awakens with a brightness in his eyes, a surprising joy. He tells Wes he knew he was done for, but he thought he saw Wes (it was really Alex, administering the future medicine) and decided to fight. He comes out of it a changed man. I'm sure this is another thing cited by people who think it's a softening of Timeranger -- Mr. Asami never became a nicer, better person -- but I think if you can buy Ebeneezer Scrooge changing over one night, you can buy Mr. Collins looking at life differently, especially if he's been as impressed with Wes' decisions as he's claimed. It's another person Wes has had a positive influence on, and that's one thing I like about the character. He's in that Yuusuke Godai or Shouichi Tsugami role of making the people around him better. Tatsuya was supposed to be like that, but Masaru Nagai just isn't likable enough or a good enough actor to sell it. Jason Faunt is. And by Time Force introducing the idea of him opening the eyes of Alex (Ryuuya) and his father, that's another victory over the original, and that alone makes him more successful than Tatsuya.

The episode ends with Jen bidding a silent farewell to Alex as his ship departs. I guess you can take it as she's sad to be parting with him again, but the way Cahill says it and the way the scene is filmed, I totally interpret it as her decision to break up with him.

Time For Fight Against Fate

This episode and the next are the same blueprints as the Timeranger episodes, but they're actually a little more meaningful. Alex joins the Rangers in the present to tell that that the future's been altered, especially by Frax breaking away from Ransik and building his own robot/mecha/zord/whatever-you-choose-to-call-it. After a very brief "Good to see you, Alex, we thought you were dea-- destroyed!" Alex wastes no time getting things done. He's a gruffer, no-nonsense guy than the other four remember. A result of wanting to quickly set right things going wrong in the future? Maybe. But I also think his having a near-death experience changed things for him.

Nobody likes the new Alex. He's bossing them around, criticizes the way they do everything. He's blunt and has no filter. He thinks they've gotten way too lax working in 2001, working with Wes. That might be true, but it's also true that they work better that way, and that Wes' influence has been a change for the better. I certainly buy the five Time Force Rangers becoming so close and a loving family than I ever did the self-centered-seeming, rarely heroic, grump-ass Timeranger. Alex decides to take charge as Red and cuts Wes loose, going against Doc Brown's teachings and letting him know his father will be dying from the injuries obtained by Ransik, and that Wes needs to take over his company as history says he will.

Alex runs the Time Force the way R. Lee Ermey would and pretty much everyone hates him -- Jen included. And here's where Time Force has a leg up on Timeranger; in Timeranger, nobody even really knew Ryuuya. He was the Captain, sure, but they had never interacted with him. They met him as a hologram and as Lila impersonating him, but they didn't KNOW or have a history with him. (Especially since three of the four were new recruits.) Here, the four Time Force have a history with him; they've worked with him, they know him. One of them is engaged to him! So when Alex pushes out Wes, who they've all come to like and whose light demeanor has rubbed off on, they're not happy about it, but they're welcoming back an old colleague and superior. And when Pink, in the middle of the battle, seeks Red's advice and calls him Wes? A MUCH huger impact and shock (especially for the others) than when Yuuri slipped and called Ryuuya Tatsuya. Because we know there's a relationship growing between Wes and Jen and Alex is aware, having already seen a Polaroid of Wes kissing Jen on the cheek.

Meanwhile, Wes stays by his father's bed while all of the guys from his dad's company scramble to figure out their next move. Eric is shown to be extremely concerned for A. Collins' well-being. In Timeranger, Naoto's concern was hard to figure out -- another reason why I thought maybe Naoto needed to be Tatsuya's brother. Here, Eric just seems really pissed off that he failed at his job and wasn't able to protect Mr. Collins.

Alex is in such a rush to stop Frax and his robot that it creates a problem that I have with a lot of time travel stories. We've seen Alex in the future keeping tabs on EVERYthing happening in 2001 -- he even sees Frax beginning to build his giant robot. He knows so much of what is happening, is able to travel back in time, so why doesn't he travel back to, like, the day before Frax finishes his robot and kill him there or destroy the robot? We know in Timeranger he's not really out to stop Gien or Gien's zord, because he's pretty much arranging things to guide Gien and use him to alter history to his liking. But Alex isn't an asshole and is a character that makes sense, so that's not the case here. Still...if he's able to time travel so easily...the question stands, why wait to pop up on the day things will be going to shit? Why not a day early? See what bullshit time travel stories can cause?! ARGH!

Time For Dawn of Destiny

Fallout from the previous episode, as Frax is on the run from Ransik and the Time Force realize that the medicine created from the serum shouldn't exist in 2001, so they have to destroy it. Wes thinks he can just stroll into Bio Lab and easily grab their supply, but finds an obstacle in Eric and his father. Add to this that Ransik is after Bio Lab's version of the serum and you got some problems. Wes fails to obtain the medicine, and fails to convince either Eric or his dad that there's a danger in keeping it.

So, Ransik basically saves the day by successfully grabbing their supply and solving the problem of Bio Lab's further development of the stuff and how that might effect the future. On the down side, he severely wounds A. Collins. Wes' pop faces off against Ransik, taunting him ("If I knew the serum could help *you*, I'd have poured it down the drain myself.") and then has surprisingly nice words regarding Wes and his independence and courage in fighting Ransik.

Jen started the episode worrying about the possible changes made to the future. (Like Timeranger, a lot of them comes from the greed of Red's dad; the Raimei mecha his company created and now this medicine from the future.) She's right to worry, as Alex shows up in 2001 to leave things on a cliffhanger. It's kinda creepy that he's spent so much of the show watching everything from the shadows in 3000, isn't it? He's even able to keep a close, close eye on Frax. Oh, well. At least his role's not a nonsensical mess like Ryuuya.

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.

Time For Time Force Traitor

Speaking of Star Trek, we learn in this episode that junk food doesn't exist in 3000. Star Trek likes to preach that they've gotten rid of the evils of junk food or food that's not healthy. Or, if you really want it, you can replicate junk food, but it will leave out the unhealthy ingredients. But booze is OK! Star Trek can have strange priorities.

A good episode that works in the cop theme -- the un-thawed monster is Jen's first partner, Steelix, who was a dirty cop who she helped bring down. It's nice when the show shows more of 3000, something Timeranger rarely did. The monster decides to get his revenge through brainwashing Jen into turning on her new partners, resulting in a long fight with Wes. It's a great idea for an episode, but it needed to not be afraid to push it further. The fight between Jen and Wes revolves more around their connection as officers than the love interest angle, even if it's implied, when this was the time to fully commit to that. (Sure, what breaks Jen free of the spell is a Magic Hug, but...the scene doesn't have the power it should. And they end the episode on a goofy laugh, that Jen cooks something for Wes that doesn't taste good, ha-ha. Ha.)

But this episode goes a long way in filling in some of Jen's background. Remember before she said that she was on the verge of quitting being a cop when she met Alex. It's easy to fill in that maybe turning in her first partner led to her doubting herself and possibly being shunned and hating her job and possibly losing faith in her profession.

For its flaws, it still beats the Timeranger episode, which was just goofy. (But it thought it was REALLY cool.) There, the monster is still a former colleague of Yuuri's, but one who became obsessed with her and stalked her, so she reported him. He then goes on to brainwash her to try to get her to kill for him, exerting his control on her. It really doesn't work because of it being a suited monster and because the suit actor is FUCKING ATROCIOUS. He can't stop moving, it's like they plucked some tween from their high-school play. (Time Force sticks mostly to their own guy, thankfully.) He's just so bad, it's distracting.

Also, Masaru Nagai is way off in this episode, laying on extra helpings of a jittery and angry mood in his search for Yuuri that just comes across as really bogus. The episode just doesn't work. Time Force makes it a more believable, personal episode, filling in some of Jen's professional past, with Cahill much more believable as a cop AND leader than Katsumura ever is.

Time For Movie Madness

I hate these episodes. They'll instantly kill my watching of the show for a while. They're just dumb and try too hard, and are never as amusing as they think. These are meant to be "funny" episodes, but it's one of those things that it's obvious that it was more fun for the people making the episode than the poor saps watching the episode.

Time Force has been good at taking Timeranger multi-parters and condensing them into one lean, jam-packed episode. Here they take a goofy one-off of Timeranger's and stretch it, pointlessly, into TWO parts. (It was most likely made into a two-parter to justify the money spent on raiding the production company's costume department, but, still...don't torture us for that, man.)

The Timeranger episode was simple; Shion sleeps once a year, and this time he happens to have a crazy dream wrapped up in the movie he was watching. Since it's a dream, the craziness can go as far as it wants to, the characters can behave as wildly and out of character as you want them to. In Time Force, the Rangers are sent into a dimension based on a different movie genre, and it's an excuse to have characters behaving silly for the sake of "comedy" and it's just lazy. (It would have been better to ditch Timeranger's movie-related scenario and send the Time Force Rangers to the actual time periods the movies are depicting, further utilizing, you know, time travel.)

Even Timeranger had the sense to not include Naoto into the goofiness, but Time Force doesn't, so it ends up making Eric look stupid. (Either Southworth hated these episodes or is extremely in character, because he doesn't look like a happy camper.) Eric's sent to a Tarzan kinda movie, and it's all done so cheaply, it will make you think of when Rocky's filming that commercial for the cologne that makes you smeel mainly in Rocky II.

The worst part is Ransik taking part in this episode and looking dumb. All of the villains are in pure Goldar and Rito mode in this episode; I don't care if it's lighthearted, and, yeah, I know the regular actors get a kick out of episodes like this that shake things up for them, but if it don't work, don't do it. And this don't work. (I know fans get a kick out of Ransik dressing like actor Vernon Wells' character from Mad Max 2, but whatever coolness that might hold -- it means nothing to me, I don't like the Mad Max movies -- is immediately undone by him putting on a dress.)

It's really out of character for Jen to be so gung-ho over some Jackie Chan rip-off and into those types of movies, and she takes being stuck in a kung-fu movie with an ease that's not like the character. I guess at least she makes the most of it and kicks every monk's ass. Lucas gets stuck in a swordplay flick. (What, no Cannonball reboot?) Katie gets a musical she says she enjoys, but looks scared shitless to be a part of. Wes and Trip's stuck in a Western, which might make you think of Back to the Future 3... So it's funny that the bartender at the saloon they enter is played by Buck Flowers -- aka Red, the mayor-turned-bum, from the Back to the Future movies. Yeah, it's probably unintentional and a coincidence, but that's sadly a big-time guest by Power Rangers standards.

How do people from 3000 know so much about movies, anyway? Every Star Trek says that television and movies are, like, so passe and useless that the future doesn't need or remember them.

Time For Full Exposure

The Honami story! Well, at least the way it began. I always thought it was kind of interesting the way Timeranger, continuing GoGoFive's kinda "realistic" and grounded approach, introduced the idea of the press picking up on our heroes and starting to cover them. And I think the point would have been that our covert heroes would be having their actions documented, and the way that might interfere with the timeline. I always got the impression that it was going to be a serious look at how our toku heroes, in this day and age, can't be as covert as they're always depicted because of the media...

I kinda feel like that was the original intention behind the Honami story, and my theory is that Kuuga was going to do something similar, so some Toei exec was like "Find a way to differeniate what you're doing" to Timeranger, so we got the idiot's love triangle between Honami, Domon and Time Yellow, with her occupation never again being relevant. (If Kamen Rider and Super Sentai were aired on different days from one another, as they used to be, that would be a different case; they'd be completely independent and maybe allowed to explore similar themes and premises. But since Kamen Rider and Sentai were paired up to air right after one another beginning in 2000, I think it put a lot of pressure on what Sentai could or couldn't do and Toei tried too hard to differentiate the two. Thus so many years of "Sentai is the funny one, Rider is important stuff.") Because Honami didn't seem like such a moron at first, and her involvement was more serious than they started to handle her.

(The writers could have made it work, but didn't. They made Honami too stupid, they made the "dilemma" caused by Dumb Honami and Dumber Domon too stupid and they went a little too far by giving us Domon, Jr. This romantic storyline, based in characters' stupidity and played as comedy doesn't really work, and it certainly doesn't work when it's taken so far with a child who is probably going to wreck the timeline more than anything the idiot Londarz did.)

So, this episode is just a tabloid photographer looking to advance himself by getting pictures of the Rangers; his goal is to get them maskless and he succeeds, threatening the safety of the Rangers. However, Katie gets through to him and he changes his mind. This episode hits all of the right notes, with a good guest actor, a good performance by Deborah Phillips (capturing the urgency and desperation of potentially being unmasked), a focus on a real work-life and a focus on the dangers involved, without any of the typical need to add unnecessary goofery or sugar-coating.

Katie's super-strength takes a crazy turn in this episode, as she stops a plummeting elevator by grabbing onto the cable with her bare hands. Eat your heart out, Jessica Jones, always wasting your super strength on just busting doors in.

Time For Lovestruck Rangers

Toshiki Inoue's OTHER episode of Timeranger? Back to back? That's kinda weird, especially since they were pretty spread apart in Timeranger. (And both were pre-Naoto.)

I've never really liked the Timeranger episode. The Timeranger cast thought they were so cool and serious that they don't play comedy well, except for maybe Izumi. (Well, Masaru Nagai THINKS he does. He really thinks he can do it all, that he's Kamisama's gift to entertainment.) The episode also has that creepy backstory driving the plot, that Yuuri basically moves in with a middle-aged guy to take care of him after he's duped by a woman. I don't know why Tomorrow Research thought this assignment was acceptable, but I guess it just means they're stupid.

But the worst part of the episode to me was always how it basically degraded Yuuri to snap the guys out of their trance. Even though I don't think they ever succeeded in making Yuuri seem as cool and strong as they wanted her to be, it's still a big betrayal to what they were trying to do with the character, all for the sake of a laugh that wasn't worth it. It's supposed to be funny to see her out of her comfort zone, but that's just their excuse for the sake of the creep factor in having her glam out to appeal to her colleagues.

The only thing the Timeranger has going for it is that Changerion's Chika Kochihira plays the heartbreaker, a femme fatale monster of the week who brainwashes men and ruins them. She's the best part of the episode, and a good femme fatale appropriate for a cop show. Time Force doesn't quite go with the femme fatale angle, but has the woman-disguised monster taking the appearance of each of the Time Force guys' type. (A WB -- that was what the CW used to be called, kids -- starlet look for Lucas; a super-nerd for Trip; a preppy tennis player for Wes.)

This episode beats the Timeranger episode overall, though, by wisely getting rid of that Yuuri becomes an old dude's wife subplot, wisely getting rid of her degrading herself, and replacing it with actual character stuff that goes into building the Wes-Jen romance. Jen being upset and bothered by seeing Wes so head-over-heels in love with someone else is a scenario that could have been played lightly and made Jen look stupid, but it's not and it doesn't, and Erin Cahill's performance here is good as Jen feels hurt. Wes has liked her for a while, but this is the first time where she's realized she's on the same page. This show's already wiped the floor with Timeranger's pitiful attempt at forcing a romance out of nowhere.

You know something I found really funny about this episode, though? When the monster's disguised as the nerdy girl to pick up Trip, she's testing out a stupid robot she built. That robot is...Time Roboter from Timeranger. Time Roboter is a stupid addition to Timeranger, kinda the Butchy of Timeranger, where it just reeks of some higher-up being like "The show's a drag and toys aren't selling! Put a cute robot thing in there, that will turn things around!" So they write in that tech-maniac Shion creates this stupid robot that does nothing but squeak things in an obnoxious anime voice. (It COULD have been cute, having an alarm-clock robot in a show about time, but Timeranger screws that up, too.) Time Roboter is just stupid and pointless, and it's hilarious that Time Force turns this unnecessary thing from Timeranger into...an unnecessary thing.

Time For The Last Race

Toshiki Inoue's ho-hum episode of Timeranger, in which he tries to make Ayase "cool." Plot is the same, with the latest monster -- Dash -- being an ex-buddy racer of Ayase/Lucas'. (Dash dresses and talks just like Mr. Furious.) Lucas testified against him and got him put away after the monster's carelessness led to a huge vague accident. The one thing that the Time Force episode has in its favor is that Lucas' whole racing stuff sounds more like Fast & the Furious-style X-Treme Hardcore Mountain Dew Rock 'n Roll Street Racing -- which would be "cooler" for a "cool" character -- instead of Ayase's old-fashioned, lame-o Speed Racer NASCAR stuff. So, I imagine the police putting Lucas' racing skills to use for assignments, and that he'd go undercover on the street-racing scene of 3000.

This episode features a bit of deja-vu in that Lucas takes a driver's exam where bad guy action causes him to tank the test and take the examiner on a crazy ride. This was in the original Timeranger, but Time Force also lifted it for a previous episode, which is weird. I guess maybe they were like "Yeah, we're not adapting that stupid racer-buddy-of-Blue's episode. Wait, we're an episode short? Aw, shit."

And I have to say, Nadira is SO DAMN OBNOXIOUS in this episode. She gets a lot of screen-time, being driven around on shopping sprees by Dash, and she's constantly giggling and squealing in a high pitch. She never lets up. I know, on some level, she's supposed to be getting on Dash's nerves, but that doesn't mean she has to get on our nerves. It's such irritating overkill that when she pops up for one scene in the next episode and lets out her usual high-pitched chuckle, it's just, like...too soon, show.