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.
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