Set your controls for outer space because History of the Power Rangers journeys into what was going to be the end of the franchise, but would instead keep it alive for over a decade. Join us now as Lewis “Linkara” Lovhaug delves into Power Rangers in Space.

In the first half of his review, we meet the further expanded Ranger universe with the ultimate villain, Dark Spectre, some of the most well-developed characters in Ranger history, and I’m forced to remember Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation dear God help me!

OK, for some reason I can’t get the embed code OR Cid Wicked’s trick to work here. So my apologies to Lewis (if he even reads these) but I’m going to have to go through your Vodpod to get this up here. I think there’s a flaw with the new video player or something.

OK, so goodbye full screen! *sigh*. Let’s get on with it already.

• Let’s get this out of the way. Denji Sentai Megaranger (Electromagnetic Squadron Mega Ranger) comes off as another Last Starfighter rip-off storywise. The “Megaranger” video game is used to recruit new champions in order to fight an interdimensional threat. This explains the video game style graphics for the morphs and weapons activation. The underlings in this series were used as “training holograms” for PRiS (the usual acronym spelling for Power Rangers in Space, which admittedly is only flattering if you’re a fan of Blade Runner), which in typical holodeck fashion, actually tries to destroy the world in one episode. Surprised he didn’t discuss that as a Star Trek fan, even if it was a filler episode.
• Actually, except for the monster of the week and the two generals, nobody has a Megaranger counterpart. They took Elgar from Turbo and the rest were original designs. Since the Quantrons look way better than the KuneKune, I approve.
• To be honest, I never actually noticed that PRiS had poor special effects. Granted, I come from the fanbase of Doctor Who and Godzilla, not exactly known for their high-quality special effects. DW had a very small budget and Godzilla’s wranglers were more interested in the miniatures and sets designed to make a man in a rubber suit appear to be a giant, unstoppable monster of destruction. But as Lewis says, I was too wrapped up in the story.
• The opening theme may well be my next “My Favorite Intros” inductee. I rather enjoy the music, and like a lot of Ranger themes really gets you psyched up for the show. Also, you get a prologue at the beginning, something kept for the rest of Saban run, but dropped I think for Wild Force if not for the first of the Disney/New Zealand  series, Ninja Storm.
• I always wondered why the show didn’t go ahead a make a connection with Maligor and Dark Spectre, at least making them of the same race if not otherwise related. It’s not like villain family structures made sense in this series anyway, what with monsters giving birth to human-looking kids on a genetic whim. (See next series for further evidence.)
• New Alpha 6 speech pattern = thankyouthankyouthankyou! Even a defender of the “kiddie character” such as myself couldn’t stand the pseudo-jive talk of Turbo.
• I love the set of the Astro Megaship. It looks so cool, and like a real spaceship. It even came with its own technobabble. “Hyper Rush” instead of “warp speed”, for example. And it’s not just the bridge. Often you would see the Rangers performing maintenance or chasing down intruders (and one episode had Cassie and Carlos transforming into monsters) all over the ship and all the various sets looked like spaceship areas.
• No idea what “DECA” is supposed to stand for, although the camera HUD clearly shows it’s an acronym for something.
• I’m not sure why Lewis is that surprised that there’s another race of human-like lifeforms in the Power Rangers universe. Despite the three-way split power, Trey resembled an Earthling, as did Dex the Masked Rider and the people of Edenoi. (However in the Masked Rider series, he claims that his race evolved from insects. Granted, I’m a creationist but I’m pretty sure evolution doesn’t work that way.) Later we would meet other humanoids, including the very next series, Lost Galaxy. Zordon’s true form, show in early promotional material, used the Zyuranger wizard, thus showing he had a human form, as possibly did the Morphing Masters and a few other flashback characters. Andros wasn’t the first non-Earth human. If anything the Alien Rangers were the first good guys to NOT be human, and both Rita and Scorpina, bad guys girls, were also human-like.
• The changes: I’m not sure why the Juice Bar is gone, although they’re clearly still in the same Youth Center. And why a surfing themed place? Nobody is going to mistake Adelle for a surfer, and surfing was never shows to be a big deal in Angel Grove. I do like her character, and I’m a bit disappointed that Lewis didn’t really talk about her much. She was a better replacement for Ernie than Lt. Stone.
• Then you have Professor Phenomenus. He had to grow on me a bit, but I ended up liking him. If anything he was probably the only one who could really handle Bulk and Skull’s bumbling if only because of his own. 🙂
• Your going to make me discuss this, aren’t you? Can’t we talk about how awesome Ecliptor is as a villain, probably my second favorite Ranger foe (Zedd being #1)? Fine, let’s get out of bullet point mode and get this over with.

Someday I’m going to go into greater detail as to why this series was utter crap to the point where Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 looks better by comparison. Here’s what you need to know for this series. Venus was added to the cast, possibly for gender diversity or some junk. Saban produced the series and, like Masked Rider before them, decided to team them up to promote the new series. (Oddly, Beetleborgs only teamed-up with the Turbo Rangers in a digest sized comic by then Acclaim-owned Valiant Comics which proclaimed they lived in different dimensions, while VR Troopers and the final Saban sentai-ish series, Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, never had a crossover with Power Rangers in any format that I know of.)

The story of the series is that Venus (I forget her actual name, but Michelangelo renamed her after the famous armless statue “Venus DeMilo” because there is a lack of famous women Renaissance artists) was in the jar along with the four guys, but was separated after encountering the ooze (which somehow gave her breasts, anthropomorphic clichés aside) and found by the guardian of a portal that held back a race of dragons (by staring at it really hard) who gain power from eating other animals and want to take over the world. He became friends with Splinter thanks to some astral projection Skype power or something, but never told the boys about their lost “sister”. (Yeah, they established that they weren’t all related by blood but more like “brothers in arms” so they could develop romantic tension between Leonardo and Venus. I’m totally not kidding here.) The dragons get loose when the guardian finally passes and long story short she joins the team and helps break up the Foot.

Frankly, the only good thing about this series if such a thing is possible?

Scott McNeil as Simon Bonesteel!

Seriously, what can’t this man make awesome? Not the rest of this series, I’m afraid. The episode part here also has an A Clockwork Orange knockoff gang leader that frankly was more interesting than the vampires and yeti-run gang that the Turtles would also face. Seriously, the vampires in this show held the “worse vampires ever” award until the arrival of Twilight.

The Turtles were as much a joke in the series as they were in this team-up episode, and that’s just sad. Also, I think this episode was recorded before the final Turtle voice actors were selected, because some of the voices are different from the show. Like I said, I’ll do a full review of this nightmare in the future, but for now, back to the PRiS bullet points.

• I never understood how Darkonda’s “extra lives” thing worked. He didn’t regenerate like a Time Lord, but even said Time Lord would be unable to regenerate if he exploded. (This is a power apparently saved for Wolverine.) As the franchise goes on, the whole “villain explodes” thing makes less sense, starting really with Time Force, where the bad guys just get re-shrunk so they can be locked up in their badge Pokéballs.
• So about the Zords. Awesome Zords. I never thought about Zordon working with NASADA before, since it was never mentioned until the plot device was necessary, but it’s not like previous Zords from unconnected origins couldn’t combine before. I just figured it was an unexplored property of the Morphing Grid. The various MegaShips and Mega Vehicles were some of the best Zords in the series, and few Sentais have made them as good.
• I have to agree that Justin had a decent send-off here (better than even Jason, Zack, Trini, and Billy received), and I don’t think he was a bad character. Just oddly used, much like Wesley Crusher of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Why do so may writers have trouble writing child geniuses?
• This show did one thing I find amazing, and that’s introducing consequences. In addition to Zhane’s introduction, there is an episode where Ashley is seriously hurt and requires medical attention, and the aforementioned episode where Cassie and Carlos are slowly turning into bug monsters, not to mention the whole finale. I’d like to think that someone realized kids could handle this. It’s not the depiction of violence that bothers me, but the lack of negative consequences of it. (To a point, anyway. One of the problems I have with some productions lately is that they practically revel in the consequences. Balance, people.) Look at Saturday Morning now and with the exception of the otaku-hated CW 4 Kids, what few shows are left are devoid of even the action shows of MY youth.
• One last note: Zhane has the coolest personal weapon of the franchise as well as the morpher I most wish I had. It would be a long time still before the “cell phone as morpher” idea would become a regular thing.

I’m starting to wonder again why Time Force ranks over In Space for me. There’s so much more to talk about in just this half. Ecliptor and Astronima’s father/daughter relationship. Zhane and Astronima dating. The monster with a heart, and another monster that befriended Andro. Andro and Ashley’s romance. Adam’s return. But I’ll get into some of this tomorrow, when we bring you part two of Linkara’s look at Power Rangers in Space!