TV

Ranger Ranker! #9 – Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue

The One with Lots and Lots of Trains

Woo, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? But I’m still rolling and I’m gonna keep doing this until my brain morphs out of my skull. By the way, if you missed out on my last Ranger Things video, you should check it out here. I’ll be alternating between Ranger Ranker and Ranger Things for as long as I can manage it, so keep an eye out there for your next dose of me on my costumed vigilante shit again. But forget all of that because it’s time to Rank some Rangs, so here we go:

Let’s Talk About Technology

Up until now, there’s been a sense of mystery to the Ranger powers. You would see Zordon or Billy “developing” new Zords or equipment or an entire new Ranger powerset, but only in glances and references. In theory, the Turbo and Space powers might have been backed by some kind of technology, but it’s never actually explained. So it’s interesting now that Lightspeed Rescue turns to an entirely human-made technological origin for their Ranger abilities. The Morphers are something that Miss Fairweather created, there is a crew of engineers and scientists behind the Zords, and everything is just a little bit more “grounded”. I mean, not that grounded. There’s still the whole “giant robots” and “flying trains” thing that modern physics has yet to make possible. But it adds a human element to Power Rangers that wasn’t there before. Now instead of Zords rising up from under the ground1 or from out of volcanic crevasses, you know that there is a team of engineers living in an underwater lab buffing the scratches out of the Rescue Zords every time they get wrecked during a battle. There is an air of magic and mystery that disappears when everything the Rangers can do is due to Science. Nothing is actually different about what a Ranger or Zord is capable of, but these Rangers feel less powerful, less mythic entities and more like… Paw Patrol or something. There’s no greater Destiny or Tradition or Purpose behind the Rangers and why and how they were chosen – it’s just some guy with a mustache2 and a bunch of folders. I don’t know exactly why this predisposes me to be less excited about this season. There’s certainly a lot to love here, and we’ll get into that, but this will never be a season that has quite the grandeur that I truly relish in the Power Rangers franchise.

Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue

Adaptation

Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue is, in a way, a fresh start for Power Rangers. Where Zeo, Turbo, and In Space all had a throughline of Rangers, and Lost Galaxy was in many ways a follow-up to In Space, Lightspeed Rescue is its whole own thing. If not for the one team-up two-parter, there would not be any connecting plot or characters linking it to its predecessors. 

Plot

We open in a desert, where unplaceably foreign nomads have happened across a thousand-year-old temple… in California3 . After some highly ill-advised tomb-raiding, they release a horde of demons – underlings of Queen Bansheera, a powerful demon who once threatened the entire world from her palace, the ruins of which lie under what is now Mariner Bay, California. Led by Diabolico, the demons work to destroy Mariner Bay so that Bansheera’s palace can be brought to the surface before her arrival at the planetary confluence. Unable to accomplish this, Diabolico is later replaced by Bansheera’s son, Impus, who takes Diabolico’s Star Power to become Olympius. Also Diabolico4 has Star Power represented by the star on his chest, which sounds way more like a magical girl thing than a demon thing.

Fortunately, humanity is ready for the demons’ arrival, in the form of Lightspeed Rescue, a secret organization with an undersea base5 led by Captain Mitchell. Offshore of the city of Mariner Bay, California, Operation Lightspeed, led by Captain Mitchell, uses technology developed by the genius Miss Fairweather to assemble a team of superpowered Rangers from a variety of different areas of expertise. Together, the Rangers must defeat the demons and protect Mariner Bay. And also the world I guess.

Eventually, they manage to disrupt Bansheera’s arrival ritual during the planetary confluence, causing her to become trapped in an imperfect body, but she later manages to manifest her full form,6 inciting a final showdown with the Rangers.

+430 pts

Music

This theme song goes pretty hard honestly. It slaps, or whatever the kids these days are saying. Where Power Rangers Lost Galaxy seemed almost ashamed to say the phrase “Lost Galaxy” this intro is the start of the “Just shout the name of the show over and over and over” trend of intro songs that worked so well in the Mighty Morphin’ era.

+783 pts

Fights

Being a technology-based team, there are a lot of weapons used in this series. There’s a big focus on using blasters instead of hand-to-hand combat which, while pragmatic, doesn’t lend itself to interesting choreography. It’s a much more “no-nonsense” approach to Power Rangers, fitting with its more grounded aesthetic. Some people would call that “realistic” and “gritty” but come on, this is Power Rangers, we’re here  for the high-grade nonsense.

+233 pts

Miscellany

Is it weird that the Lightspeed Power Rangers are a paramilitary organization? In the past, they have always been independent operators, working alone to fight evil in relative secrecy. This time though, they are working in an official public-facing capacity, with known identities and a whole team of technological and tactical backup. It’s pretty different and I’m not sure that I like it. To me, the Rangers have an almost mythological aspect to them – they are somehow beyond the capabilities of modern society, either through mystical powers of unknown origin or in the case of In Space, alien technology beyond what we have on Earth. Making them into this government-sponsored formal unit grounds them. The Rangers have to take orders and toe the line, answering to higher powers with human motivations. At one point, the Rangers are replaced by a team of robotic Cyborg Rangers, and General McKnight shows up to relieve the Rangers of duty, and there’s basically nothing that anyone can do about it. The existence of this hierarchy above the Rangers takes away some amount of their agency and makes them seem a lot less special, basically reducing them to soldiers just doing their jobs.

Cumulative Score: 6504 pts!

The Good Guys

When demons threaten to destroy Mariner Bay, Operation Lightspeed is put into effect and a team of highly-qualified experts in various fields is recruited. These are the Lightspeed Rescue Rangers, who use their skills to protect the city of Mariner Bay and also fight a bunch of evil demons.

The Rangers

Carter Grayson (Sean Cw Johnson)  

Firefighter. Melancholic. Does as he’s told.

  • Color: Red
  • Zord: Pyro Rescue 1
  • Signature Weapon: V-Lancer, Rescue Claw
  • Strength: 10 
  • Smarts: 0
  • Coolness factor: 0

Carter is the straight-laced, tightly-wound soldier of the group. Ostensibly the leader mainly because he’s the only one who cares about who the leader is. Normally I joke about the Red Ranger being the boring generic guy, but Carter takes it to the extreme and makes being boring his core character trait, which is, in its own way, kind of endearing.

Chad Lee (Michael Chaturantabut)  

Diver. Phlegmatic. Loves a mermaid.

  • Color: Blue
  • Zord: Aqua Rescue 2
  • Signature Weapon: V-Lancer, Rescue Laser
  • Strength: 15
  • Smarts: 5
  • Coolness factor: 5

Chad is the quiet one that shows up to be talked at by other characters when they need a second body in the scene. He’s subdued and reactive, which on this team, kind of makes him fade into the background a lot. He does get his own focus episodes which are pretty uniformly great, even if they involve the Wise Old Asian Sensei trope and an inexplicable mermaid romance.

Joel Rawlings (Keith Robinson)  

Sky Cowboy. Choleric. Keeps saying “Sky Cowboy”

  • Color: Green
  • Zord: Aero Rescue 3
  • Signature Weapon: V-Lancer, Rescue Cutter
  • Strength: 5
  • Smarts: -5
  • Coolness factor: -5

The crazy one of the group, Joel is there to be wacky, lovesick, and say Sky Cowboy a whole awful lot. He’s the self-proclaimed ladies’ man, and he even carries around his own signed poster/fliers to dump out over the city from his Zord.

Kelsey Winslow (Sasha Williams)  

Athelete. Sanguine. The Crazy7 One.

  • Color: Yellow
  • Zord: Haz Rescue 4
  • Signature Weapon: V-Lancer, Rescue Drill
  • Strength: 7
  • Smarts: 0
  • Coolness factor: 1

Kelsey is the kind of person who will tell you to your face that she’s The Crazy One. Which is to say, not so much crazy as kind of oblivious and energetic. Her thing is that she’s always on rollerblades and has a walkman around her neck. Hey, remember when rollerblades and walksmans were shorthand for being cool and radical?

Dana Mitchell (Allison MacInnis)  

Paramedic. Also Melancholic. Actually has a personality.

  • Color: Pink
  • Zord: Med Rescue 5
  • Signature Weapon: V-Lancer, Rescue Injector
  • Strength: 5
  • Smarts: 10
  • Coolness factor: 10

Dana is the Captain’s daughter, which gives her an actual emotional stake in the Lightspeed Rescue organization. She’s also the most talented of the group, being a trained paramedic preparing to go to medical school. Supposedly, she was almost played by Amy Adams.8 

Ryan Mitchell (Rhett Fisher)  

Raised by Demons. Doesn’t get a temperament. All-American.

  • Color: Titanium
  • Zord: Max Solarzord
  • Signature Weapon: Titanium Laser (which is also an axe)
  • Strength: 10
  • Smarts: 5
  • Coolness factor: 11

Ryan is Captain Mitchell’s long-lost son, whom he gave up to Diabolico as a child in exchange for saving young Ryan’s life. He’s pretty angsty and a little bit evil about this for a while. A wholly American-made character, the Titanium Ranger did not exist in the Super Sentai series that this season is adapted from, so there isn’t any Japanese footage of the character. This becomes kind of obvious when he suddenly disappears to go “find himself” as soon as his minseries-length character arc is completed.

The Team

I’m not a huge fan of these suits. I don’t like the starburst design, and the helmets are a little abstract as to what they’re supposed to represent. I guess they’re in the shape of badges or seals or something? Give me mouth-shaped visors any day. 

As for team cohesion, they get along fine, but it feels very artificial. They’re there doing a job under a fixed command structure, so they have to get along to keep up the pseudo-military appearance. This kind of power structure worked in Lost Galaxy because it only extended to the civilian lives of the Rangers, and not everyone on the team was part of the organization. Here, the Rangers are essentially super-soldiers, which I don’t love.

Ranger Ranker:

  1. Dana Mitchell – Arguably, the most useful, actually skilled professional. She gets shit done. +3387 pts
  2. Chad Lee – It feels like he’s supposed to be the boring naive one in the group, but he really just comes off as the only one who has any life at all outside of being a Ranger. +2536 pts
  3. Ryan Mitchell – What was his childhood even like? For being raised by demons, he sure adapts to normal life pretty quickly and devoid of trauma. +877 pts
  4. Carter Grayson – Even blander than the usual bland Red Ranger, his thing is that he’s dutiful and committed, which is to say, booooooooriiiiiiiiiiing. +612 pts
  5. Joel Rawlings – Oh my god stop saying Sky Cowboy +558 pts
  6. Kelsey Winslow – She’s just so… nothing. Her “thing” is that she’s “the crazy one” but apart from a couple stunt scenes, she doesn’t really stand up to that descriptor. +0 pts

I don’t want to say bland as much as I’m sure I will in this review, but oh my god everybody is so bland this season. And the only things that make them not bland are terrible. Looking at you and your lack of professional boundaries, Sky Cowboy.

“Lightspeed! Rescue!”

In this morph sequence, the Rangers jump through a projected image of their “shields,” which stretch and wrap around them like spandex. I hate it. Sometimes they don’t even do the whole sequence, they just throw out their shield and jump through it in the real world. It has been pointed out to me that it’s the same type of thing as happens in G-Gundam, which I like, but there’s just something about it that disturbs me. They also have this bit where their face shows partly out of their helmets before the mask/glass comes in, and that just raises all sorts of questions about why the visors are shaped so weird if they have to actually look out of them. Which I guess is always a question, especially with helmets like the Zeo ones, but you didn’t have to draw attention to it.

Overall Team Score: 783 Pts!

With Special Guest Rangers…

Lost Galaxy Rangers

When Trakeena9 returns to menace Earth10 for… reasons…11 she kidnaps this little girl Heather’s mommy12 and the only one who believes this poor little girl is Carter. Heather is really good at hide and seek. She leads Carter to the lab where the kidnapped people are being held and helps the Rangers to infiltrate the building and take down her operation. For her bravery and ingenuity, she is awarded a Junior Ranger badge by Carter, making her the most specialest girl in the world.

Oh also the Galaxy Rangers show up to help out or something.13

Gear

In line with Lightspeed Rescue being a technology-driven season, there is a lot more gear that comes into play. Miss Fairweather invents all kinds of cool technology to make lasers or fight evil or whatever.

Battle Boosters

These are essentially the same as the In Space battlizers – wrist gauntlets with a phone-style number-pad that they can punch numbers in to do things, but this time they use it a whole lot more, for powering up their punches and for calling in their Zords. The most important thing is that you have to shout the number that you’re pressing as you press the button or else who can say if the button was ever really pressed at all?

+56 pts

Rescue Bird

The Rescue Bird is the combination of all of the Rangers’ signature weapons, only it usually appears pre-assembled in bird-form because that’s also the form that can fly and shoot a giant combo-laser. The weapons basically never come out of it.

+2 pts

Mega Battles

For once, Rangers other than Red get cool exo-suit style power-up armor!14 And they’re… okay… one of them is just a giant water/ice cannon, which is good against specifically demons because they specifically can’t handle water, but I wouldn’t really call it a battle anything. The other one is a chunky saw that can supposedly cut through anything, which sounds a whole lot cooler than a big water cannon, but turns out not to be.

+105 pts

Trans-Armor Cycle

Things That Aren’t as Cool as They Sound. Part II. It’s a motorcycle that turns into armor and it can shoot its wheels as an attack. Actually that wheels thing is pretty cool.

+250 pts

Zords

Rescue Zords

Paw Patrol! Lightspeed Rescue! These are your standard batch of emergency/rescue vehicles, only they’re huuuuuuuuuge. How is this different than Turbo’s Rescuezords? It’s not, really! But no one complains when we re-use dinosaurs15 so sit down and be quiet! 

The Rescue Zords are fine. As with the rest of this season, they’re a little mundane, but it’s well themed and it all kind of comes together coherently. Sort of. When it gets into Megazord formation though, it is actually pretty cool – it can use the Ladder Arms of Pyro Rescue 1 to do super-long punches or support itself while doing Cool Flips. And the sword forms itself out of the belt buckle! I kind of low-key love that.

Coolness of Rescue Vehicle

  1. Pyro Rescue 1 – Super-extendy-ladder-arms! +522 pts
  2. Med Rescue 5 – Apparently it can open up into a multi-level garage and civilian cars can just drive all up into its belly. Neat! +458 pts
  3. Aero Rescue 3 – This one flies, so it gets to carry the other Zords into position when forming the Megazord. Because realism! + 404 pts
  4. Aqua Rescue 2 – On the one hand, spraying water is kind of lame. On the other hand, water is the demons’ only weakness so you’d think it would come up more. +310 pts
  5. Haz Rescue 4 – It lifts stuff I guess? I wasn’t paying attention because I was distracted by SUPER-EXTENDO-LADDER-ARMS +12 pts

Lightspeed Megazord

Main Weapon: Lightspeed Megazord Saber

Finishing Move: Flaming Circle of Doom – The Lightspeed Megazord makes a ring of fire with its saber and then slashes through it.

Total (group) score: +430 pts

Rail Rescue Zords

When the Rescue Zords on their own aren’t good enough, send in… The trains that carry the Zords! The launch sequence of this is great, just a giant train ramp launching five(5) giant robot trains into the air where they assemble into an even gianter robot before touching down. Actually, how big is the Supertrain Megazord supposed to be? Sometimes it’s an order of magnitude bigger than the Lightspeed Megazord and sometimes it seems like they’re the same size? They fight next to each other sometimes? In any case, the important thing to know here is that trains are cool and flying trains are cooler.

On their own, the Rail Rescue Zords are pretty boring. They’re trains. They basically just go back and forth with the regular Rescue Zords along the same track. It’s only when you switch to the ramp track that they start to get interesting. See above re: flying trains. Apart from that, the Supertrain Megazord is… fine. It’s a big hulking Megazord that’s mostly a shooty artillery Zord, which isn’t my favorite type. 

Coolness of… Train…. Car… [yawn]…

1-5. I don’t know they’re all trains I guess. Supposedly they’re all supposed to be different types of trains, but we all know that they are trains and trains are trains.+train pts

Supertrain Megazord

Main Weapon: Giant Turbine/Rocket Launcher.

Finishing Move: Turbine Supercharge – The Megazord wears the turbine and artillery that are normally its shoulders as big gloves and shoots lightning and also rockets at the enemy monster.

Total (group) score: +618 pts

Max Solarzord

Max Solarzord16 is, generally speaking, Ryan the Titanium Ranger’s Zord, though it’s autopiloted or remote piloted or otherwise available when Ryan himself is not available. Which is most of the show.17 It’s basically a space shuttle with solar panels all over it, and it can launch into space and soak up all of the sweet, sweet solar rays before dropping down to Earth in Warrior Mode. Oh yeah by the way, the Solarzord also has a Warrior Mode in which it turns into an honestly kind of adorable humanoid robot. Look at him, he’s so stubby! He’s just a silly little guy! And it can ride on the Megazord or they can throw it or whatever! Love him. All the points for Solarzord. The Max Solarzord can turn into solar panel armor for the Lightspeed Megazord turning it into the Lightspeed Solarzord, allowing it to absorb energy and redirect it in the form of Lots of Guns.

Coolness of Solar… Plane… Thing

  1. Warrior Mode – duh +1000 pts
  2. Plane Mode – boo -1000 pts

Lightspeed Solarzord

Main Weapon: So Many Guns

Finishing Move: All the Guns – Seriously it’s a lot of guns

Total (group) score: +1000 pts

Omegazords

The Omegazords are some kind of space shuttles or something, but they never really get used on their own. They need to launch from space though, so the Rail Rescues combine with the Max Solarzord to form a Space Train to the Cosmos and carry the Omegazords to space so that they can come back down as the Omega Megazord. They also can form the Omega Crawler, which is basically the Omega Megazord crawling around on its hands and feet, but that only gets used like, once.

The Omegazords are pretty generic – they are similar to In Space’s Mega Voyagers as Space Thing Themed Zords, but with even less personality. On the other hand, they don’t have the Mega-V3, so that makes them a thousand times better.

Omega Megazord

Main Weapon: Omega Staff/Omega Missile

Finishing Move: Omega Slash – The Omega Megazord slashes twice with the Omega Staff (usually after having fired the Omega Missile first)

Total (group) score: +556 pts

Lifeforce Megazord

So in what definitely sounds like a good idea, the Lifeforce Megazord is powered by the Rangers’ own life energy. What could go wrong? Obviously nothing. Anyway, it immediately gets taken over by Batlings18 and starts destroying the Aquabase so it doesn’t turn out to matter all that much.

Seriously though, when ever did “drain your life energy to power a thingum” ever ever work out well for all involved?

Score: +0 pts

Total Score: + 610 pts

Mentors/Allies

Captain Mitchell

Captain Mitchell is the stern, serious, fit and proper mentor that suits the paramilitary nature of Project Lightspeed. The Aquabase is his life’s work, which makes it the second season of Power Rangers in a row where an older white guy stands in shock as his entire life’s work collapses around them. He has poor communication skills, which he disguises behind a facade of being mysterious and all-knowing. Standard mentor stuff.

+410 pts

Miss Fairweather

Miss Fairweather is the chief scientist for Project Lightspeed. She makes all the tools, weapons, and Zords that the team uses over the course of the season. She’s also a smart, confident, independent woman, so they have to work in a romance subplot between her and Sky CowboyJoel, where Joel fruitlessly and comedically19 pursues her relentlessly and they of course eventually wind up together in the epilogue. Also this one time they bring her brother in, but instead of being straightforward about it, they spend the whole episode insinuating that he’s a romantic rival for Joel, so that they can have a good laugh at Joel’s expense when the truth is revealed. In fairness to Joel though, they insinuate really, really hard. Like Folgers-level hard.

+531 pts

Random Citizens Lightning Round!

Marina (and Neptune)

Marina is a mermaid that Chad falls in love with.

A mermaid. That Chad FALLS IN LOVE with.

You know, because as a diver, he loves the ocean so much.

Anyway, Marina also happens to be the sea god(?) Neptune’s daughter, because the sea god Neptune also lives conveniently near Mariner Bay.

+1023 pts

Kelsey’s Grandmother

Kelsey’s unnamed grandmother is initially shown to be cold and heartlessly materialistic, but it turns out that she’s just So Worried about her granddaughter because Family is more important than Stuff. So she gets all up in hockey gear and tries to fight a monster. Kind of like when they did the exact same plot with Ashley’s grandmother on In Space, but Kelsey’s grandmother doesn’t suplex a cop, so it’s not nearly as good.

+88 pts

Mr. Tamashiro

Joel’s mentor, Mr. Tamashiro, is an aged martial arts master with a long beard and an accent.20 He gets tricked into mentoring one of Bansheera’s demons to be Chad’s rival, which means that the episode involves a lot of the demon being wrecked by plain unmorphed humans.

+54 pts

This Lady

This lady literally says “there’s no such thing as monsters” in the middle of a city that has been having regular monster attacks for half of a season. She must have been way in the back when the panic broke out. All she heard was whatever the monster equivalent of yodeling is.

The Baddies

In this season, the monsters are all demons who come out of magical cards that get flung through a portal. Also when they die, they get sent to the Shadow RealmWorld and it’s important to remember that Yu-Gi-Oh didn’t come out until 2000, so this technically came first.

The Big Bad: Queen Bansheera – The Demon Queen

Bansheera spends the first half of the season offscreen, with her demon minions preparing for her arrival. Then when her arrival ritual is disturbed, she spends most of the rest of the season trapped in a rock like a figurehead21. In the end, she takes on her full form by killing and absorbing her minion Vypra. She kind of ends up betraying nearly every one of her minions, only barely sparing Jinxer when he begs for his life. That is to say, kind of a terrible boss.

Score: +4066 pts

Henches

Diabolico

Diabolico is initially Bansheera’s right-hand demon, but is destroyed about halfway through the season, with his Star Power going to Impus, who turns into Olympius. He is later resurrected and gets into a power struggle with Impus/Olympius, eventually trapping Olympius in the Shadow World of defeated monsters. He’s loyal and honorable, but in the end, Bansheera puppets him into destroying his own ally, Loki, which leads him to rebel against Bansheera. He then gets killed Again, but gets the last laugh when his dead spirit pulls Bansheera into the Shadow World to be torn apart by the restless dead.

+5205 pts

Loki

Pronounced Lok-eye for whatever reason, Loki is the stupider one of the villain team, but is fully loyal to Bansheera to the end, when Bansheera betrays him by forcing Diabolico to fire on him while he’s fighting the Rangers.

+2750 pts

Vypra

Vypra is a humanoid demon with bat wings and a seductive22 personality. She also gets the Vypari, a rad demon car, so that’s cool. She’s a loyal servant of Queen Bansheera to the end, when Bansheera betrays her and absorbs her energy to transform into her full form.

+1513 pts

Jinxer

Jinxer is the monster-maker of the season. He has a variety of cards containing all sorts of demons who he summons throughout the season. He also chases an egg this one time. He’s a loyal servant of Queen Bansheera to the end, when he convinces Bansheera not to betray him and absorb his energy by instead going on a suicide mission to attack the Aquabase.

+4981 pts

Impus/Olympius

Bansheera’s son, Impus, originally appears as a speechless adorable baby demon that everyone is jealous of. When Diabolico dies, Impus receives his Star Power and matures into Olympius, a powerful23 warrior. He inevitably fails to destroy the Rangers and is tricked into the Shadow World by Diabolico, whereupon he is betrayed by Bansheera,24 who chooses to leave him stuck there rather than rescue him.

+1116 pts

Fodder

Batlings

Visually, the Batlings very closely resemble the Swabbies of last season but, crucially, do not make me want to run far, far away, screaming. Maybe it’s all the hijinks they get up to, or maybe it’s the fact that they don’t have horrible eyes, who knows? They have cute little bat wings and useless sword/daggers, and they end up commandeering two Megazords, so that’s nice for them.

+250 pts

Monsters

The monsters of this season are all demons, most of which generally resemble some kind of demonified animal. All demons (except one) are incapable of going into the water, because that’s how demons work in this universe. They all come from magical cards and when destroyed, they turn into demonic clay that another magical card can be used on to make them giant. Lots of card-based demoning going on here, yet no one ever complains about this demonic card game.

Monsters That Are Good (According to Me)

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper guards the gate between the Demon World and the Shadow World, but he gets stuck in the Shadow World with Olympius when Diabolico steals the key to the gate between worlds. And then Gatekeeper is such a drama queen about it. Like, it’s just eternal imprisonment in the wasteland of the restless dead. Geez, cry about it why don’t you.

Birdbane

When a demon egg goes missing, a bird demon is the obvious choice to go after it, right? It worked for Chunky Chicken.25 And obviously this bird demon needs a comedy voice and eyeballs, because why wouldn’t it?

Demonite, Falkar, and Thunderon

Diabolico’s three strongest demons, Demonite, Falkar, and Thunderon get their whole own arc, which means that they don’t go down like chumps on their first outings. They almost get the upper hand on the Rangers, even. Eventually they all merge into one giant monster, Troika, and you know how the saying goes. “Never merge into one giant monster when three will do.” I’m pretty sure that’s a saying.

What About Bulk and Skull?

[Crying]

+0 pts

THE FINAL SCORE

We now begin the completely transparent scoring system, where I give a value (in Pts) to each of the major elements, and I also get to decide what those are. And also how much they have accrued in Bonus Points(pts) up to now.

  • The Team:  500 Pts 
    • Individual: 400 tPts They’ve got jobs and everything. Except Kelsey, it’s unclear what she does.
    • Together:  750 tPts Almost like a paramilitary unit or something
    • Leader: 5 tPts Meh
  • The Zords: 150 Pts
    • Individual: 100 zPts Nice individually for the most part, but apart from the Rescue Zords, very samey
    • Megazords: 250 zPts There’s so many of them!
  • The Villains: 6000 Pts
    • Leader: 1000 vPts Demon World’s Worst Boss
    • Henchmen: 9000 vPts Belligerent and numerous
    • Fodder: 500 vPts Not terror inducing! 
  • The Monsters: 1000 Pts I think I just really like the magical cards thing
  • Story: 3000 Pts – Actually, the villains’ stories might be more compelling than the Rangers, but still.
Sudden Dramatic Points Right At The End

The season works pretty well overall, but all of its individual parts are pretty bland. It’s cohesive and well-paced, but none of it really stands out or goes over-the-top. It’s not actively bad, but in the end Lightspeed Rescue just doesn’t work for me. -1000 pts

After totaling all the scores for each section and normalizing the results according to the secret formulae that definitely exist and are not a screen to get me out of having to think about scores ever at all:

Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: 10248 Power Points!

Let’s see the rankings!

Power Rangers Seasons, Ranked

  1. Power Rangers in Space 26
  2. Power Rangers Zeo27
  3. Power Rangers Lost Galaxy 28
  4. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Season 329
  5. Mighty Morphin’ Alien Rangers30
  6. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Season 231
  7. Power Rangers Turbo32
  8. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Season 133
  9. Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: 10248 PPs!

A poor showing considering that nothing in particular about it was strictly bad, it just doesn’t really work for me overall. Honestly, the most damning thing is that a bad season is at least interesting in its own way, whereas a bland season just doesn’t have anything going for it, and in the end, Lightspeed Rescue is kind of a bland season.

Anyway, that’s it for this installment of Ranger Ranker! Look out for a Ranger Things video…. some… time… I definitely work on any kind of predictable schedule. On the plus side, I’m probably not going to be going off my meds while I’m working on the next one, so that’s better than previously! 

And be sure to come back next time for The One That’s in TIME!!!