Ok, with a title like that, you know I have some big balls. Sky Tate from SPD is probably the most underrated complex character that PR has ever made, and its sad how most people I know of dismiss him. To me, he was the best thing about SPD(aside from Bridge) and was the only character who truly went through an arc over the course of the season, which is kind of a shame. SPD might just be my most divisive season alongside Dino Charge for several reasons. SPD probably has parts and parcel the best cast that isn’t RPM or Time Force, the way they can carry episodes and mesh well together really helps me overlook the shows pitfalls, of which there are unfortunately several- the overall plotline of the show drags more than it should with its episodic nature, the villains themselves are boring and lack depth(there was potential for Mara but was wasted), the rangers themselves, again, aside from Sky, have no development(there is an argument for Jack and Syd but overall they aren’t that different other than Jack not wanting to steal anymore to help the poor and Syd likes the robot dog more). Bridge, despite his great humor and quirky nature remains pretty much the same the whole way out, which I can’t complain too much about since his initial character is really good, and Z, well, Z got nothing after Sam, so she just joins the list of cool idea but undercooked yellow rangers that’s a pretty long and sad list really- (Summer, Lily, Kira, Katie, Aisha, Emily, Gia, and Trini), where she honestly ranks low because, while her actress does her best with the material, there just isn’t much to Z and her relationship to Jack goes on the backburner for Sky and Jacks rivalry.
The side characters were great though- Kat was a good technical support for the team, Boom was fun(Kelson Henderson is usually good in his roles) and Doggie is probably among my favorite mentors. Unfortunately, SPD has the worst Sixth Ranger of all time, Omega Ranger, the future version of Sam, a child with special powers like the other SPD rangers and formed a bond with Z due to their similar background(who the show BRUTALLY underused, especially since nothing was ever done with Omega Ranger since he was relegated to a big ball of light, and we never see kid Sam around the HQ, and the only appearance we have of adult Sam is when we see him going back to his time with Nova Ranger. You had this great idea of a Sixth Ranger, and he pretty much only exists to show Dekaranger footage that they couldn’t just cut out). The shows effects were top notch, save for the really obnoxious Kalish Explosions. The Battlizer, aside from the initial form, which is just a codpiece and a sword, is pretty cool, but it gets neglected entirely once the team gets Swat Powers in the very next episode (way to blow a great design guys). In general, the season nose dives after Shadow, picks back up for Reflections, then stumbles its way to the finale, which is pretty decent. I could probably do a whole blog post of all of SPD’s shortcomings, but only because its probably the season I like most in spite of having a lot of flaws that I normally would hate a season for. Again, it comes down to the cast, and the strongest member of that cast was easily Sky Tate. Sorry if it sounded like I was rambling, lets get on with the topic.
Schuyler “Sky” Tate is the Blue SPD ranger. When he was younger, his father was the SPD red ranger, and he wanted more than anything to be just like his dad, his hero. His father died on duty when he was younger, which inspired Sky to push harder than anyone to be the Red Ranger. When we first meet him in SPD he was the leader of the B Squad, the second string of cadets just below the A-Squad, and he doesn’t have the highest opinion of his teammates. He follows code to a fault, he wastes no time in elevating himself over his teammates, and he is quick to bicker with his two teammates Syd and Bridge. As we’ll learn, Bridge is weird but brilliant and Syd can be a bit of a spoiled airhead. However, when their Commander, Cruger, wants to send them out on a mission to capture thieves in the shopping district, he takes Sky back for a minute to talk. “Cadet, if I was to assign Bridge as Red Ranger, would you follow him into battle?” “Sir, no offense to Bridge, but....” “What if I was to promote Syd as Red Ranger?” “Sir, she’s a girl.” So yeah, aside from being a sexist dick, Sky shows elitism and believes that simply having the dream of being Red Ranger and making it known to everyone will just get him what he wants most. Since this series specifies that Red is the leader arbitrarily, we can see why Sky wasn’t gonna be chosen off the bat. When given their morphers and a chance of fighting the thieves again, Jack and Z, they do much better with their special abilities, Sky being force fields. When one of Grumms Blueheads attacks the B Squad, Jack and Z decide to help them, Z hesitant. When Sky morphs into the Blue Ranger, he gets confused as why he isn’t the Red Ranger, he assumed from his talk with Cruger that he was guaranteed the spot. After fighting the enemies off, Jack and Z get put in prison instead of a containment card. Cruger offers both a chance at becoming a part of something bigger rather than staying in Prison, which Z agrees to while Jack doesn’t. When Z is given a spot on B Squad, Sky objects. When Cruger tells him that she was a worthy opponent, he shuts up. Heck, when shes out with them on patrol, she brings up a street contact that could help them with the alien device, even showing off her knowledge of the ranger handbook. When the rangers fail to beat the Bluehead(and Jack shows off more of his heroic side by saving Boom over leaving the Delta Base when he was given the opportunity) he agrees to become Red to save Z. The fact that Jack is Red angers Sky to no end, here’s the criminal that initially refused to even join SPD, and now he gets designated as leader eats up the guy whose been working his whole life to get there. But thats what holds Sky back- his entitlement issues and his ego- he always has to be right and as such pushes his teammates away. This is clearly seen in Episode 4, Walls, where after he gets fed up with Jack being a glory hog, his ego gets bruised to the point where he gets put on guard duty for some special diamonds that Grumm is after. After Sid calls him out on his douchey behavior, Sky decides to try and one up Jack by saving the team and leaving the diamonds unguarded, which gets Grumm a huge amount of resources for his master plan. Sky gets chewed out by Cruger for his very selfish behavior and Sky finally starts playing lightball with the others.
Sky’s arc of opening up to others and being less prideful is given an interesting turn in Episode 9, Idol, where one of Sky’s old buddies from the Academy gets found in an Alien spacecraft that crashes on Earth. We learn that Sky used to be fun loving but ever since Dru left the academy Sky became more cold and probably decided not to make friends so that he wouldn’t feel that kind of abandonment. I mean hell, Sky and Dru had bracelets from Dru’s home planet as symbols of their friendship. Sky wholeheartedly trusts Dru while Jack has command of SPD(due to Cruger going to higher command) and Jack doesn’t trust Dru at all, and tries to enact protocol to make sure he’s legit, which Sky intentionally disobeys to try and protect his friend, whom he’s convinced is innocent, but his trust gets shattered when Dru attacks Cruger upon his return. Sky confronts him, and Dru reveals that Broodwing gave him a very good deal for assassinating Cruger, and he tells Sky that money and power are what are really important, and as he beats down Sky, he breaks their friendship bracelet. With Cruger in the infirmary, Sky takes it upon himself to hunt down Dru since he such a naive fool. He cared about Dru that much that he went against regulation to save him just to be played for a fool. Sky ends up taking him in as he gets punished for his actions by having to clean the entrance with a toothbrush, Jack wanting to help but Sky laughing, saying he’s using Jack’s toothbrush. It’s a good bookend, with Sky having to learn to trust Jack’s judgment beyond face value, and its good to show that the usually stoic and loner Sky once had a deep bond with somebody who went bad. It teaches Sky that nothing is as it seems on two fronts- Jack and Dru. It may not seem like nothing more than an above average fillerish episode, but its secretly a brilliant Sky episode.
Sky kind of remains the same for a while until we get to Reflections, the best episodes of SPD and the peak of Sky’s arc as a character. It’s also the introduction of the Battlizer, but that parts not nearly as important(to me anyway, until it pertains to Sky). So Kat develops a new Battlizer but Sky is pissed when he hears only Red can wear it(trust me Sky, you don’t want to be seen in Cyber mode, it looks like garbage) and he then explains his past to Jack when Jack tries to talk to him, and while Sky is pissed, Jack begins to understand Sky’s way of thinking more, and why he acts the way he does. The first part of the 2 parter is pretty weak, only an excuse to show off the flashy battlizer, though it’s the ending that really brings it in. Sky is sent to interview a criminal named Mirloc who can escape through any reflective surface. While at first Sky is able to maintain his cool as a cop, once Mirloc learns of who he is, he uses the fact that he murdered Sky’s father, the former Red Ranger, to get Sky to cry, which gives him a reflective surface to escape from. This destroys Sky, as he once again let his feelings jeopardize the mission, and he considers quitting the team, which Jack immediately objects to.
When Mirloc shows up again, he has the other four rangers trapped, but Jack, understanding that Sky needs closure, gives him the SPD Red Ranger morpher to bring him in with the Battlizer. This is more than enough to contain Mirloc. It’s here that Sky learns that, as Jack points out, heroes come in all colors. Sky’s arc really plateaus here, as he’s seen being the less prideful and arrogant but still stoic and serious member of the team, the clear second in command that respects Jack, enough to where, in a future episode, in order to try and destroy a meteor, Jack orders Sky to leave as Jack goes in to blow it up, almost seeming to destroy himself. Jack comes in at the last second to help all three other megazords finish off the powerful monster. Other than that, Sky remains the same until the ending scene of SPD, where Cruger announces that since Jack is leaving SPD(to go give clothes to the homeless with his girlfriend Allie), that he will need a new Red Ranger to lead. “Sky, if I was to promote Syd as Red Ranger, would you follow her into battle?” “Sir, I would follow anyone into battle that you thought capable of leading.” “Congratulations Cadet, you’ve been promoted to Red Ranger.” Leans in to whisper to Sky “Your father would be proud.” The season ends with the rangers visiting Jack at his work as they chat a bit, until a crime is committed as the rangers head into action, credits roll.
As I’ve stated before, no character in SPD grows like Sky does, not even close, and it’s a shame since if every character in SPD had the same level of depth that Sky does, SPD would easily be the best season, with the highest production values of the Disney era, probably the best actors aside from RPM from the Disney Era, and huge well of neat ideas that unfortunately the show wasted. Reflections Part 2 was amazing because it was a fantastic almost purely American episode amidst an entire sea of Sentai Ripoff episodes that occurred with Shadow onwards. While not horrendous or unwatchable, there was a clear shift towards the show relying more and more on stock footage and sentai plots since Grumm kind of falls into the background between Dismissed and Rival, and they have Broodwing for almost no reason start turning on Grumm(it makes no sense, has a contrived reason like Grumm stopped paying him or something, which is stupid of Grumm, and he just leads the plots for those 16 episodes and the first half of the finale). According to Kalish, he said that he was paid to translate, not tell original stories, which contradicts the work he did in the first 10 episodes of the season, and his switching to a more translation based adaptation caused the seasons plot to lag in the middle, the worst Sixth Ranger in the franchise and some of the weakest team ups notwithstanding.
I really like SPD for the really good things it did, but it got really lazy and started wasting many of its excellent ideas, and the characterization suffered as only Sky and Jack had any sort of meat to them as characters, everyone else hugely suffered, even Bridge who pretty much remained the same throughout the show, a huge shame since I liked all the actors for this season. Greg Aronowitz(the guy who created the costumes for SPD, like Cruger and his Wife Isinia, who was made during his downtime as the season progressed) definitely deserved a better showrunner than Kalish. In conclusion, as the first 10 episodes and Reflections, and even Endings showed, when it wanted to be different from Dekaranger SPD could be amazing, but when it did copy Dekaranger, the season suffered. You can do a good job directly adapting Sentai Seasons/Arcs- Psycho Ranger arc and Time Force come to mind, but PR usually works better when it does its own thing, like Dino Thunder, RPM, Ninja Storm, and In Space. Its why aside from Dino Charge(S1) I think Neo Saban is the worst era. I’m sorry if this is coming off like I hate SPD, I like it a lot, I just wanted it to be more than what it was, and what it very easily could have been. So yeah, Sky rocks, and so does Billy and TJ in terms of blue, imo.
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