Once again, another title that has big balls in the fandom. If you were to tell the me of 8 or so years ago(when I started getting involved in the power rangers fandom) that Lost Galaxy was the most overrated season of the show, I’d laugh you out of the building and call you a filthy troll, you obviously have shit taste(Apparently I still do) but here we are. There’s lots of seasons that get love, like Lost Galaxy, In Space, Time Force, Dino Thunder, RPM, recently Lightspeed Rescue, Ninja Storm and SPD(which wasn’t much of a thing back then, trust me on that), lots of seasons that get hate, like Turbo, Wild Force, Operation Overdrive, Mystic Force(I’ll get to this one someday, maybe next time), Samurai and Megaforce. Lost Galaxy is a bit of anomaly, and one that is bound to get me hanged by the Power Rangers fandom, but I’ve laid my cross to bear here, I think Lost Galaxy is one of the most confusing and wasted potential seasons in all of Power Rangers, and thankfully many of its faults come from behind the scenes aspects to it.
It kind of reminds me of SPD in that regard, but while SPD had great acting and likeable main characters, Lost Galaxy’s main characters are only decently acted with them being meh in terms of likeability- Leo is way more angsty than Andros(which is an impressive feat), Kai is probably the most complete character on the team and is my fave of the LG team, Damon is funny but not much else, Kendrix is smart and nice, and her sacrifice is cool and all, but it’s not like she was beloved(especially by me), she kind of hung in the background and didn’t do a whole lot. There were plans for her and Leo to be an item but they never materialized due to Valerie Vernon getting Leukemia. Maya has no character development, she’s literally just there to talk to the Galactabeasts, and aside from getting ghost visions from Kendrix offers little to the plot outside of a connection to Mirinoi. I wish we would have gotten more from her in terms of her empathy and ability to communicate with the wild but it doesn’t add much to the series. It’s not like the Wild Zords in Wild Force where the Galactabeasts add to the story, they’re pretty much only sentient because of Sentai Footage, they never actually do much with that sentience. Mike is ok at best but he’s kind of a flat character and really doesn’t have much personality, and he’s pretty much forgotten about in the second half of LG(especially after they get the Centaurus and Stratoforce Megazord, the Torozord only makes about 3-4 appearances afterwards, and as such Mike is hardly a factor until the penultimate episode, which was pretty good).
The strongest character was probably Magna Defender himself, before he gave the power to Mike. Within 7 episodes, he was able to tell an effective story and tragedy and revenge, with his inevitable redemption, the true hardest death in LG, Redemption Day, and helped elevate one of Power Rangers’ worst storylines to ok/above average. Let’s talk about that storyline.
The Lights of Orion arc should have either been skipped outright or just done on a single planet, not on a giant transplanted space colony. It makes no sense why the lights of orion are randomly on Terra Venture(or why it goes back to Terra Venture after leaving). They could have at least heavily downplayed it. Its really hard to call it an arc, as even in Gingaman, it has a ton of filler. Outside of the first episode, the bits of Magna Defender, and the last episode, all of the episodes have a very predictable formula that got old right before Magna Defender came on. Episode 6 is a deception plan that involved Scorpius’ general Furio, and his daughter Trakeena creating a fake Mike to lure Leo to taking them to the Lights of Orion, Furio’s way of redeeming himself in Scorpius’ eyes. Leo predictably gets to a box in a cave where fake Mike betrays him, stealing the box and revealing his monster form, only to find out that the lights aren’t in the box.
2 filler episodes later of the exact same plot(though Blue Crush is a pretty decent Kai episode), we get Episode 9, The Magna Defender. After Scorpius gives Furio 2 more one more chances(a huge writing problem with these episodes considering Scorpius said he had one more chance back in the end of episode 6), Furio goes back to the cave where fake Mike followed Leo, and him and Leo(who’s searching for Mike), have one final duel, and Furio, losing, realizes that if he can’t beat Leo, he’ll blow himself up to kill him for all the trouble he’s caused him. Leo barely survives the blast but a tall knightly figure in black armor and bull horns takes him to the rangers, not uttering a word. We get standard Lights of Orion faire until Defender shows up and tries taking the rock Leo found in the cave from Kendrix, and after Leo asks him who he is, he punches him, almost causing a fight as the monster flees with the rock. Cue boring fight scenes until Magna Defender shows up. After destroying an army of Stingwingers with his cool ass weapons, he cuts the rock that everyone was trying to break open, only for there to be no lights, as the monster gets destroyed single handedly by MD. We also get backstory between Treacheron and Magna Defender, which sadly never comes up again in the series(since as a Gingaman translated plotline otherwise, Budoh had little to no interest in Bullblack, and actually beat Bullblack in their only confrontation in Gingaman), and Treacheron was the one that caused Magna Defender to be caught in the crevice on Mirinoi. He keeps the rangers at a distance, as he’s so focused on his goal to destroy Scorpius that he’ll often be in conflict with the Rangers protecting the Colony(such as in Sunflower Search, where his hatred for Fishface gets him to almost hurt civilians, and in Orion Rising, where he almost blew up the city dome trying to destroy the force field that Destruxo was putting up to suffocate the city and keep the lights from leaving, forcing a fight between the Galactibeasts and Defender Torozord). In Silent Sleep, in order to save the colony from a sleeping spell, Leo starts going after the Lights himself, and he gets confronted by MD, which starts a fight, but the lights turned out to not be there(did the writers of LG/Gingaman realize just how stupid and monotonous it was getting?) and he destroys the monster with his Torozord. Torozord is kind of cool but I can get why people hate it, its a bit on the bricky side. Throughout the arc, MD reveals his backstory about how he used to have a son named Zika, and when Scorpius invaded his planet, Scorpius and Fishface captured and later killed his son, in front of him. He was formerly a warrior for good who lost his way in his hatred, and for pretty good reason, and this causes genuine conflict for the rangers, especially Leo, as he can easily see the kind of pain that comes with losing a loved one. As the arc progresses, MD becomes more desperate in his tactics, such as the Forcefield incident, where despite out matching the Galactabeasts, traces of Mike inside of him begin to hurt him and he flees, gradually weakening over the course of several episodes.
In Orion Returns, the other good episode of the arc, it’s a gigantic chase episode for the Lights, starting with a Skirmish between the Rangers Jet Jammers and the Stingwingers, before going to the forest dome(Still don’t know why the lights fled only to come right back to- oh yeah, Sentai footage, it’s just that the writers/director was too lazy to care about the stupidity of a power based entity coming back to the place it was running from). Detsruxo, MD and the Rangers spend most of the episode in pure Sentai Footage, MD getting ambushed by a fake Treacheron(Impostra, a monster sent by Trakeena to get revenge on Treacheron for underestimating her) and to retrieve the lights from Destruxo, who is loyal to a fault to Treacheron and easily to fool. We get a bit of Destruxo with the lights power, he annihilates the rangers and huge swathes of the forest, and the last 5 minutes of the Episode are honestly some of the most hyped moments of the season, probably even the whole series. Mind you the Lights of Orion arc has been pretty lackluster in terms of the actual lights of orion plot, the Magna Defender stuff has been interesting enough to not have it be Mystic Force or Operation Overdrive levels of bad plotting. Impostra backstabs Destruxo with the necklace she gave him just as he was about to destroy the rangers, and then gets blindsided by MD, who doesn’t want to hear their talking and then starts outfighting Detsruxo, which releases the lights, MD blasting at the rangers to get the lights, only for the lights to join with the rangers due to their willingness to try and destroy them to keep them from being used for evil. The music really helps this scene out immensely, as the triumphant beats and the use of the Theme Song add a ton of gravitas, as well as the actual design of the Lights of Orion probably being the best team wide power up in the franchise. They destroy Destruxo as MD realizes the lights are gone forever, with Treacheron thrown into the prison due to his perceived betrayal by Scorpius. He dies in the next episode where we see how the Galaxy Megazord gets a boost from the lights, and that more of Mike is filtering into MD as he stops him from just killing Trakeena (Scorpius took his only son, why not take his only daughter?), which leads to Trakeena beginning her arc of going from a spoiled princess into a Warrior Bug Queen, easily the best villain of LG and for going through said arc. Rangers kill Treacheron, yada yada, next episode, Redemption Day.
The Scorpion Stinger runs out of fuel so it comes to Terra Venture to siphon fuel so they don’t freeze to death. When MD overhears the rangers discussing the power drain, he takes Torozord to try and attack Scorpius, willing to destroy the entire colony to have his revenge, since its so close to its grasp. I will make mention to Gingaman here though since there is a part to this scene that I liked in the Sentai more than the original- we see Torozord state that he just wants to go back to the good old days of fighting for good, and it gets Bullblack to think about it before going through with the plan. The rangers try to stop him, but its Torozord that kicks him out, since he refuses to sacrifice thousands of lives just to kill one. A monster stabs MD in the back and he gets severely weakened, Leo running off from the others to protect him. The two have a heart to heart about Mike and how his goodness is tearing MD apart from the inside, and he says that if Leo wants to see his brother again, he’ll have to destroy the MD. MD even tries attacking him to make it easy, but it’s clear MD can’t really fight and Leo refuses to kill him, as neither would Mike. Leo returns to the rangers, Lights of Orion, quick battle, dead, Scorpion Stinger pulls out just as the monsters spear gets thrown in the pit. This triggers explosions around the surrounding area as the rangers do their best to reach the core, but it keeps blasting them back. MD watches as the rangers agonize in pain and feels extremely guilty, but that he is too far gone for redemption, only to see Zika’s ghost as he convinces MD that he is still a warrior for good deep down, and that the best way to honor Zika’s memory is to save others at the cost of himself. MD offscreen releases Mike, then goes to the rangers and surrounds them in a forcefield as he goes up the mountain, being pushed to the brink of death, but not before one last scene of him and Zika, MD realizing how much goodness he still has, and thanks his son. When he reaches the top, steaming and his suit badly charred, he becomes a ball of light(we actually saw his body fall in the pit in Gingaman but whatever), causing the core to stabilize as it rains light, Leo picking up MD’s sword, wondering where Mike as Mike himself stumbles out of the nearby rocks and they have a very heartfelt embrace. Redemption Day is easily one of my five favorite episodes of Power Rangers, it still hits just as hard in 2018 as it did back in 1999 when I first watched it as a kid, the way MD’s arc managed to shine amongst a really crappy and plot hole laden storyline and how sympathetic he was. Unlike many characters of his ilk, he does realize the error of his ways, and even kills himself to undo the damage he caused, finally reuniting with his dead son and dying a hero. This is how you write a good character arc, and I kind of wish the Defender powers were for this arc alone since Mike as MD never reached the kind of depth or interest that MD himself had. Destined for Greatness is a pretty good Mike and Leo episode, but afterwards Mike was so thoroughly ignored(much moreso than Zhane) and the Gingaman footage so limited that its really hard to understand why they kept him as MD in Lost Galaxy.
Stolen Beauty is a crappy episode with a decent ending about Trakeena needing to enter a cocoon to become more like an insect in order to get powerful, it features a Bulk and Phenomenous cameo, but it still makes me wonder all the more why the two were even brought back to begin with, they make 4 appearances out of 45 episodes. At least in Samurai Bulk got screen time most episodes. The idea of a monster stealing Beauty yet it somehow being a Kendrix episode makes no sense, nothing gets explored about her. Rescue Mission however is amazing, it advances the story while also being a great all original footage episode that’s a huge homage to Alien. The Lost Galactabeasts 2 parter is pretty ok, it introduces Stratoforce and Centaurus, reveals more of the Galaxy Book that was discovered in the rescue mission, and it introduces Deviot, one of the most slimey bastards in PR history. Heir to the Throne shows not only Scorpius attacking the rangers due to Deviots deception, leading to his death after a fierce battle, but also Trakeena on her own on the Wild West planet of Onyx, where a young swordsman named Villamax offers to train her to become a powerful warrior, and it’s really entertaining. When she returns to her father dying, it’s actually a very sad moment, as Scorpius passes down his body to her in the form of the staff she wields, and he apologizes for keeping her sheltered. Honestly for some reason the best parts of LG aren’t even the rangers themselves, which is really a shame. An Evil Game, the following episode, shows Trakeena’s newfound strength first hand as she captures and later duels Duels Leo, believing he’s the one that killed her father. Deviot meanwhile, desperate to get that Cocoon, hires two assassins to kill Trakeena, to which she actually manages to defeat both with little difficulty, Deviot killing the last one before he could spill about who tried to kill her. This episode features the shirt rip that Leo obviously learned from Kirk. Anyway, Memories of Mirinoi is another meh episode after a string of fantastic episodes, it’s just Maya getting tricked by a monster about a friend she had on Mirinoi, not much else to it. Green Courage is an interesting idea for an episode, Damon forced to fix the Scorpion Stinger in exchange for their leading officer as a hostage bargain, but they didn’t do much with the premise, and the episode ends with a tacked on monster and zord battle. Blue to the Test is a great episode however, since it features Kai trusting his instincts more and more as he notices Stanton is acting off, as he’s being manipulated by an Ice monster, and Kai has to take command to try and keep Terra Venture from destroying itself. It’s just a great Kai episode, as he’s easily the most well developed of the Galaxy Rangers, kind of a Proto Sky. Mean Mantis on Wheels is a lousy one though, it’s just a racing episode where the girls get turned to trophies(HAHA!) and Leo is forced to race Mantis to get them back to normal, where we get introduced to the Capsular Cycle. Loyax’ Last Battle is a pretty good one, its the seasons requisite monster isn’t bad and has backstory but is still kind of bad. Notacon more or less but by choice he became evil. The ending shot is nice and the episode is just good, not great, but there have definitely been worse stinkers this season. Red Romance is an episode that was apparently supposed to lead to a romantic subplot for Leo(once Kendrix’ actress was taken into chemotherapy) but it goes nowhere, and otherwise the episode is pretty bleh, nothing to write home about really. Chameliac Warrior is great on action and has the return of some badass In Space music to highlight whats to come.
To the Tenth Power and The Power of Pink are highlights of the season, yes, but I think they aren’t the be all end all team-up everyone makes them out to be. Bringing the Psychos back was cool, and stuff like the fights were amazing, but compared to other team-ups like Thunderstorm and Reinforcements from the Future. I wish the In Space cast got more screen time and that we had more than just Andros for most of Part 1, since Part 2 is primarily focused on the pinks. Still great for what it is, and it set the bar, at least its way better than Trakeena’s Revenge in LR. I’m just gonna say it though, people blow Kendrix’ sacrifice way out of proportion, especially since, on this rewatched, I noticed how ignored and irrelevant she became by this point. The reason why it happened behind the scenes is pretty sad, though at least Valerie Vernon has since then recovered and is now Leukemia free. Protect the Quasar Saber, which follows the Teamup, is a goose chase between the LG team, Trakeena’s forces, and Karone to get the Pink Quasar Saber, which ultimately goes to Karone, who wants to redeem herself from her past as Astronema. Thankfully this retrieval arc doesn’t go on for 7 episodes or get repetitive(I’m still fucking pissed about that arc), and we get Karone in pink by the end of the episode, complete with the cuteness of her not knowing how to call her Galactabeast. Facing the Past, the battlizer episode, features Karone having to take Leo to a special cave to get a weapon capable of defeating a monster that fries their morphers. It turns out the warrior holding the keys to the weapon is frozen in place, caused by Astronema in her past. When she arrives, the warrior yells at her, before having her fight Astronema. Despite her best efforts, she can’t beat her old half in a fight(should have kept the staff) and surrenders when Astronema threatens to kill an injured Leo, which deems her and Leo worthy of the Key, which saves the day in easily the worst looking of the Battlizer suits, I mean look at the damn thing. One of the better origins for the battlizer, and its nice to see Karone finally putting her demons to rest. I hope you liked this little bit of her character because she’s going to become irrelevant again starting next episode, one of the biggest slaps in the face for one of PR’s most well developed characters I say.
Turn Up the Volume is not a good transition from one story arc to the other, as its just a stupid episode where Damon has to be nice and save a guy who stole his engineering plans for a potential promotion. I’m not gonna feel bad for the guy he’s saving, he honestly deserves all that he gets, Damon was way too nice in this episode. Enter the Lost Galaxy is the beginning of the next arc, and boy is it slow. Kai starts recanting from the Galaxy Book, which has them enter into the Lost Galaxy(the series namesake) alongside an old warrior who guarded the book. So what is this treacherous new terrain that will challenge our heroes in ways that the previous Galaxy didn’t? Just more pirates and more sentai footage really. Deviot takes the book and gains flesh with its magic, growing and fighting all but the Torozord(why of course) in the fight. We meet Captain Mutiny in the next episode and his crew, including the Swabbies, and even Deviot joins their ranks(for no reason other than Sentai footage, it makes 0 sense for his character since he’s trying to get in Trakeena’s good grace- I’m gonna stop now before this takes an eternity. But yeah Mutiny offers to help Terra Venture(the guy who rides on a giant dinosaur with a castle on its back), but it’s a trap as they plan to enslave the colony. Rangers find out, monster fight, Deviot comes back as a robot, bigger monster comes in, rangers need all the zords to take it down, you pretty much have Beware the Mutiny and Grunchor on the Loose pretty much summarized, it’s that simple and boring. This arc is literally like 50% sentai footage and it doesn’t fit at all, we get no Trakeena until the last episode of the arc. Episodes 38-40 are standalones(the little Hexuba “arc” isn’t anything to write home about, nothing really interesting about them at all) and Episode 41, Raise the Titanosaur, features the best Mech fights of the season, so I have nothing to complain about. Escape the Lost Galaxy, the final episode before the finale, was a pretty decent one. We see Mike go into the slave camp to try and start a revolt to free the slaves, and later on as the only portal to the regular Galaxy is opened, Mike sacrifices himself and the Torozord to hold the portal long enough for Terra Venture to get through. Leo goes to get Mike, whose morpher is destroyed, as he’s unconscious in space. MD says that Mike was a great Magna Defender as they fade away. The final 3 episodes, Journeys End, is easily the darkest finale in all of power rangers, as it features a Deviot fused Trakeena using her own army as suicide bombers against the Colony, as she starts attacking Terra Ventures engines(which have slowly been getting damaged as they spent time in the Lost Galaxy), which turns even Villamax off, but his indecision gets him killed. Eventually the rangers are forced to sacrifice the Megaship to blow up the Scorpion Stinger, which hits quite hard since its the same Megaship from In Space. Trakeena, in the wreckage of her ship, enters the cocoon to get her full metamorphosis. The final episode is a huge battle as the remnants of Terra Venture arrive on Mirinoi and the City Dome is set to collide with the Colonists on Mirinoi by Trakeena. It’s a fierce fight between her and the rangers, especially between her and Leo, as Leo is forced to blow up his own battlizer in order to fully defeat her(too bad he couldn’t completely finish the job) and the Galaxy Megazord stops the City Dome in time for it to throw it to the side, sparing the Colonists as they begin to build a new home on Mirinoi. The rangers return the Quasar Sabers as Kendrix comes back, somehow(this is never explained, at least you could sort of say Karone was just healed by the Z Wave, this makes 0 sense but hey its nice to see a recovering Val from chemo). The ending is a bit too happy for my taste, and it brings down an otherwise solid 3 part finale, I just wish they had kept Kendrix dead, maybe it would make her death more impactful on the rewatch.
Lost Galaxy as I hope I’ve shown in my critique is a good series with great antagonists and decent to okay good guys, which I think is LG’s crippling flaw, the other one being just how diametrically opposed to space Gingaman’s entire show and premise was, it was a really bad idea to set the series on a Space Colony, especially when it came to the Lights of Orion arc, which at least kind of makes sense in Gingaman since it happens on Earth. It took a very good Anti Heroic character like Magna Defender to keep the arc from being Overdrive or Megaforce levels of bad. The showrunners, feeling beholden to the footage(can’t blame them, it would have been harder to adapt around the whole arc), still somehow managed to have the show behind schedule, despite these episodes being more or less very faithful to the Gingaman episodes, and even having an episode delay because the episode itself wasn’t even finished filming by the time it set to air(I believe the episode was either Sunflower Search or Orion Rising, it’s probably the latter). The Lost Galaxy arc, a boring slog through 7 episodes worth of raw sentai footage and plots that had no business being in the season(it’s essentially 7 filler episodes trying to save money for the finale) and the villains introduced were pretty boring and onenote, despite being pirates. These were apparently the biggest threat the epic Lost Galaxy in the title could muster, it just feels so disappointing. One interview did give me a lot of context for this critique though, and I highly recommend every PR fan check out this interview. LG was a total shit show behind the scenes, and this interview puts everything into perspective, specifically Judd Lynn and his time working on PR’s golden years. https://deriksmith.livejournal.com/4099.html
Don’t think for a second that I hate Lost Galaxy. I love Lost Galaxy, I have since I was a kid, it was probably one of the most ambitious seasons of PR from the start, it kind of reminds me of SPD in that regard. Both series had a very large budget that their shows used well, for the most part(looking at you Sam). While SPD’s story went nowhere once the middle part happened, it was generally more consistent than LG. LG is a series of great highs and some disgusting lows, and whether it was the stupidity, repetitiveness, and overall pointlessness of all the Lights of Orion episodes, or the utter bore of most of the Lost Galaxy episodes, especially given the lofty goals Judd Lynn had set out for the Lost Galaxy, LG has one of the most compelling villain stories in PR, third only to Astronema and Ransik, a young, spoiled Princess named Trakeena who was able to basically destroy a Space Colony and get over her vanity to become a nigh invincible insect queen, the girl who trained to get stronger and did what she could to get revenge on the murder of her father, and finally descending into madness due to being unwillingly fused with Deviot. Villamax wasn’t bad either, though he kind of came off as Ecliptor lite a lot of the time(still way better than guys like Koragg though *shudders*, one day I’ll come back to Mystic Force), he was still likeable. Deviot was just as crafty as Darkonda was, and he looks pretty cool on top of everything else. At least for the LG rangers I didn’t really hate anyone, its just that I was indifferent to Mike, Kendrix, Maya, Sadly Karone(due to how she essentially became a suit filler once her two parter was done) and Leo to an extent. I still think SPD has better main characters. Both series suffered when they tried to be faithful to their source material(especially LG) and overall they are both series I love, but have major flaws. I really enjoy these seasons, and I hope you do too, I just wish I didn’t have these nagging thoughts in my head as I rewatch these seasons. It’s the price to pay as an internet reviewer I guess. Enjoy your day guys.
No comments:
Post a Comment