Super Sentai Equivalent: Gekisou Sentai Carranger (Radical Racing Team Car Ranger)
You know when a TV show gets popular, so they make a movie based on it, but it's not actually canon so it's like all of the characters magically forget about what they went through the second it's over? Okay, now imagine if, instead of that, they declared it to be TOTALLY canon and made the plot of the entire next season all about the characters facing the fallout from that movie's events.
That's Power Rangers Turbo, in a nutshell. It's actually fairly impressive that they took the events of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie as canon, when even non-kids' shows don't usually do stuff like that. Of course, there's a reason WHY they don't usually do it... without watching the movie you'll be fairly lost. Here's all you need to know - the new Blue Ranger is a little kid named Justin, there's a space wizard that talks like ET, space pirate Divatox hates the Rangers for screwing up her wedding to Off-Brand Satan, and the Zords are monster trucks.
Oh, you also need to know that this season is trash. That too. It's not quite as bad as Alien Rangers, and the second half of it is a lot better than the first half, but it's still pretty garbage.
The actors clearly didn't want to be there anymore after four and a half seasons. As a result they kept giving focus episodes to the newest ranger, Justin, a little kid who had the power to grow about two feet taller whenever he morphed. Justin wasn't actually bad as kid-appeal characters go, but he did get way too much screen time at the expense of everyone else, even fan favorite Tommy Oliver, who basically had nothing to do except have occasional shots of him driving race cars.
The villain was boring and stupid, even by the standards of already stupid villains from other seasons... every single member of Divatox' crew was trying to play comic relief at the same time, and their plans were always the same - send a monster to distract the Rangers while the villains plant a "detonator" (which the writers seemed to think was just a fancy way of saying "bomb") somewhere in the city.
Zordon and Alpha 5 also left to return to Zordon's home planet of Eltar. Their replacements were Dimitria and Alpha 6, two obnoxious characters with even more obnoxious gimmicks - Dimitria spoke only in questions and Alpha 6 spoke only in jive, and the two seemed to be in a constant competition to see which of them could be more irritating.
Oh yeah, and Bulk and Skull become chimpanzees for several episodes. There's that too.
To be fair to Turbo, it does get much better in the second half. The original set of Rangers (except Justin) all got replaced and as sad as it was to see them go, at least the new actors cared about the show. With that, the writers seemed to get a second wind too. Divatox and her crew actually got some new plans, even if those plans weren't all that much more effective than her stupid "detonator" plans.
My biggest feeling personally about Turbo is that I felt they wasted the potential of an automobile-themed Power Rangers. When I found out that the Zords were cars now, I imagined a show that was sort of a high-stakes game of demolition derby, like Power Rangers meets Wacky Races. Unfortunately, that... doesn't really happen. There are a few car battles but it's mostly just regular Power Rangers. I know this isn't their fault, it's just what Super Sentai footage they had to work with... still sad, though.
KR Rating: [2] BAD
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