Thursday, January 24, 2019

Television Review: Power Rangers Lost Galaxy

Super Sentai Equivalent: Seijuu Sentai Gingaman (Star Beast Squad Ginga Man, named for the Ginga Forest where the characters live)

Following Zordon's sacrifice at the end of In Space all monsters have finally been wiped out from the galaxy. At last, humanity no longer needs to fear destruction at the hands of space demons and so turns their attention fully to space exploration with the first colony ship, Terra Venture. Meanwhile in a distant galaxy where monsters still live, the evil Scorpius and his minion Furio invade planet Mirinoi hoping to gain the ultimate power of the magical Quasar Sabers. Shenanigans ensue and a squad of young soldiers from Terra Venture's defense force find themselves transported to Mirinoi where they draw out the Quasar Sabers and become a new generation of Power Rangers!

Lost Galaxy was the first series of Power Rangers to not directly continue the story from a previous season, though there are still a lot of carryover elements from In Space. The Astro Megaship returns along with Deca and Alpha 6, and there are memorable reappearances from the evil Psycho Rangers and a now-good Astronema.

Lost Galaxy also did manage to keep up some of the things that made In Space so good. Notably, it kept the idea of having complex villains each with their own unique motivations and agendas. It also gave us some of the best villains up to its point. There's Trakeena, the spoiled daddy's girl who tries to fill her villainous father's shoes after his destruction, noble demon Villamax whose only goal was to serve the person he saw as the universe's rightful ruler, all the way to the other end of the moral spectrum with sleazy traitor Deviot who played every side for his own ends.

The Rangers themselves are fairly competently written too, though not quite as well as the villains. Quite often one of them (usually Maya, the Yellow Ranger and an alien girl from Mirinoi where apparently manners don't exist) would do something stupid for no reason except to allow the audience to learn a moral lesson. This lesson was usually some variation of "don't be a stupid jerk like this stupid jerk."

It's also worth mentioning that Lost Galaxy was the most expensive Power Rangers series ever made and it definitely shows. The space battles between the various factions in the show are fairly well made as far as late 90's CGI goes. Honestly, this show wanted to be Star Trek so bad it hurts. I swear the theme that plays over shots of the Terra Venture colony ship is only a few notes off from a lawsuit.

Also, for a series called Lost Galaxy, they only actually spent 7 episodes out of 45 in the titular lost galaxy, and then the total fallout from that event ends up being... nothing. Okay, it did finally convince Trakeena that Deviot wasn't on her side, but that's about it and she was already suspecting anyway. Honestly, the entire lost galaxy... "thing" is a perfect example of the indecisive writing this show sometimes suffered from, and why it can't get that full five out of five.

KR Rating: [4] GOOD

PROS:CONS:
+ Some of the best villains in the franchise.- The rangers aren't as well written as the villains.
+ Solid action, pretty good quality effects.- Sometimes major plot points just go nowhere.

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