In the year 3000, delivery boy Fry is thawed out after 1,000 years in cryogenic suspended animation... wait, no, wrong series. Let's start over.
In the year 3000, Earth has become a peaceful planet where war and strife and even crime are a thing of the past... almost. Ransik and his army of evil genetic mutants have terrorized the world, but one by one they've all been captured and cryogenically frozen by the Time Force patrollers. Ransik comes up with one final desperate plan... stealing an entire prison full of frozen mutants and traveling back with it to the year 2001, where there is no Time Force. The only hope of stopping him is the same crew of Time Force patrollers who were disgraced by his escape... stranded in the past with him, they'll use their future tech to become a new generation of Time Force Power Rangers and transform all the villains back into action figures!
Time Force would end up being the last series of Power Rangers produced by Saban Entertainment before they were bought out and merged into the Walt Disney Corporation, who continued producing the series themselves for a decade or so before its original owners would pull themselves back together as Saban Brands and buy it back.
So is it a worthy send-off? For the most part, yes. The writing is pretty decent. The villains have a fair level of complexity to them, approaching In Space levels. The Rangers are pretty decent. There are a few moments here which could be counted among the top moments for all of Power Rangers. (Which you'd better believe is a list I'll be writing someday in the future when I've gotten through more of the series.)
That said, it isn't perfect (though, did you really expect it to be?) There are also a lot of really bad moments, and episodes where a character grabs hold of the "Idiot Ball" and starts acting like a moron just so that the audience can learn a moral lesson, or so that the villains' plan of the week can get off the ground, or even just because.
My major complaint about Time Force is that I felt it wasted its premise. (You may recall I also listed this as a major complaint when I reviewed Power Rangers Turbo. Get used to it, because it's not going away anytime soon.) When I first heard about Time Force I imagined a crazy adventure through time, visiting different time periods. They even show this happening in the show's intro sequence, with clips of battles being fought in a jungle full of dinosaurs, and one in ancient Egypt.
This doesn't really happen in the show... there's some time stuff, of course. The villains and most of the heroes are from the future. (All except the Red Ranger, who is the original Time Force Red's distant ancestor.) The Rangers hang out in a clock tower, their powers and weapons have a clock theme to them... there are a few episodes that involve actual time travel, but these number in the single digits. For the most part it's just typical "Rangers saving the city" action. Honestly, I'm not really surprised... but still a bit disappointed.
In the end, though, Time Force is a worthy enough send-off to the Saban Entertainment era of Power Rangers, and a decent show.
KR Rating: [4] GOOD
| PROS: | CONS: |
| + Some really good story moments. | - Also some really bad story moments. |
| + A lot of cool creative ideas. | - Wasted its premise. |
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