Series Commentary: Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy

If Power Rangers in Space, with a close-knit team flitting about in space and visiting seedy locales and deadly forest planets, was Power Rangers meets Star Wars, then Lost Galaxy is Star Trek. Here we have a core group that forms much of the command and security team, responsible for a large vessel filled with military and civilian individuals on a long-term mission, independent enough that the Commander of Terra Venture has effectively complete control over what happens to the station and the people that call it home.

When the "final" season of Power Rangers was more popular than anyone could have imagined (despite my losing interest halfway through the series as a child), Saban shrugged its shoulders and said "what the hell, let's have another one". The result was Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy, probably the single post-Angel Grove season with the most ties to the season that came before. The Megaship, which the Rangers use whenever they're not on Terra Venture, was stolen (yes, it was stolen) from its role after the finale of PRiS left it decommissioned. Tracheena is essentially a writers' response to "make Astronema again, but different". And... yeah, I just jumped two thirds of the way through the series. Oh well.

When Valerie Vernon had to leave the show for medical reasons, Kendrix sacrificed herself to save Cassie, the Pink Space Ranger, in the finale of a two-parter that saw eleven Rangers from two seasons (don't ask me why Zhayne didn''t show up) face off against the Psycho Rangers from PRiS. Rather than try and introduce a brand new Pink Ranger in a short span of time, the producers decided to have one of the girls from In Space reprise their role as a new Pink Ranger. When Patricia Ja Lee left the show for her own reasons, Melody Perkins was called upon to be the first villain-turned-black corset wearing Pink Ranger and it was glorious.

Having Karone (with the occasional cameo by Astronema) back was the highlight of the show for me. We already had the same villain quartet in Scorpius-Tracheena-Villamax-Deviot that we had had in Dark Specter-Astronema-Ecliptor-Darkonda, right down to Deviot causing Scorpius's death and wanting to be his successor. Karone being on the opposing side, and even having an unmorped fight or two with Tracheena, just made this all the more epic.

I just realized I may have an unhealthy crush on 10 years' ago Melody Perkins. Moving on.

As you can probably guess, Lost Galaxy was in many ways an attempt to duplicate In Space without being a blatant ripoff of In Space. The villains meet in different ways, taking half of the season to form the quarter I mentioned and changing much more in the process. While none of them ever were in danger of joining the Power Rangers, we go another step in exploring the perils of a noble warrior working for the forces of evil.

Lost Galaxy is so successful in copying the formula of In Space, in fact, that it comes with the same flaws. Specifically, I mean the sixth ranger. The introduction of the Magna Defender was done as well as the Silver Ranger (that is to say, as well as the Blue Centennial or the Phantom Ranger), but it was rather abrupt when Big Brother became the Defender and the constraints of a Sixth Ranger make him seem like less of a friend or a brother and more like a distant, lone wolf character that he never was when he was introduced.

Related to this issue- because the Lights of Orion were often used as an excuse to separate Max from the team- is all of the power ups they received. It's not the fact that they got power boosts that concerns me, but the fact that it seemed like more of a constant thing. In MMPR, the Rangers would gain new powers after getting their asses beat. Hard. Here, it's like more of an arbitrary reward. It's as though the marketing division were afraid toy sales would plummet the minute they stopped promoting new ones.

This was the last strictly linear Power Rangers season. They would continue until Operation Overdrive having crossovers that defined continuity, but other than those special events (thirteen or so episodes in the next eight years), continuing cast members like Bulk, Karone and Professor Phenomenous would be a thing of the past.

Bill Silvia is a regular contributor at Fantasy & SciFi Lovin' News & Reviews. You can find more of his content at http://www.MiBreviews.com

Tumbler Roundup Jan 2012

Aloha from beautiful Hawaii!! Here's what I've been up to so far in 2012.



I don't always wear flats. But when I do, I prefer cute ones... Miu Miu

Xmas gift from my awesome Parisian aunt ;) Balenciaga

The mean streets of Costa Mesa. Louboutin

Plastic shoes by Melissa

A prototype of my Cece L'amour boxes!

Leah and I going out on the town. Both Jeffrey Campbell. I'm on your right.

New purchase :D

Bedroom <3

Living room

Happy in my new chair

eBay WIN! Penelope and Coco

Perfect Jonathan Adler pillow

A package from Dannijo

Loving my new neon necklace

SHOES! left to right, top to bottom... lamb, i forget but will post when I get home, miu miu, balenciaga, casadei, gianmarco lorenzi, lamb, louboutin, jessica simpson, bordello, JC, cece l'amour, steve madden, nicholas kirkwood, penelope and coco... phew!

Love from Deer Valley, Utah

Love from Pupukea, Hawaii!

XOX,

16 January 12

Taken at night, but to me the light looks like early morning.

15 January 12

Sure, the photo is boring, but if you click through to read the story that goes with it, you probably won't be bored anymore.

Jim's Rants & Raves

Similar to SQT’s Random Thoughts, sometimes a few things wind up sticking in my craw that I feel the need to talk about, but it isn’t enough for me to write an entire entry about. Usually these are things that I either feel the need to express my displeasure about, or that I want to sing the praises of – so despite the fact that it’s rather unoriginal, I’m going to go with Rants & Raves.

• Rave – the “Glory”ious return of Extreme Studios comics. Believe it or not, I wasn’t a huge fan of this particular sub-studio of Image back in the day – I was more of a Wildstorm guy (though I was not a Rob Liefeld hater, I just didn’t wind up reading most of these titles, with the exception of Prophet). I was only mildly intrigued by the announcement that some of these titles would be coming back in 2012, and even Prophet didn’t garner my attention at first (though it has since moved onto my list to check out, with it’s combination scifi/Conan vibe) – but after this recent interview with the creators of these books at Newsarama, I’ve decided I must give Glory a try. A book I never looked twice at, despite it’s attempts to pander in the past, I love how the creators of this book go out of their way to talk about how they don’t want to make a book that girls are embarrassed to read (like – as they say – DC screwed up royally with their relaunch). Descirbed as a superheroes meets epic fantasy book, with that kind of attitude from the creative team, I’ve decided I must give Glory a try.
  
  
  
  
  





• Rant - Speaking of attitude, there was a great article on Author Behavior that I completely agree with. I’ve had contact with a number of authors over the years, even ones whose books I haven’t always loved (and they knew it). There have only been a few occasions where I’ve had completely bad interactions with authors (and by this I mean, giving me undeserved bad attitude) – in two cases I let it go owing to the situations (one was at a signing, the other through a Yahoo! Group interaction). But one I have never been able to let go. I had long lurked at the Star Trek BBS for discussing literature, where many of the authors interact with the fans. I had long seen one particular author act rudely to fans, but I didn’t know him and had never read anything by him. Eventually I did read one of his Trek books, and found it to be entertaining though not memorable. I never said anything one way or the other about that particular book, but when I was later praising a follow-up book by another author, the rude author wound up engaging me over my comments about the characterization of one new creation who had been introduced (by all of these authors) in the books. It became a personal attack against me (directed by this author), because it was apparently my fault that multiple authors had failed to make this character sympathetic to me. I’ll also note, I was essentially a new user to that board – I can’t imagine how people would feel welcomed in that kind of a situation. I vowed I would never read another book by that author again and that I would never post at that board again, and I haven’t. This despite the fact that TOR just released covers of some new books, including one by the author in question, which sounds like it would be right up my alley – but I’ll never allow my dollar to help subsidize his career again.
  
  
  
  
  





• Rant – my family and I were recently watching The Brave Little Toaster. Actually we didn’t get very far with it – within moments of turning it on my wife was asking me when this movie was made (because it looked like Snow White era, and not in a good way, despite being made in 1987). Since I was on the Wiki page for it, I looked up the plot and decided it was going to be too sad to continue (at which point we switched to the new Pooh movie, which was hysterical by the way). I’m not sure if my rant is more directed at The Brave Little Toaster – which seems to be alluding that a Toaster, a Vacuum Cleaner, a Radio and an Electric Blanket are the favorite TOYS of their child master whom they miss (yes, all electrical appliances kids, lets go PLAY!) – or am I more annoyed to discover that essentially the Toy Story movies (which has the involvement of John Lassetter, who also worked on guess what? The Brave Little Toaster) drew from this plot with the household items coming to life, missing their master, going out on their own into the real world, sent to a junkyard… I guess I could look at it as the Toy Story movies actually took what was probably a good idea and making it far more appropriate by actually making it about toys instead of appliances that could get a person killed, but the whole experience has just gotten to me.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





• Rave – to end on a positive note, Orbit books recently announced that they would finally be bringing Michael Cobley’s Humanity’s Fire scifi series to the US. I’ve had an advance copy of the first book for a few years now, and I look forward to finally cracking it open in time for the debut here. You’re bound to see me feature these books in upcoming Waiting on Wednesday columns, but I thought I’d share my excitement here first.
  
  

14 January 11

My aunt Wendy is joining the reserves, and my mom hosted a going-away party for her before she heads off to Montreal for basic training. I was late due to bussing out in the snow, but apparently my uncle Mike showed up in full camo gear and started yelling at her, and made her do 20 pushups. My uncle Ken gave her a bunch of army figurines and a nerf gun. We all ate too much and drank wine in the afternoon, so by the time Jeff came out after work to join us for dinner at the pub, he was the only one who ordered a full meal.
Kenny (above) is going to be seventeen tomorrow. He is my youngest brother. This makes me feel old.

Graphic Novel Review: Fables vol 16 – Super Team

At the end of the last volume, the Fables had to retreat from our world just as they had to flee from their homelands ages ago. They had thought they had defeated Mr Dark, but he broke free of their enchantment and is intent on destroying them all, and as the second book opens he has trapped them within the realm of the Frog King with no way out. He is slowly wearing down the defenses of this realm, so the only thing left for the Fables is to fight.



Since Pinocchio is considered the foremost expert in the area of superheroics (as a comic reader) he has been tasked with putting together a team of the most powerful Fables in the hopes that these fearless characters will be able to defeat Mr Dark once and for all. Meanwhile, Mr Dark continues to gain power in our world, gathering more allies around him – ones that may still pursue his agenda even if the Fables are able to defeat him. And the biggest trouble of all may not come from Mr Dark at all, but from Bigby’s father, Mr North (the North Wind) who has discovered that one of his grandchildren is an abomination – and must be destroyed.



I was a little inaccurate in saying this book starts where the last book left off. The first issue included in this book is actually a tale of Buffkin the flying monkey and his continued mis-adventures in the lost offices of Fabletown (buried beneath Mr Dark’s new fortress in our world). My problem with this issue is that Buffkin was somewhat amusing as a one or two-panel joke in a single issue, but as a main plotline he holds no interest for me. His story continues to remain unresolved, as he winds up in Oz at the end of this issue, and while I’m sure it’ll eventually connect together into an important story for the Fables book – I was glad to be done with it and move on to the main story.



The forming of the super hero team was probably the best part of the main section of this volume, as they do a casting call and try out all sorts of different Fables for the various roles. It’s both a humorous look at the typical character stereotypes you’d see in a superhero comic book, and at the same time it remains serious business as Pinocchio (and the writer) treats these clichés with respect. Unfortunately the superhero team don’t get all that much to do in the story, as it’s actually resolved by a bit of a dues ex-machina that was a little out of left-field for me.



While I wasn’t enthralled by the final comic included in this collection, it fit better with the overall theme than the first did. Here the reader is shown what’s been going on back in the Homelands since the defeat of the Adversary – that some supporters of the Adversary are looking to defeat the enchantment of Sleeping Beauty (with echoes of Mr Dark’s breaking of the enchantment on him) in order to bring back the most powerful allies of the Adversary. What we also discover is that there are two sleeping women – and no one is quite sure which one is the real Sleeping Beauty.



For me, Super Team continued the recent trend of getting this book back on track. It wasn’t a complete success (I don’t think it’s ever been the same since the defeat of the Adversary) but it was an enjoyable book and at this point if you’re still following this book it’s worth a read. But don’t let this be your starting point with Fables, this is a book well worth starting from the beginning.