Pretty much.

The filler takes over the episodes more and more - seriously the show becomes a chore by the middle, character relationships and dynamics just fall out of the show despite being very important aspects early on, they contradict the sentai footage for no real purpose, characters will constantly come out of character and so on.

On the topic of SPD, my opinion of the Lovefilm Stream service has improved dramatically. The way the streaming works is it jumps between standard, 720 and 1080 automatically depending on how well your internet is doing at the time. It's nothing special but now I am home it's HD more often than it is SD and makes the viewing experience more pleasurable. That aside Recognition was a pretty great episode. It was a clever episode that relied on actual acting! And I think it's really warmed me to Sky again.

To be fair to the whole series, even during bad episodes, it does seem a lot of money was put into SPD much like it seemed with Jungle Fury and much more money than you saw put into a lot of the Saban stuff. Funny though that Kalish's tenure is so hated with all the effort that seems to go into his seasons.

That said, is it possible that relying little on the sentai could be a bad thing? So much new footage has been recorded for SPD whenever it jumps to the sentai it's really jarring as locations completely change and the quality of the film drops dramatically. You don't notice as much when it's regularly swapping but unless it's really, really clever editing there seems to have been little Dekaranger footage used at all yet. And every time it is it's a slap in the chops.

The following episode, 'Samurai' however was as uninspired as it was dumb.

bingo. they put too much money into each episode and thats why omega was a retarded ball of light. all in all still a good seres.

I never quite saw the problem with Omega not having a human form.
They should have given him more character, but his being a ball of light wasn't all that bad.

A main ranger can be bland, boring, and just be more of a set piece than a character, but that's a-okay, but a character who exists solely to fight not having a human form is where the line is drawn?

This! I would so love to get an orange ranger, I would buy every damn toy of that figure :lol

I think Boom's imaginary Orange Ranger should get a figuarts!

I can't comment on Omega until I get to him in the story but so far the entire set of characters are unlikeable so I'm not expecting much.

In terms of the episodes, I'm REALLY glad they didn't use Doggie's suit from Dekaranger but I am kinda disappointed they made a new suit for Birdy, Numa O looked way cooler. Either way Birdy is just another twat to add to the long list of SPD twats. About the only character I like is Kat and that is just because I have the hots for her.

That said the first clash with Gruumm was a damn epic one, especially as I'm assuming this is all original footage.

Mine too and I wish we would get a real Ranger in orange some day. I think most people just find orange to be too loud of something but it would perfectly with Sentai/PR.

This is so meta man, Orange Ranger talking about the Orange Ranger :lol

Amazing, when I did my watch thru of Jungle Fury, everyone said "JF sucks!" and no one responded to my comments.

Now it gets all sorts of love. Go figure.

I only recently (like in the last few months) watched it in its entirety after it got hated on but the fandom at large. I'm kicking myself still for listening to them because it is easily my favourite Power Rangers series now and I wish I had seen it sooner.

I missed it entirely when it aired the first time, and so I randomly decided to watch it on Netflix. Heck of a show, I say. Lots of action, lots of fun, lots of heart.

Great characters, consistent storytelling, actual money spent on the show for new action scenes and people who can actually act.

So I watched Part 1 of the SPD 2 parter 'Messenger' and wow that was underwhelming.

Introduced as the day the Rangers would fall, we basically got a very bland monster of the week episode and despite the show telling us the villains are the two most wanted people in the galaxy, they gave them both goofy voice actors and personalities so it's impossible to be convinced or engaged.

I don't even get why now, this has been a show with comedy sure but for the most part it's been mature, serious and grown up but when it really counts it feels like a lost MMPR episode. The fuck?

Hopefully part 2 is better.

One day my alter ego will make it into a show.

Part 2 wasn't better. The Omega Ranger is cool but I didn't really care about anything else in that episode.

I mean the Rangers changed all of time as we know it to save their butts? Selfish assholes, I'm betting this has no repercussions either.

i maintain that the only people who hate jungle fury are the ones who havent watched it.

I watched it, I didn't particularly like it. I also saw it long before I watched Gekiranger so it wasn't a case of preferring the source material either.

Jungle Fury isn't without its flaws, the handling of RJ and Dom was pretty poor and due to how short the series was, the series never had time to take a moments rest which made it very overwhelming at times but that aside I think it's some of Power Rangers best, with some of the best characters and writing.

if they dont have a human form we cant ever see them emote and they never interact with the rest of the cast. thats why i dont give a crap about omega because they never gave a reason for me to care about him.

Omega is actually one of my favorite rangers. .-.

I'm not asking to for you to care about him.
I'm asking why is the concept of his character is "Retarded."
We've had plenty of rangers who never emoted and solely existed to fill out a colored suit. But when we get a character to cut the nitty gritty and just be the suit, it's suddenly "Retarded." Why?

And my trek through Jungle Fury continues! I just finished up the episode where R.J. saves Flit. Some additional thoughts:

*R.J.'s Morpher... where did it come from? Its introduction is a bit awkward, but, assuming that R.J. built it at the same time he built the Solar Morphers, then it might follow the Zordon principle of, "Never unnecessarily escalate a fight."
*If Master Finn is R.J.'s father, in addition to having fought in the great battle 10,000 years ago, how old is R.J.? How old is R.J.'s mother? Who's R.J.'s mother? If a tree falls, and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?
*Flit's voice is incredibly annoying. Why can't he have a better voice?
*Casey's not that great of a leader; he doesn't really take charge in battle until it's mentioned that he does.

I actually think for someone who is a ball of light, Omega has a lot of personality and presence.

But yeah the handling of RJ and Dom's powers was AWFUL luckily we got to see werewolf RJ first.

So I'm on the first part of the Reflections two parter and I have to say, I'm really enjoying SPD. It mixes up a lot of the core elements that Sentai seem to include now because they just feel the have too, no matter how tired those aspects have become, so the series manages to feel really fresh despite being almost ten years old. And even when it conforms to those basic Sentai aspects, it makes sure to do it kicking and screaming critiquing it all the way.

Seeing the worst past villains all together like their own team was especially awesome and badass. And this new villain who uses reflections is damn impressive so far, I love his voice and his intelligence, I hope he lives up to all this in fight sequences. I'm guessing he will as the fights in this show are fantastic.

About the only disappointment was the Battlizer. I'm not a big fan of these upgrades as they have the same clunky design as the megazords do but this one gets the added bonus of a weird leather thong.

I also love Sky as a character, I know you aren't really supposed to like him but I dunno I guess it makes me appreciate him more because he is an asshole. Because those rare vulnerable moments where he opens up or has fun feel more special and they come at just the right times so he feels consistent without also becoming a drag. I mean he isn't perfect, far from it, but he's the best of a bad bunch and the one who comes closest in this series to well written.

His actual actor is pretty good as well, I loved the little details to his performance as he recounted about his Dad's death. Although I wonder if he'll turn up alive at some point since Power Rangers doesn't usually let dark things like this stick around.

How does the continuity in this series work though? Did they just have spare props and use them or are the Space Rangers and Time Force all connected to SPD somehow? Or is the answer both?

The second part of Reflections was unintentionally hilarious, with the Magical Girl mecha. That said Sky going Red to take down Mirloc and get vengeance for his Dad was EPIC. Stop this SPD, I am falling in love with you.

Reflections was pretty damn good for taking a story about an entirely different ranger and making it about Sky. The only trace it really left of the Dekaranger plot was the Omega Ranger smashing the mirror (which imo felt really out of place in SPD)

It sorta fit in a meta sense, since they've been hitting us pretty hard over the head with how amazing Omega is.

Roughly ten episodes away from the end of SPD now and here is my reason that I'm not enamoured with the series for all those that care:

So the way SPD feels is like this, Kalish watched DekaRanger and pencilled out a vague set of heroes, villains and a setting. He then went to either end of the children's TV writers spectrum and created two teams from either end, he explained to them his vague outline and then said they could fill in the blanks with whatever they wanted after they had watched Deka Ranger.

So the first team, who believe that children's TV shouldn't assume children are stupid, saw Deka Ranger as a great way to really mix up Power Rangers in both the more slower paced action of police work and also as a humorous critique of the series all wrapped in a mature storyline full of actual conflict that really push the soccer Mum boundaries. A sort of RPM prototype or similar to the Dragon Knight Kamen Rider adaptation.

The second team, a bunch of late twenties something's drinking pepsi max with the flipped round baseball caps are sat in a living room watching sports.

"So Kalish wants us to watch some fag ass chinese power rangers knock off but subtitles are gay who wants to READ a movie!"

They high five and chuckle to themselves.

"But like we need to write something or we wont have money for sports merchandise."

"Well you remember MMPR right? The only Power Rangers series because all the others that I don't recognise that came after that are for kids and fat chicks."

"Haha fat people."

A round more of high fives and laughs continue.

"So yeah what was MMPR about again?"

"From what I remember there were loads of villains with personalities and voices that didn't match their personalities at all, who would say stupid shit to take all the drama and the tension out of the scenes."

"I'm typing this into my iPad it's gold! So what about the characters and the police theme and stuff?"

"MMPR never did anything to convince us it was actually them in the suits other than taking their helmets off."

"Good point!"

"And if we just make all the characters annoying then we've given them all depth without doing anything!"

"Perfect!"

So the two sets of writers went back with their stories for SPD and Kalish decided that...MMPR that is vaguely in the future and sorta about police if they really must is by far the better series. Realising he had already paid those other writers though, he decided to splash elements of their story around and give them a chance to actually have a few of their stories filmed.

What does this clash of tones do? Not only does it show off how great SPD could have been if they stuck with a mature police procedural show but it also highlights just how utterly crap the rest of the series is.

And not only that but the two kinds of shows are so different it actually hurts to watch at times from whiplash as we go from sinister and intelligent villains to villains who are just as strong but played entirely for comic relief for no real story reason. As the show goes from a fairly slow paced, intelligent and well used depiction of a future police force to a bunch of idiots bumming around until the next bit of sentai footage. As the characters go from deeply layered following interesting arcs to immature children in the next episode. As plot lines come up that are so mind blowingly stupid that they almost contradict everything the show stands for just urgh.

Personally, I think that kaijin generally should be able to speak. They are on a one-to-one level with the hero(es), so they should be able to converse with them.

Daikaiju, on the other hand, should most of the time not speak. It should be a rare case for a giant monster to speak rather than simply roar, snarl, shriek, etc. And those rare cases should be for special reason; ie, the Alien races from the Showa Ultra shows, the satantic Mefilas, the "audio virus" Skorn from SSSS, etc.

Locke, I want to say two things:

First off, I never got an MMPR vibe off of SPD except in the broadest of senses. SPD for one thing was not nearly as formulaic as MMPR. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to the viewer. The villains were not nearly as comical, either. There's goofball stuff, no doubt, but I don't remember SPD ending episodes with Grumm bonking his toadies on the head. Which would have been AWESOME but that's neither here nor there.

Secondly, iPad's didn't exist in 2003. Your reference should have been "my Powerbook." :D

Really? I still remember their 'greatest threat' Devastation sounding like a stoned surfer. Or the time two villains who successfully built and stole SWAT tech and kicked the heroes around the curb were both portrayed as incompetent and stupid. Those are recent examples and I could give you more if I went back over them again like Bugglesworth. It's shit like that that gives me the MMPR vibe.

It's also when characters go through entire arcs, learn a lot and really change for the better only for the next episode to have them at the start again. I can't actually count the sheer number of times Jack and Sky have butted heads before realising that they are better off as a team and forming a friendship but they've done that whole song and dance a damn few number of times, along with the rest of the team.

Every time it feels like something is about to progress the shitty side of the writing drags it back to the beginning again. It's like the good writers are literally battling against the shit writers to make the show go somewhere good and the shit writers keep pushing them back.

I'm not seeing how having stupid or incompetent monsters makes it like MMPR. Generally, the MOTW on MMPR were at least competant enough to handle Rita/Zedd/Vile's plan for the episode before the heroes overcame whatever the roadblock was.

As the series continued, we got sillier and sillier baddies, but it was more confined to the regulars and not the MOTWs. Rito, for example, was pure comic relief, and by the time Rito had showed up, so was Goldar.

I don't know, I've always read MMPR as earnest in the face of high camp, while SPD is sort of just "embrace the crazy and don't ask too many questions."

As far as characters, they don't really go on character arcs in MMPR. They're all fairly standard characters and don't evolve much over the course of the three years, save Tommy who goes from outsider to confidant, to aww shucks guys to super leader dude.

I coulda said 'stupid villains like Ninja Storm' but it looks like not a lot of people have seen Ninja Storm and MMPR is the most stupid after it. This series is the other way round, the Generals were clearly all written by the good writers along with key monsters like Sky's friend and the guy who killed his Dad but most seem to be written by the shit writers.

And that is kind of what I meant, the MMPR characters don't grow and the SPD ones wouldn't either if the shit writers have anything to say on the matter.

Ahhhh, alright, I see what you are getting at now. I was not grasping how you were making the connections but I'm following you now. Ninja Storm was more like MMPR in that the main baddies were silly but the monters fairly straight, but yeah, I'd call SPD the opposite of that.

Personally speaking, I find the illusion of progress to be more frustrating than no progress. I like that the characters on MMPR (and Zeo, and Turbo, and In Space) don't particularly grow or change. The shows are formulaic in the same way that a police procedural or courtroom procedural are formulaic, and I like that I could catch whatever episode was airing and follow along without worrying about "Oh geez is this before or after X happened?" Like Dragnet or Perry Mason but with bright colored costumes, monsters, and giant robots. (Raymond Burr would fit in perfectly!)

I always chalked the Sky and Jack thing up to the two of them just not liking each other a fundamental level. Eeven though they can work together, end of the day there's no way they'd get along. A No Prize, for sure, but better to No Prize something away sometimes!

It isn't so much an illusion here but more glimpses of two very different shows mashed together. When the good writers get a few episodes in a row they do a lot with those characters in that time. When the shit writers take over though they almost seem to pretend that nothing the other writers just did happened and we're back to square one again.

I like serialised shows, I don't think a show should pander to audiences who jump in half way through, I've been here since the beginning and if you want me to the end, the show and its characters have to progress and grow or there is no reason to watch this.

I don't consider a procedural to be a form of pandering to the audience, but instead simply another type of periodic show. MMPR and it's sequels are a "science fiction procedural" instead of a police, courtroom, or medical procedural. This is a long standing tokusatsu TV tradition dating back as far as the original Ultra Q (and the following year, Ultraman).

SPD would have been the perfect show to actually mash those two concepts together, and make a science fiction police procedural!

A crime is committed. SPD B-Team is assigned to investigate. Some sort of clue is discovered. Depending on who is getting the spotlight that episode, deeper investigation is performed. A hypothesis of the means, motive, and perpetrator of the crime is formed. The suspects (monsters or otherwise) are confronted by the B-Team, and then we move into the more familiar super sentai style tropes.

Of course that is not what we got with SPD, but I think that approach has a lot of merit. Marrying the more serious aspect of policework with the more crazy aspect of giant monster fighting.

Oh yeah but procedurals still have overarching stories to tie the seasons together and character arcs functioning in the background. Power Rangers doesn't even often have that, SPD does but only when the good writers get a chance to shine.

So the Kat focused episode rests on the fact that she is offered a promotion?

What a crock of shit, she was offered this same position before and turned it down. I know Birdy was a dick in that episode but she didn't just stay for that, she stayed because of her loyalty (and possible attraction) to Kruger so she shut down the offer immediately.

Now she needs a whole episode to decide the same fucking thing? Actually she didn't even decide, she did it because apparently the entire staff of SPD is a fucking sham. Kat is doing everyone's jobs for them and the episode proved that if the Rangers and Boom did their jobs properly they actually wouldn't need Kat at all. I mean seriously the kind of stuff that goes wrong after she leaves, if that is because of a single person, then Earth has no hopes.

This is also coming less than ten episodes away from the end. I mean is this supposed to suggest that the bond between Kruger and Kat is fraying? Sure she seems to have a shorter fuse with him perhaps but you think if anything their love would be rekindled after he went back into active duty again, something he swore against after his planet fell, to fucking save her.

When you feel like you pay more attention to the characters than the show does, there is a fucking problem.

Remember kids, you can be lazy and a sexy cat lady will do all your work for you! I mean great message guys but not great storytelling. And she likes getting her hands dirty, eh? I can help with that...

The villain this week was fucking terrible as well. "But we went to school together!"

On the positive Kat Ranger may well be my new favourite Ranger. She is a sexy cat lady, who actually hisses and scratches like a real cat...and her suit is orange.

JUST MARRY ME KAT MANX JESUS. I dunno who I am more in love with, her or Ichijou. Let's just have a threesome and you can Kamen Rider my Kuuga huuur.

So what actually took place in the Deka episode SPD's Missing was based on? I'm just intrigued because this episode was terrible.

That one tiny sign that said 'train station' which is apparently supposed to convince us that those warehouses are something other than that, the way bridges morpher broke and was immediately replaced or all the broken and poorly written dialogue that never matches up to the sentai footage I dunno, it just felt like the episode wanted to be as far removed from the original episode as possible whether it made sense to or not.

Right I'm on the Dino Thunder SPD crossover and... of all Rangers of the past they choose those ones? Yeah I know it was the last series before this one but come on guys you've gotta be more convincing than that. Then again since they did it all in a single episode I guess they didn't have much room for story.

I was really excited to see Conner again, the one character I liked in Dino Thunder other than Tommy, but somehow they even managed to make him uninteresting. At least Kira finally sorted out her makeup, then again her fanbaiting outfit was a little eh....

I dunno the action was all well made and everything I just don't really care about either of the teams, at least Dino Thunder gave me a cross over where I got to see a team I liked school a team I didn't and outshine them in their own series.

Oh no wait, the crossover keeps going...into the next episode. Great...

So now Mora is back, apparently a key part of Morgana's arc happened off screen then, and now we're in 2004 rather than whenever SPD is set, a year before the last episodes past, if that means anything.

At least it meant more Conner, seeing the Triassic Ranger in action again and I've really warmed to Bridge. And at least we also got to hear what Tommy would sound like if he was a chain smoker.

Really struggling with SPD now, I thought after we got that shitty Dino Thunder crossover out of the way we'd be on great episodes until the end, but I'm on the final five episodes and I'm just waiting for this series to end. Honestly this series hasn't really been great since the Reflections two parter where the series seemed to hit its peak.