Power Rangers Operation Overdrive - Just how bad was it?
 

I myself am not a Power Rangers fan, but everywhere I go, I keep hearing about Operation Overdrive being the worst in the series. Was it really that bad?

I gave it a meh. It had two redeeming qualities to it:

1) Mack's backstory

Once you get deep in the show, you'll learn about Mack and his backstory, which was pretty drastic, and there's hints about all the way from episode 1. His character actually got interesting from that point forward till the end of the season, just because of how his relationships with his dad and team change.

2) Once a Ranger

Yup. Took it from "WORST SEASON EVER" to "Pretty bad but that team-up was awesome!"

I think Wild Force was better, but nothing is as bad as Turbo.

From what I've seen of Operation Overdrive, it seems like its Pretty Bad. The opening theme for it in my opinion was the worst of the Disney Era themes and Themes in general. I've only seen the Once a Ranger episodes, because they were the only ones I was interested in watching. Thankfully I didn't notice that much the Overdrive Actors in those episodes.

But now flash forward to 2012, I might actually sit through some episodes of Operation Overdrive to give it a fair opinion than what I remember from a couple of years ago.

Pretty much, yeah.

Operation Overdrive may not be the purest distillation of everything that was wrong with the Kalish era of Power Rangers - that would by Mystic Force (which I actually liked a lot) - but it did suffer heavily from all of his faults - uneven characterization, lame comic relief, half-hearted plotting, and a ridiculous overuse of wire work and people jumping in slow motion as something behind them explodes. While Mystic Force actually had even more of this, what saves that show for me is that it still feels like there was some heart and effort put into it - Operation Overdrive always just feels lazy and half-assed - like no one involved with the show really gave a rat's ass about what they were doing.

The characters are either bland (Ronnie, Rose, Taizon, Mack), annoying (Will), or so infuriatingly obnoxious I want to systematically travel back in time and murder every preceding generation of their family just to ensure that there will never, ever be any single strain of DNA anywhere in the world that might contribute to any aspect of that character ever existing (Dax - oh god, I could rant for hours about all the places where that character fails). Now, in fairness, Power Rangers has rarely been a place to go to see fantastic and deep characters, but at least most other shows have characters with some level of personality - or maybe one character that can stand out above the pack to still be really likable or interesting - but PROO just doesn't. No one on this show is in any way likable, not the Rangers, not the supporting cast, not the villains. This is the only PR show I've ever watched where there was a team-up episode and my first thought was "why can't we just lose the regular cast and keep going with these guys?" (granted, said team up was pretty much a "greatest hits" sampling of the previous four Ranger casts and Adam, but still).

Characters aside (and I haven't even touched on the lame, useless, and overcrowded villain cast), there's nothing else to really recommend the show. The plot is mediocre and badly paced, with several bits of it recycled from previous shows (seriously, Taizon is the laziest character ever - his entire backstory is three parts Doggy Kruger and two parts Merrick - he even steals his morphing pose from Dino Thunder). The action isn't all that great, mostly just the same wire work and explosions we'd been seeing for the last several seasons. The stupid unmorphed powers were back and lazier than ever (one guy had the super power to hear really well! :eek:). Even the stuff we got from Boukenger wasn't all that good - this was the start of the "clusterfuck" Megazords that just kept piling Zord upon Zord upon Zord until you have an immobile, vaguely human-shaped monstrosity.

I can keep ranting, but it all basically boils down to the show being poorly thought out, badly executed, and lazy as fuck.

But I still enjoyed it more than Samurai.

This is one of the one only 2 Power Ranger series I'm yet to watch (the other being Mystic Force). I've seen 'Once a Ranger', and even that didn't do much for me so I'm not expecting to enjoy the rest much.

Truth is, i liked it.
The Globe-trotting theme, over-arcing plot and the Mack was pretty entertaining to me.

It was far from perfect though, Far, far from it. But to me it was a decent show.

I watched it in and out when it was on, the last PR season I tried to actually get into. It was meh, only thing I liked/remember is the team-up which may not be the best, but well it made me happy enough. Probably because most of the people coming back were the ones I liked/grew up with (excluding Adam). Hell, even my favorite SPD ranger came back as a different colour! But yeah, OO is just eeeh. I'll see what I think about Boukenger, but I think I'll probably enjoy it more than OO, if just because it's not OO.

Current poll shows that this series is either "Epic Fail" or "Meh". I'll just be skipping this show, then.

I said pretty bad. Hell I couldn't even finish it. I think what i disliked about was that there were too many bad guys and the plot was boring. The battlizer was cool though

Turbo had a team up?

I have only seen a handful of episodes so I don't really have a judgement value. I sincerely doubt that it could be worse than Turbo, honestly.

You people are nuts. Turbo is nowhere near as bad ass the worst of the Disney era.

Turbo at least had good fights and more memorable villains and the like and even Justin was cooler than the Overdrive bums...the rest of the Rangers were all likable. Yeah, Turbo was bad for the Zordon era, but EVERYTHING was awful about Operation Overkill.

The characters didn't get a chance to be likable or they just weren't. They were super awkward, the fights were all just bland slow motion, the music was super super terrible just like Jungle Furries (that weird amelodic thing they had going on). The music changed tempos and keys so often that it didn't pump you up, it kept changing your emotion.

It's weird because the Mack backstory episode or two was good, and handled well, and it felt like a different show for a bit, but besides that, it was a disaster.

Turbo's "memorable" villains are only memorable because they are so irritating. Divatox? Seriously? Cheese and rice she's obnoxious. Or Elgar, for crying out loud. The only baddie worth a damn from Turbo is General Havoc, and he's only there for a few episodes.

This is coming from someone who was a huge, HUGE PR fan straight through Zeo, and I gave up on the series for the better part of 2.5 years thanks to Turbo.

I'm going to watch Operation Overdrive once I finish Jungle Fury, so then I'll be able to form a more complete opinion. But until such time as I see something less watchable, Turbo is it as far as "bleah" goes.

Yeah, but see how many of the OO villains you remember in a couple years. I only saw it for the first time a month or so ago and I don't remember any of their names.

And that's a good point, too. Like I said, it's hard for me to say since I have seen I think only about 4 or 5 eps of OO.

I will always maintain that the later part of Turbo, the part with the new cast, was actually pretty awesome. Bulk and Skull were back, Justin got downplayed to highlight the new characters, and the Phantom Ranger stuff was awesome.

Plus I crush hardcore on Patricia Ja Lee.

I for one enjoyed Turbo. I liked the new cast of rangers, I am a male and always found Divatoxs outfit to be hardcore ridiculous(nevermind her charecter, thats irrelevant to a males eye.) But going back and watching on Netflix, I am finding it to be an average season at best, with a few fun moments, and Phantom Ranger awesomeness

I'll have to go back and watch some of the second half of Turbo, because the only episodes I recall with any fondness is when Havoc comes to Earth with the Space Base and takes out the Zords with Metallasaurus. The rest of it I remember just being silly, with a lot of Divatox hamming it up. (Part of that is that Carranger wasn't exactly serious, of course.) Then again, I pretty much only watched it on ABC Family so who knows.

That's the thing. I feel like most people just watched the first 17 or so episodes of Turbo then gave up and called it the worst series ever. Once the cast changed, even though the original cast were awesome characters in Zeo and before, the show just got way better. It became really serious and there were hints dropped EVERYWHERE that shit was going to go DOWN soon. Then Chase Into Space happened.

This big time. I used to be a big Ashley fan when I was younger, but as I've gotten older, I can't deny my love for Patricia Ja Lee.

Neither of those girls ever did anything for me. I always dug Thuy Trang and to a lesser degree Amy Jo Johnson as a kid.

In addition to PROO, I'm going to add the second half of Turbo to my "To Watch" Queue.

because i was a general power rangers fanboy at the time(mostly into sentai now but i digress) i watched operation overdrive with an open mind after watching boukenger...... they took the first sentai i had ever seen, slaughtered it, and set it on fire.

The acting was terrible, the villains were boring, and once a ranger was meh. The Rangers were bored half the time it seems to me. The battlizer was awesome, that is the only redeeming quality. I SAW THE PLOT TWIST FROM A MILE AWAY........

so yeah, it was really terrible in my eyes, but then again im a major sentai fanboy

With all the explosions in the series, I swear that the series must've been secretly directed by Michael Bay or something.

I only ever watched it for 'Once A Ranger.'
Those episodes could've been better, but it was pretty fun.

As for the rest of the series, I guess (What with it being on Netflix) I could give it a look see.

Interesting ideas ruined by a terrible cast and overall very weak storytelling.

But what I hated about it the most were the American toys. They ruined one of the best Ultrazords in decades.

Just finished the series - it was awful, but still better than Ninja Storm I guess (not that that's a hard target to beat). They managed to take everything that sucked in Boukenger and make it worse. The characters were mostly awful, and the villains were a complete joke. "Fearcats" sounds more like a cheerleading squad than a gang of dangerous aliens.

There were only 2 things I quite liked about OO;
1) "Once A Ranger" - pity the show couldn't have just been about them
2) Mack's backstory - I honestly didn't see that coming. Pity all it served to do was make the character a complete dick until the very end and create a horrifically obvious ending.

I thought about and came with a few real problems I had with OO.

Like ZeoV said the ending was painfully obvious and Mack's all IMMA ROBOT! Was just.. idiotic.
There wasn't really a central villian. Just a clusterfreak of about 90 of them. It's hard to root for the rangers when you don't know wtf their fighting, you know? And it seemed like every episode they were introducing someone else.
The Battlizer. ... Now look I love this gimmick. I really do, and I know it's not always popular, but seriously.. His chest freaking talked... It was just.. I don't have the words to describe how awesomely bad that was.

Oh I forgot all about the Sentinel Knight. When the series started I thought "Wow, they're making pretty good use out of the character - better than Boukenger did with Zuban anyway." Then he got a body, and went on to carve a pumpkin and be a chest face.

And people say Ninjor was bad.

I'll toss in two cents. WORST theme song ever.

Uninteresting characters, and villians. but at least we got "Once a Ranger" out of the deal.

But really It's source materiel was equally Forgettable.

And for people trahsing on Turbo, yeah it was bad, but it gave us Selwyn Ward, Patricia Ja Lee and Tracy Lynn Cruz. and it ended, which is to say the ending itself was epic....they didn't just burn the sets to the ground, they pissed on the ashes.