[Androzani84]

And on to our second feature of the week, with...

Time Force Episode 4: Ransik Lives

(I didn't even know he'd been dead up until this point)

We open on our foursome from the future, who are still living on the beach (and I?m wondering how much time has passed in this show).



Trip is trying to fish up something for them to eat, but all he succeeds in catching is sole.



And then Wes pulls up on his bike with a solution to their housing problem.



Trip expects something fancy, given the place Wes lives in... only for the four to discover that Wes has set them up in an old clock tower from the Wild West days (either that, or some architect really envied Big Ben).



Even worse, the building doesn't seem to have been cleaned since whoever owned it last died/moved out (probably the former).



But Jen decides they should stay in the old abandoned building that would realistically be either a historical landmark or condemned because... it has a window (so do Travelodge hotels, but I wouldn't recommend living in one). And so, the Rangers clean the place up quickly and Trip somehow finds a stand to mount Circuit on.



Meanwhile, Nadira is getting her nails done while watching cartoons (like most grown women of 30 do), in particular the "we don't have to pay the copyright for this" channel. (This is either a Saban owned toon, or public domain. Someone let me know)



This ends up giving Ransik the idea to go on tv to announce his future rulership of the world, for which Frax unfreezes Fearog (who uses the Nabal costume), who instinctively attacks the Cyclobots, mistaking them for Time Force (why, I don?t know. There?s no indication anyone other than Ransik uses these robots)





Meanwhile, the Time Force team have finished renovating the clock tower into the main set for the season.



Wes shows up with a briefcase of colour coded clothes so they're not stuck in the same white leather uniforms all season.





And then Wes forces Trip to wear a hat on top of his chosen outfit to cover his distinctive crystal (sure, but wouldn't a headband work just as well and be less conspicuous?).



Wes: I don't know if the public are quite ready for a Xybrian yet.

And then we cut to Jen getting dressed with the standard male gaze shot (if you?re about to blame Sakamoto, this episode and the next were directed by a guy named Kaizō Hayashi).



Wes and Jen go downstairs to meet with an old man (named by the credits as "Ivan"), who assumes they're moving in to reopen the odd jobs business that used to be based there (and if you think the Rangers living in a clock tower wasn't unsubtle enough, look at the name of the place).



Jen takes the job, and so we cut to the two Rangers repainting Ivan's tv studio pink.



Jen ends up leaving to get more paint after Wes accidentally knocks the can over... just in time for the Cyclobots to appear to take over the studio.



He manages to deflect attention from himself by claiming to be "an average, ordinary painter. Love to paint"... until one of them checks again and sees the Morpher on his wrist. One fairly poorly choreographed fight later, Wes is captured and turned into part of the audience for Ransik's TV debut.



Ransik demands they surrender to him by having Fearog blow up a rock in a quarry (not even the whole quarry. Just one rock. Are we sure Ransik is dangerous?), and threatening to do worse. Meanwhile, Jen gets informed of the situation by the others (who she didn't tell where she was going. Some leader she is) and soon finds where the Mutants are holed up thanks to a set of footprints they left in the spilt paint (What I want to know is who made those footprints? And why did they step in the paint to begin with).



Back in the studio, Ransik decides to share his backstory with Wes so he has both sides. Namely that in the future, scientists created a way for people to give birth to whatever kind of babies they wanted (which sounds an awful lot like eugenics. Not really the sort of topic you'd expect a show created by Jews from a nation founded on the back of the Holocaust to promote).



But what they'd surgically extracted developed sentience and smashed its vial, pouring itself into the sewers, where it merged with everybody?s pee-pee and poo-poo to evolve into Ransik.



Ransik tried living among humans, but was rejected for his grotesque appearance, so he formed a gang of mutants to overthrow society and gain acceptance (where'd these other mutants come from? Never explained).



Wes states that though he sympathises with Ransik's backstory, he doesn't agree with his methods of going back in time to before Time Force existed and killing innocents in misguided revenge. So Ransik departs, leaving his captive at the mercy of Fearog. But the other Rangers soon show up for the save.



Wes is untied and morphs, before the battle moves outside. It's an abruptly executed sequence in which Wes kicks Fearog through a wall and everyone pulls out some Star Trek reject props to shoot him. (I can see why Hayashi never did any Toku beyond these two episodes. His fight choreography is terrible)



Fearog exposes himself and grows giant, with the Rangers summoning the Megazord for a battle. While we don't see them trampoline off the sky, the Megazord does change modes (albeit it didn't do anything in Mode Blue as a result of the edit) and Katie gives our one liner of "Your time's up", despite not doing anything in this episode. Tl;DR is that Fearog is defeated and arrested. Some time later, Ivan pays the Rangers for a job well done, making them decide to open Nick of Time as a legitimate source of income.



Wes then admits to Jen that he's starting to feel sympathy for Ransik, to which she proceeds to shut down any idea that Ransik is supposed to be sympathetic.

Jen: Look, don't let him try and fool you. People did try to help him, but he turned them away. He wants power, and he'll do anything to get it and we;ve gotta stop him. He's evil, through and through.

But this serious conversation is derailed by everyone having a pizza party.



And rather than end on that note, we, for no apparent reason, cut to Ransik in the flashback yelling "No!" to end the episode.



Next time: Lucas takes Wes for a drive and Nadira embarks on a career in bank robbery, so we get some car chase action.

Final thoughts: You may be expecting a compare and contrast, but to be honest, there's little to compare. Beyond the Megazord battle and the Nabal/Fearog costume, these were very different episodes.

As for the episode itself, while well written and adding some much needed depth to Ransik (even if, as Jen says, it does nothing to make him any kind of Magneto/MLK figure), it suffers from some contrivances (the idea that there was an odd jobs shop based in a clock tower, just so we can have an equivalent to Tomorrow Research), things that seem there to be cool (a clock tower would be an awful place to live. No electricity or running water, for one) and atrocious fight choreography. And given how little Sentai footage there is in the episode, I imagine that is the only reason this lack of effort help up in the finished programme.