Future Unknown

Power Rangers: Time Force, Episode 10

Original Airdate: 4-7-2001

Last Time: The Rangers got a new megazord and Mr. Collins plans for world domination hit a big set back.

At Ransik's Playhouse, Ransik is dismissive of the ability of robots to do anything useful, and smacks Frax around a bit. Frax ends up landing right in front of the key to the X-Vault, which he later tracks down. What is the X-Vault, you might ask? It's apparently the maximum security wing of the cryo-prison, not that the monsters contained therein will be markedly different in any way, though. Credits!

In the clock tower, Katie is looking at pictures of her family. In a thousand years, people will have lost the ability to take digital photographs and will be forced once again to develop their prints on film. Trip shows up to talk about Katie's family. Meanwhile, the other Rangers recall that the super-drill was reasonably effective last fight, so Jen orders a search for other useful weapons of the time period. Circuit informs the team that according to his records, the super-drill never existed. It turns out that the Rangers have already fucked up history good. Katie does not take the news well. Wes, misapprehending the situation as only he could, argues that it might not be so bad that the future has been irrevocably altered. Katie continues to be bummed, so Wes continues on his increasingly disastrous plan of raising Katie's spirits by accusing her of having something against the year 2001.

Back in the lair, Frax releases another monster, and then proceeds with his plan. It involves bombing the fuck out of a park. The Rangers get called in, and Katie only agrees to go reluctantly.

The Rangers fight the monster, but since it's a first-half monster fight, they are precluded from winning, and so get blown up for a while before the monster escapes. The Rangers regroup and it's time for Katie to have a poorly-timed freakout. She wants to quit the team because she's reasonably sure that her actions are erasing all she knows and cares about from existence, and she isn't particularly enamored of the idea of dying for that. Katie then relents and agrees to fight so long as someone promises that her future won't be destroyed. The conversation doesn't go well, and the other Rangers decide to run off to stop the monster instead.

It's up to Wes to convince Katie to fight, and he, not particularly understanding temporal mechanics or the origins of Katie's worry, explains that Katie should fight because of the people in her photograph. Wait, no, that makes no sense, the issue is that Rangers' actions, no matter how well-intentioned are changing the future and thus may be retroactively preventing Katie's family from having existed, so it's not really something that you can fight to protect, as any action that Katie takes, whether to fight or not, has an unpredictable ripple effect that may change history. Now, if you want to take the position that given that Ransik is already in the past, and therefore history will change regardless of one's actions, and therefore the only thing you can do is protect the people of the past and hope for the best, that's fine, but that doesn't seem to be the moral here.

Katie, however, got a "C-" in Intro to Temporal Mechanics, and proclaims that she has "More Reason to Fight Than Anyone," and then starts shouting towards the heavens over her unwillingness to fight. She decides violence is the only option if she is to protect her family from a world were mutants are free to intermarry. The reassembled Rangers kill the monster.

Megazord fight time, and this much time left in the episode means something's going to happen. The Rangers call out the Time Force Megazord, and Alex launches the Time Shadow, which promptly gets clobbered. Time for the Time Shadow to go obsolete: One episode. The Rangers' weapons aren't powerful enough, so the Rangers combine their two zords to form the Shadow Force Megazord. The Rangers then kill the monster in an extravagantly flashy manner.

Later, Ransik is pleased with the quality of the latest monster, and Frax goes down into the X-Vault to plot against Ransik.

In the clock tower, the Rangers have dinner, and Katie claims that she's okay with being trapped in the past and that her every action may erase her family from reality. Hooray! Show Over!

Next Time: Trip realizes that he's a terrible, terrible Ranger.