The Last Ranger

Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue, Episode 31

Original Airdate: 11-8-2000

Last Time: Saban showed his distaste for the Lost Galaxy season in a truly extravagant and self-destructive manner, wherein he gave a little girl more screen time than all of the Galaxy Rangers combined. It was pretty impressive.

The Rangers are speeding to fight a monster when Dana gets out to help treat some injured person. I guess Dana is the only paramedic in Mariner Bay. The remaining Rangers find the monster who beats them up and then erases their memories, because that's just how he rolls. Dana finds the team, and none of them remember Dana or being Power Rangers. Credits!

At the aquabase, the Rangers all demand to be released so they can go back to the jobs they held before becoming Power Rangers. They probably also want to know why Ms. Fairweather is treating them instead an actual doctor. Captain Mitchell is displeased, and show his irritation by ordering the Rangers restrained and hooked up to a machine that will restore their memories by playing recordings of their past adventures. Fuck, it's a clip show!

The first clip is from the pilot, when the Rangers were kidnapped by Captain Mitchell's relentless band of men in black to serve as his personal monster hit squad.

At the ziggurat o' new content, Diabolico and Olympius are still trying to sort out who's actually in charge. Diabolico claims that if he erases Dana's memory, then Mariner Bay will be defenseless. Well, no, it wouldn't, because as this clip show just reminded us, the Rangers with no experience were perfectly capable of beating back Diabolico and his monsters.

Okay, more clips. Apparently Captain Mitchell runs the aquabase much like a communist dictatorship, and monitors all that goes on in his underwater domain, and thus they're able to show a clip of Joel hitting on Ms. Fairweather. Or maybe this was just footage that Ms. Fairweather had been saving for the inevitable civil suit. Kelsey also gets his some clips of her played. They all involve her rollerblading or crying. Chad's clips conveniently exclude that his spotlight episodes always end up being utterly bizarre, like him falling in love with a mermaid, or his old sensei training an evil monster out of spite. Finally, Carter's highlights are shown and they're bland and forgettable, summing up the character perfectly.

Elsewhere, Diabolico sends out the monster from before to destroy Mariner Bay. However, Captain Mitchell can't turn off the machines before they finish because their shitty design. Thus, Dana must go alone, against the captain's orders. And then five seconds later the other Rangers regain their memories, except for Carter's whose memory machine explodes, and he doesn't remember anything. Well, that's still a 75% success rate.

Everyone except Carter goes out to fight the monsters and manages to get locked into a stalemate. Eventually Carter gets his memory back and goes to help. The Rangers fight the monster and some Batlings but eventually just slag the villain with the Thermo Blasters. Zord of the day: Lightspeed Solarzord. Time of megazord fight: 43 seconds.

Later, the Rangers reflect on the capricious nature of memory. Then Joel tries to use amnesia as an excuse to get out of training, but is undone by Ms. Fairweather cockteasery. Show Over!

Next Time: Remember Ryan? No? Me either, but the writers sure did!