Olympius Ascends

Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue, Episode 17

Original Airdate: 8-19-2000

Last Time: The Rangers killed Diabolico dead, but Queen Bansheera, poor sport that she is, wouldn't concede the loss.

The Rangers have chosen to try and crush Impus' chrysalis, but can't quite manage it, and blow a huge hole in the ground from which evil laughter emanates. That's...not promising. Credits!

Olympius, the adult form of Impus, rises out of the put and starts thrashing the Rangers. He even shoots Carter with his own gun and captures the other four Rangers. Olympius then has a seizure and has to leave the battlefield. Ryan shows up and....let me tell you a story about another one of Saban's shows, named VR Troopers. You see, for that show, Saban wasn't content using the footage from one Japanese show, so, instead, he combined footage from a number of different sources to the point where the titular troopers could never actually team up to fight a monster, as no footage existed for such a scene. So, invariably, half the team would fight and kill the monster of the week, and then the other half would run in and ask how the fight went. It was always kind of stupid, and I bring this up only because that's the sort of situation that will plague Ryan for the rest of the season.

At the ziggurat o' new management, Loki wants to kill the Rangers, but Olympius wants to use them to infiltrate the aquabase, because it would be too much to ask for him to do something productive. And the plan is made even more moronic by the fact that monsters are apparently weak towards water.

Down on that very aquabase, Ryan is giving some exposition about the whole situation. Apparently Olympius is even stronger than Diabolico. Of course he is. Anyway, Olympius-as-Chad begins his infiltration mission by convincing Carter to take him back to the aquabase. Carter being Carter, he immediately agrees. However, Olympius proves to be a very bad infiltrator as he arouses suspicion by not knowing where anything is on the aquabase. Anyway, the other demons prepare to invade and make a new monster. Olympius decides to do the most attention-grabbing thing he can think of and changes into Kelsey, with no explanation as to how she got back to base. Fortunately, Carter and Captain Mitchell are completely useless, so they don't question it. Carter's attention is piqued, however, when Kelsey suggests that they call off the search party....which she shouldn't know about.

FakeKelsey heads to the bridge and is frustrated by her inability to login to the computer system. No one seems particularly concerned by this, of course, because, well, working under the ocean has a well-documented deadening effect on the brain. Later, Olympius has decided to set a new world record for worst infiltrator, and is ransacking Captain Mitchell's office. The captain walks in and Olympius changes into Dana and leaves with Captain Mitchell's cardkey. Elsewhere, the demons have reached a secret doorway into the aquabase, and are waiting for Olympius to open the door. The aquabase having no security, he soon does, but the command staff just decides to close the door and the crisis is averted. It's like watching the blind fight the blind.

Anyway, Carter has finally twigged onto the fact that his friends are being impersonated and confronts Olympius, who's currently in guise of Joel. In response, Olympius takes Ms. Fairweather hostage and demands that Carter, in effect, open the gate. Ryan takes this opportunity to do something useful and tackles Olympius from behind, leading to a fight scene that concludes with Carter knocking himself and Olympius into a pool of water. Olympius, of course, is weak to water, and has to release the other Rangers as a result.

But, hey, there's still that monster from earlier, and Vypra sics him on the Rangers to kill some time. The fight doesn't last long, so Jinxer is forced to make him grow in order to properly fill out the episode. The Rangers call out the new Lightspeed Solarzord, and blast the monster into bits again. Total fight time (exlcuding stock transformation footage): about 1:30.

Back in his lair, Olympius is pissed at the Rangers for foiling his plans and Vypra comes up to either sympathize or mock him....it's hard to tell with her inability to display any recognizable emotion.

Later, the other Rangers punish Carter for his incompetence at stopping the infiltration of the aquabase by forcing him into a pool of water and then laughing at him. It's an odd little scene. Show Over!

Next Time: Okay, remember that firefighter that saved Carter when he was a kid? No? Well, he mentioned it once about ten episodes ago. Er...anyway, next episode is a follow-up on that mystery.