Sunflower Search

Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy, Episode 10

Original Airdate: 4-17-1999

Last Time: The Magna Defender showed up and didn't actually do that much, and no one was able to find the damn Lights of Orion for the fourth straight episode.

On the banks of a river...in a space colony, the Magna Defender reflects on why he wants to kill Scorpius. It turns out that the bug killed the Magna Defender's son and planet. That's a pretty good reason for revenge. We flash back to the night it happened, and it quickly becomes apparent that you couldn't conceive of a less threatening villain than Scropius, who can't really move at all. Anyway, it turns out that the Magna Defender's son is wearing his own miniature version of the Magna Defender armor, which cracks me up for some reason. Scorpius is holding the boy captive, and the Magna Defender has no choice but to surrender and get wailed on by some monsters. In the course of the battle, the Magna Defender's son gets killed, on camera no less. In the present, the Magna Defender swears revenge again. You see, it's storylines like this that make me think that the writers forgot that Power Rangers is not exactly a show that's able to maintain dramatic weight. Credits!

On the command carrier, Scorpius and Treacheron are discussing the ongoing problem of the Lights of Orion. In the Galactic Apartment, Maya and Kendrix contemplate some sunflowers and praise them for their beauty. The villains use their new surveillance equipment to overhear this, and leap to the conclusion that the Lights of Orion are either in a sunflower, or something shaped like a sunflower. Scorpius thinks that he subordinates have finally completely lost their minds, but Trakeena interrupts to somehow convince her father that the Lights are in a sunflower statue. You know, it's got to rankle the Magna Defender that his son was not only killed, but killed by this brain trust.

At the local sunflower statue, the monster of the week moves to attack. The Magna Defender music starts up to herald a new world of hurt for the monster. Some Sting Wingers try to fight big D, but get butchered. Meanwhile, Leo is brooding about Mike some more, and then heads off with the other Rangers to help the Magna Defender out. The Magna Defender doesn't want their help, and for good reason, as the Rangers are swiftly taken down.

The Magna Defender goes in for the kill, but is stopped by Leo because there are some civilians in his line of fire. This leads to Magna D kicked Leo to the ground and opening fire regardless, causing some concrete chunks to rain down on the fleeing citizens. Kai and Damon come up to more forcefully restrain the Magna Defender, and this allows the monster to blow up the sunflower statue to discover that, shockingly, there is no timeless source of energy contained in a rather generic park monument. The monster flees. The Rangers help the people injured in the Magna Defender's counterattack, and Leo decides to yell at the behorned warrior. He doesn't care.

Soon after, the Magna Defender briefly loses me by talking about "his pain" that the Rangers could never understand, when a meteor crashes to the surface of Terra Venture and the Magna Defender announces the arrival of his "ultimate weapon."

At the Galactic Apartment, the Rangers are discussing the Magna Defender: Who is he? What does he want? Where does that rad music that announces his entrance come from? They're all rather concerned about his tendency to put lives at risk, especially for people that spend every other day piloting a giant mech through downtown. Leo, his powers of plot insight at critical levels, realizes that the Magna Defender has a vendetta against Scorpius. The Rangers get called in to defend another one of Terra Venture's sunflower statues. They do for a while, and the Magna Defender shows up to blow the crap out of the monster, and he does.

At the moment of victory, however, some girl walks onto the battlefield to retrieve the teddy bear she had lost earlier, and the monster takes her hostage. Magna Defender has another flashback to his kid getting killed, but remembers that his son got killed anyway, so decides against dropping his weapon. Leo tries to stop the Magna Defender, but just manages to get the two of them shot by the monster. The girl manages to escape, though, mainly because the monster is laughing too hard at Leo to restrain her.

Anyway, the Magna Defender gets his sword back and hurts the monster, but can't stop it from breaking the last statue, which also doesn't contain the Lights of Orion. The monster decides to grow to giant-size for no real good reason. The Galaxy Megazord gets called out, but isn't good enough and gets broken up back to its component zords. The Magna Defender calls out Torozord, and grows to giant-size himself, and there's a stunningly dull fight as a result of the Torozord's inability to move at speeds faster than glacial. The Magna Defender and the Torozord eventually combine and kill the monster.

On the command carrier, the villains bicker over the level of danger posed by the Magna Defender. Later, the Rangers confront the Magna Defender about his anger issues. Generally, it's best to make those sorts of comments when the guy with the problem doesn't have a sword/gun, but okay. Magna Defender reveals that Scorpius killed his son, and any normal human being would stop and let this one go. Leo is no ordinary man, however, and decides to say that without control, Magna Defender is as bad as the people who killed his son. In a supreme act of mercy, the Magna Defender walks away instead of gutting Leo like a fish for that last comment. Show Over!

Next Time: The search for the Lights of Orion continues, as the villains come up with their dumbest plan yet.