Recap / History of Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue

After two space seasons in a row, the series returns to Earth and features a new team of Rangers that are rescue heroes. Linkara takes a look at Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue and see how the franchise goes back to basics.

Tropes:

• Arbitrary Skepticism: The lady in the Lost Galaxy Crossover: "There is no such thing as monsters," who got the award for "Dumbest Person in Power Rangers EVER".
  • Specifically, the woman claimed this in the first series in the franchise where the rangers are publicly known figures, have no secret identities, and frequently fight monsters out in the open. Oh, and this also happened in the team-up episode, where it's made clear that this season is canon with all previous ones- including the one where aliens nearly took over the entire planet were it not for the Rangers' intervention.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Discusses this a bit with the Titanium Ranger, the first American-created Power Ranger. Even though he notes they couldn't do much with him as it would mean shooting a lot of original footage for him, he's still glad that they did create a ranger without being tied down to the Sentai footage too much.
• Awesome McCoolName: The Omega Megazord, which Linkara says is "the most freaking awesomest name for a Megazord ever!"
• Character Perception Evolutioninvoked: In the updated review, Linkara discusses this trope when talking about Carter. When he first did the review in 2010, he was surprised that many fans considered him one of the weaker Red Rangers in the franchise. But after pointing out the badass moments in the original review, people's opinions changed positively. Linkara even wondered if it was thanks to his review or time passing by that helped that change in perception.
• Continuity Nod: Calls back to In Space when he jokes that Lightspeed's Humvee is actually Tankenstein.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Linkara's main problem with the series, the villains aren't very interesting. Notes that it feels a little worse than it might be, as the two previous seasons (In Space and Lost Galaxy,) had villains with very strong characterization, from Astronema to Trakeena. He also notes that except for the invasion of Lightspeed's headquarters at the end, the villains never really won major victories against the Rangers.
• Memetic Badassinvoked: Carter Grayson. The Tag shows Carter shooting a monster at close range with two BFGs and the resulting explosion takes out a shipping yard, with the subtitle "The Lesson: Don't Screw with Carter Grayson." He frequently jokes in later videos that this is what Carter would have done with a monster the current Rangers are afraid of, or that when the Rangers try an attack that doesn't work that it would have worked if Carter had been the one doing it.
• Merchandise-Driven: Like many seasons, he points out that the Rangers get new weapons (toys to sell to kids) every other episode... but says it makes sense in this particular series. These Power Rangers were created by a military institution, so, logically, they would continue to develop new weapons regularly for the Rangers.
• Revisiting the Roots: After two seasons of space odysseys, Lightspeed Rescue felt very reminiscent of Mighty Morphin' especially in its return to Magic Versus Science as a major theme, and the Sixth Ranger saga feeling a lot like "Green With Evil" (but in a good way).
• The Scrappyinvoked: States that the villains of the season weren't all that interesting, but he loathes Vypra the most because of the actress' terrible performance.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: His main criticism of the "Trakeena's Revenge" team-up, the episode focuses mostly on the little girl whose parents were kidnapped and not the Rangers. If it were from a filler episode, Linkara would have no problem with the little girl, but he does feel that the team-up special was stapled onto an existing script.
• Troubled Productioninvoked: While Lightspeed Rescue did not have any major problems in the long run, Linkara notes that there were some problems behind the scenes in "Trakeena's Revenge". Specifically, Danny Slavin left after initial filming after finding out that it would focus on a girl rather than the team-up story. His role would be filled in by another actor for dubbing and additional shots. Likewise, Amy Miller, the actress for Trakeena, walked off the set before filming began for the same reasons, so another actress was brought on and a mask was placed on Trakeena to cover the switch.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plotinvoked: He shows disappointment that no one tries to fix the problems with the Cyborg Rangers to provide backup, even though that would have been a pretty good idea.
• What Could Have Beeninvoked: Claims to have heard this season was originally going to be another space opera like In Space and Lost Galaxy, but for one reason or another was changed to take place back on Earth, instead. Linakra is okay with it as the space idea was getting stale.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Carter's "Thumbs up" victory pose being interrupted by a not quite defeated Bansheera was a deliberate Call-Back to Lost Galaxy when that was the end of the fight.