Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Intruder Alert! Review

PRBM "Intruder Alert!"

In the latest episode of Beast Morphers, Earth is host to two visitors from SPAAACE. One is the notorious criminal Ryjack, he of the Cockney accent and technology able to clone someone from an object they owned. Cue Ryjack cloning fallen villain Vargoyle, in a long tradition of the Power Rangers/Super Sentai trope where dead villains are brought back as clones - just look at the robot Blaze and Roxy.

The other is the VR Trooper-looking space cop Captain Chaku, who teams up with the Rangers after a misunderstanding. Chaku's role as interstellar law enforcement and unofficial sixth Ranger gives major Turbo Blue Senturion vibes. Chaku's sense of justice is pretty space cadet: his idea of resolution is to "destroy" Ryjack. But hey, it's Power Rangers, where monsters are rubber-suit monsters.

Ryjack wants to burgle the newly introduced past Ranger tech vault, in a neat nod to continuity. Another one is Ryjack summoning Putties and Viviks to fight the Rangers! The unmorphed fight against the Putties, taking place as it does in a construction site full of parkour opportunities, strongly recalls similar fights in the Mighty Morphin days.

If there's any higher messaging at work, it's that of a parable about communication. At first the Rangers arrest Chaku because he's an unknown quantity and they can't understand what he's saying. But it doesn't take too long for the good guys to all coalesce, and Chaku looks to be sticking around for a bit. And he must partake in the one, singularly important initiation ritual at Grid Battleforce: chuckling at Ben and Betty hijinks.

That's right, Ben and Betty are given their usual slapstick pratfalls, because of course they are. Their main setpiece involves slipping on a bunch of marbles. That's fine, but it's the CGI triple flip that's objectionable.

Benefitting from decently intriguing new characters and a soupçon of the same fanservice from last week, "Intruder Alert!" is an above average entry. 6/10.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: The Evox Snare Review

PRBM "The Evox Snare"

The Power Rangers Beast Morphers team has returned for the final stretch of its second season, with an episode that compensates for fairly generic action by feeling like the better version of the continuity episodes from the Super Megaforce anniversary season. Plotwise, it features a mini-war of attrition on Evox and his need for Morph-X, and resolves the Mayor Daniels/Evox thread that has run throughout the season.

The macguffin of a juiced-up arrow from the lab that the Rangers need to fire at a specific target is familiar from the previous episode "Beast King Rampage". The difference here, I suppose, is its strangely literal interpretation of "freezing" someone in cryonic suspension - in a ruddy great block of ice. While Nate and Devon are at the base working on technical matters, the remaining team take on the Bulldozer Gigadrone, with Steel oddly taking on a leadership role. Shouldn't Ravi or Zoey be leading in Devon's absence? The action in the episode is most concerned with introducing toyetic arsenal developments, like the Beast-X Ultra Cannon and the Beast-X King Megazord.

The true headline from this episode is the shockingly on-point fanservice. Olivia Tennet appears as RPM's Doctor K (!), giving advice on how to split the Mayor from Evox... based on tech established in Dino Super Charge. It's notable that Beast Morphers is connecting to RPM and Dino Charge, as those are particularly siloed off seasons in their own dimensions. But the episode casually and efficiently bridges those gaps.

It's also revealed that Nate has been basing Grid Battleforce Ranger tech on past Ranger teams' equipment, which is a fantastic reveal. A humble closet holds some exciting and tantalizing props from the past, most notably Mystic Morphers.

Ben and Betty are up to their usual cartoony hijinks, but still prove useful to Devon, which is an important endearing detail. The episode as a whole is operating from a basic framework, but what spices it up are the rewarding continuity connections. 7/10.