Power Rangers Season 27 Overview (Beast Morphers)

Power Rangers Season 27 (Beast Morphers Season 2)

Average episode rating: 6.4/10 (holding steady from Season 26, Beast Morphers' debut, with 6.3/10)

The Hasbro era of Power Rangers has gotten off to a solid start with two seasons of Beast Morphers. At least some of the goodwill toward this team might be due to where we just came from. The Neo-Saban era is unequivocally the worst in the show's long history; Dino Charge is the only genuinely good incarnation it produced, with the follow-up Ninja Steel slipping on a banana peel week after week. But even divorcing Beast Morphers from the context of looking good by comparison, it still stands out with its attention to detail, mostly solid character development, bursts of creativity, and an on-point cast.

Its second season, Power Rangers' 27th overall, also made the fan-pleasing decision to embrace more continuity. So main villain Evox was revealed to be a mutation of RPM baddie Venjix, Doctor K showed up as a guest mentor a couple times, and of course, a dinosaur-themed team-up event made a huge noise even if it sacrificed some elegance to do so.

At the end of Season 26, the original digital avatars of Roxy and Blaze were defeated, freeing their human selves from comas. Going into Season 27, the potential of these characters seemed limitless. Here were two people who had been intensively trained to be the Yellow and Red Rangers. They could assist the team in any number of ways, including in unmorphed fights or even, if the show felt ambitious, as sixth and seventh Rangers.

But that is not even close to the direction the show took, to its cost. Roxy and Blaze were retained as robot villains in addition to their human bodies. I get it. Colby Strong, and especially Liana Ramirez, give excellent arch-villain performances. But human Blaze, whose spiky personality caused friction at the outset of this team, had a personality lobotomy that made him 100% docile and inoffensive, to the point where Blaze evincing a dissenting opinion meant he must be the robot in disguise. The gaping missed opportunity of using human Roxy and Blaze as secondary team members or Grid Battleforce allies is the single biggest demerit on this season.

But evil or not, Roxy and Blaze are assets in this cast. Ben and Betty were sometimes assets as well, and sometimes victim to the same Wile E. Coyote logic that animated, God help us, Victor and Monty in Ninja Steel.

One area in which this cast excels is roles for women. There is a female Ranger (Zoey), a formidable mentor (Commander Shaw), a deliciously evil villain (Roxy), and broad comic relief (Betty), all appealing. That's all four quadrants! The only other season to match it in all four "quadrants" is Dino Thunder: Ranger (Kira), mentor (Hayley), villain (Elsa), comic relief (Cassidy).

While still prone to wonky Saturday morning logic at times, Season 27 is a success, and Beast Morphers overall is a hopeful sign that the Neo-Saban era's low standards are banished. Next on Power Rangers: Dino Fury. 

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Evox Unleashed Review

PRBM "Evox Unleashed"

What "Evox Unleashed" nails as a season finale, and finale to a Ranger team's story, is an "end of term" feel, wrapping up a number of small but important threads. In doing this, it touches the emotions to a surprising degree, making up for slight deficiencies with the action portion of the episode.

Yes, Venjix/Evox is gearing up for a final power play, but there are human stories to attend to, even in the midst of a Coral Harbor evacuation. In a touching scene, Zoey reveals that she's the Yellow Ranger to her mother (and now, all three original Rangers are "out" to their parents). Even when the situation is desperate, Ben and Betty resolve to stay and help the team. And this is a wonderful episode for Commander Shaw. She authorizes Zoey's disclosure, and Shaw gets one of her best moments in a pep talk to the team about the power of being human. The speech is blunt, efficient, and composed, and I expect nothing less from her.

And another favorite end-of-season trope: morphed Rangers with their helmets off! 

With Venjix having adapted to Grid Battleforce weapons, the Rangers try using various pieces of legendary Ranger arsenal, but despite their best efforts, Venjix appears to kill Steel. Down a Ranger, the team comes up against Venjix' giant evil mech, appropriately looking like a bastardization of an RPM zord. Zoey tells us this is "50 times bigger" than a gigadrone. That seems like quite an exaggeration. It's maybe twice as big?

In a clever turn, the Rangers figure out a way to literalize their human advantage over Venjix. Using examples from earlier in the past two seasons, they figure out that Venjix' Evox form is incompatible with human DNA, and that animates their final blow to the cyber-villain. Impressive as that is on a storytelling level, the biggest issue with the episode is that the fight with Venjix himself is not dynamic. They shoot at him, it doesn't work, Steel tries to shoot him, it doesn't work, Venjix kills Steel with a wave of his hand, Venjix gets big, Rangers stab him, job done. And as a gift from the Morphin Grid, Steel is reconstituted in totally human form.

But that slack is picked up by the rest of the episode, which even provides an epilogue set one year later. Colonel Truman (!) shows up with the fugitive Scrozzle, who had been hiding in the sewers of Corinth. (That year of Scrozzle on the loose is ripe for untold stories at some point.) Commander Shaw is seen out of uniform for the first time and even attempts painting her son's favorite subject, Roxy (who was seen earlier in the episode helping with the evacuation). Devon is now Commander of Grid Battleforce, and he even tries to "do" Shaw in his delivery of orders.

Steel is a movie star in action films, with Blaze as his stunt double (Dax from Operation Overdrive, much?). The finale sees Devon calling Steel away from set for a surprise birthday party. Surely that could've waited until Steel was done filming that day? But in any case, the ending is happy. And Beast Morphers ends with a poignant episode that makes up for its fairly barebones action with a fond salute to this cast of characters. 8/10.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian - The Believer Review

MND "The Believer"

And so it came to pass, that "The Believer" would be the first Mandalorian episode not to feature Grogu, and there were riots in the streets... Just kidding. In Grogu's absence, Din assembles his version of the Avengers (Cara Dune, Boba Fett, Fennec Shand, newly-sprung prisoner Migs Mayfeld from last season's "The Prisoner") for an arcane mission to triangulate the location of Moff Gideon's ship - in a dynamic episode alive to the political context of the galaxy at this time, through the personal lens of Mayfeld of all people.

I wasn't a big fan of Mayfeld from last season. He, like the other guest characters in "The Prisoner", had a performative toughness to them. But the characterization here is downright sympathetic. His days as a stormtrooper have haunted him, particularly as he personalizes Operation Cinder, the defeated Palpatine's devastating scorched earth campaign. He encounters an old superior officer named Valin Hess (played by Richard Brake with a real "evil Dennis Quaid" energy), and when Mayfeld can't take Hess' neofascist drivel a second longer, Mayfeld shoots first.

To hear Hess tell it, the people of the galaxy, like the exploited natives of Morak near this Imperial mining facility, will eventually welcome order with open arms. While he overestimates the citizenry's future receptiveness to the First Order, he speaks what he feels is truth from his point of view. The theme of shifting political reality in the episode is captured in its centerpiece moment, the subversive reversal where Din and Mayfeld are saved from pirates by TIE Fighter pilots swooping in like they're Han Solo. Din and Mayfeld, disguised as Imperial transport drivers, are given an excessively happy heroes' welcome at the facility, the troopers probably unused to seeing main character-worthy heroics from Imperial rank and file.

Mayfeld questions foundational aspects of Din's creed, and as events unfold, Din must remove his helmet to complete his mission. Technically he has betrayed his Creed, but that is a rigid point of view. He certainly looks uncomfortable with it, though. The man introduced with "I can bring you in warm or I can bring you in cold", rendered vulnerable. The episode's adherence to that classic Star Wars theme of "from a certain point of view" finds its climax at the end, when Din parrots Gideon's monologue about Grogu from Season 1 right back at him, in a righteous new context.

The action of the episode works like muscular punctuation. Things take a Mad Max-shaped turn when pirates in skiffs beset the transport. And Boba Fett gets another punch-the-air moment when he uses the sound-warping seismic charges from Attack of the Clones to take out a couple TIEs (more on this in Stray Observations).

"The Believer" is an episode of unexpected quality, or to be more specific, unexpected depth. Especially given the surprise mileage from bringing the loudmouth Mayfeld back to the show. Roll on the finale next week. 7/10.

Stray observations:

- This episode has an Office Space reference?! Mayfeld says he and Din have to fill out those TPS reports.

- We finally get to see more of the interior of Slave 1 beyond the cockpit, including the weird rotation of the body.

- Nice to see the Scarif shoretrooper design from Rogue One return on this vaguely tropical planet. The transport driver costume is a hybrid of a redesigned Jedha assault tank driver helmet from Rogue One and the Mimban mudtrooper armor from Solo.

- As aforementioned, we last saw Jango Fett deploy seismic charges against Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones. And the boy who said "Get 'im, Dad, get 'im! Fi-yah!" has now grown into a man. This is the first time we've seen Boba's Slave 1 use the charges... except for the Geonosis scenario in Disneyland's Star Tours ride!

Star Trek: Discovery - Terra Firma Part 1 Review

DIS "Terra Firma Part 1"

The first episode of Discovery, "The Vulcan Hello", began with a cold open of Shenzou First Officer Michael Burnham and Captain Philippa Georgiou, bantering as a two woman landing party on a strange new world. "Terra Firma Part 1" recreates that dynamic, even though Georgiou is represented by her Terran Mirror self, and Burnham is no longer First Officer of anything. It's a fitting callback, but is emblematic of an episode that looks back at the expense of going forward.

This third season has thrived when using the new dynamics of the show to establish a new center of gravity for the show. I have been slightly resistant to any element from the first two seasons potentially slowing that roll. So when Georgiou finds herself back in the Mirror Universe, indeed in the backstory to the events we picked up there in Season 1, it feels like going backward.

Indeed, everything in this first part of a two-parter leads up to the moment when Georgiou, with the benefit of a more "evolved" consciousness, makes a different choice and doesn't execute Mirror Burnham. That choice changes things and brings the story into uncharted territory, serving to make Part 1 something of a no-frills setup for what's to come.

The essential problem with the Mirror stuff in this episode is that it replaces plot with posturing. Yes, the aesthetics are very effective, it's great to return to Captain Killy, Landry's back, there's a play within a play, everyone's wearing too much eyeliner, and even the maintenance robots are shadowy. While the arch scenery-chewing has always been the delicacy of Mirror Universe episodes, there's not a lot to the setting as presented here beyond that. 

There are the mixed feelings Georgiou seems to feel in her homecoming. For one thing, her slightly softer edges account for her uncommon civility toward the enslaved Saru. It's almost like the Georgiou of the season so far has protested too much, that her sadism was a bit of a front, some useful branding, and that confronted with her old life, she doesn't embrace it with open arms.

The episode begins with an expository scene with Culber and David Cronenberg's Kovich, and there are few actors on this show I'd rather hear exposition from than Cronenberg. Any sinister undertone to Kovich from his last appearance appears to be a red herring at this point. Dude just knows the Mirror Universe. (And the events of 2009's Star Trek film, as he alludes to Nero's incursion in time.) Elsewhere, the Burn-relevant distress call is revealed to be Kelpien in origin.

While the plot device of the doorway and the affably enigmatic Carl just screams, "We're being SURREAL!", it's novel. (Like a workaday Guardian of Forever.) That puts it in contrast to most of the episode, which has a lot of Terran pomp and circumstance but proves slightly hollow. Now that Georgiou has splintered the timeline by sparing Burnham, hopefully Part 2 triangulates how to tell a more dynamic Mirror Universe story. 5/10.

Power Rangers Beast Morphers: Source Code Review

PRBM "Source Code"

"You've reached the final chapter in your story." - Venjix/Evox

Beast Morphers' penultimate episode, "Source Code", recontextualizes the threat of Evox, tying the storyline inextricably to RPM, one of the best seasons of Power Rangers.

As Evox interacts with a Cell Shift Morpher, it's revealed that Evox is a snake DNA-enhanced offshoot of Venjix, the evil computer virus from RPM! This makes sense, as many fans compared Evox to Venjix when he was first introduced. This is an unprecedented twist, revealing the main villain of a season as truly the main villain of a previous season in a new guise. Given that the same voice actor for Venjix, Andrew Laing, has been performing Evox all along, the pieces all fit into place. Taking a step back, all these developments mean that Beast Morphers has shown an uncommon willingness to incorporate elements from past Ranger seasons set in other dimensions, including Dino Charge.

Nate unwittingly created Evox when he was a child prodigy, leading Evox to taunt him with booming lines like, "How does it feel to be responsible for the destruction of human civilization?!" This element of backstory is reminiscent of Doctor K, who created Venjix, so naturally she arrives to give Nate a pep talk. It's good to see Olivia Tennet again, in an expanded role after her appearance earlier this season, making for a team-up of two Ranger teams' tech geniuses!

The Rangers manage to destroy Robot Blaze for good, who appears powered up the entire time so as not to leave evidence for last episode's Hairgate. After this accomplishment, Steel comes dangerously close to dabbing. Zoey's "It's good to be counted on" feels like a defining line for her. And Doctor K gets a poignant moment where she tells our heroes they have a beautiful world - we know that K's is despoiled. But the ending is hardly happy. Blaze was a diversion, and Scrozzle has delivered the world's morph-X towers to Venjix.

With its outsize developments and Earth-shattering twists, "Source Code" is an excellent lead in to a finale. At its best, Beast Morphers' attention to detail is a big part of its appeal; as in RPM, Venjix' monsters don't speak. Next week, we say goodbye to this incarnation of the show. 8/10.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian - The Tragedy Review

MND "The Tragedy"

In "The Jedi", Ahsoka was revealed in all her glory in the very first scene, which was wonderful in its own way. In "The Tragedy", Boba Fett, having surreptitiously retrieved his armor from the Razor Crest, jetpacks into a fight after a runway of build-up, making for a truly fan-pleasing moment. I'm not a "Boba Fett bro", but that was something special, a highlight of a fantastic slice of Star Wars.

On the planet Tython, Din takes Grogu to the seeing stone of a Stonehenge-like Jedi Temple, only to encounter Boba Fett (arriving in Slave I!) and a not-dead cyborg-ized Fennec Shand looking to make a deal for the armor Din got from Cobb Vanth in "The Marshal". But Gideon's Imperial forces follow them and a pitched battle ensues.

The episode gets the show off the Volume studio stage into glorious sun-kissed location filming, setting a bright stage for a glorious extended action sequence marshaled by Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn). Boba, Fennec, and Din cut swathes through waves of stormtroopers, until rocket-booted Dark Troopers (updated from Legends continuity) kidnap Grogu.

The centerpiece of the episode is Temuera Morrison's expanded role as Boba Fett, having way more to say in this episode than in, say, The Empire Strikes Back. After years of back and forth, we learn that Boba's father Jango Fett was indeed a Mandalorian foundling. And Boba, being a clone, actually goes there and quotes his father by calling himself "a simple man trying to make his way in the universe". It should be noted that in early concept art for The Mandalorian, Boba Fett was used as an illustrative placeholder cradling Grogu before Din's distinct design was in place. And now things have come full circle, and Boba is a major part of the show.

Going into the episode, a focus on "that Jedi stuff", as Din calls it, seemed top of mind given the Temple setting. Indeed, Grogu's experience on the stone seems to amplify his power, as two stormtroopers find to their cost. But where last episode tapped into the samurai genre foundation of Star Wars, this one stages a space Western skirmish. The show again brings out the E-Web blaster cannon, extrapolating the old Western trope of the gatling gun. It's pew-pew action at its finest, thrilling every step of the way. 9/10.

Stray observations:

- What is it with Nevarro's new administration and putting your feet on your desk? First Greef in "The Siege", and now Cara in this episode.

- The Imperial troop transports are clear design precursors to First Order troop transports. Boba Fett rockets the escaping transports, vaguely reminiscent of Rey destroying another escaping transport with Force lightning on Pasaana in The Rise of Skywalker.

Star Trek: Discovery - The Sanctuary Review

DIS "The Sanctuary"

"The Sanctuary" continues the Orion-Andorian Emerald Chain syndicate's animus toward Discovery, reinforcing the old science fiction maxim: If you need a villain, when in doubt, use space pirates! Just as the titular sanctuary refers to the ecosystem of Book's home planet Kwejian, threatened by harvest-eating locusts, the episode's ecosystem is also not in perfect balance.

The B and C plots (respectively Georgiou's deteriorating condition and Adira's work on the latest Burn data) are largely transitional, by design lacking a sense of closure. So it falls to the A plot to make the episode unique. But the episode struggles to give its main storyline a strong identity, beyond "this planet has wood tech!" It has high emotional stakes for Book, returning to his world and the brother he feels has sold out their principles, but I'm not sure those stakes translate to the audience. 

The Discovery side of the main plot puts some paprika on the sandwich. We see Tilly in action as First Officer, playing bad cop (then ultimately, of course, good cop) to Andorian asylum-seeker Ryn. Saru workshops a "Captain catchphrase", raising everyone's eyebrows in the process (he considers Pike's "hit it". And never forget Lorca's "...go"). And in a contrast to Star Trek's vintage space extrapolation of submarine tactics, Detmer uses Book's ship for a strafing run on Emerald Chain boss Osyraa's flagship.

Georgiou's condition makes her even spikier than usual, and then literally spikier than usual in the face area. Meanwhile, Adira makes clear their preference for "they"/"their" pronouns. To its credit, the show doesn't explicitly tie this in as 100% part and parcel of the Trill experience. For one thing, the actor Blu del Barrio uses they. But at the same time, it seems like many joined Trill might go by they, fitting with the sort of gender fluidity that has animated Trill storytelling since The Next Generation.

The episode continues mining the emotionally rich baseline of this season. But the main plot doesn't have a particularly strong identity or hook. All things are in transition. And if the next time trailer is any indication, Michelle Yeoh might be on her way off the show (no!), in time to wait for her own spinoff (oh!). 6/10.