Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue



""Lightspeed Rescue!" "Titanium Power!""

The eighth season of Power Rangers, successor series to Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, and adapted from Rescue Sentai Go Go Five. It was the first Power Rangers series to be completely independent from its predecessor, and to drop the secret identity trope. Lightspeed Rescue was a government-sponsored agency, dedicated to protecting the city of Mariner Bay from the return of Queen Bansheera and her minions.

Captain Mitchell, accidentally made aware of the threat, assembles a team of rangers, including his eighteen-year-old daughter, Dana, a paramedic; Carter Grayson, a firefighter; Kelsey Winslow, extreme sports enthusiast; Joel Rawlings, stunt pilot; and Chad Lee, a whale trainer and martial artist. At first, the potential Rangers want nothing to do with it, but upon witnessing the threat with their own eyes, they embrace their position as civil servants.

It turns out that Mitchell was prepared for the arrival of the demons because he has had experience with them in the past...

Lightspeed is the first season to feature an entirely American-made ranger, the Titanium Ranger, as Go Go V did not have a Sixth Ranger. It also was a military-esque funded and organized team, with Secret Identities entirely non-existent.

Followed up with Power Rangers Time Force.

Has a character sheet.

Recurring Power Rangers tropes include:

 * All Your Base Are Belong to Us
 * Chest Insignia: Operation Lightspeed logos on the belts, personal shield shapes as the faces of the helmets. The design on the chests (eighths alternating white-colored) is also pretty distinctive.
 * Chrome Champion: Titanium Ranger
 * City of Adventure: Mariner Bay
 * Five-Bad Band:
 * Big Bad: Queen Bansheera.
 * The Dragon: Originally Diabolico (also a Dragon-in-Chief at the beginning) but replaced by Prince Olympius.
 * Mad Scientist: Jinxer.
 * The Brute: Loki.
 * Dark Chick: Vypra.
 * Sixth Ranger Traitor: Diabolico after he gets better.
 * Five-Man Band:
 * The Hero: Carter
 * The Lancer: Chad
 * The Smart Guy: Dana
 * The Big Guy: Joel
 * The Chick: Kelsey
 * Sixth Ranger: Ryan
 * Home Base: the Lightspeed Aquabase
 * Underwater Base: Justified as the demons have water as a Weaksauce Weakness.
 * Humongous Mecha: Besides the obvious, the Supertrain Megazord deserves special mention - It's formed from the vehicles that carry the Lightspeed Megazord into battle, and because of this, dwarfs most monsters and all of the other Megazords that Lightspeed used.
 * Combining Mecha
 * Transforming Mecha: the Max Solarzord
 * The Mentor: Captain Mitchell
 * Mooks: Batlings
 * Recycled in Space!: Power Rangers
 * Sealed Evil in a Can
 * She's a Man In Japan: Kelsey as the counterpart of Daimon, aka Go Yellow.
 * Weapon of Choice: In general, Superhero Packing Heat. The Lightspeed Rangers are some of the few who do not favor swordplay, instead using their blasters for the most part. This is most notable with Carter in "Forever Red".
 * Swiss Army Weapon: Rescue Blasters (with a Baton Mode)
 * With An Axe to Grind: Ryan's Titanium Laser
 * Fire-Breathing Weapon (sort of, they fire heat beams): Thermo Blasters
 * Bifurcated Weapon: The Rescue Bird
 * BFG: Unilaser Mode
 * Improbable Weapon User: Rescue Cutter, Rescue Claw, Rescue Injector
 * The Gunslinger: Rescue Laser
 * This Is a Drill: Rescue Drill
 * Boom Stick; also used as just Blade on a Stick: V-Lancers
 * Word Power:
 * By the Power of Greyskull or Invocation: "Lightspeed! Rescue!"

This subseries contains examples of:

 * Acquired Situational Narcissism: When Dana becomes the Glitz Girl and neglects both her Power Ranger duties and her friends in "In the Limelight".
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: The Cyborg Rangers go nuts after being struck by lightning.
 * All Love Is Unrequited: Joel to Miss Fairweather up until the season finale, where she asks him out. They marry just before the Lightspeed/Time Force team-up.
 * Alpha Strike: The Lightspeed Solarzord's Finishing Move, which basically consists of blasting the living tar out of the target with everything it's got.
 * And the Adventure Continues...
 * Arbitrary Skepticism: "No such thing as monsters" in "Trakeena's Revenge". Even discounting the prior portion of the season, it's the crossover, confirming that yes, the last seven years of monster attacks count.
 * Linkara even awarded "No such thing as monsters" lady the title of dumbest person in Power Rangers ever!
 * Avengers Assemble
 * Badass Family: the Mitchells.
 * Black Cloak: the Ghouls.
 * Breath Weapon: Vypra.
 * Breather Episode: A Face From The Past was immediately followed by
 * Canon Foreigner: the Titanium Ranger
 * The Captain: Captain Mitchell, obviously. Also Carter.
 * Casanova Wannabe: Joel.
 * Catch and Return: The Lightspeed Solarzord's solar panels can absorb an incoming attack to augment its own.
 * Chekhov's Gun: A submarine is used in the first episode to transport the future Rangers to their underwater Aquabase, then is seemingly forgotten when it's revealed they can travel to the city and back via an underground tunnel. In the finale, they use the same submarine to escape the flooded Aquabase, and Captain Mitchell takes out the Batling-piloted Lifeforce Megazord with it.
 * Chekhov's Skill: All the Rangers were selected for their skills in certain fields, which come up specifically in different parts of the season.
 * Command Roster:
 * The Captain: Carter, although Mitchell technically has the rank of Captain.
 * Number Two: Chad
 * The Marine: Kelsey, largely in her attitude in jumping into action without thinking
 * The Medic: Dana
 * Ace Pilot: Joel
 * Girl Genius / Wrench Wench: Miss Fairweather
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Captain Mitchell
 * Cool Train: the Rail Rescues/Supertrain Megazord
 * Deader Than Dead: One way to interpret  fate; a horde of demons rip her soul apart.
 * Disk One Final Boss: Diabolico
 * Dragged Off to Hell: Queen Bansheera's final plan  She is eventually   It's nothing more than she deserved.
 * Every Car Is a Pinto: Even Captain Mitchell drives one!
 * Evil Laugh: Queen Bansheera
 * Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Impus/ dearly loves his mother, despite the fact that she's perfectly willing to destroy him.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: The other way to interpret  fate; a horde of demons beats the shit out of her for all eternity. Most fans would agree she deserves this one more.
 * Freeze-Frame Bonus: A bit of a random and weird one. This pops up while the Lightspeed Megazord is scanning for Queen Bansheera. (Yes, the second one is an actual band.)
 * Fuel Meter of Power: The Titanium Ranger. Specifically, he's cursed so there's a cobra tattoo on his back, and every time he morphs it rises higher. If it gets to his neck, he dies. Eventually subverted, as Ryan destroys the cobra statue powering the tattoo. This didn't mean he would appear more often, though.
 * Government Agency of Fiction: Operation Lightspeed
 * Groundhog Day Loop: "Yesterday Again"
 * Heel Face Door Slam: Inverted slightly. After Bansheera took control of him and forced him to fire at the Rangers who were battling Loki, who ended up being hit by the blast and destroyed, Diabolico vowed revenge against the queen. However, before he could act on his plan, Bansheera took control of him and forced him to fight the Rangers, who had no choice but to destroy him. Fortunately, he got another chance in the finale when he came back as a spirit and helped Carter trap her back in the demon world forever.
 * Heroes-R-Us
 * Homage: Besides the source footage's hat-tipping to the work of Gerry Anderson, Saban's adaptation (perhaps inadvertently) takes it further. Lightspeed is a technologically advanced government agency with clear similarities to the Navy, much like Stingray's WASP.
 * Hot Scientist: Miss Fairweather
 * Improbable Age: Dana's official age is 18, and she's a qualified paramedic. Granted, she's working for her daddy...
 * By next season's team-up, she has a doctorate. After an episode in Lightspeed predicated on her saving money for medical school. Which she graduated from in one year, according to the Lightspeed Rescue/Time Force team-up episode "Time for Lightspeed". Medical school does not work that way!
 * Paramedic training can shorten the length of time spent in medical school, but yeah it's still pretty messed up.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: The Lightspeed Rangers' blaster preference makes this one something like Required Secondary Powers.
 * I'm Your Worst Nightmare
 * The Legions of Hell
 * Life Force: used to power the Lifeforce Megazord
 * Long Lost Sibling:
 * Mark of the Beast: Ryan's snake tattoo, post-Heel Face Turn
 * Max Trope: the Max Solarzord
 * Meganekko: Ms. Fairweather.
 * Metaphor Is My Middle Name: Kelsey: "Crazy is my middle name!"
 * Mildly Military
 * Name's the Same: Fairweather's brother Clark is a big guy in glasses and a suit.
 * Also, General Mc Knight shares a surname with Conner McKnight. No connection is ever made in PRDT, though.
 * Noble Demon: Diabolico.
 * No One Could Survive That: During a subsequent fight with the Titanium Ranger, the Lightspeed Rangers are equipped with the V-Lancers, basically lances equipped with a gun mode. They nail the Titanium Ranger with a combined blast which, by rights, ought to have killed him. However, he's more or less fine, prompting Carter to invoke this trope in his incredulity.
 * Odd Friendship: Chad and Kelsey.
 * Official Couple: By the time they team up with the Time Force Rangers, Joel and Miss Fairweather have got married.
 * Our Mermaids Are Different: Chad's love interest Marina. Eventually operates by the Splash method, but can only live out of water for so long.
 * Palette Swap: The Lifeforce Megazord is basically the Lightspeed Solarzord in black and gold wielding the Lightspeed Megazord's sword in red, and apparently cannot transform.
 * The Power of the Sun: The Max Solarzord
 * Prop Recycling: The monster version of the cobra that Ryan fights to get rid of the cobra tattoo on his back is Snizard from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1, repainted, sans Zapper Apple, and given a cobra hood.
 * Relative Error: Angela and Clark Fairweather
 * Team Dad: Captain Mitchell, helped along by the fact that he actually IS a dad.
 * And to a member of the team, at that.
 * This Cannot Be!: Perhaps verbatim when Diabolico unleashes his full arsenal on the Lightspeed Solarzord... and it absorbs the energy. Carter's response: "Sure it can, Diabolico!" *BOOM*
 * This Is Not a Drill: Invoked, at one point it looks like the demons have been defeated, everyone's celebrating and then the alarms go off, when Carter asks if its a drill, Captain Mitchell responds with "We don't have drills".
 * This Looks Like a Job For Aquaman: Chad.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Kelsey and Dana.
 * Too Dumb to Live: The receptionist who tells a little girl "Now dear, there's no such thing as monsters". Midway through the season...
 * And in the crossover episode with Lost Galaxy, to boot. As Linkara put it, "Dumbest Person in Power Rangers Ever"
 * The Worsening Curse Mark: Given to Ryan by Diabolico.
 * Unwinnable Training Simulation
 * What Could Have Been: Rhett Fisher (Ryan/Titanium Ranger) originally auditioned for the role of Carter. Interesting if you think about how, in the show, Carter originally tried to use the Titanium Ranger powers, but couldn't handle it.
 * Toei and PLEX came up with entirely original Zords for the Red and Titanium Rangers, but Saban declined to use them due to the expense. The Red one only appears twice, in the Groundhog Day Loop episode, and used as a kamikaze ship in the season finale. Both of them exist in toy form though.
 * Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Averted big time. Carter doesn't have any martial arts training, and thus is quick to draw his blaster when dealing with Mooks and the like. To say nothing of the bit when he has a Monster of the Week pinned up against the wall with a BFG in each hand, with the monster daring him to take the shot.
 * You Look Familiar: A subverted example. Christopher Khayman Lee appears as an Aquabase tech, but it's a background character, as he did the role for fun. Not to mention that, after the Lost Galaxy team-up, he has said to cut his hair, meaning that he wouldn't be seen without his long hair.
 * Your Size May Vary: the Supertrain Megazord. Due to the size of the suits and sets, it'll be massive in special effect-ed distant shots, but in normal shots, the same size as whatever Monster of the Week or mecha is also in frame.