Power Rangers in Space/Awesome


 * Bulk, Skull, and the population of Angel Grove, and their re-enactment of the I Am Spartacus scene.
 * Followed shortly by another Crowning Moment of Awesome for Bulk when he rallies the citizens to enter the fray, fighting alongside the Rangers against quite frankly impossible odds. Then he throttles a Quantron with one hand.
 * The finale: holy hell, Earth's been enslaved by the bad guys and Bulk and Skull are the Big Damn Heroes! And the rest of the episode was just as awesome, even without knowing any of the context beforehand.
 * There's also the scene where Bulk very nearly wards off a monster by convincing it that a toaster is some kind of deadly weapon. Unfortunately Professor Phenomenous has to open his mouth and ruin it, but that took balls.
 * And Bulk, Skull, and Phenomenous blasting off in an experimental rocket to try to stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth. Man, they became awesome this season.
 * Both times Andros and Astronema fought one-on-one ("The Secret of the Locket" and "Countdown to Destruction") and the entirety of "The Rangers' Leap Of Faith."
 * Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny: Andros is walking down the hall, happy because The Psycho Rangers have been defeated--but look! There's Psycho Red, coming right at him! After a quick, heart-stopping fight, Psycho Red removes his helmet--it's Zhane! Who scared the living crap out of his best friend just for the hell of it! Go Zhane!
 * This only happened a few episodes after Zhane messed with the Psycho's heads as Psycho Silver, too.
 * The scene in "The Secret of the Locket" where Astronema zaps one of her own Mooks in order to prevent it from attacking two kids and their mother has always been a CMoA for me, due in large part to the audio. During the fights leading up to it, there's a lot of generic fighting music playing, but the minute Astronema kills her own Mook, there's absolutely no music at all playing. It reflected the shock and confusion that viewers (not to mention Andros, Ecliptor, and Astronema herself) were experiencing.
 * Following this, in "The Rangers' Leap of Faith", Astronema does the Reverse Mole turn to Gambit Pileup proportions, giving the Rangers a tip that leads them into a trap and then turning in a room full of mooks. She tells Darkonda to destroy the Rangers and once he readies to strike he is blasted and falls down, just like in the above scene. Darkonda is then finished off by some beams from a wounded Ecliptor, who fights his way through the mooks and supports his surrogate daughter in her Heel Face Turn. Meanwhile, the Rangers form a circle around Astronema and Ecliptor and hold off a now angry mook army that wants to tear their Big Bad apart. Ecliptor does a Heroic Sacrifice, holding off a few dozen Quantrons and the like so to allow Karone enough time to escape. Poor Ecliptor, I always felt he was horribly mistreated by the Zordon Wave.
 * The serious tone of the series as a whole, and the deeper-running plot and themes, especially compared to Turbo.
 * Carlos' return from his Ten Minute Retirement, where he anticipates the same position-switching trick the Monster of the Week fooled him with earlier and jumps off Adam's shoulders to nail it with his staff.
 * From the same episode, Adam morphing with his damaged original morpher. With a familiar yell of "MASTODON!", he becomes the black Mighty Morphin' ranger one more time. And the Fandom Rejoiced.
 * Ecliptor's several-minutes-long fight with Darkonda in "Astronema Thinks Twice," including resisting the merging spell he'd been subjected to in an earlier episode through sheer force of will.
 * Alpha and D.E.C.A. (the Astro Megaship's computer) in "The Impenetrable Web," fighting off Ecliptor Home Alone style after he breaks into the Megaship.
 * One-Shot Character Waspicable deserves one for his Heel Face Turn, taking a hell of a barrage of energy blasts from his former king and even running against them to get his own hits in.
 * Despite being a major Tear Jerker (especially for this troper), the ultimate defeat of nearly all the evil forces and the ultimate sacrifice of Zordon during the climax of the "Countdown to Destruction" Grand Finale has to be, by far, the defining moment for Power Rangers as a whole.