The Power Rangers franchise is a bit in flux at the moment. Since talking about the final seasons with Dino Fury last year, the Netflix plans fell through and the potential reboot has been moved over to Paramount. But with it being 2025, I thought we'd take another look at a season I covered way back when I ranked them all up to Megaforce at that point.
While airing in 2005, Power Rangers SPD took place twenty years in the future. I posited the question on forums back then what the franchise would do if they reached 2025, and we were two years shy of finding out. But given we're in the year of SPD, it being its 20th anniversary, and it's chronologically the final season, I thought it'd be fun to give it another look. Besides the fact I haven't watched the season since its DVD release, it'd be interesting to see how well the series holds up on its own merits, how it fits with the established Power Rangers canon, and how its 2025 compares to our own. (Click the highlighted portion at the beginning of the paragraph for my original look back at the series.)
Within the now concluded main Power Rangers canon, SPD still fits in pretty well. It also helps that Beast Morphers and Dino Fury included some subtle references that help build up the setting for this season off-screen. If there are any inconsistencies that arise, it's within SPD's season itself, particularly when it comes to character backstories. The biggest hiccup to me is if each of the Ranger's parents secretly worked for SPD before they were born, why did Jack, Z, and Sam grow up on the streets unlike the others, especially if tabs were kept on all of them? Jack didn't even know his own birthday but referenced his parents were missionaries. Some things don't add up.
So how does the 2025 of SPD where aliens and earthlings reside together compare to the real world? Oh Power Rangers, you had such high expectations of us. We're still very far away from a world where humans live in peace and accept each other's differences, let alone live with aliens.
I feel like the team's police motif could be seen as controversial today. Modern perception of police is fractured to say the least given issues such as excessive force and profiling. The fact that SPD deals with alien-related crimes (even smaller ones compared to world domination like carjacking and bank robbery) doesn't help, especially when they're a government based public organization and not top secret like Men in Black. Funny enough though, Disney was kind of ahead of things because they had to tone down the violence while adapting Dekaranger. This included editing out bullets and creating the containment card system; otherwise, we'd be seeing our police officer protagonists killing every single criminal.
On the flipside though, SPD is full of instances of characters recognizing their biases and privileges, which in my opinion makes the series even more relevant than it was at its release. Character growth is a big part of the season not just for our main protagonists, but those associated with SPD that broke bad. It showcases the choice we all have to be the best or worst version of ourselves.
Back when I was ranking the seasons, I tried to give my overall thoughts on each one and rather than a deep dive focus like I did from Dino Charge to Dino Fury. But now that I'm giving SPD that treatment, I can talk about the two separate Dino Thunder team-up episodes.
The first episode entitled "History" shows Connor, Ethan, and Kira being transported from their high school reunion to the future via their Dino Gems by Broodwing, wanting to recruit them for his own plans in world domination. Why he thought he could persuade heroic figures from the past is anyone's guess. The three escape and encounter the SPD Rangers, eventually being given their old morphers from the SPD archives to assist in a fight with Grumm, Morgana, and an overwhelming number of Troobian foot soldiers before being sent back to the past with their memories erased. It was a pretty satisfying team-up, catching up with the core Dino Thunder Rangers and seeing them experience a future world and interacting with the current season's Rangers.
Another team-up entitled "Wormhole" sees Grumm traveling through a temporal wormhole back to 2004 where he hopes to conquer Earth without SPD's resistance. The SPD Rangers give chase, meet up with the Dino Thunder Rangers and together repel Grumm back to the future. "Wormhole" is a more traditional team-up that had come to be expected from the franchise up to this point, including the full rosters of each team and showcasing the Reds' battlizers. In that respect, I do prefer this over "History". But from a story standpoint, "Wormhole" feels out of place in more ways than one. Not only did this episode not air until the interim time between SPD's finale and Mystic Force's premiere, but the episode is placed directly after "History" on both the DVD release and how it's listed currently on Tubi where it simply doesn't fit. The only place this episode can happen is before the final three, and even then, there's a glaring continuity problem with Mora. By this point, Mora had been transformed back from Morgana and become fully corrupted by Omni, abandoning her more childish tendencies in the process, but they're still present in "Wormhole."
Besides these additional thoughts, my overall feelings toward Power Rangers SPD haven't changed since my season rankings. It's still a great season that cracks my top ten and giving it a rewatch for this occasion was a nice nostalgia trip. It holds up well and fans of the franchise should take a trip back to Newtech City this year to celebrate 20 years of SPD.
My Rankings of Power Rangers Seasons:
21. Megaforce
20. Operation Overdrive
19. Turbo
18. Samurai
17. Ninja Storm
16. Wild Force
15. Beast Morphers
14. Ninja Steel
13. Dino Charge
12. Zeo
11. Dino Fury
10. SPD
9. Lightspeed Rescue
8. Mystic Force
7. Lost Galaxy
6. Jungle Fury
5. Dino Thunder
4. Mighty Morphin'
3. In Space
2. Time Force
1. RPM
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