Dark Specter sends his chosen disciple Astronema to pursue and destroy him.Īs he retreats to the spaceship, the Red Ranger Andros finds the former Turbo Rangers and Alpha examining the ship. As the villains enjoy a banquet, an unwelcome guest crashes the party - a Red Power Ranger. Elsewhere on the Cimmerian Planet, the evil Dark Specter is celebrating his conquest of Eltar with his guests in the United Alliance of Evil: Rita Repulsa, Lord Zedd, Master Vile, the Machine Empire, Divatox, General Havoc, and their many minions.
Ecliptor, who sees himself as Astronema's father due to him raising her, gains a level of depth not seen by many villains on the show when he tries to defend his adopted daughter, only to be cruelly tortured by the sadistic Darkonda, who forces the two to merge into a singular entity, leaving Ecliptor broken both physically and mentally.Īfter being defeated by Divatox, the former Turbo Rangers T.J., Cassie, Ashley, and Carlos leave for space with a voice-damaged Alpha 6 in search of their old mentor Zordon and are taken to a strange spaceship. When Astronema learns the truth about her identity, she is tortured and brainwashed into returning to evil by Dark Specter and Darkonda.
Astronema in actuality Red Space Ranger Andros' sister, Karone, who was kidnapped by the cruel Darkonda as a child and raised by the cyborg Ecliptor to be the evil Dark Specter's harbringer of evil.
The series is also highly regarded for being the first Power Rangers series to feature sympathetic and multi-dimensional villains in the form of Astronema and Ecliptor, as opposed to Goldar and Rito Rivolto's time spent as the humorous amnesiac "servants" of Bulk and Skull through Power Rangers Zeo. The show would be the first Power Rangers series to be completely serialized, relying on a continuing plot that unfolded episode by episode. The Phantom Ranger (whose identity was never revealed in Turbo) was also brought back for a multi-episode arc, but plans to reveal his identity fell through due to budget problems and forced Lynn to cut the episode where his identity was to be revealed. Two team-up episodes were commissioned along the way, bringing Blake Foster (Justin from Power Rangers Turbo) and Johnny Yong Bosch (Adam, succeeding Zack as the second Black Power Ranger, Green Zeo and Original Green Turbo Ranger) to the show to try and tie up loose ends. A great deal of the budget would be spent creating cheap green screen space footage for the Zords traveling in space as well as shooting new fight scenes with the Space Rangers which were tinted a different color for broadcast so as to create the appearance of the battles taking place on alien worlds. Series director Judd Lynn went ahead with the "space war" storyline, in spite of the problems with the Megaranger footage, which only featured space minimally as a theme.