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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:16 pm 
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When I was a teenager in the early 1980s, I got embarrassed about watching cartoons (as many teens do) and stopped watching them for a couple of years. Then as I got a little older and more self-confident I got back into them. Due to syndication, a big influx of advertising revenue, and the outsourcing of animation to Japan, the TV cartoons of the mid-late 1980s were much more numerous, a bit more diverse, and far better made than the cartoons of a few years earlier. I managed to watch quite a few when I wasn't busy with stuff like school and work.

"Galaxy Rangers" is not one of the better-remembered series of the day, probably because efforts to create a toy line around them (or vice versa) weren't that successful. But I recall it being one of the better-done. It is set a century or so in the future, after humans have begun colonizing other solar systems and encountering assorted alien races. Since crime and outlaws are still a problem, Earth has created an interstellar police force of Galaxy Rangers.

A quartet of them have been given bionic superpowers to serve as "super troopers." Team leader Zachary Foxx has a powerful bionic arm. "Goose" Guzman (who is obviously supposed to look and sound a lot like Clint Eastwood) can temporarily transform himself into various superhuman forms. Niko has enhanced psychic powers (naturally as the girl on the team she doesn't have combat powers). "Doc" can conjure a holographic gizmo containing a team of sentient computer programs that can hack into any sort of electronic system.

I now have some DVDs of "Galaxy Rangers" cartoons. Are they as good as I remembered? Let's see....

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:28 pm 
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Phoenix
Galaxy Ranger Zachary Foxx and his family are caught aboard a ship attacked by space pirates seeking human slaves for the villainous Queen of the Crown.

It seems that the Queen rules an outlaw planet called Tortuna. She has been using the life forces of these unfortunate aliens called Gerkins to create creepy artificial minions to do her bidding. Now, with the supply of Gerkins running low, she has learned that humans work even better, and has put a bounty on them. Foxx and the children escape at the cost of serious injury to him. His superiors help him out by making him one of the chosen few to receive those "Series 5" bionic implants as part of the super trooper program. You can guess where he wants to go on his first mission.

I do not remember seeing this particular cartoon. It served as the series pilot. Apart from the lively main theme, the music is not very good. The animation is pretty well-done, and the designs are as good as I remember.

It seems that humanity's two best friends among the alien races they have encountered are the Kiwis and the Andorians. The former have absurdly large ears and are very hard to take seriously. The latter lack the ear stalks that the Andorians of "Star Trek" had. Of course this is only supposed to be the late 21st century. Perhaps by the 23rd century the Andorians will undergo one of those mass mutations like the one the Klingons later experienced.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:41 pm 
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I've been thinking about buying these DVDs. I have fond memories of the episodes I saw.


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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:44 pm 
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New Frontier
The Galaxy Rangers' first mission takes them to Tortuna, to rescue the enslaved humans.

And they do, too! Unfortunately Foxx's wife, Eliza, has already been used in the Queen of the Crown's evil experiments. When they get her back to Earth she has to be placed in suspended animation. I'm spoiling this development because it's apparently going to be a big part of Foxx's back story.

This time he shares the limelight with his new companions, Goose, Nico, and Doc. And with the setting of outlaw planet Tortuna. The episode has obviously taken a lot of inspiration from "Star Wars." The rescue from enemy headquarters is reminiscent of the Death Star rescue sequence, and there's a big spaceport shootout like the one at Mos Eisley as our heroes try to take off. The Queen's expendable henchmen look vaguely like stormtroopers and have obviously attended the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. They all speak with the same monotone voice (weirdly cowboy-accented) in a way that implies they might be robots. One hopes for their sake they are, since the good guys are shown gunning down a number of them. You wouldn't have seen that in a 1970s cartoon!

There's also a lot more plot and action in general than in those earlier cartoons. Most 1970s cartoons were aimed very much at a kindergarten level. Watching them today, one gets the impression that the writers came up with a very simple and basic scenario, and then added enough slow-paced, mildly slapstick gags to pad out the running time. Here there's a remarkable amount of story and action packed into a twenty-minute cartoon. I'm beginning to think that this is indeed going to be as good as I remember. If only the music hadn't all been done on the same 1980s keyboard! It sounds like they hired the organist at an iceskating rink to do all the incidental music.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:39 pm 
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Ocean Doot wrote:
I've been thinking about buying these DVDs. I have fond memories of the episodes I saw.


I bet you'd enjoy them!

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:57 pm 
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Tortuna
The Rangers return to the Queen of the Crown's homeworld to steal a memory device containing valuable data.

The memory device is a "memory bird," which is apparently an organic computer that looks like a talking bird. Two memory birds appear, each quite funny in its own different way.

There are more "Star Wars" elements here. When the Rangers infiltrate the Queen's capital they head for a bar full of weird-looking aliens. The Rangers walk into this Star Wars-ish setting dressed in stylish hats and dusters, looking like something out of a postapocalyptic western. Naturally there's a brawl. At one point Nico draws her sidearm and throws down on the bad guys--and we see that she carries what looks rather like a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. Yikes! Actually she ends up using martial arts against the bad guys, rather than shooting them. But that's still something you wouldn't have seen in a '70s Saturday morning cartoon.

Later there's an exciting and well-done hovercar chase. At one point our heroes lose their pursuers in a maze of giant tunnels reminiscent of the pursuit through the bowels of Death Star II in "Return of the Jedi." A couple of the pursuers crash in collisions that don't look like they'd be easy to survive.... Meanwhile Doc keeps uttering witticisms (As a token black character written in the 1980s by what were in all probability white writers, he probably couldn't help it), wondering after one particularly close call why he can no longer feel his own pulse.

This is another lively and busy episode. It includes a subplot about efforts to rescue the last of the Gerkins, those poor aliens whose life forces the Queen has been using to create her evil minions. Their rescuers are Pedulants, goofy-looking aliens with long probosci and voices not unlike Mickey Mouse. The first two we see are driving a space-age stagecoach, complete with hats and bandanas. Later we learn that a team of brave Pedulants have risked their own lives (or rather their snouts--the Queen reportedly tortures Pedulants by wringing their noses) to save the Gerkins.

All in all, this episode was a lot of fun.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 2:10 pm 
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Chained
Goose transports a dangerous alien pirate leader--whose gang is out to get him back.

The pirate is named McCross--pronounced like "MA-cross." I recall wondering when I first saw this years ago whether the name was a nod to "Robotech's" Macross Saga. I'd just recently read about that show's origins and learned of the existence of anime. Despite the vaguely Scottish-sounding name, McCross is clearly not of this Earth. He looks like he might be an amphibian, though he seems to have no trouble functioning in an arid environment.

Goose leads a swarm of small pursuing pirate craft through an asteroid field (Sound familiar?). Several pursuing craft are destroyed, presumably along with their crews. Then Goose's sentient spacecraft informs him that "she" has been damaged by enemy fire and will have to land on a nearby planet. Goose, McCross, and a freight container carrying Goose's robot horse eject and parachute down. The damaged ship then loyally lets "her" self be destroyed in an effort to decoy the bad guys. They find McCross and Goose anyway. Fortunately some friendly human colonists intervene.

Not as good an episode as the previous one, but still good. The space battle sequence in the first half is the highlight. McCross's weird minions are also good for a couple of laughs.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 3:59 pm 
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Smuggler's Gauntlet
The Rangers infiltrate Tortuna once again, in search of a top secret DNA formula.

For all that she is a ruthless tyrant, the Queen of the Crown seems not to have a very tight grip on what goes on in her own capital city. That paradox actually makes sense--real-life tyrants have found that their displacing of rule of law with arbitrary power tends to undermine basic law enforcement. They might not have any viable political opponents, but their societies are undermined by chronic bribery, corruption, and secret dealings. The Rangers never seem to have any trouble getting into Tortuna. Getting out is always the tricky part....

All four Rangers feature in this episode, and all have the chance to demonstrate their respective talents. Doc summons at least four sentient computer programs to hack into assorted enemy systems. Then he gets stumped by an archaic pre-electronic vault lock! Nico takes over and uses her psychic powers to trick the lock. It's the first time we've actually seen her employ her powers. None of the characters seems to be taking all of this stuff too seriously.



Mistwalker
Foxx and Kiwi ally Zozo travel to a planet inhabited by peaceful, primitive, birdlike aliens and find themselves under threat from McCross and his gang.

The episode begins with the gangsters attacking a bird-people village. It is clear from McCross's orders to leave no witnesses that we are watching a massacre. Or at least that's what it's supposed to be--fortunately for the natives, McCross's boys don't appear to be very good shots.

Also fortunate is the presence on the scene of a human anthropologist who can translate the natives' speech for the benefit of Foxx, Zozo, and the viewer. The titular Mistwalker is their leader, a female shaman who repeatedly uses her deep knowledge of the local natural environment to save Foxx from trouble when he persists in charging ahead despite all sorts of malfunctions caused by the planet's unhelpful climate and insects. There's obviously a subtext here about technology vs. the environment. The writers don't belabor it. This relative subtlety in a cartoon made in the 1980s--or more recently, for that matter--is refreshing.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 4:04 pm 
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That meddlin kid wrote:
Ocean Doot wrote:
I've been thinking about buying these DVDs. I have fond memories of the episodes I saw.


I bet you'd enjoy them!


Dang it, I might have to finally pull the trigger on this one.


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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 4:09 pm 
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I also listened to a DVD audio commentary on the episode "New Frontier." Several of the show's creators talked about the experience of making the "Galaxy Rangers" TV series. They had the animation done in such a hurry that at least some of the episodes had voices dubbed in post-production, like anime imports, instead of recording the dialog before the animation. Of course technically "Galaxy Rangers" IS an anime, as it was animated by Japanese studios. You would not know this from the end credits. Production is credited to the studio TMS, with nothing about how that stands for Tokyo Movie Shinsa. TMS did very good work. This truly is a well-done TV cartoon by 1980s standards. It doesn't look bad today. It's amazing to think that there was a time when producers could come up with the budget for a show this well-made without having to go through one of a handful of big networks. We have more TV channels than ever, yet they are all controlled by fewer media conglomerates than ever. Probably helps to explain why so many of the channels look so much alike any more.

Interesting fact: The creators were fans of old pirate movies starring the likes of Errol Flynn. The planet Tortuna is named in honor of Tortuga Island, in the pirate movie classic "Captain Blood."

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 5:32 pm 
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This is a great thread, and I remember this show. It was unique, as you describe, and much more like an anime movie than a standard made-for-TV cartoon of the era.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:05 pm 
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Wildfire
While guarding a shipment of unstable isotopes, the Rangers encounter a minor outlaw pursued by much more dangerous characters.

For reasons which are never explained--and which the viewer is presumably not supposed to think too much about--most of the humans in "Galaxy Rangers" tend to dress like characters in a western. After all, this is supposed to be a western IN SPACE! Here Cody, the lovable rogue--well, he's supposed to be, anyway--and the leader of the bad guys chasing him are in appropriate duds and speak with appropriate accents. Goose has apparently had run-ins with the guy before and doesn't care to have him around. He nonetheless nobly tries to rescue him. It seems that Cody has apparently found some valuable mineral resources, and the bad guys want them. Standard western plot--IN SPACE!

Remember the classic "Star Trek" episode entitled "The Corbomite Maneuever?" The one where Kirk bluffed the alien threat by saying that his ship was carrying a substance called Corbomite that would guarantee that anybody who destroyed it was also destroyed? Zachary Foxx tries a variant of that on the outlaw leader. Except that in this case he's not bluffing--the damage caused by the initial attack really has put the ship's unstable isotope cargo in danger of blowing up. The bad guys don't seem inclined to listen to reason....


Ghost Station
An asteroid on a trajectory to rendezvous with Earth turns out to be a gigantic space station armed with a bomb capable of destroying the planet.

"That's no moon!"

Although the rogue station does look vaguely Death Starish, the inspiration comes more from Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers and their cousin, the Doomsday Machine of classic "Star Trek." Like them, it is a weapon of mass destruction created by an alien race who died out and left the thing wandering around bent on destroying something. When the Rangers board it they find themselves under siege from holograms of monsters, haunted houses, and other spooky stuff apparently culled from their subconscious. It's a silly plot, but fun to watch. No doubt younger viewers got plenty of Scooby Doo-type thrills from this one.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:38 pm 
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One Million Emotions
A valuable--and potentially dangerous--artifact is stolen from an interstellar art show.

The artifact is a kind of sentient sculpture created by an alien master who invested it with all of his own emotions of a lifetime. Anybody who touches the thing without appropriate protective gear will suffer a potentially sanity-destroying emotional overload. The episode contains some startlingly brutal scenes. The thieves have a shootout with museum guards that leaves one of each down; it is not made clear whether they survived, and we actually see a wound appearing when the guard is shot! Later the crook who has hired the successful thief to steal the artifact sadistically forces him to touch it; when last we see him, the poor hood appears to be hopelessly insane. Finally, at one point Goose threatens to kill the crook's pet to make him tell him where the artifact is. Mind you, the pet in question is a mutant bug the size of a small dog that most viewers are unlikely to feel any sympathy for. Still, it was rather mean of Goose to say something like that.

The viewer learns lots of things about the world of "Galaxy Rangers" in this episode--that museums of the future apparently have no electronic security; that there is a planet--presumably a Terran colony--named Nebraska; that Mars has been terraformed and has very earthlike cities; and that the planet is swarming with disgusting, but apparently not harmful, giant mutant bugs that some weird people turn into pets. Also, corrupt alien plutocrats have been allowed to buy extensive property holdings on Earth. One hopes that the comment that the plutocrat in question "owns New Jersey" is hyperbole.



The DVD had another creator commentary on this episode. One of the creators had already gone to Japan to contract animation for an earlier cartoon and was impressed with the sheer variety of anime that he saw there. Productions that especially caught his eye included early Miyazaki work and the science fiction adventure anime "Cobra." The latter's bionic-armed hero became an inspiration for Ranger leader Zachary Fox. With multiple toy companies in the mid-80s creating syndicated cartoons, the producers decided to cash in by contracting TMS to do a show for them.

Because of production time constraints, the American producers gave TMS designs and storyboards that weren't fully fleshed out and trusted the Japanese artists to do the rest. This resulted in their having the freedom to give "Galaxy Rangers" plenty of interesting camera angles, scene setups, and science fiction details. They also added details like the bullet wound mentioned above and a sleazy, cigarette-smoking alien stoolie that a cartoon made for an audience of American children wouldn't normally have shown. The unusual freedom and creativity resulted in a show that apparently ended up attracting more teen and older viewers than children. This helped to sink the show by making it unattractive to the advertisers for toys and other products aimed at children who were understood to be a cartoon's normal supporters in American markets. TV stations that syndicated "Galaxy Rangers" ended up sticking it in out-of-the-way timeslots as a result. That would help to explain why I recall usually seeing it early on weekday mornings before going to school or work.

As a TV cartoon that mostly attracted older viewers, "Galaxy Rangers" was, unintentionally, rather ahead of its time for the U.S. Then again, it was very much a product of its time in that it stemmed from the 1980s toy-based cartoon boom. The creators observe on their commentary that in those days there were several major toy producers in the American market with the resources to support animated series. Now there are far fewer toy producers. And they mostly produce toys for adult collectors, since actual children today spend most of their time playing video games!

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:30 am 
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Traash
The Rangers engage in battle with an alien race so hostile and xenophobic it seeks to destroy all other races it encounters.

"Traash" sounds like the name of a garage band.... They are insectoids (sort of) with a hive-mind. That ultimately makes them easier to deal with, as all Nico has to do is mind-meld with their "queen" to convince them that the Traash and others can peacefully coexist. Of course getting close enough to the queen to do that is easier said than done!

For the first time we see an all-out space battle between swarms of ships. It's a classic 1980s anime-style battle too. All that's missing is a bunch of giant robots firing off an "Itano Circus" or two. But so far the Rangerverse doesn't seem to have any missile-firing combat mecha.

It's apparent that both sides suffer significant losses. Nonetheless there is a good bit of comic relief. Most of this is provided by the scenery-chewing alien pirate Captain Kidd. Kidd warns the Rangers about the Traash as he flees from them, then finds himself dragooned into using his knowledge of the Traash to help the Rangers infiltrate their headquarters ship. You know it's going to be a dangerous mission when Kidd's faithful, inseperable space "parrot" decides to stay behind!

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:43 am 
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Mindnet
A rogue Super Trooper assumes Goose's identity to steal a dangerous psychic enhancement device.

I had supposed that "Super Trooper" was another name for the bionically-enhanced super Rangers. Turns out the Super Troopers were actually an earlier program that tried to create superhuman soldiers. Ranger Gooseman originally belonged to them. At least some of the others have apparently gone rogue. We've already had hints that Goose had an interesting back story. Now we're starting to learn something substantial.

At the climax there's a fight between Goose and the villain of the week, the reduntantly named "Killbane" (Would've made a great name for a 1990s supervillain--or "hero" for that matter). It's startlingly brutal--they go at each other like they really mean it with rifles and bayonets. This cartoon definitely pushed the envelope on content compared to most of its contemporaries. There's also a more slapstick fight where the Rangers, who have loyally decided to support Goose after Killbane frames him, fight their own authorities to keep him out of custody so that they can clear his name. We also learn that they keep in training by performing something called zero-G acrobatics.

Since the McGuffin Killbane steals is a psychic abilities enhancer, Nico is naturally front-and-center in this story. She is twice shown linking hands with the other Rangers so that she can borrow some of their power to enhance her own abilities. That's a handy ability to share with one's coworkers.

I haven't yet mentioned that several episodes feature spacecraft launch sequences from Ranger HQ that look very much like the Viper launch scenes from the old "Battlestar Galactica." The writers and production designers here borrowed from EVERYBODY! But their borrowing was generally well-done enough to keep the episodes from coming across as the compilations of sci-fi cliches and ripoffs that they could have been.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 11:57 am 
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This show seems similliar to Orguss another anime series. And Venus Wars an American show about Earth battling An alien race foe control of Earth and an environmentally changed Venus.

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 3:29 pm 
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Daphne is going to be done reviewing the series before I can get my DVD set and follow along.


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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 1:04 am 
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Ocean Doot wrote:
Daphne is going to be done reviewing the series before I can get my DVD set and follow along.

You can console yourself by reviewing it for websites.


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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 1:43 am 
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Jeff wrote:
Ocean Doot wrote:
Daphne is going to be done reviewing the series before I can get my DVD set and follow along.

You can console yourself by reviewing it for websites.


Galaxy Rangerville? :)

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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 3:29 am 
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Jeff wrote:
Ocean Doot wrote:
Daphne is going to be done reviewing the series before I can get my DVD set and follow along.

You can console yourself by reviewing it for websites.


That's a good point. Man, I'm so awesome.


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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 3:46 am 
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Ocean Doot wrote:
Jeff wrote:
Ocean Doot wrote:
Daphne is going to be done reviewing the series before I can get my DVD set and follow along.

You can console yourself by reviewing it for websites.


That's a good point. Man, I'm so awesome.

Quite.


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 Post subject: Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 1:06 pm 
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Okay, now that all that's settled....



Tune-Up
An alien artifact taken to Ranger Headquarters for study turns out to be part of a trap laid by an outlaw seeking to steal Ranger technology.

The artifact is what would now be called a 3-D printer. It creates multiple miniature, mischievous, and larcenous duplicates of Ranger HQ's robot servant Buzzwang (Buzz is a sort of poor-man's C3PO). The mini-Buzzes steal all the hi-tech equipment they can get their hands on, hijack a spacecraft with a mentally-disturbed artificial intelligence unit, and light out for the territory, so to speak.

This is a "lower decks" episode that spotlights secondary characters. The only primary cast member who is really featured is Nico, and we don't see all that much of her. Apart from Buzz, the main protagonist here is Zachary Foxx, Jr. Evidently some years have passsed since the events of the pilot episode. There Foxx's children were shown to be quite young. Here Junior appears to be serving at Ranger HQ as a cadet or college intern or something.

The episode is great fun, as the mini-Buzzes (they call Buzzwang "Pop", but show him absolutely no filial respect) lead Buzz and Junior on a merry chase. Highlights include the demented AI spacecraft, the cheeky way the minis respond to a query from mission control by announcing that they're "going out for pizza," and their laugh-out-loud parody of the song "Home on the Range."

Things get a bit serious when Buzz must sacrifice himself to rescue Junior from the bad guy. He is of course salvaged and rebuilt by the end. But it is implied that his original artificial consciousness has been lost forever; the Buzz we see at the end is a only a close copy of the original. It's kind of sad when you think about it.

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