Season 4, Episode 44: A Brief Mystery of Time

"A Brief Mystery of Time"
Episode 44
Air Date: November 11th, 1996

Time loop episodes can be tricky! It's a trope that used in TV shows and movie a lot ever since "Groundhog Day" popularized the concept. Now you have an episode of Power Rangers where Tommy is the only one noticing that time is repeating itself. It makes sense in terms of what recently happened to Tommy with the brain drain as Zordon and Alpha test to see. But I really wish they did more with the trope than just having Tommy figure out things quicker. They should have added more humor to it. I can't help but think of that episode of Charmed, "Deja Vu All Over Again" when everytime Phoebe figured out the time loop more, it got both funnier and more intense as it went along. Here, it's not much of a suspenseful time loop.  Now I know it's  kid's show, but the writers certainly could have made the time loop more interesting as the day kept repeating itself.

As far as Gasket's latest plan, I'm noticing that his plans so far, are needlessly elaborate. I mean he creates time loop to make more time for a large fleet of Cogs to attack the Earth. Why not just send down you entire army of Cogs to attack the Earth??? You can tell my body and mind is just aching for worldwide invasion but I need to calm down as we will get that very soon in approximately two seasons. But like I said, at least Gasket is making creative plans to conquer the Earth instead of say, making the rangers stink (Queen Machina_ or turning things in gold (Louie Kaboom). Not to mention, Gasket seems to be directly interacting with the rangers more often, seen here when he fights them as well as Archerina.

The episode ends with the rangers having to destroy Chronosapios but having to deal with Casket's latest monster, Protectron who is guarding the crystal. When Gasket arrives to fight the rangers, Jason deals with him while the rest of the rangers call on their Super Zeo Zords to fight off Protectron in their Super Zeo Megazord. So....can I just mention how I love how spacious the cockpit in the Super Zeo Megazord is??? I mean the Zeo Megazord cockpit looked so crapped and small, how did the rangers not hit each other when making the simplest of gestures? O_o Anyway, they defeat the monster with the Warrior Wheel and the time loop ends. Overall, "A Brief Mystery of Time" was pretty good, if not a little underwhelming on how much better it could have been. I feel like the future time loop episodes that will be explored in future seasons were better. Just saying, but not bad here though.

Final Morph: B-