Season 17, Episode 27: Control-Alt-Delete

 

"Control-Alt-Delete"

Episode 27

Air Episode: October 3rd, 2009

Sigh....I feel like this is where this extremely familiar storyline reaches its most "copy and paste" feel to it as Tenaya returns, now upgraded and rebuilt as Tenaya Generation 15....with a more robotic voice and top half of her face now covered with electronic circuits that are overriding her emotions....just like Astronema.  Not only is this a complete repeat of the storyline but it actually hurts Tenaya as a character instead of making Astronema a more terrifying villain.  Once she was reprogrammed by Dark Specter, Astronema became more vicious, emotionless, even unhinged as she was betrayed Dark Specter and was planning to destroy him to claim his throne of Monarch of Evil......ehhhhhh....where as here, Tenaya goes from being a pretty awesome badass female villain to being a brainless weapon against the rangers with zero personality now! -_-  So yeah, NOT happy with this direction of the season so.....  I mean I guess I enjoyed Kilobyte but I feel he's been wasted already as villain with a very promising debut, not to mention personality but has done more damage to Tenaya competitively than actually winning against the rangers.  The villain downward spiral continues with General Shifter.  Last season we finally saw him striking out and ready to defeat the rangers to prove himself to Venjix.  Now here, he has grown powerful enough where he can take all the rangers on his own but also setting himself up to take over Venjix's lair after destroy him and gaining all his forces.  But General Shifter just turns out to be hardly a threat this episode and is defeat almost instantly after beginning the next phase of his plan.

Also, the subplot with that mechanical key inside Scott proved to be more of a temporary inconvenience that is quickly rectified by Dr. K and the rangers so....what exactly was the point??? Would have been real cool to see an out of control leader of the team having to fight them and them figuring how to save him but...nope! O_0 Also, the episode is definitely a very sloppy slap up of too Sentai episodes of Go-Onger as the General Shifter/Scott control plot is rushed through only for Venjix to send Tenaya out with yet another Attackbot with only like 7-8 minutes left in the episode.  Then you have this plot point of Dillon needing the mechanical key to temporary regain control of Tenaya but decides last minute to save the rangers from the almost unstoppable new Attackbot.  I mean this is all just happening so fast and there's a lot the viewer has to take in, now we're already trying to save Tenaya and bring her back in normal in a handful of minutes when this could have been spared for the next episode.  I get it! the 32 episode count sometimes forces the writers to abandon a lot of unused footage but when the jam two episodes into one to use as much of it as possible while trying to tell one coherent story makes it sooo jarring and messy.  The episode just doesn't flow and just feels like it's on fast forward to rush to the next plot after rushing through the last. -_-

Honestly, the real interesting plot movement is in Dillon's Venjix virus growing to 40% and Dr. K revealing if it reaches 50%, that Venjix will have complete control of him...and she can't stop it.  It's just so sad that Dillon's very intense and way more tension filled virus arc is being kind of given a backseat with his sister soap opera.  Dillon has been one of the most mysterious and badass characters of the show who's virus storyline is just as essential to the story and needs waaayyy more focus. Just think of the possibilities the writers could have taken the story instead of something we've already seen before. Sigh...oh well. :(

Final Morph: D-