The rangers are going about an expedition, collecting samples, on an unexplored planet, Kadix. As they leave, a group of marauders ambushes them. Thankfully, the rangers are able to get back to the Megaship relatively unharmed, and the marauders attempt to keep them on the planet by sabotaging the engine components. The ship is able to lift off, but with some difficulty. As the rangers check out the damage, the sample they have found turns out to be an egg pod, but they don't know that yet, and it has already hatched...
However, after the damage is checked and repaired, an electrical malfunction reveals a secret door from last episode, which Cassie notices. Carlos notices as well, and going inside, they find a cryogenic machine, with someone frozen inside. Carlos calls the rest of the rangers in, sans Andros, who's still piloting the Megaship on the bridge. As they find the person inside is still alive, Cassie wipes off some of the condensation from the tube, revealing a Silver Ranger. Ashley asks who he is, and at the doorway, Andros reveals that the person inside is named "Zhane", and is the Silver Ranger and his best friend.
Two years ago, when Dark Specter attacked KO-35, Zhane was caught in an attack intended towards Andros, mortally wounding Zhane. Out of guilt, respect, and gratitude, Andros placed him into the cryogenic tube to save his life. Before Andros can tell the other rangers why he never told them about Zhane, D.E.C.A. completes her damage report.
As the rangers head to the bridge, Andros remembers the samples they collected. Cassie heads down to the cargo bay, to check on them, but notices the cracked egg on the floor. An alien monster, grown from the egg, surprises her, pushing her away, and knocking off her morpher. She tries to leap for it, but the alien is smarter than it looks, taking her by the wrist and lifting her up, ready to fight. She knocks it away, and tries to run out into the hall for help, but the creature shows its intelligence again by reaching for a control panel and locking the hallway door. With no other choice, she fights the monster, and tangles it up in a netting hanging from the ceiling. Grabbing her morpher, she also braces herself onto a pole and opens the outer airlock door, the vacuum of space pulling on both the alien and herself. The velcro holding the netting fails and the alien is sucked outside, but only just, as when Cassie closes the door with the panel again, the netting gets caught between the halves of the door. Unfortunately, even though Cassie releases the netting, this doesn't get rid of the creature for good, as its still hanging onto the netting and the outside of the ship.
Cassie runs to the bridge, and Andros tells her they had a faulty indicator for the cargo bay door. Cassie replies that it wasn't faulty, and their sample hatched into a monster. Even worse, the Megaship's orbit is deteriorating, caused by the monster further destroying the engines' circuits outside, and Kadix' gravity is pulling them back fast.
The Megaship makes a crash-landing, and it seems they're not going anywhere soon. Even worse, the marauders seem to be working for the monster! As the rangers engage the marauders, Andros signals D.E.C.A. to seal off all entrances in the ship. A group barely gets sealed off from the bridge, to Alpha's relief. Unfortunately, they're making trouble outside the ship, as well, destroying the electrical connections that just so happen to power the hidden healing chamber. The marauders continue attempting to push forward into the ship's bridge, and the monster continues to pummel the rangers into certain defeat. Meanwhile, the cryogenic chamber begins to fail, and Zhane flatlines. Outside, Andros senses Zhane's fading life signs through his telepathy. It seems that Andros has lost his friend forever. In a blind rage, he attacks the marauders, taking them down one-by-one. Even worse, the door to the bridge is failing, where Alpha is standing helplessly. All seems to be lost, until... the heart monitor begins a rhythm again, and Zhane slowly stirs within the cryo chamber. The marauders continue attempting to force open the bridge door, until one of them spots a figure approaching, which scares them off, and outside, the rangers watch as the intruders are flung out of the cargo bay door hatch. A set of white boots with silver legs walks from around the corner, and the figure is revealed to be... Zhane, none the worse for wear!
The now-very-much-alive ranger engages the monster, and handily defeats it. Unfortunately, the celebrations are cut short as the monster enlarges, prompting the Megazord fight. The monster gains the upper hand at first, trapping the Megazord in a pit, but Andros brings in the Delta Megazord, bringing the monster down a few pegs. The Delta helps the Astro out, and they combine, making quick work of the monster with a Flying Power Punch.
After repairs, the rangers come across Zhane recounting a story of a fight with a monster to Alpha. Pleasantries are exchanged between new and old rangers, and it seems that Zhane has become one of the team once again!
Tropes
- Expy: The hooded aliens that the rangers encounter look and act an awful lot like Jawas.
- Flatline: The EKG attached to Zhane's cryogenic chamber flatlines while the Rangers are battling a group of hooded aliens. It's subverted as shortly afterwards, not only does Zhane's pulse restart, but the cryogenic chamber also opens and Zhane turns out to be alive and well.
- Human Popsicle: Zhane.
- Left Hanging: Andros doesn’t reveal why he never mentioned Zhane before this, even when Ashley questions him. Though it’s likely that a combination of guilt for putting Zhane in that situation and not wanting to worry his new teammates about the likely possibility that they might suffer a similar fate. With no way to know if Zhane was healing properly over two years, he might as well be dead anyway.
- Starfish Language: What the Monster of the Week speaks. We don't get a translation as to what it says. (Although it does get a mocking tease in at least once, when it fights the Astro Megazord.)
- Thrown Out the Airlock: What Cassie tries to do to the Monster of the Week when it hatches from a pod the rangers pick up on another planet. The monster is sucked out into space, but it's able to hang on thanks to a net that gets caught on the outer structure of the ship. It then starts trashing the engine circuits outside, causing the Megaship's orbit to deteriorate, and crash-land back on the planet.
- Worldbuilding: Implied. Zhane muses that he's never seen female power rangers before Ashley and Cassie, inferring that the previous space rangers were all men.
