Series / Power Rangers Time Force

Timeless wonders! Fire and thunder! Off to save the world! Go, go Time Force!

"Time for Time Force!"
"Quantum Power!"

—Morphing calls, Power Rangers Time Force

Power Rangers Time Force is the ninth season of the Power Rangers series, adapted from Mirai Sentai Timeranger. In the year 3000, crime is almost a memory, as a police organization called Time Force has captured almost every criminal. The only one left is a villainous mutant named Ransik. Time Force Red Ranger Alex and his squad finally manage to capture him, and Alex takes the opportunity to propose to his girlfriend and subordinate, Jen Scotts. Before they can fully realize their dreams of wedded bliss, however, Ransik's spoiled daughter, Nadira, breaks him out and Alex is apparently killed in the crossfire. Ransik and Nadira go on to take all the cryogenically frozen mutants from prison and hightail it back to the year 2001, before there even was a Time Force to stop them.

Taking responsibility for the fact that they got away on her watch, a heartbroken Jen collects the morphers and her squad, and journeys a thousand years into the past to avenge her fiance. Unfortunately, Alex's DNA is needed to unlock the morphers, but there just so happens to be an ancestor of him living in Silver Hills, Washington at the turn of the millennium. What are the odds?

Said ancestor, Wes Collins, once he's convinced they're not crazy, joins the Time Force Rangers, helping them in their fight and to adjust to being so far from home. Eventually, it turns out that the future in Millennium City isn't as rosy as one would expect, and either destiny will be screwed, or Wes will.

Easily one of the darkest seasons of Power Rangers, it takes a lot from its Super Sentai counterpart (despite seasons of PR that do so normally being disliked, such as Wild Force and Samurai, this season is a rare exception). Of particular note is being the first Power Rangers series to actually acknowledge the death of a character. Also of note is the fact that the leader of the team is the Pink Ranger, Action Girl Jen (although because of the source footage Red is still in the forefront, with him and the Sixth Ranger getting nearly every Limit Break and Super Mode through the season).

Time Force is the final Power Rangers installment produced by Saban Entertainment before Disney bought the franchise in late 2001. As such, it was succeeded by Power Rangers Wild Force, which was the first one produced by Disney.

It was also the last season to use the services of veteran screenwriter Judd Lynn until RPM, as well as the last to be aired in full by Fox Kids, which would be replaced by the Fox Box the following year.

In 2017, it received an official Tabletop RPG sequel entitled Power Rangers Hyperforce, with Erin Cahill reprising as Jen Scotts in the first episode.

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Recurring Power Rangers tropes include:

• Action Girl: Jen and Katie, as per Power Rangers tradition.
• Big Bad: Ransik, with Frax as The Starscream.
• Big Good: Captain Logan and Alex Drake.
• Chest Insignia: Time Force emblems (badges?) on the belts (in the sentai, they were the power sources for the Ranger's suits, here they do nothing), personal geometric shapes on the helmet visor and chest.
• City of Adventure: Silver Hills
• Compressed Adaptation: Was given 40 episodes to Timeranger's 50. This included an original single-episode team-up with Lightspeed Rescue.^note Timeranger vs. GoGoFive was a direct-to-video supplement to the series
• The Dragon: Co-Dragons Frax and Nadira
• Evil Plan: Ransik is a criminal motivated by hatred for non-mutants, then he gets his hands on time travel technology.
• Home Base: The Clock Tower becomes the Time Rangers' lair.
• Humongous Mecha: As usual, the Rangers use a giant mecha called the Megazord to take on the Monster of the Week after the threat becomes gigantic.
  • Animal Mecha: the Quantasaurus Rex
  • Combining Mecha: The Rangers' Time Fliers can combine in two different Time Force Megazord formations (three formations if you include Jet Mode): a melee-oriented Red Mode and ranged attacker Blue Mode. It can then join with the Shadow Winger to form the Shadow Force Megazord, which also has Red and Blue Modes.
  • Transforming Mecha: The Shadow Winger and Q-Rex.
• Mini Dress Of Power: Part of the Pink Ranger's costume, averted for Yellow since She's a Man in Japan.
• Mooks: Cyclobots are the standard foot soldier for this series.
• Recycled IN SPACE: Power Rangers as TIME POLICE!
• Rookie Red Ranger: Wes is the Red Ranger, but not as experienced as the other Time Rangers.
• She's a Man in Japan: For the third time in a row, and fourth overall. Katie as the Distaff Counterpart of Domon, Time Yellow.
• Thememobile:
  • Cool Bike: The US-exclusive Vector Cycles and Wes' Strata Cycle.
  • Cool Plane: The Time Jet and Eric's TF Eagle.
• Transformation Sequence:
  • Back to being pretty quick. The Rangers called out “Time for Time Force!”, do some arm motions and press the button their morphers. It activates, we see their DNA apparently merging with the power and they're soon in their suits.
  • Eric's morpher is voice activated. He shouts “Quantum Power!” raises his fist into the air as it activates and the suit instantly forms over him.
• Two Girls to a Team: Jen and Katie are the only female members of the team.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: As is the norm for the franchise, we generally get a MOTW appearing with an Evil Plan Once an Episode, with our heroes then arriving on the scene to stop them.

• Word Power:
  • By the Power of Grayskull!: "Quantum Power!"
  • Invocation: "Time for Time Force!"

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This subseries contains examples of:

• Actor Allusion: Ransik (played by Vernon Wells) gets one in "Movie Madness" - in the episode's Chase Scene, he goes head-to-head with the Rangers on a desert road, driving a vehicle similar to the one Wez (also Wells) drove in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and wearing a similar costume.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Eric, Mr. Collins, and Alex. All of them are much nicer and heroic people (ultimately) than their Sentai counterparts, who were varying levels of unpleasant and stayed that way^note Naoto never really lost his unscrupulous opportunism, Wataru Asami remained a callous, greedy patrician, and Captain Ryuuya was the Big Bad who manipulated everything to defy his predestined death. As a result, all of them get to live, and while Alex loses Jen's love, the other two enjoy Karmic Jackpot as a result of their preexisting standards and Character Development.
• Adaptational Species Change: The villains in Timeranger are aliens. Here, they're mutants.
• Adapted Out: Tatsuya's Mom and her Dad don't get counterparts in this series.
• Advertising-Only Continuity: The Big Bad, Ransik, searching for them with a Time Machine when it was the opposite way around, and the rangers constantly mentioning the evil Cyclobots as the reason they went back in time. Alongside him, a minion who is never seen in the show.
• An Aesop: Forgiveness breaks the cycle of hatred. Nadira was the first to understand this upon learning the truth about Frax's past with her father Ransik, and it only took Nadira putting herself in harm's way to make Ransik see the errors of his ways.
• Almost Kiss: Jen and Wes share one in "Lovestruck Rangers." They of course immediately encounter a Moment Killer.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The future's opinion of Mutants. Frax as well, but he's better reason than most. As he puts it to a conflicted Nadira in the finale:
  Frax: You're an evil mutant with a heart as black as coal, just like your father.
• All Crimes Are Equal: The fact that Notacon was put into cryo-freeze just because he stole some vegetables is actually pretty harsh, especially since he had no other way to get food.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In the second part of the Grand Finale, Ransik's forces attack the Clock Tower. Eric and Wes have no choice but to set up the Electro Booster to blow up the tower in order to escape.
• Ambiguously Human: The Black Knight from "Beware the Knight". He's definitely not a mutant or a robot, but since he's lived for hundreds of years and never takes off his armor, we don't find out if he's something supernatural or a human who used magic to survive.
• And I Must Scream: The frozen mutants, because their minds are still active while frozen.
• And Starring: The opening cast roll ends with "and Edward Laurence Albert as Mr. Collins".
• The Artifact: Trip being an alien. In Timeranger, the main villain and Monsters Of The Week were also aliens instead of mutants (which would explain some of the more outlandish designs on some mutants). Since they were changed to mutants, thus making the series Earth-based, Trip stands out a bit more. On the other hand, unlike Timeranger, Human Aliens like Trip being on Earth wouldn't be anything new, given their close interaction with several alien civilizations since the Zordon era, such as Aquitians, Triforians, and the residents KO-35. If anything, Trip's need to hide himself is The Artifact, unless Xybria itself still isn't an established member of the universal Ranger network by this point in history.
  • The "CGD" insignia all over the Silver Guardians' uniforms and equipment — in Timeranger, they were known as the City Guardians.
• Badass Boast: Possibly one of the most accurate in all of Power Rangers, in the finale;
  Wes: You might as well give up!
  Katie: We're Time Force.
  Jen: And you're under arrest, Ransik. You've got no one left to fight for you!
  Ransik: (Draws sword) I don't need anyone! I'll destroy you myself!
  • He then spends the next several minutes handing the Rangers their asses.
• Badass Bystander: Wes's dad doesn't actively do much in fighting the show's villains, but props for him having the gall to talk back to Ransik when he tries to get his batch of anti-Venomark serum.
• Badass Driver: Lucas.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Subverted. The Rangers were on the losing end of the final battle with Ransik and probably would've been defeated had he not had a last-minute Heel Realization and surrendered willingly.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: No, the Rangers don't actually time travel to all the eras shown in the title sequence; those clips come from the Trapped In Movie Land episode.
  • This is a result of Pragmatic Adaptation - originally the writers planned to do at least some time travel arcs, using Sentai footage in remote woods like they'd used to represent alien worlds in season six... then they realized that all the Megazord fights were in modern Tokyo. Every. Single. One. (Why they simply couldn't have made it so the Rangers would be able to relocate the battle to the present before the growth {ala the Vortex Command} to explain the city battles isn't clear.)
• Best Served Cold: When Ransik blew up the lab of Lewis Ferricks and left him for dead, he barely survived though turning himself into Frax. He then allied himself with Ransik in his new form, becoming a part of of his inner circle. Undermining him secretly in their mission through releasing X-Vault mutants. All in preparation for releasing one mutant who Ransik could not abide defeating the rangers. Then Frax destroyed all of Ransik's serum, gloating to his face about it, and planning on having him die a long, slow, painful death without it. It doesn't quite work out thanks to unforseen circumstances, but it was a solid revenge scheme.
• Betty and Veronica: At the show progress , Wes is the Betty to Alex's Veronica for Jen's Archie. But not at first. In the beginning, Alex was Jen's caring fiancee while Wes was a spoiled and rich man. BY the end, Alex is aloof with Jen and Wes is more capable and noble.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the finale, with the Megazord, followed by the Rangers saving Wes from a veritable army of Cyclobots.
  • Eric was this quite a few times when the other Rangers were on the ropes; he lampshaded it, remarking "Looks like I have to bail you out again."
• Big Fancy House: The Collins Manor.
• Bittersweet Ending: Ransik willfully surrenders, the disaster that would have wiped out Silver Hills has been averted, and Wes and Jen profess their love for each other. But the Time Force Rangers have to return back to the future, much to everyone's sadness. After the Rangers leave, Mr. Collins reveals he's turning the Silver Guardians into a free service and asks Wes to be their leader. Wes agrees only if Eric can be his co-leader and the latter accepts.
• Bowdlerise: Due to the 9/11 attacks, almost half the series was heavily edited to remove most of the buildings exploding that Super Sentai uses heavily, and any references to terrorism made by Ransik, and the broadcast masters were apparently destroyed. As a result, the original unedited versions are highly prized by collectors.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Nadira acts like a spoiled adolescent.
• Broken Faceplate: How Wes's father finds out that his son is a Ranger.
• Bullet Time: A couple times in the premiere.
• Carrying a Cake: Done with Trip and a pizza in "Beware the Knight", twice. The first time, he gives in to his hunger and ends up coming across the titular Knight. It happens again at the end of the episode, though this time he just dropped it.
• Cassandra Truth: Also in "Beware the Knight", when Trip tells the other Rangers about his run-in with the Knight, they don't believe him, assuming the pizza only returned destroyed because he dropped it. It's not until they spot the Knight wreaking havoc around Silver Hills that they find out Trip was, in fact, telling the truth.
• Catapult Nightmare: In "The End of Time, Part 1", Wes wakes up from a nightmare in which his fellow rangers are sucked into a time vortex during the attack on Silver Hills.
• Character Development: This series is all about the Character Development, let's take a look, shall we?
  • Wes started out as a Brilliant, but Lazy, Nice Guy, Sheltered Aristocrat, of a Rookie Red Ranger who was a kind of spoiled, by the end of the series he's grown into The Hero and an excellent leader.
  • Jen was a Heartbroken Badass who could be overly serious and something of The Stoic, eventually she's Letting Her Hair Down and has her Second Love with Wes.
  • Eric started off as a Jerkass with with some Green-Eyed Monster issues, but after a while, reveals himself as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who becomes the partner of Wes after the end.
  • And the Big Bad and his Dragon of a daughter both have Heel Face Turns]] and are full-fledged good guys in the team-up next season.
  • Even Frax gets a little development and recognizes the futility of their actions.
  • Towards the end of the show’s run, Gluto apparently decides to stop chasing Nadira and prove his worth to Ransik, (and earn it) by finding Frax.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The Electrobooster.
• Chekhov's Gun: Before Frax's reveal as The Starscream, there were brief moments where Frax was seen unhappy (but did not make a fuss about it) with Ransik's treatment of the robot mooks. Power Ranger villains often do not flinch at poor treatment of mooks, let alone robots.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Ransik's flashback in "Frax's Fury" at first only seemed like a way to explain the reason he needed his serum, but it also revealed the origin of Frax and his reason for hating Ransik.
• Clock Tower: The Rangers' base is in an old clock tower.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Trip is a bit odd, although he's not nearly as severe as some later Rangers.
• Cold Open: Fifth season of PR to do this, but the first to do this extensively, as a way of getting the unadaptable Sentai footage out of the way without cutting out the monster (and thus toys) and giant robot action.
• Confidence Sabotage: Alex inadvertently does this to Circuit in "Circuit Unsure" by deleting the data on the Rangers' approaching Final Battle just as he was about to reveal it to them, causing him to think he was malfunctioning, which prevented him from helping Trip disarm a self-destruct device. However, once Alex reveals the truth and why he did so, Circuit's confidence is restored and helps Trip stop the bomb in time.
• Cool Shades: The Rangers' mutant scanners are cool-looking eyewear.
• Crapsaccharine World: In the beginning of the series, the futuristic world of the year 3000 was depicted as a peaceful utopia where people are born free of disease, and crime is almost non-existant. However, we learn later on that mutants are placed as second-class citizens, where they had no choice but to become criminals.
• Cross-Referenced Titles: The premiere, "Force from the Future," and the Wild Force team-up, "Reinforcements from the Future."
• Cycle of Revenge: Becomes a theme near the end, with Frax urging Nadira to break the cycle.
• Darker and Edgier: Time Force is a series that takes itself pretty seriously a large chunk of the time, and is one that doesn't shy away from themes of revenge, discrimination and even death. Some named, even major characters end up dying throughout the series (in some cases brutally for a kid's show). This almost landed Time Force a primetime slot on Fox next to The X-Files, of all things, but the show ultimately went to Fox Kids for brand consistency.
  • Much of this can be attributed to Time Force borrowing heavily from the plot of its corresponding Sentai, Mirai Sentai Timeranger, which was also quite dark and dealt with equally mature subjects.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Frax chooses to unfreeze Notacon because he looks like a "particularly devious mutant" (He's not).
• Dating Catwoman: Lucas and Nadira. Subverted in that Lucas does everything he can to get out of it, but they're apparently seeing each other again after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Dead-Hand Shot: Alex is killed (or appears to be) by Ransik near the end of the pilot, and upon his death we are treated to his hand falling and hitting the ground from two different angles as dramatic music swells.
• Deadly Sparring: In "Movie Madness, Part 1", the Rangers visit a movie set for an action film starring Frankie Chang, Jen's favorite action star. When one of the stunt doubles is injured, Wes decides to take his place. Everything seems harmless enough until Wes realizes that the sword Frankie is using is very real and the actor is very much trying to kill him. As it turns out, the entire movie set is a trap for the Rangers; the director is the Monster of the Week, and the cast and crew are revealed to be Cyclo-Bots in disguise.
• Debate and Switch: Certain questions about the Fantastic Racism lose a lot of steam when the mutants are, for the most part, Always Chaotic Evil. Granted, most of them are recruited straight from a prison specifically designed to hold super-powered mutants, so we're not in much position to see any nonviolent civilian mutants.
  • Subverted in the episode where a very peaceful mutant was placed in cryogenic stasis for petty theft.
  • Double Subverted when a mutant is allowed to work for Time Force and betrays them of his own free will.
  • Considering Trip, an alien is a Time Force officer, and other aliens were shown to be employed there, it seems Time Force is very tolerant of non humans and law abiding mutants.
• Designer Babies: Every human from the future is one, with Katie having the most prominent improvements. The Mutants are failures of the genetic engineering process, or, alternatively, the result of natural births in an environmentally-wrecked future, while the genetic-screening/modification program was formed to prevent this.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Mr. Collins does this to Ransik when he stands in his way as he's trying to leave with a batch of anti-Venomark serum and boasts that he would've thrown away the serum himself if he knew that the serum would help Ransik.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Katie is normally quite careful, but on occasion her bubbly personality makes for some painful hugs.
• Driving Test Smashers: Lucas in "A Blue Streak" takes a driving test and finds difficulty in fulfilling his duties as a Ranger at the same time.
• Emmy Bait: Jen's "I am taking you in!" speech to Ransik in the finale.
  • As well as Ransik's My God, What Have I Done? moment and "I'm ready to pay for what I've done." It's probably the best performance Vernon Wells has ever turned in.
  • Many fans point to The Reveal in the second part of "Force From the Future" where Wes takes his helmet off, showing his face for the first time, and a teary-eyed Jen is stunned silent as the prime demonstration of the superior acting in this season.
  • Jen's crying and desperate attempt to tell Wes that she loves him, just before the Rangers are sucked back through time, in The End Of Time, or when she actually tells him - just before she has to leave him for the future.
• Everyone Can See It: Jen and Wes's attraction to one another is very obvious to others, to the point of annoying Lucas in Undercover Rangers.
• Evil Versus Evil: Frax launches a rebellion against Ransik later on in the series. He releases Venomark, the mutant responsible for infecting Ransik with his venom.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Frax's death in the finale of "The End of Time" was a Dies Wide Open involving a scream and parts of his robotic face falling apart. This after his having been reprogrammed into a mindless automaton by Ransik. Remember, this is Power Rangers we're talking about here.
• Fanservice:
  • Eric in a loincloth, DAMN.
  • For the men, Jen's miniskirt, and a training scene in "Jen's Revenge" where she works out her frustration wearing jogging pants and an athletic top.
  • Trip also looked pretty damn sexy working out in "Uniquely Trip", if you're into skinnier guys.
• Fantastic Racism: In the future most humans look down on mutants, genetically inferior beings that are the trash and leftovers of the Designer Babies program. This is not aided by the fact that the most prominent mutants in the series are anarchist terrorists, although how much of that is caused by growing up in a society that hates them, and how much is the cause of society hating them is very, very debatable.
  • And it's worth noting that the one time this is actually brought up with Notacon, who was frozen for petty theft, the main five Rangers don't show any of this towards him. Instead, it's Eric, who's from the present, who displays this.
• Fate Worse than Death: The frozen mutants are still conscious and some have life sentences.
  • Implied to have been changed in the Power Rangers Wild Force crossover episode "Reinforcements From The Future", as Ransik is in a standard prison cell when the Rangers visit him to seek out his help.
• Femme Fatalons: Nadira
• Five Rounds Rapid: The Silver Guardians.
• Flashed-Badge Hijack: In the premiere.
• The Future: The Time Rangers and the villains all come from the year 3000.
• Gender Flip: Aside from Katie's and as a result of it, Mitch. In Timeranger, his counterpart is female photographer Honami Mirayama, the Love Interest of Katie's counterpart Domon.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: The show was rated TV-Y7/G, so no cursing was allowed. In the original version of the finale The End of Time, we hear the Cyclobots talk for the first time. It sounds like nonsense robot talk...until you run it backwards. They say, "You are the size of a fucking condo."^note "Odnoc gnikcuf a fo ezis eht era uoy." to Ransik and "You bitch, that's too much money."^note "Yenom hcum oot staht, hctib uoy." Disney took notice and in later airings, that backmasked speech was recorded with "You, sir, are the size of a condo."^note "Odnoc a fo edis eht era, ris, uoy." and "That's too much money."^note "Yenom hcum oot staht."
• Government Agency of Fiction / Heroes "R" Us: The Time Force Police.
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: In "Uniquely Trip", Jen performs a move which involves her running up a wall, backflipping off it and landing with a kick on her opponent. Trip tries to duplicate the same move in a later fight but fails to stick the landing.
• Gut Punch: The series starts with one as the Red Ranger, usually considered the best of all the rangers is apparently killed in battle.
• He Didn't Make It: Alex about Wes in the second part of the finale.
• Head Bob: Justified in this clip. Here, it's made clear that it's the chin of the person inside the suit that pushes down on the helmet as he/she speaks, giving off the illusion of a Head Bob.
• Heartbroken Badass: Jen feels some grief over Alex's apparent death.
• Hero Secret Service: The Silver Guardians under Eric (and later Wes).
• Hot in Human Form: In "Lovestruck Rangers", the mutant criminal Contemptra takes on the form of a beautiful girl named Angelique to place the male Rangers under a love spell. After her defeat, Wes openly admits that she was a "babe" in human form.
• Human Popsicle: The imprisoned mutants are frozen alive.
• Humans Are Bastards: According to Ransik, although he's really in no position to judge.
• I Broke a Nail: A combat-oriented version is seen in "Something to Fight For", when the Pink Ranger slashes off one of Nadira's Femme Fatalons to save Wes' bacon.
• Identical Grandson: This is what Alex seems to be to Wes at first. Word of God says Alex is a descendant, but not necessarily a direct one. Word of God (the writer) added that she hates time travel logic.
• Identical Stranger: A bizarre meta example. Normally when Sentai is converted to Power Rangers, this necessitates filming a new morphing sequence for the American actors, however, the producers did not do this for Eric the Quantum Ranger's first morph because, by sheer chance, he was almost identical to the actor who played the equivalent character in the Sentai series, and so the Sentai morphing sequence was used with none being the wiser.
• Immune to Bullets: Silver Guardians vs. Monster of the Week
• Ineffectual Loner: Eric and Alex
• Ironic Echo: The two morphing calls. Usually they mean two different types of Ranger against a small force but in the finale they mean two rangers against a million.
• Irony: Early on in the series, Nadira lured Trip into a trap by claiming she wanted to turn good. In the finale, it was partially thanks to Trip that Nadira started a real Heel–Face Turn.
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Trip, who attempts to look cooler by imitating the other Rangers in "Uniquely Trip".
• I Surrender, Suckers: Fatcatfish in "Jen's Revenge."
• Justified Criminal: Played with, in that Fantastic Racism drove the mutants to crime, but with the exception of Notacon they tend to go above and beyond what's necessary.
  • Fantastic Racism drove a few mutants to crime, but most of them just seem to enjoy their villainy and don't care about justification, much less try to give one.
    • Really its doubtful that Fantastic Racism even plays a role since at least two different mutants where shown having equal rights as human, one mutant was even Jen's ex-partner and betrayed Time Force on his own accord.
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Justified in that the mutants were tried and convicted already in the year 3000.
  • Although mutants are apparently judged in a Kangaroo Court, with at least one of the prisoners guilty of no greater crime than (essentially) being a mutant.
  • The CryoPrison has no human inmates whatsoever, so despite the fact that there have to be humans in the year 3000 that commit equal crimes to those of mutants they apparently receive different (and presumably less harsh) sentencing.
    • It could be there were no non-mutant prisoners because mutants are considered more dangerous (with good reason) and held in facilities with tighter security, or because Ransik just didn't take any non-mutant prisoners during his breakout.
• Last-Second Term of Respect: Katie does this with Alex after he commandeers his former team leader rank (and morpher) from Wes, but his attempt to command the team and stop Frax's Giant Mecha robot fails.
  Alex: TRUST ME! With the kind of performance you gave out there today, we don't have a chance against Dragontron! Do you realize what could happen? Do you care about the future? Have you forgotten about it completely?!
  Katie: [exasperated] We haven't forgotten...!
  [Alex shoots Katie a Death Glare]
  Katie: [realizing she's spoken out-of-turn] ...Sir.
• Last Stand: The finale has Wes versus several hundred Cyclobots. Fortunately, the others manage to come back and save him.
• Last Villain Stand: After his Mecha-Mooks have been taken down, Nadira has abandoned him, Gluto has pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here, and Frax has been destroyed, Ransik pulls this trope and inverted it since he managed to defeat the rangers one by one. He only surrendered when he hurt Nadira.
• Law Enforcement, Inc.: The Silver Guardians are a rare heroic version, by Wild Force they appear to have taken over all policing duties within Silver Hills.
• Lighter and Softer: Yes, Somehow. Despite being one of the darkest season of Power rangers until RPM, It's still not as dark as Timerangers. At least Alex is not the Big Bad and him, Mr Collins and Eric, the Quantum Ranger are Spared By Adaptation and are all nicer than their sentai counterpart. Ransik also makes a Heel–Face Turn and Wes is able to visits and talks with the others Time Force rangers as we can see with the crossover with Wild Force
• Limited Wardrobe: Continuing the trend from the previous two series, the Time Force Rangers, aside from their uniforms, that they only wear for a few episodes, each have 1 civilian outfit. Somewhat justified since they are from the future and just had to wear whatever Wes could find for them, less justified that Wes also basically had one outfit (special occasions like business meetings with his dad aside) despite being from the present and rich.
  • Funnily enough, Eric's the one who's seen in different outfits when not in uniform.
• Love Triangle: Jen is torn between Alex and Wes. It's very complicated due to their similar physical appearance among many other factors. And it's one of main themes of the show.
  • Two-Person Love Triangle: Averted; Alex and Wes seem identical but are very different people and Jen knows this fact.
• Maternally Challenged: Nadira in the finale.
• Meaningful Name: Someone depicted as the resident Klutz in his own focus ep is named Trip...
  • There's also the mutant "Notacon," who was only imprisoned because of having to steal to survive because he's a mutant and is otherwise pacifistic - he's "not a con."
• Meanwhile, in the Future…
• Mind-Reformat Death: It's strongly implied that Dr. Ferricks/Frax met his end this way. When he's captured by Ransik for his separate mecha, Frax, while verbally hostile at first, desperately convinces Nadira to not give-in to hate and break the chain caused by Ransik, as he's carried off to be experimented on. Later, Nadira enters the laboratory he's being held in, but when she tries to continue their conversation, "he" only responds with a robotic error message, and all trace of Dr. Ferricks'/Frax's essence seems to have been erased forever.
• Monumental Theft: Ransik didn't just stage a prison breakout, he stole the whole prison!
• Mook Depletion: Before the final three-parter began, Ransik discovered that he was out of mutant prisoners. Even the X Vault was emptied. However, Ransik soon managed to find Frax and the new robot he was building, the Doomtron, which Ransik would use for his final attack on the city.
• Morality Pet: As bad as he can be Ransik genuinely loves Nadira, also Eric keeps pet birds and makes friends with a little girl at the trailer park he lives in, even Frax has his robots.
• Multiform Balance: Time Force Megazord has a close combat oriented Mode Red and an agile ranged Mode Blue.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Ransik has this reaction when he nearly kills Nadira in the final battle. This leads to his Heel–Face Turn.
• Mythology Gag: Wes' Battlizer's finishing move is identical to the Lightspeed Megazord's.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • In Timeranger, the future rangers are Only One Name characters. The show give them surnames.
  • Inverted with Mr. Collins and Mitch, whose counterparts are Wataru Asami and Honami Moriyama.
• Never Say "Die": In full effect. Ransik mistakes Wes for Alex and vows he'll "destroy" him again.
  • But, Jen does declare "I won't let his death be in vain," when thinking about Alex in the episode "Jen's Revenge."
  • Alex also proclaims that Wes's father will "die", when he explains to Wes why he needs to take over his father's company in "Fight Against Fate".
• Never Trust a Trailer: The first trailer for the season that was featured in the VHS tape for Digimon: The Movie seemed to be made for a very different show entirely.
  • Most of the footage shown is from Mirai Sentai Timeranger, the Sentai series Time Force was based on, with no mention or scene of Ransik who was the actual Big Bad of Time Force.
  • The trailer states that "five special Rangers" are sent back in time to capture an escaped criminal mastermind. In the show, the original Red Ranger Alex is supposedly killed in action and the other four Rangers - who were fired for failing to stop Ransik's escape in the first place - steal the morphers and hijack a ship to travel to the past after Ransik. In doing so, they meet and recruit a new Red Ranger who is Alex's ancestor.
  • The trailer's claim that the Rangers' time machine had never been tested would be contradicted by the three episode arc revolving around the Quantum Ranger.
  • Speaking of the Quantum Ranger, the trailer suggests his identity will be an ongoing mystery in the show. It wasn't. The Quantum Ranger debuts an episode before he gets his powers and his identity is only a mystery for about five seconds to the four Time Force Rangers before Wes tells them who he is.
  • The trailer teases a show in which the Rangers will be hopping from one era to another in pursuit of bad guys. The actual show had about seven episodes out of forty where time travel occurred.
• Nice Guy: Wes is very friendly and the reason he wanted to be the Red Ranger in the first place was out of a desire to help the other Time Rangers. Trip is also a very kind and trusting person. Sometimes this can be an issue the villains take advantage of ("Short-Circuited") but other times it can help a great deal like in "Trip Takes A Stand" and "The End of Time" part which kicks of Nadira's Heel–Face Turn.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In truth, Frax would've been rid of Ransik after destroying his supply of serum if he hadn't released Venomark and thus created a need for more serum to be manufactured, which Ransik then stole.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Trip is a time-traveling alien being with psychic powers. And he's a cop.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The team goes to see a filming of a "Frankie Chang" movie in "Movie Madness", which is a Shout-Out to Rumble In The Bronx.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ransik takes on the entire team during the finale and beats the tar out of them all. It makes you wonder why he bothered using monsters of the week, especially considering they were using weapons they didn't even have at the start of the season and he still won.
  • There are two possible stipulations: The Rangers were already exhausted from the previous fight, and Ransik's infection that was slowly killing him keeps him at a weaker level; by the end he's "cured" and nothing is holding him back. In "Lovestruck Rangers", Ransik got himself in a position to fight the girl Rangers without interference from the boys. The infection prevented him from defeating them and the girls destroyed the vial of medicine he brought with him, forcing him to flee.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: You would think we'd get a kiss between Wes & Jen in the finale, but nope, standard embrace.
  • Although the trade-off is that to this day, they're still the only two Rangers to say "I love you" to each other.
• Official Couple: Alex/Jen in the premiere, Wes/Jen by the finale.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Black Knight. He comes out of nowhere, and has no connection to Ransik and his gang, or to the series' theme.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Wes in "Ransik Lives" when he was dressed as a wall painter. Never mind the fact that he and Jen were doing one of their odd jobs, but when the Cyclobots came marching in, he tries to pass himself off as just an "ordinary painter".
  Wes: Never mind me, I'm just an average, ordinary painter. Yup. Looove to paint.
  (Cyclobots keep going until one of them spots the morpher, and they all attack)
• Please Dump Me: Lucas, because Nadira's dad is the Big-freakin-Bad!
• Pregnant Hostage: In the finale.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Sometimes when the finishing blow was landed by the Megazord on a giant-sized monster, time would freeze for a moment just before they detonated, allowing one of the Rangers to deliver the following line:
  Ranger: Your time's up!
  KABOOM
• Psychic Powers: Trip, who is somewhat clairvoyant and telepathic.
• Punny Name: Notacon, Not-a-con. A gentle mutant who only stole some food because he couldn't get it normally due to Fantastic Racism
• Quack Doctor: The Monster of the Week Medicon is a medical-themed mutant prisoner who is derided by Frax as being a quack.
• Quickly-Demoted Leader: Averted; Jen holds on to leadership despite not being the Red Ranger. Somewhat subverted as well since Jen and Wes, who was the Red Ranger, worked on more equal footing as the season progressed, and all of the rangers agreed Wes made a better Red Ranger than Alex.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Wes is on the receiving end of two of these:
  • The first is from Jen in "Something To Fight For", when she rejects his overtures to join the team by chastising him for his Sheltered Aristocrat upbringing and saying that he wouldn't know what to do if he had to fight for something other than himself. That's not the real reason.
  • The second is from Eric in "The End of Time, Part 2", when he mocks Wes for thinking they could ever be friends and finally lets out his bitterness towards Wes for all the advantages he had growing up "with everything handed to him on a silver platter" while Eric had to work extra hard to get to where he was. Wes counters this one with a Dare to Be Badass speech of his own.
• Recap Episode: "A Calm Before the Storm" is the last episode before the three-part Grand Finale and mainly consists of a Clip Show recapping the major events of the series thus far.
• Red Shirt Army: The Silver Guardians. Except no one actually dies.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: After abandoning Ransik following destroying his entire supply of serum, Frax had been under the impression that Ransik had been destroyed by his next venom attack, unaware that Ransik had gotten a new supply of serum from Bio-Lab. As such, he was completely taken by surprise when Ransik stormed his hideout in the finale.
• Reverse Polarity: Blurted out by Trip in the episode "Reflections of Evil".
• Rings of Activation:
  • When Wes puts on the Red Chrono Morpher for the first time, a red ring of light materializes and passes down his person as it scans and accepts his DNA imprint.
  • Eric's morphing sequence has a beam of yellow rings surround him before his Ranger suit materializes around him.
• Robot Buddy: Circuit. Dr. Ferriks originally designed the Cyclobots to be these for human and mutant alike, before Ransik repaid his kindness with treachery and made them into his shock troops.
• Rollerblade Good: On Eric's Mega Battle armor.
• Rubber-Forehead Alien: Trip, who has a crystal in his forehead and green hair
• San Dimas Time: One concern expressed by the group is how the future could be different from the future they originated from if they don't stop Ransik and his minions fast enough.
• Sarcastic Clapping: Eric, in his debut as the Quantum Ranger.
• Scooby Stack: Trip, Katie, and Lucas attempt this once while eavesdropping on Wes and Jen near the end of "Jen's Revenge". It didn't work so well.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: While not applying to the main villains, the individual monsters fit this trope, being mutant prisoners shrunk, cryogenically frozen, and sealed inside small containers. They also return that way when defeated.
• Second Love: Wes is a love interest towards Jen after Alex's supposed death.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Wes starts as a wealthy citizen oblivious of the world around him.
• Shirtless Scene: Eric in a Tarzan style film in the "Movie Madness" two parter.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the main leitmotifs sounds amazingly like the main theme of Back to the Future.
  • Trip's planet, Xybria, is a reference to Saban's cartoon Xyber 9: New Dawn.
  • Wes and Eric escape the clock tower swinging out on a rope as the building explodes behind them, an obvious homage to Die Hard.
  • When Jen was caught in a Wuxia movie, she had a qipao and Odango Hair. Sounds like stock Chinese stuff, but then she gets into a one-on-one fight. Who else do we know that's famous for fighting with that appearance?
  • In "The Quantum Quest" a group of archaeologists are at a dig site, where they find The Q-Rex. The head honcho at the dig site is named Dr. Hammond.
• The Show Goes Hollywood: The two-part "Movie Madness", which features the rangers being trapped in a movie universe.
• Silly Walk: The Cyclobots travel everywhere doing a weird kind of trotting jog, rhythmically throwing their arms up in the air.
• Speed Demon:
  • Lucas the Blue Ranger loves three things above all else: his looks, beautiful women and fast cars. He was a race car driver in the year 3000 and still has a need for speed.
  • The Monster of the Week in "The Last Race" is Dash, a Friendly Rival of Lucas who was a dark take on this trope, being obsessed with racing to the point of total recklessness and disregard for people's lives. Lucas is able to show him the error of his ways and promises to race him again some time in the future.
• The Starscream: Frax tries to overthrow Ransik, though he's a particularly sympathetic example because it's Ransik's fault he became a robot in the first place.
• Super-Strength: Katie.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Lucas discovers that his 31st century driver's license isn't valid in the 21st Century.
  • Ransik seriously injuring Jen in the season finale causes her to walk with an injured leg.
  • While the Rangers do tend to survive things that are more likely to kill them in real life, there are times when they are taken out of commission due to heavy injuries. A good example would be Eric getting injured and needing to be hospitalized when he takes a blast from a Cyclobot while unmorphed. The Cyclobots might be pushovers for the Rangers but laser fire is still laser fire.
  • The penultimate episode has Ransik attack the Clock Tower with a massive army of Cyclobots which overwhelm Wes and Eric. The two are forced to blow up the Clock Tower in order to escape.
• T. Rexpy: Eric's Quantasaurus Rex zord ("Q-Rex" for short). And he and Wes run into the real thing when they go to prehistory to get it.
• Taking the Bullet: Eric, in the finale, though he lives.
• Technology Levels: Advances in technology resulted in the creation of perfect DNA, and mutants as a side product, as well as time travel devices and futuristic weapons. The point of that is that besides the crossover with Lightspeed Rescue and the season's Battlizer, everything in the series was explainable this way, rather than needing a 'magical' explanation. Of all incarnations of Power Rangers, this series is the only one where that's the case.
• Terminator Twosome: More like Terminator Two-teams, but it's the same idea.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Surprisingly standard policy at Time Force is to capture and not kill the mutants, as demonstrated in "Jen's Revenge" where the rangers are insistent that Jen incapacitates the monster rather than destroy it.
• Time Police: The Time Rangers qualify, since the series' goal is chasing after criminals from their time and following them to a thousand years in the past.
• Time-Travel Romance: Between Jen (from the year 3000) and Wes (from 2001). The show's Bittersweet Ending have them not ending up together, but the Crossover the following season implies that they finally do.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The series never really establishes the exact nature of how time is shifting, including how Alex is alive and helping them from the future after being killed in the pilot. There are a lot of statements that the timeline was changing with technology showing up that shouldn't have existed in 2001 but nothing appears to be different in 3000.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Averted. Both female Rangers are tomboyish.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The Reveal in "Frax's Fury" that Frax used to be Doctor Ferris would've come as a big surprise if the previous episode's Next Time On promo didn't give it away.
• Trapped in the Past: The basic premise of the show is four Time Police officers from a thousand years into the future stuck in the present trying to catch the villains.
• Trash the Set: Ransik's assault on the Clock Tower.
• Tron Lines: Embedded in the Rangers' helmets, they're typically seen when downloading info or when they use the Vortex Blaster. However, they're not solid energy like usual, as you can see circutry patterns within the lines.
• Universal Driver's License: Lucas has no problems driving 21st century cars, but got in trouble because his 31st century license isn't valid yet.
• The Unmasking: Wes to his dad in "Worlds Apart".
• Unobtainium: Trixerium crystals.
• Vicious Cycle: Humans treatment of mutants, humans and mutants treatment of robots, and Frax's treatment of humans and mutants. Stated explicitly by Frax.
• Was Once a Man: The tragic case of Frax. He was once human, but was forced to rebuild himself as a robotic being after Ransik fatally injured him.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Being rebuilt as a cybernetic being after a near-fatal accident is revealed to be the origin of Frax, though it was more like "I Can Rebuild Myself".
• Wealthy Yacht Owner: During a flashback from when Wes and Eric were Prep School students, a rich kid invited Wes to a yacht party. Wes declined because Eric wasn't invited.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Wes wants his father's respect.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The mutant population in general, most memorably touched upon in episode 19, "Trip Takes A Stand".
• What Year Is This?: The mutants in the premiere.
• Whateversaurus: The Quantasaurus Rex.
• Trapped In Movie Land
• You Can't Fight Fate: Wes was originally groomed to become a part of Bio-Lab - something he long since fought against, much to Mr. Collins' chagrin. In the storyline where Mr. Collins is dying, Alex explicitly says it is Wes' destiny to replace him at Bio-Lab. When Mr. Collins is saved (by Alex's intervention), much is made of the idea that Wes' destiny has effectively been changed. However, there is nothing to say that Wes won't one day takeover as head of Bio-Lab - just that the circumstances would be different. The fact that Wes becomes co-leader of Bio-Lab's Silver Guardians suggests his destiny hasn't changed at all. Arguably, Alex's actions (which made it possible for father and son to formally reconcile) inadvertently made it possible.
  • Possible, though as head of the Silver Guardians, it's quite possible that he would give up his position as head of Biolab, opting instead to stay as team leader under a new head. On the other hand, given that he'd want to protect the guardians from improper use, perhaps circumstances would force him to take over anyways. It's very much left up in the air, but the Character Development is that all of this happening under his own rules and not just because his father said so. Not to mention, under Wes, Bio-Labs would be less of a business built solely for its own profit and more of a philanthropic organization placed under the umbrella of the greater Ranger network, so its destiny did change somewhat.

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