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Well, for now it looks like there will be no more new Power Rangers shows in America...they're remastering Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for HD and issuing new toys to go along with it instead of adapting the series that followed Go-onger.
So, looking back, as someone who was probably slightly older than the target audience even when MMPR started, I have to say that there's a fairly consistent thread connecting the Power Rangers arcs that I liked: it was those where being a Ranger was their main job, no secret identities of McJobs or pretending to be normal high school students. Where the Rangers were cast as adults, not teens. Where, if they did something on the side it was because it was a career they loved (i.e. Blue Overdrive Ranger's desire to be an actor), not just something they did because they needed the money or a cover story. This definitely ties into my disdain for the "Poverty Plot", but I think it's also a case of preferring things to be slightly more subtle than a bat to the head. Being a Power Ranger, regardless of the generation, is Damned Cool, if dangerous. Why should the powered-down life be crappy for contrast? There's enough contrast between being a Danica Patrick pastiche and being a Power Ranger (Yellow Overdrive), you don't need to be a picked-on high school student to make Rangering a hell of a step up.
Of course, there's plenty of room on the spectrum between MMPR at one end and SPD at the other. For instance, Jungle Fury's McJob was mostly a cover and a way for the Rangers to continue learning discipline during downtime. They never had to worry about getting in trouble for ditching work, because the boss was their "Zordon" figure. On the other hand, the Time Force Rangers had Rangering as their career, but they had to take McJobs for the money because their agency couldn't support them financially in the 20th Century (I forget if they had a decent explanation for not sending gold through, maybe they didn't want to time-loop any more than they had to). So, despite first impressions, Jungle Fury was closer to my ideal than Time Force, since while they still had to work at the pizza place to earn money, it was never a significant plot complication in the way that "Okay, we're homeless timetravelers" was.
Anyway, for this and a few other reasons (including Kat Manx and Morgana, rowr), Power Rangers SPD is my favorite of the American adaptations. Unless it spectacularly falls apart in the endgame, RPM will probably take the #2 spot away from Operation Overdrive. I didn't watch much of the middle chunk (Lost Galaxy, In Space, etc), so there might be a few series in there I'd put in my top five as well, but at this point it's mostly the more recent ones (which I've watched more recently, natch, and watched more of) that occupy the rest of the list. Even the most Poverty Plotty of them (Mystic Force) wasn't that bad.
So, looking back, as someone who was probably slightly older than the target audience even when MMPR started, I have to say that there's a fairly consistent thread connecting the Power Rangers arcs that I liked: it was those where being a Ranger was their main job, no secret identities of McJobs or pretending to be normal high school students. Where the Rangers were cast as adults, not teens. Where, if they did something on the side it was because it was a career they loved (i.e. Blue Overdrive Ranger's desire to be an actor), not just something they did because they needed the money or a cover story. This definitely ties into my disdain for the "Poverty Plot", but I think it's also a case of preferring things to be slightly more subtle than a bat to the head. Being a Power Ranger, regardless of the generation, is Damned Cool, if dangerous. Why should the powered-down life be crappy for contrast? There's enough contrast between being a Danica Patrick pastiche and being a Power Ranger (Yellow Overdrive), you don't need to be a picked-on high school student to make Rangering a hell of a step up.
Of course, there's plenty of room on the spectrum between MMPR at one end and SPD at the other. For instance, Jungle Fury's McJob was mostly a cover and a way for the Rangers to continue learning discipline during downtime. They never had to worry about getting in trouble for ditching work, because the boss was their "Zordon" figure. On the other hand, the Time Force Rangers had Rangering as their career, but they had to take McJobs for the money because their agency couldn't support them financially in the 20th Century (I forget if they had a decent explanation for not sending gold through, maybe they didn't want to time-loop any more than they had to). So, despite first impressions, Jungle Fury was closer to my ideal than Time Force, since while they still had to work at the pizza place to earn money, it was never a significant plot complication in the way that "Okay, we're homeless timetravelers" was.
Anyway, for this and a few other reasons (including Kat Manx and Morgana, rowr), Power Rangers SPD is my favorite of the American adaptations. Unless it spectacularly falls apart in the endgame, RPM will probably take the #2 spot away from Operation Overdrive. I didn't watch much of the middle chunk (Lost Galaxy, In Space, etc), so there might be a few series in there I'd put in my top five as well, but at this point it's mostly the more recent ones (which I've watched more recently, natch, and watched more of) that occupy the rest of the list. Even the most Poverty Plotty of them (Mystic Force) wasn't that bad.
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You might have liked Lightspeed Rescue. It was sort of SPD meets Thunderbirds, where the team members each had their own careers (one was a stunt pilot, another a extreme sports star) and were drafted by LsR when needed. Plus, Monica Louwerens in a lab coat and glasses. Rowr, indeed.
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Also, "In Space" had the TMNT: TNM cross-over and the less said about that, the better.
"Lost Galaxy" was also strange. Most of the rangers were staff aboard the colony ship, with some of them being ("Starship Troopers"-movie inspired) soldiers yet being Power Rangers was something that they did in addition to that (and may have been secret from what I remember).