Power Rangers SPD (Toon Disney)

The Power Rangers -- familiar from previous series, a movie, and too many action figures to count -- are back in POWER RANGERS SPD. In the year 2020, five fully trained Rangers clad in their signature colors -- red (Brandon Jay McLaron), blue (Chris Violette), green (Matt Austin), yellow (Monica May), pink (Alycia Purrot) -- form a futuristic police patrol to battle monsters, robots, and aliens; save the planet; and keep the peace. The villains du jour are the alien Emperor Grumm (Rene Naufahu) and his ally, a spoiled and spooky little girl named Mora (Olivia James-Baird) who can create monsters out of her imagination. They hatch evil schemes to take over Earth, which the Rangers heroically foil.

The dialogue, costumes, and sets are so campy they make the original Star Trek look sophisticated. The show takes itself so seriously that it's funny, although kids young enough to find it entertaining will probably miss the unintentional humor. Little attention is paid to character development or interaction; instead, the show glories in extended fight scenes, combining martial arts combat with sci-fi shoot-'em-ups.

The series plays into kids' fantasies of empowerment, and some viewers may revel in the excitement of one fight scene after another. Still, the fighting is all the show really has to offer. The characters seem to exist only to do battle and have little to occupy themselves with when they're not clobbering the bad guys. Viewers young enough to find the simplistic plots entertaining may still be young enough to blur the line between real and fantasy violence, which makes this show problematic.