VR Troopers: Season One, Vol.1 DVD Review

By Jason Nimer

Shout! Factory, the DVD company behind a lot of the television reissues I've been reviewing lately, has truly stepped up their game in two ways: One good and one bad. On the positive side, the releases coming from this ahem factory (sorry) have been getting better and better from an A/V standpoint, and VR Troopers Season One Volume One is no exception. On the negative side, why is this increasingly impressive company wasting time on some of the lamest shows ever to be cobbled together? Though not as out-and-out nauseating as the recently reviewed Big Bad Beetleborgs DVD debut, VR Troopers is a waste of Shout! remastering talent, and even more vexing when one considers how many actually decent shows are still unseen on the DVD landscape. Taz-Mania, anyone? How about Dino-Riders? The Wuzzles? Ok, that last one is Disney's fault, but you see where I'm going with this.

Ok, like the successful Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, VR Troopers is an American live action show pieced together from old Japanese action shows and newly-shot American footage to round out the story. This one features three teens, Ryan, Kaitlyn and J.B., all hip young go-getters with various typical teen interests, i.e. karate, computers, photography, etc. Ryan, the center of the show, is on the hunt for his long lost father when he and his three friends stumble upon a laboratory populated by none other than the large disembodied head of one of Ryan's dad's colleagues. The head explains Ryan's father's involvement in 'virtual reality' (remember when that was big?) research and another dimension populated by all manner of goofy monsters. The ruler of the other dimension, Grimlord, is also a presence in the teens' world as some kind of billionaire overlord akin to C. Montgomery Burns, but that isn't all that important. Anyway, the teens eventually become the VR Troopers, battling monsters in both dimensions in predictable, one-shot episodes.

Mercifully, VR Troopers isn't as totally asinine as sister-show Big Bad Beetleborgs, but that doesn't mean it is the height of good television, either. Just when you think this program can sidestep the pitfall of annoying, supposedly 'funny' sidekicks ' bam! we get Ryan's talking dog, Jeb. The Power Rangers had a developmentally disabled robot in Alpha 5, the Beetleborgs had Flabber, a ghost who desperately needed a life-ending encounter with Jake Busey's Johnny Charles Bartlett from The Frighteners, and now the VR Troopers have Jeb. Sigh.

As is the case with all these DVD sets, VR Troopers is split down the middle of its first season, becoming the Volume One you see in the article's title. Volume Two is probably just around the corner, but after 27 episodes of this barely passable nonsense I'm not sure you, I, or anyone else will be willing to sign up. Still, as far as splitting seasons goes, 27 episodes in one set isn't all that bad. It is much worse when consumers only get 10-12 episodes at a time from 24-26 episode seasons. And, as I previously mentioned, Shout! Factory's treatment of this show is far better than it deserves, with audio and visuals pumped up far larger than they ever were on Fox's Saturday morning lineup.

VR Troopers falls somewhere in the middle of the Power Ranger-knockoff scale. It isn't a great show, but it outclasses the Beetleborgs and even the live-action Ninja Turtles series easily. It doesn't quite hold the nostalgia card that makes overlooking Power Rangers' flaws so easy, but it isn't the worst show ever, either. I can't really recommend this set to anyone except those who are intensely interested in Shout! Factory's growth as a company or who are simply gluttons for punishment.

Final Rating: