Like Power Rangers and Beetleborgs, VR Troopers contains footage from a Japanese TV series, in this case three of them: Superhuman Machine Metalder, Dimensional Warrior Spielban and Space Sheriff Shaider. Between dubbing over the voices while the characters are in-costume and re-filming the non-costumed scenes, Saban was able to create new characters and storylines for the American audience. VR Troopers was actually their first attempt after Power Rangers to do this, and while it isn't quite on the same level as Power Rangers, it is markedly better than Beetleborgs.
VR Troopers: Season One, Volume One covers the first 27 episodes of the series. In it, Ryan Steele (Brad Hawkins) and his two friends, J.B. (Michael Bacon) and Kaitlin (Sarah Brown) are summoned to a strange laboratory in the middle of the nearby desert by a man claiming to be a friend of Ryan's long lost dad. As it turns out, Ryan's father's friend, Professor Hart (Julian Combs), is locked in the virtual world and he asks Ryan and the other two to become VR Troopers in order to stop the evil virtual leader Grimlord from breaking through the dimensional barrier and taking over the real world.
Given the power to not only turn into the three-man fighting team, but also go into the virtual world themselves, Ryan, J.B. and Kaitlin spend each episode taking on one of Grimlord's seemingly endless supply of evil mutants, robots and all around bad guys.
The show's supporting characters include Tao, the trio's sensei; Jeb, their talking dog; Woody, Kaitlin's boss and editor at the local newspaper; and Percy, the mayor's son who also works with Kaitlin. The only other recurring character, besides some of Grimlord's henchmen, is Grimlord's secret identity. The evil mastermind spends his time in the real world as the head of Ziktor Industries and spends most of his time plotting new ways to take over land, destroy the environment and do generally bad deeds all around. There are a few times Ziktor directly interacts with the Troopers. Of course, he knows their secret identity, but they don't know his, so they don't quite realize just how nefarious their enemy really is.
Each episode is book-ended with Ryan remembering some time he spent with his father and the fact that some lesson the older Steele taught him as a kid comes in handy in his day-to-day fight against Grimlord and search for his father. While this adds a nice message to each episode, it also feels like the creators just didn't have enough footage, so they spend a few days having young Ryan and his father practicing karate and then filmed a lot of the older Ryan leaning against his motorcycle looking stoically into the distance.
While the fighting sequences have their own flair of over-exaggerated motions and re-used video clips, that is sort of expected with this kind of show. The scenes that were re-filmed for this show aren't quite as painful to watch as Big Bad Beetleborgs, but there is still a noticeable amount of overacting that really throws off the overall feel of the show. I will say that I found the outfits and hairstyles to be very 90's, something I haven't noticed while re-watching the original Power Rangers episodes. In the end, VR Troopers fits nicely into Saban's teenage superhero series and fans who enjoyed their various attempts at recapturing the Power Rangers' success will find this show far better than most others of its kind, but that doesn't say a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Basically, VR Troopers is best for those wanting to dwell in that 90's nostalgia feeling.
