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Cyborg Rangers — Description
This episode begins with a monster who has his own catchphrase, "Lightning strikes away!"
The Rangers are nearly defeated, but are saved by- more Rangers?! They look just like the Lightspeed Rangers, but with black gloves and boots, antennae, and little electronic looking boxes on their chests. The monster retreats, and the rangers go over to thank these newcomers. They don't respond, just robotically march over to a man who explains that these are the Cyborg Rangers. Odd, "cyborg" refers to "cybernetic organism", do these Cyborg Rangers contain any organic properties? Or is that a code name? Most likely they just thought it sounded cool, like SPD would years later.
At the Aquabase, Captain Mitchell receives a visit from General McKnight. There is alot about him I want to talk about, so I'll wait until the end.
General McKnight is adorned with medals and honors, and if this series takes place in 2000, that would nean he's probably a veteran of quite a few wars. It makes sense an experienced soldier would be involved in a fight against enemy forces, even demons. I'm actually surprised Power Rangers doesn't include any military elements in more of it's seasons. The closest I can recall is RPM.
General McKnight wants to replace the Lightspeed Rangers with his Cyborg Rangers. General McKnight has seniority, and orders Captain Mitchell to let the Cyborgs take over as the new Lightspeed Rescue Rangers. The Rangers solemnly turn in their Morphers.
We get to see what the demons are up to, being frustrated at Impus's crying. Then back to the Aquabase. I guess they just wanted to remind us of the villains.
General McKnight brags to Dr. Fairweather about the superiority of the Cyborg Rangers, to which she responds they don't have heart. She actually has a valid point, a few episodes ago in Trial by Fire, Mitchell noticed details Carter missed. If one of them were a Cyborg Ranger, what would they have done? Would it have followed Mitchell's order? Would a Cyborg Ranger in Mitchell's place have noticed fire spreading to flammable canisters? Would they have considered this to be a big enough threat to take priority? It's all intresting to speculate.
The monster from earlier is attacking again, and the Cyborg Rangers are sent in. Their controller is threatened by the monster, but McKnight doesn't see this as a burden the normal Rangers don't have. Imagine having a borderline defenseless guy standing off to the side in standard battles. It's a subtle way to show McKnight's overconfidence. The monster zaps the Cyborgs and retreats again. The Rangers, the real Rangers, see the blast the monster caused and debate going to help. Meanwhile the monster's attack has turned the Cyborgs against their controller. The Rangers show up to save him, when suddenly Captain Mitchell drives up to return their Morphers. We get a very impressive battle between the Cyborgs and the Rangers. After the Cyborgs are defeated, the monster shows up, and the Rangers take him out before he can escape again. Jinxer comes to make the monster grow, and the Rangers bring the Zords together to defeat him. It feels like padding, this monster may have been a driving force in this plot, but he doesn't have much personality. He wasn't the focus of the episode either, the Cyborgs were. General McKnight admits he was wrong about replacing the Rangers, ands departs. Unfortunately, McKnight never made another appearance, not in the show, anyway.

This was one of my favorite episodes as a kid, and it remains a pretty strong episode for Lightspeed.
General McKnight is certainly a fascinating character, especially in retrospect, he shares his last name with Connor McKnight of Dino Thunder, a relative, or just coincidence? If the Cyborg Rangers are truly cyborgs, that's another tie to Dino Thunder, as that season featured genetic tampering going on.
A really bizzare bit of triva for General McKnight is that he appears in the Playstation video game for this season. Not as himself, though, as Captain Mitchell! The explanation must be that in early versions of Lightspeed Rescue, he was the main mentor of the Rangers. For whatever reason, this was changed, but his design was already in the game. There were two other Lightspeed Rescue games, one on Nintendo 64, and one on Game Boy Color. The Game Boy one had no cutscenes, from what I remember, and the N64 game had crude stock art, which looked a bit more like Captain Mitchell. The Playstation game also featured a very different look for Dr. Fairweather, no glasses, and short reddish hair. Was this based on an actor who left?
For those wondering, the Playstation game was alright, basic and repetitive, with delayed control problems. It's fun though. The N64 game is even more basic and repetitive, and annoying. I have nostalgia for it, but it's not good. The Game Boy game is a fun little puzzle-problem solving game with decent graphics for the Game Boy.
Anyway, good episode, fun episode, one of Lightspeed's best.

Here's my video with further thoughts :
youtu.be/kn0X9U9rPMA