Stream This ’90s Sci-Fi Series Featuring a Future NCIS Star for Free

Sci-fi as a genre struggles on the small screen. Big-budget space operas like Star Wars set a high bar with expensive space battles and creature effects that are hard to replicate on a television budget. For every successful series like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica, there’s a Space Rangers.

Space Rangers featured a cast of actors who later found stardom in more successful projects. Linda Hunt, who played the no-nonsense Commander Chennault, later starred as Hetty Lange in NCIS: Los Angeles. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who portrayed the character Zylyn, became famous as the villain Shang Tsung in the first live-action Mortal Kombat film.

A forgotten sci-fi cult classic, Space Rangers was canceled after airing only four of its six completed episodes. This makes it easy to binge the entire series on Freevee. However, it also means viewers will quickly run out of episodes and be left wanting more.

Space Rangers premiered in 1993 on CBS, created by Pen Densham. Two years later, Densham achieved sci-fi success with the 1995 reboot of The Outer Limits. But before that, he experienced the disappointment of Space Rangers being canceled before it had a chance to find its audience.

Space Rangers isn’t a hidden masterpiece, but it holds up as well as many sci-fi shows that lasted longer. The series centers around the Space Rangers Corps, an eclectic group of interstellar peacekeepers in 2104, inspired by the U.S. Rangers of old. These Rangers defended colonists from bandits and other space-faring miscreants, much like their Wild West counterparts.

The show adopted George Lucas’s approach to sci-fi, opting for a rugged, lived-in look rather than the sleek, clean future seen in Star Trek. The Space Rangers Corps had a blue-collar aesthetic more akin to Alien than the pristine officers of Starfleet. The series also gave the Rangers budget problems and aging tech that didn’t always work as intended.

Tech in Space Rangers was relatively grounded for the 22nd Century. The Rangers used conventional firearms instead of beam weapons, and their ships required big rings to catapult them past light-speed. One character still wore glasses, although they had one long lens to appear more futuristic.

Why did Space Rangers last only four episodes before CBS canceled it? There are two main reasons. First, it aired on one of the “Big Three” networks during primetime. Sci-fi has historically been considered niche, and against programs like The Wonder Years, Beverly Hills 90210, and Unsolved Mysteries, the series never stood a chance.

Second, there was too much competition. Shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, SeaQuest DSV, and Earth 2 all debuted around the same time. Unfortunately, Space Rangers got lost in the mix.

Space Rangers is definitely a concept that deserves a reboot, but first, people need to be aware of it. Hopefully, everyone reading this will check it out on Amazon’s Freevee streaming service. If enough viewers tune in, who knows, maybe Space Rangers will get a second chance. And perhaps, Clint Howard could use the work.

Source: Giant Freakin Robot