OK,
after a less than awe inspiring freshman and sophomore seasons on the air,
STAR TREK: VOYAGER finally began showing some signs of life during
season three, which certainly gave this long time Trek fan high
hopes for the forthcoming seasons of the show. When season four finally
rolled around, I definitely was not disappointed by what I saw, with STAR
TREK: VOYAGER starting kicking some serious butt as a TV show, thus
making the series an interesting, exciting and worthy extension of the
science fiction universe created by Gene Roddenberry. So what kicked STAR
TREK: VOYAGER into gear? Probably, better character development, some
darker storytelling, interesting adversaries, not to mention Voyager’s
first encounter with The Borg, plus the addition of a new cast member that
came out of that encounter.
The
arrival of Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, a freed Borg drone, certainly
brought a new dynamic to STAR TREK: VOYAGER; not only was it
interesting to see the near life long member of the Borg collective adapt
to being an individual human being once again, Seven of Nine’s skin
tight outfits really added a whole lot of visual appeal, plus more than a
bit of sex appeal to the series. For those unfamiliar with the series, the
basic premise of STAR TREK: VOYAGER finds the crew of the starship
Voyager trying to make their way hope from the Delta Quadrant- a
seventy-year journey at maximum speed. The Voyager ship’s crew features
Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway, Robert Beltran as Commander
Chakotay, Roxann Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres, Robert Duncan
McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris, Ethan Phillips as Neelix, Robert Picardo
as The Doctor, Tim Russ as Lieutenant Commander Tuvok and Garrett Wang as
Ensign Harry Kim.
STAR
TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR ($130) comes to DVD in a seven-disc set
that features all twenty-six episodes that were aired in the forth year.
The twenty-six featured episodes are as follows: Scorpion Part 2,
The Gift, Day Of Honor, Nemesis,
Revulsion, The Raven, Scientific Method,
Year Of Hell Part 1, Year Of Hell Part 2, Random
Thoughts, Concerning Flight, Mortal Coil,
Waking Moments, Message In A Bottle, Hunters,
Prey, Retrospect, The Killing Game Part
1, The Killing Game Part 2, Vis A Vis,
The Omega Directive, Unforgettable, Living
Witness, Demon, One and Hope And
Fear. Personal favorites from season four include Scorpion
Part 2 in which the Voyager crew forms an alliance with The Borg
to avoid assimilation, The Gift, which marks Jennifer Lien
departure from the role of Kes, Year Of Hell Parts 1 & 2,
in which Voyager is nearly destroyed by an alien race tampering with the
very fabric of time, plus Message In A Bottle, which finds
the holographic doctor using an alien communications array to travel to
the Alpha Quadrant to inform Starfleet of Voyager’s predicament.
Paramount
Home Entertainment has made all twenty-six episodes from STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR available on DVD in the proper full screen aspect
ratios of their original television broadcasts. As with the preceding
three seasons, STAR TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR looks very good on
DVD, especially for a television series that relied heavily on special
effects that had to be completed on a television caliber budget. Sequences
shot on film look the best, producing crisp and reasonably well-detailed
images. Effects work also looks good and is a definite step up from the
work on THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE, Season Four’s
effects even seem to offer some improvements over the earlier years.
Colors appear strong, with appealing flesh tones and no signs of noise or
fuzziness. Blacks are deep, whites appear clean, and while contrast is
reined it to the limitations of broadcast, lighting doesn’t seem
particularly flat. Even with four episodes on a dual layer disc, digital
compression artifacts are always nicely camouflaged.
As
with the earlier sets, all the episodes that comprise STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR feature soundtracks that have been upgraded to
Dolby Digital 5.1 channel format. Not surprisingly, the new sound mixes
appear to be direct transcriptions of the pre-matrixed surround sound
stems, which were prepared for television broadcast. Fortunately, the show
was well mixed for a mid to late1990’s production and proves to be
rather engaging. Sure, the forward soundstage dominates, but there is good
channel separation across the front, plus the rears provide solid
reinforcement to the space battles, as well as other ambient sounds,
engine rumble and a bit of musical fill. Fidelity is good for this type of
production, with the music coming across nicely and the sound effects
seeming convincing enough. The bass channel is fairly sturdy for a
television production, while dialogue is always cleanly rendered. English
Dolby Surround soundtracks are also encoded onto the DVDs, as are English
subtitles.
3-D
animation with a Borg motif, plus sound serve to enhance the DVD’s
interactive menus, which provide access to the set up and episode
selection features, as well as the supplemental materials, which have been
relegated to disc seven of the set. Starting things off is Braving
the Unknown: Season Four, a twenty-one minute retrospective
program that looks back at the show’s forth year (with a special
emphasis on Seven of Nine), through a series of recent and vintage
interviews with various members of the cast and crew. Voyager Time
Capsule: Seven of Nine runs thirteen minutes and features vintage
interviews with actress Jeri Ryan talking about her character and the
challenges of coming into the show, and the instantaneous recognition and
sex appeal of Seven.
.
. Voyager Time Capsule: Harry Kim clocks in at thirteen
minutes and features new and vintage interviews with Garrett Wang, who
discusses his character. The Birth Of Species 8472 in a
nine-minute program that looks at the creation of a new alien life form-
one that becomes a genuine threat to The Borg. The Art Of Alien
Worlds runs ten minutes and features a look the matte art and
artists that create the landscapes of alien planets. A Photo Gallery
and a promo for TREKKIES 2 close out the supplements.
.
With the darker storylines and the addition of Seven of Nine to the cast,
season four marked a positive turning point for STAR TREK: VOYAGER
as a series. As for the STAR TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR DVD set,
Paramount does their usual first rate job by providing very good looking
presentations, plus solid sound quality and some fine extras. Considering
that the show starts to kick butt during its forth year, fans will
definitely want to add STAR TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR to their
Starfleet libraries.
OK,
after a less than awe inspiring freshman and sophomore seasons on the air,
STAR TREK: VOYAGER finally began showing some signs of life during
season three, which certainly gave this long time Trek fan high
hopes for the forthcoming seasons of the show. When season four finally
rolled around, I definitely was not disappointed by what I saw, with STAR
TREK: VOYAGER starting kicking some serious butt as a TV show, thus
making the series an interesting, exciting and worthy extension of the
science fiction universe created by Gene Roddenberry. So what kicked STAR
TREK: VOYAGER into gear? Probably, better character development, some
darker storytelling, interesting adversaries, not to mention Voyager’s
first encounter with The Borg, plus the addition of a new cast member that
came out of that encounter.
The
arrival of Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, a freed Borg drone, certainly
brought a new dynamic to STAR TREK: VOYAGER; not only was it
interesting to see the near life long member of the Borg collective adapt
to being an individual human being once again, Seven of Nine’s skin
tight outfits really added a whole lot of visual appeal, plus more than a
bit of sex appeal to the series. For those unfamiliar with the series, the
basic premise of STAR TREK: VOYAGER finds the crew of the starship
Voyager trying to make their way hope from the Delta Quadrant- a
seventy-year journey at maximum speed. The Voyager ship’s crew features
Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway, Robert Beltran as Commander
Chakotay, Roxann Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres, Robert Duncan
McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris, Ethan Phillips as Neelix, Robert Picardo
as The Doctor, Tim Russ as Lieutenant Commander Tuvok and Garrett Wang as
Ensign Harry Kim.
STAR
TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR ($130) comes to DVD in a seven-disc set
that features all twenty-six episodes that were aired in the forth year.
The twenty-six featured episodes are as follows: Scorpion Part 2,
The Gift, Day Of Honor, Nemesis,
Revulsion, The Raven, Scientific Method,
Year Of Hell Part 1, Year Of Hell Part 2, Random
Thoughts, Concerning Flight, Mortal Coil,
Waking Moments, Message In A Bottle, Hunters,
Prey, Retrospect, The Killing Game Part
1, The Killing Game Part 2, Vis A Vis,
The Omega Directive, Unforgettable, Living
Witness, Demon, One and Hope And
Fear. Personal favorites from season four include Scorpion
Part 2 in which the Voyager crew forms an alliance with The Borg
to avoid assimilation, The Gift, which marks Jennifer Lien
departure from the role of Kes, Year Of Hell Parts 1 & 2,
in which Voyager is nearly destroyed by an alien race tampering with the
very fabric of time, plus Message In A Bottle, which finds
the holographic doctor using an alien communications array to travel to
the Alpha Quadrant to inform Starfleet of Voyager’s predicament.
Paramount
Home Entertainment has made all twenty-six episodes from STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR available on DVD in the proper full screen aspect
ratios of their original television broadcasts. As with the preceding
three seasons, STAR TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR looks very good on
DVD, especially for a television series that relied heavily on special
effects that had to be completed on a television caliber budget. Sequences
shot on film look the best, producing crisp and reasonably well-detailed
images. Effects work also looks good and is a definite step up from the
work on THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE, Season Four’s
effects even seem to offer some improvements over the earlier years.
Colors appear strong, with appealing flesh tones and no signs of noise or
fuzziness. Blacks are deep, whites appear clean, and while contrast is
reined it to the limitations of broadcast, lighting doesn’t seem
particularly flat. Even with four episodes on a dual layer disc, digital
compression artifacts are always nicely camouflaged.
As
with the earlier sets, all the episodes that comprise STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FOUR feature soundtracks that have been upgraded to
Dolby Digital 5.1 channel format. Not surprisingly, the new sound mixes
appear to be direct transcriptions of the pre-matrixed surround sound
stems, which were prepared for television broadcast. Fortunately, the show
was well mixed for a mid to late1990’s production and proves to be
rather engaging. Sure, the forward soundstage dominates, but there is good
channel separation across the front, plus the rears provide solid
reinforcement to the space battles, as well as other ambient sounds,
engine rumble and a bit of musical fill. Fidelity is good for this type of
production, with the music coming across nicely and the sound effects
seeming convincing enough. The bass channel is fairly sturdy for a
television production, while dialogue is always cleanly rendered. English
Dolby Surround soundtracks are also encoded onto the DVDs, as are English
subtitles.
3-D
animation with a Borg motif, plus sound serve to enhance the DVD’s
interactive menus, which provide access to the set up and episode
selection features, as well as the supplemental materials, which have been
relegated to disc seven of the set. Starting things off is Braving
the Unknown: Season Four, a twenty-one minute retrospective
program that looks back at the show’s forth year (with a special
emphasis on Seven of Nine), through a series of recent and vintage
interviews with various members of the cast and crew. Voyager Time
Capsule: Seven of Nine runs thirteen minutes and features vintage
interviews with actress Jeri Ryan talking about her character and the
challenges of coming into the show, and the instantaneous recognition and
sex appeal of Seven.
.
.