The
superior and highly entertaining season four of STAR TREK: VOYAGER
showed that the television series had finally come into its own, and
proved that this incarnation of Trek was worthy of the franchise
created by that Great Bird of the Galaxy Gene Roddenberry. The addition of
the freed Borg drone changed the dynamic of the show, which seemed to have
taken on a darker edge in many of the episodes, not to mention that
actress Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine gave STAR TREK: VOYAGER a
sleeker, sexier attitude. Moving into its fifth year, STAR TREK:
VOYAGER continued its winning ways producing a solid season of science
fiction entertainment.
For
those unfamiliar with STAR TREK: VOYAGER, the basic premise of this
forth Trek incarnation finds the crew of the Federation Starship Voyager
transported halfway across the galaxy and trying to make their way home
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 FIVE ($130) comes to DVD in a seven-disc set
that features all twenty-six episodes that were aired in the fifth year.
The twenty-six featured episodes are as follows: Night, Drone,
Extreme Risk, In The Flesh, Once Upon A
Time, Timeless, Infinite Regress, Nothing
Human, Thirty Days, Counterpoint, Latent
Image, Bride Of Chaotica, Gravity, Bliss,
Dark Frontier Part 1, Dark Frontier Part 2, The
Disease, Course: Oblivion, The Fight, Think
Tank, Juggernaut, Someone To Watch Over Me,
11:59, Relativity, Warhead and Equinox
Part 1. Personal favorites among season five’s episodes include:
In The Flesh, which finds the crew of Voyager finding a
little piece of home, as well as an unexpected encounter with Species
8472. Timeless is one of those great stories in which
Voyager crewmembers once again break the Temporal Prime Directive to save
their ship and their future. Latent Image finds the Doctor
in the midst of a conspiracy surround events that have been wiped from his
memory. Dark FrontierParts 1 & 2 features
another encounter with The Borg and their Queen, who wants Seven of Nine
to rejoin the collective- or else. Course: Oblivion finds
the ship and crew of Voyager facing certain annihilation from an unknown
cause. Relativity is another great time travel story, one in
which 29th century agents enlist Seven of Nine to prevent Voyager’s
destruction, and root out whomever has been tampering with the timeline.
Paramount
Home Entertainment has made all twenty-six episodes from STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE available on DVD in the proper full screen aspect
ratios of their original television broadcasts. Like the preceding sets, STAR
TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE looks great on DVD. Considering that STAR
TREK: VOYAGER was an effects laden series competed on a television
budget, the episodes offer a reasonably impressive visual quality. For the
most part everything looks sharp and very nicely defined. There are some
softer looking shots here and there, but they really don’t detract from
the viewing experience. Colors are pretty nicely saturated, and never
display any significant fuzziness. Blacks are accurately rendered, whites
are clean and while the contrast is kept within the scope of television
broadcast, the picture maintains a fairly dimensional quality. Even with
four episodes on a dual layer disc, digital compression artifacts are
always nicely contained.
Like
the earlier releases, all the episodes that comprise STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE feature soundtracks that have been upgraded to
Dolby Digital 5.1 channel format. As expected, the 5.1 sound mixes appear
to be direct transcriptions of the pre-matrixed surround sound stems
prepared for television broadcast. Still, STAR TREK: VOYAGER was a
well-mixed TV show from late1990’s, so the soundtracks prove to be quite
effective and engaging. The strongest portion of the audio content is
localized to the forward soundstage, with the rears adding a nice
complement of ambient sounds, engine rumble and musical fill. Of course,
sequences with space battles offer more sonic sparks than the more talky
ship bound portions of the show. Fidelity is quite good for a television
production, with the music producing a nice sense of presence and the
sound effects having a convincing quality. Dialogue is always cleanly
rendered, plus the bass channel is fairly sturdy for a television level
production. English Dolby Surround soundtracks are also encoded onto the
DVDs, as are English subtitles.
3-D
animation, plus sound serve to enhance the DVD’s interactive menus.
Through the menus one has 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. Braving the Unknown: Season Five
is a twenty minute program that features interviews with the cast and crew
and reviews the highlights of the show’s fifth year. Voyager Time
Capsule: Belanna Torres runs sixteen minutes and features Roxanne
Dawson talking about her character and how the Human/Klingon hybrid
developed over the course of the show’s seven-year run.
Voyager
Time Capsule: Tom Paris is a fifteen-minute program that looks at
the character portrayed by actor Robert Duncan McNeill. The Borg
Queen Speaks clocks in at six minutes and features actress Susanna
Thompson discussing the character and the differences she brought to the
role created by Alice Krige in STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT. Delta
Quadrant Make-Up Magic features Michael Westmore discussing alien
character makeup designs in this nineteen-minute program. A Photo
Gallery and some very enjoyable Easter Eggs close
out the supplements.
STAR
TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE continues the winning ways of season four
by delivering consistently entertaining episodes worthy of the Trek
franchise. As for the DVDs, Paramount once again delivers the goods, by
providing the episodes with strong video and audio presentations, not to
mention, some very nice extras. If you are a Trek fan, or a Voyager
fan in particular, you want to add STAR TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE
to your Starfleet library.
The
superior and highly entertaining season four of STAR TREK: VOYAGER
showed that the television series had finally come into its own, and
proved that this incarnation of Trek was worthy of the franchise
created by that Great Bird of the Galaxy Gene Roddenberry. The addition of
the freed Borg drone changed the dynamic of the show, which seemed to have
taken on a darker edge in many of the episodes, not to mention that
actress Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine gave STAR TREK: VOYAGER a
sleeker, sexier attitude. Moving into its fifth year, STAR TREK:
VOYAGER continued its winning ways producing a solid season of science
fiction entertainment.
For
those unfamiliar with STAR TREK: VOYAGER, the basic premise of this
forth Trek incarnation finds the crew of the Federation Starship Voyager
transported halfway across the galaxy and trying to make their way home
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 FIVE ($130) comes to DVD in a seven-disc set
that features all twenty-six episodes that were aired in the fifth year.
The twenty-six featured episodes are as follows: Night, Drone,
Extreme Risk, In The Flesh, Once Upon A
Time, Timeless, Infinite Regress, Nothing
Human, Thirty Days, Counterpoint, Latent
Image, Bride Of Chaotica, Gravity, Bliss,
Dark Frontier Part 1, Dark Frontier Part 2, The
Disease, Course: Oblivion, The Fight, Think
Tank, Juggernaut, Someone To Watch Over Me,
11:59, Relativity, Warhead and Equinox
Part 1. Personal favorites among season five’s episodes include:
In The Flesh, which finds the crew of Voyager finding a
little piece of home, as well as an unexpected encounter with Species
8472. Timeless is one of those great stories in which
Voyager crewmembers once again break the Temporal Prime Directive to save
their ship and their future. Latent Image finds the Doctor
in the midst of a conspiracy surround events that have been wiped from his
memory. Dark Frontier Parts 1 & 2 features
another encounter with The Borg and their Queen, who wants Seven of Nine
to rejoin the collective- or else. Course: Oblivion finds
the ship and crew of Voyager facing certain annihilation from an unknown
cause. Relativity is another great time travel story, one in
which 29th century agents enlist Seven of Nine to prevent Voyager’s
destruction, and root out whomever has been tampering with the timeline.
Paramount
Home Entertainment has made all twenty-six episodes from STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE available on DVD in the proper full screen aspect
ratios of their original television broadcasts. Like the preceding sets, STAR
TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE looks great on DVD. Considering that STAR
TREK: VOYAGER was an effects laden series competed on a television
budget, the episodes offer a reasonably impressive visual quality. For the
most part everything looks sharp and very nicely defined. There are some
softer looking shots here and there, but they really don’t detract from
the viewing experience. Colors are pretty nicely saturated, and never
display any significant fuzziness. Blacks are accurately rendered, whites
are clean and while the contrast is kept within the scope of television
broadcast, the picture maintains a fairly dimensional quality. Even with
four episodes on a dual layer disc, digital compression artifacts are
always nicely contained.
Like
the earlier releases, all the episodes that comprise STAR TREK:
VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE feature soundtracks that have been upgraded to
Dolby Digital 5.1 channel format. As expected, the 5.1 sound mixes appear
to be direct transcriptions of the pre-matrixed surround sound stems
prepared for television broadcast. Still, STAR TREK: VOYAGER was a
well-mixed TV show from late1990’s, so the soundtracks prove to be quite
effective and engaging. The strongest portion of the audio content is
localized to the forward soundstage, with the rears adding a nice
complement of ambient sounds, engine rumble and musical fill. Of course,
sequences with space battles offer more sonic sparks than the more talky
ship bound portions of the show. Fidelity is quite good for a television
production, with the music producing a nice sense of presence and the
sound effects having a convincing quality. Dialogue is always cleanly
rendered, plus the bass channel is fairly sturdy for a television level
production. English Dolby Surround soundtracks are also encoded onto the
DVDs, as are English subtitles.
3-D
animation, plus sound serve to enhance the DVD’s interactive menus.
Through the menus one has 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. Braving the Unknown: Season Five
is a twenty minute program that features interviews with the cast and crew
and reviews the highlights of the show’s fifth year. Voyager Time
Capsule: Belanna Torres runs sixteen minutes and features Roxanne
Dawson talking about her character and how the Human/Klingon hybrid
developed over the course of the show’s seven-year run.
Voyager
Time Capsule: Tom Paris is a fifteen-minute program that looks at
the character portrayed by actor Robert Duncan McNeill. The Borg
Queen Speaks clocks in at six minutes and features actress Susanna
Thompson discussing the character and the differences she brought to the
role created by Alice Krige in STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT. Delta
Quadrant Make-Up Magic features Michael Westmore discussing alien
character makeup designs in this nineteen-minute program. A Photo
Gallery and some very enjoyable Easter Eggs close
out the supplements.
STAR
TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE continues the winning ways of season four
by delivering consistently entertaining episodes worthy of the Trek
franchise. As for the DVDs, Paramount once again delivers the goods, by
providing the episodes with strong video and audio presentations, not to
mention, some very nice extras. If you are a Trek fan, or a Voyager
fan in particular, you want to add STAR TREK: VOYAGER- SEASON FIVE
to your Starfleet library.