Star Trek: The Next Generation-Season 7 (1993)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Star Trek	Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-Mission Overview Featurette-A Captain's Tribute Featurette-Departmental Briefing-Production Featurette-Starfleet Moments and Memories Featurette-The Making Of "All Good Things..." Featurette-Special Profiles Featurette-Dressing The Future Trailer-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVD
Rating
Year Of Production	1993
Running Time	1371:07
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Multi Disc Set (7)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Alexander Singer Cliff Bole Robert Wiemer Winrich Kolbe
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Patrick Stewart Jonathan Frakes Brent Spiner Michael Dorn Marina Sirtis Levar Burton Gates McFadden
Case	Custom Packaging
RPI	$234.95	Music	Dennis McCarthy Jay Chattaway John Debney

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	German Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.33:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Danish German English Spanish French Italian Dutch Norwegian Swedish English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Season Seven of Star Trek: the Next Generation is the final season. By the time this season was made, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was established, and planning for Voyager was underway. Interestingly, the cast went from making the last episode of this season straight into making the first feature film (Star Trek: Generations). If you missed them, here are reviews of Season One, Season Two,  Season Three, Season Four, Season Five, and Season Six.

    Season Six closed with Descent, Part I. It was an interesting scene that it closed on, with Picard and companions surrounded by rogue Borg, led by two Soong androids: Lore and Data. Quite a dramatic scene ending, and a nasty cliff-hanger.

    This season starts, as you'd expect, with Descent, Part II. The episodes are:

    The numbering of episodes continues sequentially until the final episode — maybe they thought it was such a big episode it deserved a jumbo number.

    Because the writers knew that this was the final season they were willing to take a few risks, and write episodes that might not have been approved earlier. This resulted in some of the best episodes they ever made. I think this may be the first season where we really get to know a character before he/she dies, for example (no anonymous "red shirt", for once). And we've never seen so many Enterprises as at the end of Parallels.

    In one of the extras this season is described as the "family" season, with mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters all popping out of the woodwork at various times. I liked this — it gave the characters more depth. I also liked the fact that they had more courage in referring to past episodes — such as in Descent, Part II, where Crusher refers to metaphasic shielding.

    In discussing Season 6 I commented on a prop slip — the appearance of a Varon-T disruptor, a weapon supposedly incredibly rare — sadly, the very same weapon appears again in one of these episodes, too.

    No really big name guest stars this season, but a very young Kirsten Dunst appears in Dark Page, and Geordi's parents are played by Madge Sinclair and Ben Vereen in Interface. Worf's brother is played by Paul Sorvino in Homeward.

    Lwaxana Troi only appears once this season, but it's in the very good episode Dark Page.

    In a nice bit of book-ending, Q appears in the final double episode, just as he did in the opening one. Funnily enough, this is the one episode where he seems really appropriate.

    Wesley Crusher appears just once this season, in Journey's End. It's fitting that a character who has generated so much reaction (a lot of it negative, but still reaction) gets a chance to say goodbye in the final season. On a similar note, it was good to see Ro Laren, Miles O'Brien and Tasha Yar one last time, too.

    This season we get to see Data's cat Spot on a number of occasions. Interestingly, Spot has changed again (remember my mentioning him being a Somali? Now she is an ordinary domestic cat).

    For a long time (alright, until now!) I thought there was a major glitch between All Good Things and Star Trek: Generations. After all, in All Good Things we get to see the future Enterprise NCC-1701D, complete with third warp nacelle and ability to hit Warp 13, but in Generations we see the end of that ship. That seemed a major contradiction, but it was answered by one of the extras — you'll see.

    They got new opening credits for this season — the stars' names are in small caps, which makes it clear that LeVar Burton does have a capital letter in the middle of his first name.

    There's an error in the star dates on disc 4 — both Homeward and Sub Rosa are labelled as star date 47423.9 — I don't know which is right. Additionally, Parallels and Pegasus are out of order with the rest.

    So the TV show draws to an end, after a mammoth 177 episodes which we have been given on 48 DVDs. Over the past (almost) year I've watched every single episode, in order. It gave me a new appreciation for the work they put in creating this series. It really is quite an accomplishment, and I'm really quite glad to have it in my collection. I doubt I'll watch it end-to-end in a hurry (maybe if I got glandular fever...), but it's nice being able to pick out any episode.

    In many ways I think this was the best season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, with strong plots and really solid performances, giving the show a perfect send-off. Strongly recommended.

Video

    These DVDs are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, so there's no 16x9 enhancement. This is the aspect ratio in which the series was shot — so this is the right way to see them.

    The picture is never going to be perfect, because this was shot on a TV budget; a large one, but a TV budget nonetheless. However, this set comes close. The image is clear and reasonably sharp almost all the time. Shadow detail is very good. Grain is never more than light, although some of the footage is fairly soft, except in the title sequence and the occasional stock shot of the Enterprise — possibly these are older footage. Low-level noise is never a problem.

    Colour is improved again, with the command uniform maroon showing no striation for a change. There are no significant colour-related artefacts, except that Geordi's VISOR shows very minor rainbows occasionally.

    There are few film artefacts, which is excellent. We do see the occasional optical artefact in Engineering, mostly light blue bars, possibly as a consequence of shooting through glass (see 6:40 of Dark Page).

    Aliasing is common enough, although reduced somewhat by the softness of the image in places. There's a lot of aliasing on exterior ship shots, but occasionally on interiors, too — see 40:13 in Gambit Part II, for example. There's some moire, such as on Troi's collar at 32:59 in Parallels, or Nikolai's waistcoat around 40:25 and on the edge of the chronicle around 41:42 in Homeward. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are ten subtitle tracks, including both English and English for the Hearing Impaired. I watched most of the English subtitles, and they are very good — they are slightly larger than usual, in a decent font, well-timed, and rather accurate.

    All seven discs are single-sided and dual layered. There are no layer changes in the episodes, because there are four episodes per disc (except the final one), with two episodes on each layer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is presented in five languages — I only listened to the English. It is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, but it might as well be 3.1 — only the left, right, and centre channels were used extensively, with occasional bursts from the subwoofer. There are a couple of small pops in the soundtrack, most noticeable at 34:50 in Pegasus

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand. There are no flaws in dialogue audio sync that I noticed.

    The score is mostly the work of Jay Chattaway and Dennis McCarthy. John Debney pinch-hits for them on Pegasus. All of the music is full orchestral, and there's even an extra about it.

    The surrounds get pretty much nothing to do. The sub comes in and out (mostly out), supporting the occasional explosion or rumble. This is not too surprising for a TV series which wouldn't have been recorded in anything fancier than stereo.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    All the extras are on the final disc, as usual.

Menu

    The main menu for each disc is presented in the captain's ready room — nicely done.

Featurette - Mission Overview - Year Seven (14:34)

    Interviews with cast and crew, shot at varying dates between 1994 and last year. One of the subjects discussed was the way they used this show to set the scene for Voyager, by introducing the Maquis, and the idea of Native American culture off-planet.

Featurette — a Captain's Tribute (16:18)

    A lengthy interview with Patrick Stewart, covering his relationships with every one of the other main cast members. Quite interesting.

Featurette - Departmental Briefing - Production (15:32)

    Covering a number of episodes in some depth, including Genesis (Gates McFadden's first try at directing), and Parallels. Also talks about how they were consciously creating strong female role models without being aggressive.

Featurette - Star Fleet Moments and Memories (29:48)

    Includes interview footage from 1991 through to 2002. Points out that no actor or director in any Star Trek series has been nominated for an Emmy. Discusses how some of the crew have been working together on Star Trek for over 15 years.

Featurette - Making of "All Good Things" (17:31)

    An interesting look at some of the work that went into this marvellous final episode, including mention of the 300 man-hours it took to get the single scene featuring the "pool of goo". Lots of spoilers in it, though — make sure you watch the episode before watching this.

Featurette - Special Profiles (15:05)

    Covering two very important bit parts:

• Q (John de Lancie)
• Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett)

Featurette - Dressing the Future (10:15)

    Introduced by Marina Sirtis, who doesn't just show us the uniforms, but even the underwear they wore under them! Lengthy interview with Robert Blackman, including a discussion of the original uniform, new uniform, and even the future uniform (all seen in All Good Things).

Trailer - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVD Preview (4:51)

    A lengthy trailer telling you why you should start collecting the next Star Trek series to hit DVD.

    This box set was released in Region 1 with almost the same features. Apart from the obvious NTSC versus PAL differences, the R1 is in a cardboard box, while ours is in this nifty plastic one.

    Mea culpa — I missed noticing that the last two featurettes: Special Profiles, and Dressing the Future, seem to be missing from the R1 release. Fascinating! That tips the balance further toward the Region 4 release (what a shame!).

    The best season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, presented very well on DVD.

    The video quality is very good — don't expect to see it any better.

    The audio quality is quite good.

    The extras are good.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall