:: theLogBook.com DVD Reviews ::

Well, this is going to be an easy review. What separates this massive box set from the seven full-season sets put together is down to two things: new packaging, and one bonus DVD. The packaging’s nice, and makes marginally more sense than the oddball color-coded season sets as they were available individually. Now let’s talk about that bonus disc. With each of the individual season sets, Best Buy included exclusive DVDs with a handful of short bonus pieces that you could only get by shopping there (and paying pretty much whatever they asked for the sets, which wasn’t much of a discount). This bonus disc gathers all of the Best Buy bonus disc features in one place, with three brand new featurettes assembled just for this box set. (more…)

So…I promise I’m not going to get on the bandwagon bashing this movie. Really, I’m not. I’m just going to talk about what’s on the DVD.

The first Star Trek movie to feature a real live director’s commentary (not an audio track of spliced-together interviews) on its first DVD release, Nemesis - the disc - spends a lot of time massaging director Stuart Baird’s ego. Baird is at the center of most of the featurettes on the DVD, and his stage-whispered commentary manages to be both informative and slightly amusing, just because of the almost sinsiter intensity of his voice! Stu, buddy, we’re not in the theater. You could’ve spoken up. If we’re listening to your audio track, it’s because we want to hear you talk - really. (more…)

Nearly ten years later, I’m still mixed on my opinions of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s final season. Did they really go out with a bang, or would they have been better off ending on a song? As many outstanding episodes as there were (the slick speculative fiction of Parallels, which plays with all kinds of what-if scenarios; the outstanding military-ethics drama of The Pegasus which gives Riker long-overdue hidden depths; Lower Decks, which everyone was so sure was a launching-point for future Voyager regulars; and the stellar send-off of Ro Laren in Preemptive Strike), there were also some clunkers which came to rest with an almighty and ungainly “plop” during a season that should have been the best one yet. (more…)

Hailed by fans, critics, cast and crew as Star Trek: The Next Generation’s finest year on the air, the sixth season is a joy to revisit. Truth be told, I had forgotten how good it really was.

In the bonus featurettes, the show’s writers gleefully and guiltily admit to the fact that there was no road map showing how to finish the spooky fifth season cliffhanger Time’s Arrow. A lot of that show’s spookiness, however, was jettisoned for the season-opening second part, which concentrates instead on action, the resolution of the strange time travel coincidences which see Picard and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) meeting for the first time in her timeline, and some fun with the character of Mark Twain. (more…)

I still remember reading those great Cinefantastique Magazine articles on each successive season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, wherein Mark A. Altman and company would wax enthusiastic on the past year’s adventures and talk extensively with the behind-the-scenes crew about how they were made. Much was made of Michael Piller and the writing staff strutting their stuff since season 3, and while I’ll admit that season 3 was my favorite, I felt season 5 wasn’t far behind - and with the addition of future Voyager co-creator Jeri Taylor, I also felt the writing was sharper. (more…)

Ahhhhh, the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I have such fond memories of spending the entire summer of 1990 watching and re-watching The Best Of Both Worlds Part I, reading all those wacky, zany BBS rumors about Patrick Stewart not renewing his contract and Elizabeth Dennehy being signed up as a regular. Those were the days when, as a freshman in college, I discovered that even people who weren’t Trek fans were caught up in it to some extent. (more…)

Flashback to the summer of 1990. Iraq was gearing up for an invasion of Kuwait. Madonna was vogue-ing her way to the top of the music charts. Arsenio Hall was taking prime time by storm as a talk show host. And all I cared about was whether Jean-Luc Picard would survive the season premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I wasn’t alone. Thanks to The Best Of Both Worlds, the riveting third season finale that found Picard transformed into a Borg, Star Trek: The Next Generation suddenly became the coolest thing on television in 1990. (more…)

Season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Most fans like to sum it in three words - Shades Of Grey, a dreadful clip show that capped off the season and came to exemplify everything that was wrong with the second year. Admittedly, season two had its share of writing and budget problems, thanks to a crippling writers’ strike that delayed its debut in 1988 and infighting among its staff, but it remains one of the show’s crowning achievements, producing some of Star Trek’s finest character episodes. (more…)

Seems like the jury’s still out on this, the most recent Star Trek movie featuring the Next Generation characters. And some of the criticism is valid - Insurrection is a bit of a mess, but still an entertaining mess. But did it really merit big screen status, or is it something that could’ve been done on TV? That seems to be the big question, and it too is a valid one. However, given the huge strides in special effects, particularly CGI, that have been made since Next Generation’s miniature model-based heyday, it’s almost a moot argument since some of Insurrection’s more action-packed setpieces couldn’t have been pulled off in the early 1990s. (more…)

can’t exactly say I was counting the seconds until my Star Trek: The Next Generation first season DVD box set came in the mail. After all, the first season wasn’t one of my favorites. Getting it was more an excuse to get rid of all those decaying VHS tapes I recorded the show on back in the early 90s. The real fun begins when I get my third season set - with its classic episodes like Yesterday’s Enterprise and The Best Of Both Worlds - but I have to wait a few more months for that. (more…)