:: theLogBook.com DVD Reviews ::

Ahhhhh…that’s a little more like it. Following the muddled mess that was Star Trek: Voyager’s fifth season, season six is a breath of fresh air, and yet it still could’ve been so much more. Some of that regret comes in the form of the arrival and hasty departure of writer Ronald D. Moore. Fresh from his stint on the just-finished Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Moore wrote one episode (perhaps predictably - since he almost single-handedly spawned the operatic Klingon political epics of Next Generation - a Klingon-themed episode centered around B’Elanna) and co-wrote another, and then left the series after what was widely rumored to be a spat with Brannon Braga, who got his start as Moore’s co-writer in Next Generation’s fourth season and was now running the show with Rick Berman. (more…)

In retrospect, the fifth season of Voyager is fraught with problems. After the departure of executive producer and Voyager co-creator Jeri Taylor, the show seems to flounder around, trying to find its new voice. It would eventually find one, but not in this season, and it wouldn’t be a voice strong enough to salvage the show as a whole. The problem isn’t Seven of Nine. The problem isn’t an increased reliance on digital effects and CGI animation. The problem at this stage of the show’s development was that a series that, for all intents and purposes, had two female leads who were now being written by a young, almost all-male, writing staff. When one of those leads is meant to be a distinguished starship captain in her 40s, one of Starfleet’s best…you begin to see the problem. (more…)

Between the third and fourth seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, it was announced that a new cast member was being added, and where the press was concerned (not that Paramount’s press material did anything to dampen this, mind you), the new character was described from day one as a “sexy Borg.” Jeri Ryan, formerly of the short-lived NBC paranormal series Dark Skies, was chosen for the role, though it’s generally well known now that while the fans seemed to be up in arms about Seven of Nine on a conceptual level, it was considered an attractive role in Hollywood - even Babylon 5 co-star Claudia Christian auditioned for the part, since she was at something of a loose end after allowing her contract to lapse with that series. (more…)

Depending on where you stand, the third season of Star Trek: Voyager is either where this show started coming together…or started coming apart at the seams.

There’s actually much to like here, with The Swarm introducing a most promising new enemy (which we never hear from again), False Profits following up on the Next Generation episode The Price (which stranded two Ferengi on a wormhole-exploring mission in the Delta Quadrant as a throwaway gag), and some outstanding standalone shows like Distant Origin and the engrossing Worst Case Scenario, two of my favorites in the entire series. (more…)

The DVD rollout of Star Trek: Voyager continues, with the second season arriving in the more familiar (and more expensive) 7-disc format for a season of a Trek series.

The second season was a heady time for the new Trek series - there’s actually a lot of decent stuff in here, and a few bottom-feeders as well. For starters, an unusually strong quartet of first season episodes was held back by UPN, and were subsequently shoehorned into the second season. Whereas previous Trek shows in syndication had the luxury of airing a strong string of episodes in May sweeps leading up to a season finale in early June (it’s almost hard to envision now that The Best Of Both Worlds airing in June 1990, and not in a ratings sweep month), UPN was having trouble popping a number with anything but Voyager in 1995 - virtually the entire slate of programming that it started with was replaced by the network’s sophomore season kickoff in August of that year. (more…)

I was there, you see, at the dawning of the fourth age of Trek-kind. Working at a Fox affiliate at the time, which had recently undergone a bit of mitosis and spawned a second TV station which was earmarked from early on as a potential UPN station, I was more keenly aware of Star Trek: Voyager than I was of any Trek spinoff before it. I was aware of it not only as a fan, but in a more businesslike sense. I cringed at the hasty exit of Genevieve Bujold, and cringed again when the WB premiered a week ahead of UPN (though, again at the time, I predicted they’d never make it when their coolest offering was the series of Michigan J. Frog commercial bumpers and their lead program was a pale clone of Married…With Children). (more…)