:: 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.

Now, let me pause for a moment and say this - double-dipping is bad enough. But the studios really need to get it into their heads that shiny new packaging for the same old content, plus one lousy bonus disc, do not a new box set make. I do understand and appreciate that this set represents a significant savings over doing something monumentally stupid like buying each season individually at retail…like I did a few years back. If the home video industry starts wondering why, with the dollar balanced on a rather precarious perch these days, people aren’t flocking to buy new DVD releases…this is probably why. Hopefully the average consumer is wising up to the racket, reading reviews like this one in advance, and figuring out which titles are going to be reissued later as loss leaders (i.e. probably any generation of Star Trek you care to name, Stargate SG-1, etc.) with per-disc prices that scream “fire sale!”

OK, end of rant. The bonus disc has three exclusive featurettes found only on this set. Two of them are just about worth the price of admission - the kind of bonuses that the TNG DVDs should’ve gotten all along - while the third rates high on the “eh” meter. The first gem here is a 20-odd-minute piece on the impact of TNG on the television and science fiction landscape, which leans heavily on interviews with such writers as Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica), Naren Shankar (CSI), Rene Echavarria (The 4400) and D.C. Fontana (the grand doyenne of the original Trek’s writers). This piece, hosted by John “Q” de Lancie, winds up being a touching valentine to the late Michael Piller, who made the careers of most of the above named writers (Ms. Fontana was, of course, already doing quite nicely). All of them are glowing with praise for their former boss, and not once do I even remember the name “Rick Berman” being mentioned at all. It seems that finally, all these years later, there’s now a collective understanding of who was really behind the creative renaissance of the Star Trek franchise (and why the iterations that had little or no influence from him suffered so badly). This feature is a must-see for anyone who ever marveled at the show’s writing.

The other shining moment of the new features is a loose roundtable discussion of TNG’s special effects wizardry. As paltry as the average hour of TNG may look today, in the age of CGI, the show represented a huge leap forward in special effects for television. FX wizards Rob Legato (who later went on to win an Oscar for Titanic’s FX), Ronald B. Moore (no relation), Dan Curry and original series FX maestro Howard Anderson gather for a not-at-all-formal discussion of how things worked in the ’60s, and how they worked in the ’80s/’90s. They swap humorous stories about their co-workers who aren’t present, and talk about the stuff that got left on the cutting room floor. Legato, in particular, mourns the near-death of the well-photographed miniature model in motion picture and TV effects work. It’s fascinating stuff whether you’re in showbiz or not.

The third new feature is somewhat more fluff-like, involving Wil Wheaton going to JPL, a robotics convention, and other venues to see what impact TNG has had on the lives of people working in these futuristic fields. The answer really boils down to “whatever they’re willing to give lip service to on camera,” which isn’t really Wheaton’s fault. The rest of the bonus features - and there are plenty on offer - all hail from the infamous Best Buy bonus DVDs.

So is it worth it for new packaging and this one bonus disc? If you didn’t already have the TNG season sets, it probably is. If you did, I leave that decision up to you - I suppose there’s always a secondary market for the sets you paid top dollar for the first time around, and maybe you can turn around and pay for this set with what you get there. Maybe. I enjoyed the extra disc, but I’d like it if it were also available separately, as a “thank you” for those of us who were Paramount’s loyal customers just a few years ago.