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Star Trek The Next Generation - The Complete Seventh Season

Star Trek The Next Generation - The Complete Seventh Season

List Price: $139.99
Your Price: $111.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Boldly go...
Review: I always thought that TNG was far better than the original series even though I liked Kirk better than Picard. The last season was as good as any season. So why only 3 stars? Because I always felt the premise of the show was as absurd as suggesting communism was a workable theory.

Fans of the series will appreciate this collection and I recommend it to them. As for the rest of us, just watch them on TV and that's more than enough.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Worst of all the series
Review: I am a total Star Trek Fan and have bought every series. I don't know what happend with the Seventh Season, but it came no where near an equal of the others. It appears to me that many of the standard actors really didn't want to do Star Trek. Most all the episodes reminded me of more of a murder mystery rather than a Science Fiction serious----they seemed to be burned out with the standard themes that has made me a Trek Fan for many years. They moved away from their past successful themes. I missed Whoopee Goldberg. After watching this, I understand why it got canceled.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "All Good Things..." review for the non-fans, too.
Review: I had brought out an old video of things I had taped off television, and this was on it. I was never really a fan of Star Trek, although I did watch the first few seasons of Next Generation, so I was a little skeptical going in. (I had only taped it to begin with because this last episode was hyped so much.)

Patrick Stewart really gets a chance to flex his acting muscles here. He is surely doing better acting in this than he's been allowed to do lately. He has to play the same character in three different time periods, all the time trying to not let on to anyone else (because they wouldn't understand) that he is time-traveling. Plus, he never knows when a "jump" will take place, and so is having to explain himself saying out loud something he said in the previous time period. It's pretty complicated, but done so well that it becomes easy to follow.

This was obviously written to end the series with a bang. Q is here and he's "putting mankind on trial" again, as he apparently has done before. (Like I said, I haven't seen one of these in years, so Q was new to me.) There is a spatial anomaly involved that destroys humanity and it's up to Jean-Luc (Stewart) to stop it...because he started it! Things unfold at an alarming rate, meanwhile the time-shifting becomes more erratic, not allowing Picard to stay in one place for very long.

It was fun to see the old crew members again, especially Denise Crosby's Lt. Yar (I stopped watching the show soon after her demise). It was also fun to learn what happens to them in the future (some surprising discoveries are made). On the downside, I've never liked Captain Riker (he always come across as a--how can I say this?--a real phallus), although he does resemble Orson Welles (especially aged) so that's a point in his favor. Fortunately, he is not around much. Unfortunately, when he is around, he's doing noble things, so I can't hate him.

John de Lancie is Q and he overacts as expected (what else can you do when you spend all your screen time on a floating throne?), but as a whole, this was a very entertaining experience and I would even recommend it to non-fans like myself.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Beginning of the End
Review: I have recently finished my trek through Star Trek, watching the entirety of Season 7 on DVD. Through 6 seasons, Star Trek managed to survive inconsistant writing and some questionable acting because it had flair, imagination, unquenchable optimism, and a core of very good actors. Season 7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation is where the Star Trek franchise largely lost its grip, though, and the deterioration process has continued (and even accelerated) right up through Enterprise.

OK, so we'll get it out of the way ... the series finale, All Good Things, is quite good. Everything that we've come to love in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and of higher quality than many odd-numbered Star Trek movies. Despite what the fanpeople might say, however, this episode alone is *not* worth the price of the set (duh), partly because the plot is still a bit contrived unfortunately, but mainly because no hour and forty-five minutes of television is worth what they're asking. So what else do you get?

Primarily, you get more episodes in the "unwatchably bad" cateogry than in any other Star Trek: TNG season. It starts right out of the gate with Interface, which features Geordi behaving like a total moron given alien possession only kicks in about every 3rd episode. We also have the horrendous and inexplicable Force of Nature, the awkward Homeward, the poorly-written and badly acted Sub Rosa, and the (again) poorly-written, tedious, and insufferable Journey's End (despite the emotional pull of a nice ending for Wesley and the reunion of with the Traveller). Bloodlines is terrible and utterly contrived, and Emergence is simply pointless.

To see how far Star Trek has come, it's instructive to look at two episodes that are actually pretty good, Lower Decks and Thine Own Self. Both have good imaginative plots, and Thine Own Self features Data heavily, who everyone likes. Both could have been great, but are significantly flawed in execution - in Lower Decks, the entire Alyssa/Crusher plotline is entirely pointless and simply serves to make the episode more tedious. This is a shame, because both the Sito/Wharf and Lavelle/Riker relationships are very well-done with a nice emotional resonance - somthing Star Trek may only have achieved in this episode - and the 10 minutes wasted with Alyssa could have been much better spent here. Or with Taurik - it's nice to see a Vulcan struggle with the interpersonal relationships, and his dillemas have potential - but he ends up getting short shrift to a worthless subplot which serves only some misplaced sense of symmetry. This episode is well-written, acted, and directed, and with tighter execution and a firm editorial hand, this is a best-of-Trek type episode. Likewise, Thine Own Self; this wants to be two episodes, but apparently the writers didn't have enough ideas and didn't really care, so they just crammed both ideas into one episode, even though they are not even tangentially related; you keep waiting for Troi and Data to link up in some way, but the two plotlines remain confusingly and completely seperate. And since when does becoming Commander require only passing some sort of wierd Civil Service exam? And despite all this, the episode *still* takes forever to really get going. Sadly, despite these problems, these two episodes still rate amongst the best of Season 7.

Interestingly, a few of these episodes have almost direct counterparts in The X-Files. It might be instructive to watch Sub Rosa back-to-back with The Ghosts Who Stole Christmas, or Thine Own Self with The Post-Modern Prometheus. They aren't as exact parallels as with, say, Cause and Effect and Monday (which I mention in my ST:TNG Season 5 review), but they are close in spirit, and to see the professionalism and skill of the X-Files team in every aspect of their show up against a Star Trek outfit that always had writing problems, uninspired directing, and a lack of attention to detail is, well, interesting. These are both similar big-name, big-price box sets, and Star Trek is just having trouble competing on the technical aspects. Now, I won't deny that Star Trek is still Star Trek and your average Star Trek viewer is not going to be genetically predisposed to become an X-Files junkie ... but for me, it makes the high price of the Star Trek box sets hard to justify. Or you can compare Geordi's utterly unconvincing response to the loss and strange return of his mother in Interface to the so-real-it's-scary writing (if not always acting) of Sheridan's similar loss in Babylon 5's Revelations.

Most of the rest of the season tops out at about average. Liasons, Dark Page, Gambit, Masks, Firstborn, Bloodlines - all episodes of solid mediocridty. None are terrible, all are watchable, even marginally entertaining - but basically don't gel. The performances are often uninpsired, the pacing is off, and the writers usually can't come up with enough material to fill 45 minutes so they have to resort to extensive ues of technobabble or irrelevant 5-minute openers. There is usually one idea, and it seems like when it doesn't quite work out as well as they hoped, they just "ship it" anyway.

Now, there are a handful of solid episodes this season that are up to the standards of previous years. Parallels is by far the best episode of the season, simply because the writing is solid, it is skillfully and consistantly executed, the relationship between Wharf and Troi is touching, and it has a nice element of classic Star Trek wit without going overboard. The pacing is right, you don't sit around for the first 10-15 minutes of the episode waiting for somthing to happen as in Thine Own Self, Interface, Dark Page, or too many other episodes in the Star Trek franchise to count (including virtually every episode of Enterprise). It is a skilfully done whole, and it helps that Michael Dorn and Mirina Sirtis can in fact act, even if their characters are usually appallingly underwritten; when they're given good plots, as they are here, they are very good. It's frustrating to give this the title of "best episode" by dint of lack of egregious flaws, but that's all it takes at this point (even so, it is quite good).

Otherwise, Lower Decks is probably the best of the rest, Phantasms is pretty good, as are Attached, The Pegasus, Lower Decks, Thine Own Self, Genesis, Eye of the Beholder, and Preemptive Strike. Not an extensive list. Both Attached and The Pegasus are amusing because their conclusions feature fundamental character-altering revalations - and yet everything is back to normal the next week.

So to answer my own question, this is in fact the first season which for me the answer is "no" - this isn't worth the money. If only it had some commentary tracks (if somebody would just explain what the heck they were thinking in Sub Rosa, I'd pay money for that), I might reverse my opinion; it's close. I give it 3 stars for the stunning series closer, of course, and the handful of decent episodes and the fact that after all that, it still is Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Picard, Data, Wharf, and Troi are sympathetic charcters (it's a particularly strong "Wharf" season, and the poor guy has been given such short shrift in previous years). But it's also priced very high, and this year has a lot of episodes of truly stunning mediocrity.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice for completists - but steep price
Review: I have seasons one through six right now, so you know I have to pick up season seven.
But, I have to ask Trekkies if they are as unhappy with the asking price as I am. While series such as Buffy, Mad About You and Friends regularly retail their season box sets for under [money], Trekkies are being punished with close to twice that, and feature lesser extras than certainly Buffy. I will cite one example -- Buffy seasons regularly feature at least two episodes a season with feature commentaries by producer Joss Whedon. Trekkies I guess must not be deemed as interested in actually learning anything new about their favorite series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: ST:TNG
Review: I love STTNG! I was very sad to see it leave the airwaves in 1994, But I knew I would be watching it in reruns for a long time to come. It has not been off the air in reruns yet.

Season 7 was a fairly good season. My favorite episodes in season 7 were:

'Attached'
'The Pegasus'
'Lower Decks'
'Genesis'
'Parallels'
'All Good Things'---->
The scenes with Picard and Yar from the time period of when he assumed command of the Enterprise during the Farpoint mission were great. It's too bad they weren't really a part of the 'Encounter at Farpoint' episode. 'All Good Things' was a fitting end for the series. It let them go out on a high point...With respect and honor! :-) Most series that end either do not get a final episode to end things properly, or when they do... it's not very well written...'All Good Things was very well written...As was ST:Voyager's last episode!! I can't wait to see Star Trek Voyager's final episode again: 'End Game'-- Another great final episode for a trek series. I didn't really like the final episode of star trek DS9. But it would be nice to see it again. And I will when I start buying the ST:DS9 boxed DVD gift set in 2003!

But the season 7 is a must for any trek fan! Especially just for the fact it has 'All Good Things' part 1 & 2 in it!

So go out and get season 7 on 12/31/02! And go see Star Trek Nemesis in theaters now! to support Star Trek & TNG cast! Reports have said they only pulled in $18 million 12/13-12/15, at least thats what the entertainment news programs have reported on monday 12/16.

Live Long and prosper everyone! May your tribbles be little ones! };-> <-vulcan grin

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: GREAT!... Almost as good as Voyager
Review: I LOVED this season! It's probably the best one of TNG. My personal preference is Voyager (Female Cpatains ALL THE WAY!... and not to meantion great plots, and a fantastic theme song!!!), but this is definetly sencond best. TOS is dull, TNG's great, DS9 is pretty slow, Enterprise is NOT good, but Voyager is great! If this is your first time watching Star Trek, go for either this or Voyager.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the Best DVD sets Ever !!!!
Review: I've been a fan of star trek for many years and have say that this dvd
set is one of the best star trek items I have ever brought. And I think every
trekker out there with a dvd player should buy this dvd set and the other six
dvd sets NOW!!! Any fan out there who doesn't buy these sets is a
patok [thats klingon for idiot] . So in conclusion BUY THIS PRODUCT
NOW!!! You won't regret it. Each set is worth every dollar you pay for it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: TNG's Final Year
Review: In its final year as a television series Star Trek: The Next Generation proved that at its best it could run rings around any of the other trek incarnations (the origanal series included).
While - like in every season - there are some weak entries (Including the terrible 'Sub Rosa') there are plently of mini-masterpieces to compensate (Including: Parallels, The Pegasus, and the incredible season finalé ALL GOOD THINGS...). It is difficult to imagine more of a perfect ending to the series.

And unlike the movies made in years following on from the end of season 7, in 1994, cast time is devided up far more equally - everyone of the cast has a chance to shine and prove their worth. A great ensemble.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: STNG 7
Review: In the 7th and final season, the crew runs into Hugh the Borg, Picard and DaiMon Bok meet again, we meet Data's mother, Worf's half human brother, Wesley is back, and Tash Yar returns in the final two-part episode.

All 26 episodes are contained on 7 disks.

1) Descent (part 2) - Taken prisoner by Lore and the Borg, the away team consisting of Picard, Troi and Geordi is trapped while the Enterprise is attacked by the Borg ship. Riker and Worf, discover that Hugh, a Borg, is in hiding on the planet.

2) Liaisons - Picard's shuttlecraft crash lands and when he leaves to look for medical aid for the pilot, he meets a woman named Anna, who has apparently been stranded alone on the planet for seven years. Anna won't let Picard leave and he finds out that no there is really alive.

3) Interface - A new interface is being tested by Geordi to control remote unmanned probes. Utilizing his visor implants, Geordi is able to see, hear, and experience whatever conditions the probe encounters.

4/5) Gambit (part 1/2) - Captain Picard is missing and Riker, Troi, Worf and Crusher are searching for him on Desica II. Riker goes to a planet in the Barada system where he finds out that Galen is Picard. Riker joins the Baran's. A Romulan mercenary Tallera reveals herself as an undercover Vulcan security agent, and she earns Picard's trust enough for him to reveal his own identity. Riker is left for dead on the Enterprise by Picard to resume command.

6) Phantasms - The Enterprise receives a new warp-core, which does not work. Data experiences his first set of nightmares that drives him to commit acts of violence.

7) Dark Page - Lwaxana visits the Enterprise along with a small delegation of Icarans, who communicate in telepathic imagery with no verbal elements whatsoever.

8) Attached - Captain Picard and Beverly Crusher Beam down to meet with Kes representatives and they are kidnapped by the Prit, who believe the Kes affiliation with the Federation to be a military pact.

9) Force of Nature - Investigating missing starships, the Enterprise finds that a brother and sister have been misleading and damaging all warp-capable vessels that enter the region of space near their home world. They claim that warp engines are disrupting their space and it's threatened to destroy everything.

10) Inheritance - Dr. Tainer and her husband have joined the Enterprise to help save a planet. She reveals herself to be the ex-wife of Dr. Soong and co-designer of Data and Lore.

11) Parallels - Returning victorious from a Klingon martial arts competition, Worf walks into a surprise birthday party, but notices that something is incorrect aboard the Enterprise.

12) The Pegasus - The Enterprise heads for an asteroid belt between Romulan and Federation space, with Admiral Pressman. It becomes clear that Pressman and Riker have some old business issues that need to be addressed.

13) Homeward - Dr. Nikolai Rozhenko, Worf's human foster brother, sends a distress call from his hidden observation post on Boral II. Worf beams down, disguised as a Boralan, and discover that Nikolai has also been masquerading as a native and providing them technology from his observation post.

14) Sub Rosa - The Enterprise visits Caldos, so Dr. Crusher may attend the funeral of her grandmother. Beverly learns that her grandmother, despite being over 100 years old, had a much young lover.

15) Lower Decks - A promotion is nearing for one of a group of four friends who are junior officers aboard the Enterprise. The Enterprise undertakes a top secret mission, the true purpose of which is unknown to the four friends - though each of them has a piece of the puzzle, and a part to play, in the "exercise".

16) Thine Own Self - Troi returns from her Star Fleet Academy class reunion to find Dr. Crusher in charge of the bridge, and she begins thinking about her own position in the ship's chain of command. Data is on a shuttle mission to retrieve radioactive material.

17) Masks - Studying an ancient comet at close range, the crew of the Enterprise becomes aware of strange objects appearing on board.

18) Eye of the Beholder - A young officer assigned to the Enterprise commits suicide by leaping into the ship's warp core.

19) Genesis - Testing Worf's new photon torpedo guidance system sends a hazardous torpedo off course into deep space, which Picard and Data set off to recover. When they return from their mission, they find that every inhabitant of the ship has somehow mutated into more primitive life form

20) Journey's End - Wesley Crusher, on a sabbatical from Starfleet Academy, has returned to the Enterprise.

21) Firstborn - Alexander nears the age where he must decide whether or not to become a warrior; Worf grows worried that the boy will choose to discard his Klingon heritage ways.

22) Bloodlines - Picard receives a threat from his old Ferengi adversary DaiMon Bok, who still blames Picard for the death of his son.

23) Emergence - Picard and Data are rehearsing a scene from "The Tempest" in the holodeck, when they are nearly run over by the Orient Express.

24) Preemptive Strike - A reception for recent Starfleet Advanced Tactical Training graduate Ro Laren is cut short when the Enterprise responds to a Cardassian ship's distress call. Ro has to face her loyalty to Star Fleet vs. her hatred for the Cardassian.

25/26) All Good Things (part 1&2) - In the past, the EXACT moment in which life is "started" a chemical event fails to happen. The human race does not come into existence.


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