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esterday's Enterprise." "The Offspring." "Sins of the Father." "Deja Q." "The Best of Both Worlds." When thinking about Star Trek: The Next Generation at its finest, these memorable episodes are invariably among the ones that come to mind. The one thing all five have in common: They're part of Next Gen's pivotal third season—the year the series came into its own and established the storytelling voice that would define it through four more successful seasons.
Some of the aforementioned episodes actually remain among the best work ever done on Star Trek, period. As soon as it aired, "Yesterday's Enterprise"—which features the return of Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar—became an instant classic, with its carefully wrought tale of what happens when the Enterprise encounters a temporal rift. It's always a treat when John De Lancie makes an appearance on Trek, but "Deja Q" is an entertaining favorite by virtue of the strength of its story: Q (De Lancie) is ejected by the Continuum and sentenced to spend life as a mortal. He seeks haven aboard the Enterprise, asking to be treated as one of the crew—and his subsequent attempts to adjust to living as one among humans balances humor with an insightful perspective on the human condition.
Trying to emulate humanity has long been the goal of Data (Spiner), and he has a modicum of success with Lal, the android daughter he fashioned himself in "The Offspring." It's no coincidence that the director elicited tremendous performances from his actors: This episode was helmed by first-time director Jonathan "Number One" Frakes.
Of all the episodes on the disc, though, none tops the pivotal "The Best of Both Worlds." This episode marks Enterprise's second encounter with the Borg—and the fast-paced episode (directed by Cliff Bole and written by Michael Piller) never lets up. The effects are outstanding, even by today's standards, and the shocking cliffhanger provides a jolt no matter how often you've seen the episode.
Season three isn't just about these three episodes, of course: Among the many other standouts are the anthropological study "Who Watches the Watcher"; "Sarek," an allegory to Alzheimer's disease which features the return of Mark Lenard as Spock's father; a view of terrorism from the other side in "The High Ground;" "The Most Toys," where Data is kidnapped; "Menage a Trois," in which Riker (Frakes), Deanna (Sirtis) and Mrs. Troi (the inimitable Majel Barrett Roddenberry) are abducted by Ferengi; and "Booby Trap," in which Geordi summons a holographic recreation of the designer of Enterprise in order to help save the ship.
There are many changes introduced in season three, and all were for the better—resulting in a stronger, tighter, better-written series with a well-defined ensemble of characters. For one, Michael Piller was brought aboard as co-executive producer and head of the writing department; Piller would stay with the show for the duration, and penned some of the episodes that helped the show achieve its lofty prominence among mainstream viewers. Gates McFadden returns as Dr. Beverly Crusher. Goldberg expands her role as the ship's insightful barkeep. Another reason to pay attention to this season: It's essentially the last season Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was directly and actively involved in.
A season of stellar episodes
The six-disc set is organized in a manner similar to season one and two: four episodes to a disc, with an LCARS-based menu interface based on the design of Next Gen's own computer consoles. The limited extra features are contained solely on disc seven, and consist of four sections. Unfortunately, once again the four sections have a cookie-cutter-like, formulaic feel to them; there are no concept designs, sketches or episodic-specific offerings (such as a writer or director's audio commentary track, as found on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season two DVD set). Furthermore, the 12- to 20-minute featurettes are loosely organized around themes that highlight many of the same episodes in a scattershot fashion; for example, if you want to find info on "Yesterday's Enterprise" or "Deja Q," you can find it spread across two sections—very frustrating if you want to jump to comments related to your favorite episodes.
On the plus side, as with the second-season set, all interviews are identified with time-stamps—making it easy to identify snippets culled from past interviews and fresh reflections on these episodes from the cast and crew. There are actually many current reflections—captured in late 2001 or early 2002—from actors like Stewart, Frakes, Sirtis and Burton, and from producer Piller.
All four sections offer a few interesting tidbits, even though some of these may be rehash for die-hard Trekkers who've read every piece of source information published across time. The "mission overview" runs 17 minutes, and features recent interviews with producers Rick Berman, Peter Lauritson and Michael Piller (who reveals that he wrote part one of "Best of Both Worlds" with an impossible scenario in mind, since he hadn't intended to return for season four), as well as recent thoughts by Frakes, Stewart and Goldberg. Selected "crew analysis" runs just 13 minutes, and is the weakest of the four—in spite of great quotes from Stewart on Picard's direction, and from Burton on LaForge's sexuality. The "departmental briefing-production" is a strong 20 minutes, but again the perspectives jump around, with everything from Piller talking about writing to Dan Curry discussing special effects and Jay Chattaway musing about the show's music. "Memorable missions" also has a few strong quotes, but the selected episodes and commentary content seems arbitrary.
As is to be expected from a DVD, image quality is generally strong and sharp, but there are scattered moments where the image—particularly fast-moving effects—looks mildly digitized and softer in focus. The remixed audio track is especially effective when played in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound; the directional components of the effects can really be heard during playback.
Season three remains one of my favorites from Next Gen's entire run. Few seasons, episode for episode, hit the mark as well as season three. When re-watching "The Best of Both Worlds," I again found myself at the edge of my seat thinking, "How long do I have to wait to see the conclusion?" Fortunately, it won't be as long a wait for the next box set as it was between seasons three and four. As the Borg would say, "Resistance is futile": If you're going to buy one season of Next Gen, this should be high on your list. — Melissa
Also in this issue: Signs and The Master of Disguise
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