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Star Trek The Next Generation - The Complete Fifth Season

Star Trek The Next Generation - The Complete Fifth Season

List Price: $139.99
Your Price: $125.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An important notice!
Review: After living in Russia for four years without any Trek, I had to buy the DVDs. It's been wonderful to re-live and share the series with my friends and we are all looking forward to DS-9 and Voyager as the season sets arrive.

Only one small complaint about formatting. I normally skip the prolog "Space, the final frontier ..." and go to the second track. However, the second track does not always take you to the begining of the first scene after the "commercial break". As a rule of thumb, if after 5 seconds you don't see the name of the episode, track back until you do. You could be missing up to 5 minutes!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another great season of TNG
Review: After the third and fourth season, STAR TREK: TNG showed no intention of slowing down. And it never did.

The fifth season stars out with REDEMPTION: PART II. The fourth and last part of the rough quadrilogy involving Worf is by far the best of them all. It starts with a spaceship fight and never lets up. 10 times better than the first part.

What made this season so great was that it had many guest stars and character-based episodes:

1) In THE GAME and DARMOK, Ashley Judd guest stars.

2) Leonard Nimoy returns as Spock in UNIFICATION, PART II. There is a priceless conversation between Data and Spock in that episode.
3) Kelsey Grammer makes a brief apperance in CAUSE AND EFFECT.
4) Famke Janssen appears in THE PERFECT MATE. (She would later star with Patrick Stewart in X-MEN)
5) Ray Walston makes a memorable appearance in THE FIRST DUTY. Will Wheaton is in that episode as well and delivers a great performance.
6) In THE NEXT PHASE, La Forge and Ro get some time to deliver some good performances
7) ETHICS is a great Worf episode.

Also in this season were many funny and intersting episodes:

1) In DISASTER, Data's head is removed, Worf helps to deliver a baby, and Troi must run the bridge. Good stuff.
2) In POWER PLAY, Data, Troi, and O'Brien go renegade and take over Ten-Forward. Very cool.
3) I, BORG was a great episode. Very intersting. And watch for Hugh to come back late in the 6rth season...

Unfortunately, there were some bad episodes as well. IMAGINARY FRIEND and COST OF LIVING were horrible. Watch for yourself. (LWAXANA taking a MUD BATH?!?!?!?! Please, no!!!!!!!)

And last, the season's last episode, TIME'S ARROW. Unfortunately, it's not that great. Data accidentally goes back in time and meets Jack London, Mark Twain, and others while trying to stop aliens (again). Some of it is funny, but you're gonna have to wait until the end of the 6th season for a REALLY GREAT SEASON FINALE.

All in all, a great and crucial season.

1991-1992; all episodes are rated PG for mild sci-fi violence and breif language.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An excellent season which contains the best TNG episode.
Review: As I review this season I have watched Seasons 1-5 (but not 6 or 7). In my subjective opinionl this one ranks second, surpassed only by Season 3.

Having said that, this season contains the single best Star Trek episode I've ever seen: The Inner Light, which won television's Peabody Award. And rightly so--even the most hard-boiled viewer will find this episode to be moving and unforgettable. I cannot imagine anyone failing to appreciate the impact of this superb episode.

This collection has lots of other strong episodes as well. This is the season that introduces the lovely "Ro Laren" character. She's hot, and a definite plus.

A great season for a great series. The DVD is very nicely done, very high quality audio and video.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Some bumps in the road but otherwise a great season
Review: At this point in the series the show had been running smoothly for several years and had built up a serious following. Thus, the result is a season with consistently solid writing, the usual high standard of acting and some wonderfully innovative special effects pices (no longer does the viewer sit there cursing tyhe series for not having a bigger budget like seasons 1 and 2).
Arguably fifth season was the apex of the series, where everything was running smoothly and week after week the show was churning out classics. Whie I personally don't believe this is the best year (I prefer season 3,4 and 6), fifth season has many episodes which rank in any Trekkers top twenty (sadly I have one).

Redemption II opens things with a relative bang and thankfully puts to an end the lengthy Klingon civil war saga. Warf's family name is cleared and he rejoins the crew of the Enterprise (I think everyone knew this would happen anyway).

Darmok, the season's second episode is undoubtedly one of the show's best moments. Patrick Stewart turns in a virtuso performance alongside Paul Winfield (remember him in Terminator?). Some of the season's other high points are, Cause and Effect in which the Enterprise gets caught in a time loop only to find Frasier at the other end, The Game, a Wesley Crusher comeback special, I Borg, an exploration in humanity with a lone Borg, and The Next Phase, arguably Geordi's best episode to himself (Booby Trap is up there).

Then we have the peabody winning 'The Inner Light' which is certainly one of the show's most touching and well written episodes.

Unfortunately there are a few episodes that suffer from the old "Shakka when the walls fell syndrome" ... The Masterpiece Society is as banal as any episode and Violation is another clunker but these are only minor bumps int he road.

A fine effort of a season with an intelligent and savvy cliffhanger.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great
Review: Best one so far, I'm getting them all. Can't wait for more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Yet another winner!
Review: By Season five, Star Trek: The Next Generation had matured enough that references to the Original series could be made without hurting the show's image. It is another great season of writing and ideas. The fifth season saw the end of the ongoing conflict with the Klingons that was building up over the past two seasons. I have just one phrase to sum up the season: HORRAY FOR SPOCK! Many great and interesting episodes with a few duds thrown in, but overall a great season. The cliffhanger at the end of the season is not the best of them, but I still like it very much.

Personal Favorite Episodes:

Redemption: Part II, Darmok, Ensign Ro, Disaster, The Game, Unification: Parts I and II, A Matter of Time, Conundrum, Power Play, Ethics, Cause and Effect, The First Duty, The Perfect Mate, I, Borg, The Next Phase, The Inner Light, Time's Arrow: Part I

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Yet another winner!
Review: By Season five, Star Trek: The Next Generation had matured enough that references to the Original series could be made without hurting the show's image. It is another great season of writing and ideas. The fifth season saw the end of the ongoing conflict with the Klingons that was building up over the past two seasons. I have just one phrase to sum up the season: HORRAY FOR SPOCK! Many great and interesting episodes with a few duds thrown in, but overall a great season. The cliffhanger at the end of the season is not the best of them, but I still like it very much.

Personal Favorite Episodes:

Redemption: Part II, Darmok, Ensign Ro, Disaster, The Game, Unification: Parts I and II, A Matter of Time, Conundrum, Power Play, Ethics, Cause and Effect, The First Duty, The Perfect Mate, I, Borg, The Next Phase, The Inner Light, Time's Arrow: Part I

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply excellent
Review: I am a busy man so I cannot spend the time writting a full fledged review, however the fact that the Star Trek TNG DVDs are in Full Screen mode is a huge bonus in itself. I was afraid of having to stare at the two huge bars while trying to enjoy this wonderful series, however that was not the case and I do not plan on spending $4,000+ dollars on an HDTV widescreen.

Season 5 contained some of the best episodes, and the first day I received this collection I have watched all DVDs nonstop, and I rushed ordered the 1 day delivery of Season 3 so I could keep enjoying the wonderful world of Star Trek TNG

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great season so-so DVD collection
Review: I appreciate that Paramount has finally released TNG seasons on DVD. Now if they could only get it right. First off, season five was another outstanding season. The Inner Light stands as one of the most touching and powerful episodes of any television show. Also, the tie in to Star Trek VI with Spock is one of the best written episodes of season five.

The picture quality is so-so. It looks sharper than VHS but is a little soft on many of the episodes. The extras are pretty skimpy with a interviews with various cast and production members about various episodes. It's not bad but it would have been far more inviting to have some actor/director/writer/producer commentaries. Still, the dual layer DVD's included in this set are the one of the fewStar Trek: TNG where I haven't had a some sort of flaw (the season three set had picture problems, dialog somehow out of synch, etc.). So Paramount has gotten the manufacturing difficulties out of the way.

The packaging is very nice all except the booklet. It would be nice to see some sort of overview on the season, comments, etc. Considering the amount of $ your paying I don't think this is too much to ask.

On the positive side--many of these episodes are among the best Trek produced. They also stand as some of the best science fiction, no, scratch that, drama produced for either television or the movies during the 90's. TNG was equaled (with some episodes and the story arcs that were developed they actually surpassed TNG) by the complex Deep Space Nine (which, by the way, is still not available on DVD thank you very much).

If you're a Trek fan, I'd recommend this set although I wish Paramount had included more extras. TNG surpassed The Original Series in terms of scope, writing, acting and optical effects.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Darmok is worth the purchase price
Review: I have been waiting years for Paramount to release the fifth season on DVD because of the second episode- Darmok. This is classic Trek at its best. The Enterprise encounters a new species and they have to figure out how to communicate. Even though the universal translator is working fine, they make no sense to each other. This is because the aliens' speech is full of symbols referencing their own mythology, which Picard and crew don't know, of course. The problem has to be solved with thought and understanding, not engineering. I have used this episode on snowy VHS, recorded from broadcast, for college teaching in symbolic anthropology, and it will be nice to pop the DVD into my laptop and shoot it out via the data projector.


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