Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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93 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ST:TNG Season One - DVD, April 27, 2002
Superb. Seeing these twenty-six episodes together for the first time in fifteen years was truly a treat. The behind-the-scenes information is well done and worth the purchase, and the menus are well-organized. The preview (Episode Log) screen for each of the seven discs is excellent, with each disc providing four scenes from each episode set to the backdrop of the main theme for the series. One of the benefits of the package is that production order and air date order are taken into consideration, and this shows with regard to the order in which each title is furnished in the menus (e.g., 121, 120, 122, 123).The first season has often been termed 'sterile' by some; this probably has some merit given that any new series doesn't necessarily have chemistry from the outset. However, some of the episodes are in the opinion of this writer among the best in the series--among these, "Code of Honor," "Where No One Has Gone Before," "Justice," "The Big Goodbye," "Datalore," "11001001," "Home Soil," "Coming of Age," "Heart of Glory," "The Arsenal of Freedom," the Stefano-written "Skin of Evil," "Conspiracy," and "The Neutral Zone"--the latter episode perhaps introducing us (albeit cryptically) to the Borg. The segment on "Memorable Missions" was particularly poignant, especially the portion where Natasha Yar (Denise Crosby) reflects on her work on ST:TNG. The interviews with the Production (and other) Staff were also very interesting and informative; I found the excerpt with Michael Okuda intriguing and eye-opening. This DVD boxed set is a must for lovers of any of the five Star Trek series. I've already placed my order for ST:TNG Season Two. :)...
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256 of 298 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All About The Fitst Set, January 17, 2002
Each season of TNG will be presented in a highly collectable box set, with seven discs and a pull-out booklet of episode information and a panoramic montage of the crew (Season 2 will have only six discs due to the abbreviated season of 22 episodes versus 26). The seven box sets will create an attractive library of the entire series. "Star Trek is one of our most popular and enduring video franchises," said Eric Doctorow, president, Paramount Home Entertainment Worldwide. "We are very excited to be releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD because we are now offering consumers the ultimate home viewing experience for this immensely popular show." The contents of the Season One box set are as follows: Disc 1: Encounter at Farpoint Parts 1 & 2 (episodes 101, 102), The Naked Now (103), Code of Honor (104) Disc 2: The Last Outpost (107), Where No One Has Gone Before (106), Lonely Among Us (108), Justice (109) Disc 3: The Battle (110), Hide and Q (111), Haven (105), The Big Goodbye (113) Disc 4: DataLore (114), Angel One (115), 11001001 (116), Too Short a Season (112) Disc 5: When the Bough Breaks (118), Home Soil (117), Coming of Age (119), Heart of Glory (120) Disc 6: The Arsenal of Freedom (121), Symbiosis (123), Skin of Evil (122), We'll Always Have Paris (124) Disc 7: Conspiracy (125), The Neutral Zone (126), Special Features Disc 7 includes the following special features: - The Beginning: focusing on the challenges of creating a new series and keeping to Gene Roddenberry's vision. Includes interviews with Roddenberry, Patrick Stewart, Robert Justman (former producer of the Original Series), Rick Berman (Co-Executive Producer at the time), Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Denise Crosby and other cast members. - Selected Crew Analysis: features first-season cast members talking about their roles, their acting backgrounds prior to being cast and their impressions of the Star Trek legacy. Also features a comparison between the launch of the series in 1987 and the comments from the cast seven years later (1994), using archive interviews and b-roll to present a fascinating "before-and-after" look from the series cast members. - The Making of a Legend: features commentary from the first-season production staff members - Michael Westmore (Make-up), Herman Zimmerman (Production Designer), Mike Okuda (Scenic Artist), Richard Stembach (Scenic Artist), Dan Curry (Visual Effects), Peter Lauritson (Co-Producer), Rick Berman and others - as they discuss the making of the new series. Uncovers information on how the beaming effect is achieved, Worf's make up process and how much time and effort goes into creating each episode. - Memorable Missions: cast and crew discussions of specific episodes and events that occurred during the first season. The DVD of Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season One is presented in a full-frame version, and the audio is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. The DVDs are subtitled in English and closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired. The Season One box set carries no suggested retail price but is expected to be priced by retailers for their customers at under... It is not rated in the U.S. by the Motion Picture Association of America; it is, however, rated G in Canada. Each disc has a running time of approximately 176 minutes, with the exception of Disc 7, which has 88 minutes of features and approximately 60 minutes of special features. All seven discs are encoded with the Macrovision™ AntiCopy process. The above information pertains to the North American release only.
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72 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
STNG Season One: Setting the groundwork for better things, March 19, 2002
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" became a great television series, but it certainly was not that at the start. The first season was a concerted effort to use the original series as a launch pad and it was not until their first encounter with the Borg that we can really say the series kicked into high gear. Consequently, the chief joy of watching the first season again is to see how the bits and pieces start to fall into place. Since I have already reviewed all of the STNG episodes individually, I want to comment on the first season overall in regards to this DVD collection.
In retrospect it is clear the creators of STNG did an excellent job in shuffling around the key traits of the crew on the original series and providing some new twists centered around the notion that as soon as you looked at Jean-Luc Picard it was clear he was no James T. Kirk ("TV Guide" originally disparaged the series as "baldly going where one show has gone before"--later they declared Patrick Stewart the best actor on television for that decade). Picard gets to be the father-figure, Riker gets to be the stud, the ship's doctor is now a woman, the Vulcan on the bridge is replaced with a Klingon, and Spock's emotional detachment is transferred to an android, but with the twist that Data wants to have emotions. So there is a sense of familiarity without creating outright repetition.
The creators always felt the biggest mistake in the pilot was Troi's telepathic message to Riker and the use of the word Imzadi. While Peter David's STNG novel alone of that title justifies its inclusion in the Star Trek universe, this "error" actually speaks to a larger strength of the series, namely the backstories of the characters. Riker and Troi have a shared past but so do Picard and Crusher, both of which will be fruitfully explored in the future. Many of the best episodes of the original series had to do with the background of the characters ("Amok Time" and "Journey to Babel" immediately spring to mind), because ultimately it is the characters rather than the story lines that make a television series great and this will prove to be the same for STNG (e.g., "Datalore"). Mostly it was a matter of adjustment and finding the right roles for the characters. Consequently, in due time La Forge becomes the engineer, Worf the security chief, and Wesley the navigator. Tasha Yar suffers a meaningless death in "Skin of Evil," mainly because the producers have no idea of what to do with her character (Tasha is magnificently redeemed in "Yesterday's Enterprise" in Season 3, which only goes to prove my points about both the show's evolution and the importance of characters over plot).
Clearly the biggest flaw of the first season was the regurgitation of episodes and elements from the original series. "The Naked Now," the first episode after the two-part pilot, was a variation on "The Naked Time" and even allowed the crew to talk about Kirk's Enterprise. An episode where the characters are forced to reveal their true selves is certainly worthwhile, but not when it functions as exposition in the first regular episode (a similar complaint can be made against Riker's gift giving in "Hide and Q"). But it becomes hard to fully enjoy an episode like "The Arsenal of Freedom," when it is clearly a twist on "Shore Leave."
Finally, we get to add the holodeck to the Star Trek creative license list headed by the warp drive and transporter system. All of these technologies are scientific impossibilities but facilitate story telling (otherwise a five year mission ends up as traveling halfway to some star system). Little did we know that "The Big Good-Bye" would be the first of what would prove to be way too many "something is wrong with the holodeck and we are in danger" episodes. Still, the holodeck proves ideal for providing change of pace episodes (e.g., "11001001") and one of the strengths of STNG was its use of humor (e.g., "The Arsenal of Freedom," where Riker talks about being given command of a new ship, the Lollipop, which, he adds, "is a good ship"). I also think having families aboard the Enterprise is highly improbable to say the least. Yes, the saucer can detach and supposedly put the civilians out of harm's way, but not only do they rarely do that during the entire run of STNG, the Borg, Romulans or whoever the Enterprise faces in a fight probably would not have any compunctions about blasting the saucer into cosmic dust. But, again, the point is that the idea facilitates storytelling.
Clearly the first season on STNG is a time of discovery, which is not unusual in the evolution of a television (go back and look at the first season of "M*A*S*H" and count how many times you cringe at some of what they did). Fortunately, because they were in syndication the series was able to improve substantially. But I do not recall ever see an episode from the first season end up on anybody's list of Top 10 "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episodes. Yes, "Encounter at Farpoint" introduces Q, but the payoff is just not as good as the setup; still, there are much better Q episodes to come. "Conspiracy" is almost laughable in terms of secret alien threat, but in "The Best of Both Worlds" the show would take many of these same elements and create the best episode(s) ever. The first season is just, as Captain Picard would say, a chance to see what is out there.
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