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 - It's All About......................Seven.Seven IS Season 4 of Voyager. I just love watching her develop into a part of the Voyager crew. She is so innocent, yet so brilliant and cocky with her Borg superiority attitude. Best episodes for sure are the Hunter episodes - keeps you wanting more. As for Andy Dick being in an episode - mistakes happen. I forgive them. Rating:  - Some Excellent EpisodesSeason 4 of Voyager commences with two of the series' most compelling episodes. Scorpion Pt. II resolves the cliffhanger of season 3 and introduces Seven of Nine, who is at first decidedly unattractive as a Borg drone. The Gift completes at least her physical transformation into a surly fembot. This season lavishes attention on the character of Seven, who quickly becomes both complex and likeable owing in large part to a well-crafted performance by Jeri Ryan. Her unapologetically sexy contribution to the Voyager ensemble still causes controvery among fans, but certainly Ryan gives it her all from the first time she appears until the end of the show's run. The Gift also marks the unfortunate departure of Kes (excepting an even more unfortunate and misbegotten return for one episode in season 6), and although no other regular will disappear from the show completely, many will find themselves in the background this season given Seven's prominent place. A number of solid episodes follow the season's impressive start: Day of Honor provides Torres and Paris a chance to float in space and explore their relationship, and Nemesis finds Chakotay with some young alien soldiers "glimpsing" among the "trunks." Revulsion introduces us to an obsessive-compulsive hologram, The Raven to Seven's (that is, Annika's) eccentric parents, and Scientific Method to some invisible alien contraptions that are torturing the Voyager crew. Following these is the two-part Year of Hell, a fantastic episode with a Captain Nemo-like villain and an increasingly Captain Ahab-like Janeway. After this climax a few weaker episodes follow, including Random Thoughts, with Tuvok again playing detective (a role he first took on in season 1's Ex Post Facto); Mortail Coil, which gives us a view of Talaxian spirituality; and Waking Moments, with its sound and fury basically signifying nothing. Things get good again with the hilarious, Niles-and-Frasier team-up of two EMHs in Message in a Bottle, which also puts Voyager back in contact with Starfleet and introduces the Hirogen, a towering hunter race also seen in Hunters, Prey, and the two-part Killing Game. This last is certainly imaginative, but like Concerning Flight it involves Janeway allowing aliens to make off with Voyager's technology. I wouldn't be so concerned about this if the captain hadn't been so determined in earlier seasons to keep Federation stuff out of Kazon hands. Things get iffy from here on out in the season, although it certainly never descends to the level of the worst of season 2. Vis a Vis, Unforgettable, and Demon all seem unexceptional at best. Both the Omega Directive and One invite us into the inner workings amd motivations of Seven, and not for the last time. Living Witness, a standout, gives the Voyager crew a chance to wear grimaces and leather gloves and even makes an important point about history amidst the fun. Hope and Fear wraps up the season nicely if not spectacularly, with a brief return to where we started this segment of Voyager's journey, in Borg space. The extras, along with Easter eggs, are about what we've become used to with the Voyager DVD sets, although Real Science has been omitted and a feature on matte painting added. In general this season provides some of the highest highs of Voyager and none of its lowest lows. Rating: - Pretty decent, solid season of VoyagerI love Star Trek, I have since it was first on in the 60's (my dad tells me I used to watch it in my playpen in 1966 when I was only a year old!). :) Anyway, I consider myself a pretty good Star Trek fan, I've been watching as long as I can remember. Voyager never quite did it for me when it was new. I think part of the reason was that they removed themselves from the established Star Trek continuity. You didn't have all the familiar sights of the Federation and whatnot. However, over time, the show has grown on me, even moreso since it went off the air. I have several Star Trek season sets, but I don't buy all of them, mostly because of the price of the things, and the fact that I won't rewatch them a zillion times, the cost kind of keeps me from buying all of them. Having said that, I felt that Season 4 was a must buy. The reason was the introduction of Seven of Nine. Her visual look aside, I felt Seven was a pretty complex character, and while Seven based stories seemed to dominate for awhile, I felt she was a good mix to the crew. The fact that Jeri Ryan was pleasing (a little TOO pleasing for some people) to the eye kind of made it difficult for some people to look past her breasts and see the good character there. A Borg as a crewmember? That was a pretty radical concept back when this was new. None of the fans really knew how it would turn out. It turned out pretty well, and in Season 4 you can see the genesis of the character. Also, we lost Kes this season. The production staff was on record saying that they didn't know what to do with the character. Personally, I thought the character was fine. There were some wonderful Kes stories in the first three years of the show, and I liked that Kes was a character that didn't have these hidden agendas, didn't want to have a command of her own, etc.. She was just a "nice" character. And that was lost. Shame, as I thought Jennifer Lien was both cute and pulled off what they did try to do pretty well. There's several REALLY good stories in Season 4. Obviously, the introuction of Seven in the first episode is great (that's one beef I have with these seasons sets; season ending cliffhangers are spread over two sets, and you don't get part 1 of this thing). Ones I liked a lot were "The Gift" (The departure of Kes), The Year of Hell Pts 1/2 (The crew evacuates Voyager and it takes some supreme beatings), Message in a Bottle (The Doctor is transported back to the Alpha Quadrant), The Killing Game Pts 1/2 (The crew is forced to play war games on the Holodeck), Living Witness (a fabulous story where the crew is depicted 700 years in the future in a soceity's museum; depicted wrong). Hope and Fear (Starfleet sends a ship to bring Voyager home?). There's plenty more good stuff in this season, but I don't want to just sit here and list them all. There's a good episode guide over at startrek.com for all these episodes, go check it out. I gave this review 4 stars out of 5 because of the fact that I don't much care for what Paramount has done with the extras on these sets. They need commentaries, they need deleted scenes, they need a whole lot more stuff than the few flimsy documentaries they have included. I'm also not a fan of the actual packaging used on the Voyager sets, it seems pretty "cheap" to me. The episodes are great, so that's where the high mark comes from, but I'm disappointed in Paramount for dropping the ball on creating what could be really GREAT season sets; they seem content on just doing some work on them. What concerns me more is Paramount's history of releasing minimal releases, and then later on re-releasing them with far more extensive versions. They did that with all the Star Trek movies, I sure hope they aren't planning the same wiht the various TV show sets. Rating: - Voyager's Best Season Comes Full CircleStar Trek: Voyager's fourth season was the show's darkest chapter. It was also a major turning point for the show. The biggest change was the addition of the ex-Borg Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and the absence of Kes (Jennifer Lien), who left the ship in "The Gift" after she began to evolve into something that would have destroyed Voyager. Season Four also had two huge 2-part episodes. This is the favorite season of Voyager for most fans of the show, myself included, with very little disappointment from the episodes. Season Four begins with the conclusion to Season Three's explosive season finale "Scorpion". We are introduced to Seven of Nine towards the beginning of this second part to the episode. The season premiere flowed right into the second episode of the season, "The Gift", which picks up right where "Scorpion, Part II" ends. This episode is Star Trek at its best with superb writing and wonderful performances from the actors. The scenes between Janeway and Seven of Nine are excellent, escpecially when Seven of Nine has a break down in the Brig. The final scenes with Kes are compelling and her rush to the shuttle bay is very exciting. Voyager finally makes contact with the Alpha Quadrant in the comedy-driven episode "Message in a Bottle" in which The Doctor is sent to a Starfleet ship using an immense network of Hirogen relay stations. Andy Dick makes a perfect guest star performance as EMH-2. The 2-parter episode "Year of Hell" is one of Voyager's best. "Year of Hell" has tons of action and awesome visual effects. You can't miss the ending where Janeway smashes Voyager into the Krenim weapon ship. The other 2-part episode entitle "The Killing Game" may not have compared much to "Year of Hell" but still made a good episode. There is no cliffhanger to Season Four, but the final episode, entitle "Hope and Fear" brings the season full circle, tapping into Janeway's alliance with the Borg in "Scorpion". Rating:  - Jumping the Shark - Star Trek Style!The fourth season is where Voyager REALLY jumped the shark. Don't listen to those rabid Voyager fans, they're all insane to believe that this show was about something good and interesting. By this time, the writers, producers and everyone involved in the show cared only about one thing: money. The fourth season showcases the frantic effort to boost ratings by any means possible. The brought in the busty Borg babe, they brutally butchered the borg, and they didn't know when to let up. "7 of 9" is not a quality character folks. She's what they call a "Mary Sue." Her nano-probes can do pretty much anything, and then even more when used with a "modified deflector dish." Voyager would be the worst Star Trek ever produced had they not let Shatner direct his own film, and went on to make that mockery of everything Trek, "Enterprise." I used to like Voyager, back when that was the only Star Trek on the air. Then I saw reruns of the great jewel of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Do yourself a favour, skip the horrible excuse for television, Voyager, and buy a quality Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine.
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