Film: 
DVD: 
Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor, based on Gene Roddenberry’s universe
Starring Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Biggs-Dawson, Jeri Ryan, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, Garrett Wang, and Tim Russ.
Features:
- All twenty-six seventh season episodes
- Braving the Unknown: Season 7
- Voyager Time Capsule: The Doctor
- Coming Home: The Final Episode
- Real Science with Andre Bormanis
- The Making of Borg Invasion 4-D
- Lost Transmissions from the Delta Quadrant
Released by Paramount
Region: 1
Rating: NR, suitable for audiences 12+
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in original 1.33:1 TV aspect
My Advice: Let it die with whatever dignity it had left.
Against all odds and most reviewers’ better judgment, Star Trek Voyager lurched its way to the obligatory seventh season finale. I must confess, it gets increasingly difficult to review a series that I think should have been cancelled four seasons earlier, but alas, this is my cross to bear. Season 7 sees the writers still over-using Seven of Nine desperately, keeping the cameras trained on Jeri Ryan as often as possible in hopes of gluing enough teenage boys to the screen to make it look like somebody actually gave a shit about their fading franchise. The other obligatory trope was the use of a popular character from a more successful franchise in hopes of drawing fans back to the show, this time in the form of Dwight Schultz’s Barclay. The decision to go with Barclay is a bit of a mystery, as he was never more than the bittiest of bit players in his days as a member of Picard’s Enterprise crew.
That isn’t to say there aren’t at least a couple of decent ideas in the season, though the preponderance of Seven episodes and every other episode involving holograms or holodeck technology or a hatred of holograms or some other holo-bullshit makes it hard to sort through and find the goodness. One of the best episodes in the season revolves around the ship’s holographic doctor becoming an author, while the crew takes some umbrage at his book and he attempts to have its publication cancelled. No new alien races, no space anomaly of the week, no Borg, no real time spent with the cameras staring at Jeri Ryan’s ass. It’s an almost totally anomalous episode of Voyager, except for the involvement of a hologram. The series finale two-parter is actually not bad, either, as it breaks the mold of previous Star Trek send-offs by refusing to tidily resolve everything.
The features list is every bit as robust as all the Trek sets have been, so no surprises there. This time we get a bonus featurette all about the final episode, including tearful farewells and cast rememberances and all that sort of stuff. The Bormanis feature is pretty cool stuff for those that get a bit geeked out by real astrophysics weirdness. As always, commentaries would be nice, but hell, I’m tired of hearing me say that, so whatever. Video and audio throughout the set is excellent, as well.
I can see no really compelling reason anybody would necessarily want to own this set, except for Trek completists or the ashamed handful of Voyager devotees. Pick up NextGen or Original Series sets, if you’re looking for Trek DVDs. If you’ve got all of those and still have money to throw around, go pick up B5 or Serenity or the new Battlestar Galactica or something. Please. Think of the children.
