MovieFreak.com - Star Trek: Deep Space 9 - The Complete Fourth Season DVD Review

Paramount presents Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in standard 1.33:1 fullscreen format. The transfer is not without its flaws, but overall the presentation is fresh and updated. The print image looks healthy, and the quality is pretty good. However, noticeable grain occurs in even the slightest of dark scenes. Dark tones and black levels are inconsistent, but it’s not a major issue. Colors are fresh and at times quite vibrant. The use of colors on the show is remarkable as each set and form of clothing includes a variety of colors. Color detail is at times inconsistent. The special effects shots look obvious sometimes, but they make a nice impression, especially during the battle sequences. The overall video presentation is very good and maintains the same type of quality from the previous three seasons.

Paramount presents Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in English 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound. Not a lot of surround sound occurs as the front speakers are mostly hard at work. The speakers put out enough bass and balance to make dialog clear and easy to understand. This presentation creates a welcome environment for the show’s sound effects, which at times penetrate the rear speakers. The score comes across quite nicely as well in this 5.1 soundtrack; it is composed and used appropriately. Overall, the audio presentation is pretty good.

Following the pattern of the previous three boxed sets, the special features are available on disc 7. Extras include new featurettes, behind-the-scenes, and an assortment of Easter eggs, also known as hidden files. Here is a description of the extras.

Charting New Territory: Season Four (18 mins) – This featurette discusses the addition of Worf to the show. Interviews are with Ira Steven Behr, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Ronald D. Moore, Avery Brooks, Michael Dorn, Terry Farrell, and others as they reveal reasons and their thoughts on Worf and a new spin to the show. Following it is the segment called “Fascinating Stories,” which looks at some of the season’s highlight episodes, including Rejoined, Little Green Men, The Way of the Warrior, and the season finale Broken Link. Again interviews with the crew and cast members are included in the discussions. There is one terribly annoying aspect in this featurette—Robert Hewitt Wolfe reveals a major plot point of Season Five. Don’t worry, folks, I’m not as stupid and negligent as Mr. Wolfe to reveal the spoiler. I guess I just have to live with the fact of knowing what happens at the end of Season Five, but it really isn’t fair to viewers following this show (for the first time) on DVD. For some reason this featurette (and the one below) doesn’t really acknowledge such an audience.

Crew Dossier: Worf (14 mins) – Here we get an exclusive new interview with actor Michael Dorn discussing his decision to join the series, playing opposite Terry Farrell and enriching the Worf character. This featurette starts out with a 1995 interview of Dorn, then plays a clip from a 1999 interview, and finally settles on the all-new interview from October 30, 2002. Michael Dorn and Ira Steven Behr discuss Worf and what he means to the show’s fourth season. There is a potential spoiler here concerning Worf and Dax, including at least two clips from future episodes. This featurette also plays to Worf’s appearance in Star Trek: Insurrection. On the whole this edition of the “Crew Dossier” is pretty good and on the same level as the previous ones.

Michael Westmore's Aliens: Season Four (11 mins) – This featurette offers an examination of the good and evil creatures from the season, or as they are also referred to, “nasty aliens.” They include the beloved "Morn" to the Loathsome Letheans. It’s a decent featurette with some footage of make-up sessions and whatnot.

Rounding out the extras is Deep Space Nine Sketchbook with Illustrator John Eaves discussing his original drawings for the episodes The Way of the Warrior, Our Man Bashir, The Sword of Kahless, Hard Time, and several others. Also included is a Photo Gallery and helpful Scene Selections.

Going back to the Hidden Files for a moment, which can be found by clicking left and right in the special features menu—they will be highlighted in green as parts of the space station. These hidden files provide some 20 or so minutes of behind-the-scenes, and insights into specific episodes are present in these small featurettes. Instead of hiding them in the two parts of the special features menu, Paramount easily could’ve presented these short featurettes in a more conventional navigational structure. It’s kind of a waste of time for consumers to search for these and hope to find them all. On the other hand, they’re not terribly hard to find, and anyone with enough time should be able to find them, but in the end it’s kind of pointless to hide these featurettes. I think sometimes Easter eggs just go a little too far and should just be presented as regular special features. There’s no harm done in that.

Miscellaneous: Some Best Buy stores apparently include a bonus disc when purchasing one of the boxed sets. This eighth disc includes 1-minute episode introductions from the some of the cast members as well as additional behind-the-scenes footage and featurettes. This looks to be a Best Buy exclusive, but it’s not very fair to customers who don’t know about the bonus disc and buy the sets from somewhere else. It’s also not fair to Internet review journalists who don’t get the disc attached to review copies. In the end, however, I guess this is how the “exclusive” business works.

You can select to view the episodes with optional English subtitles. The DVD’s menus are interactive, but not animated. Each episode runs approximately 45 minutes and is organized into 8 chapters.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season Four is the most exciting season so far. I can’t say anything of the remaining three seasons because I’ve never seen them, but things are looking bright as hell, for the lack of a better term. Paramount’s video/audio presentations are pretty good, and the extras are basically the same as the extras on previous boxed sets. Surely the discussions are different in subjects and whatnot, but there is repetitiveness to the extras.

The Deep Space Nine – Season Four boxed set is highly recommended. Fans and everybody else interested in this show should seek it out before stores raise the price to $139.99, at which point the set becomes quite expensive.

THE SEASON	8
THE VIDEO	8
THE AUDIO	8
THE EXTRAS	6
OVERALL (not an average)	8