By BWilliams / 12:40, 27 September 2004 / Reviews - Products

STAR TREK: VOYAGER - THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON ON DVD
DVD

Price: $129.99
Pub Date: September 2004

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When the fourth season of STAR TREK: VOYAGER premiered in the fall of 1997, already changes were underway to shake up the series and inject it with fresh blood. What had originally been dubbed 'TNG Lite' had started to become rather stale, with rehashed plot lines becoming the order of the day, and less than captivating villains to keep Captain Kathryn Janeway and the crew of the Voyager on edge as they headed for home. It was time to up the ante.

For me this was the last season I would see VOYAGER in second-run syndication. Because of many complex issues involving the city council, the cable television company, and the arrival of the then-new UPN network into town, VOYAGER would not return to television until midway through the fifth season -- and only then as a result of a satellite download out in the middle of the woods. Could things get any worse? If this was an indicator, then STAR TREK was beginning its downward spiral.

The seeds of the fourth season's progression and development were initially sown toward the end of the third season, as co-creators and executive producers Rick Berman and Jeri Taylor faced the prospect of losing 'Kes' and Jennifer Lien, who wanted to pursue other projects. One of the earlier episodes from the third season also re-introduced one of the Federation's most dangerous enemies, the Borg, into the Delta Quadrant, so it was only a matter of time before the Voyager crew would encounter this unstoppable enemy. But even the Borg had an Achilles' heel, brought out in the form of Species 8472 in the season finale "Scorpion", which obliterated a Borg armada completely. To obtain passage through a dangerous area of space, and to handle an irresistible force, Janeway proposed an unlikely alliance with the Borg.

And therein did the fourth season pick up, in "Scorpion, Part II", as the Starfleet crew and the Borg faced off not only against each other but also against Species 8472. As Berman and company were quick to point out, the Borg were not to be trusted, no matter at the cost of a tenuous alliance, no matter who was assimilated into the Borg Collective. To facilitate the seeds of the Voyager crew's assimilation, Berman and company brought in a new Borg character, Seven of Nine, played by series newcomer Jeri Ryan. Initially a human female named Annika Hansen, Seven's origins would be explored through the fourth and fifth seasons in a number of well-written episodes, among them "The Raven" and "Dark Frontier". As she became part of the crew, she became less Borg and more human, as she examined her half-human nature, becoming to this series what Spock was to the Original Series, Data to THE NEXT GENERATION, and Odo to DEEP SPACE NINE. Eventually, Seven became part Voyager crewmember and part sexpot, with her skin-tight catsuit outfits that drew attention from her character and onto her, well, other assets. What began as a way to re-energize STAR TREK would, over the next four seasons, evolve into plummeting the series further into mediocrity, relying on sex and rehashed plots to sell the 24th century.

But there were still issues to be settled with the rest of the Voyager crew. In the season's second episode, "The Gift", we saw not only Seven's acclimation into a life away from the Borg collective, we also witnessed Kes' final departure from the ship, as her Ocampan abilities forced her to evolve into a higher life form -- but not without giving Janeway and company one final farewell gift: a much-needed push home.

Not all episodes focused solely on the new character of Seven of Nine, though she certainly took front and center in a number of episodes. In 1997 Pocket Books launched a crossover event called "Day of Honor" to tie together the various series into exploring the Klingon culture and their ritual of self-examination. VOYAGER tied into this series with an episode of the same name, exploring how B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) dealt with her half-Klingon heritage. Under the pen of Jeri Taylor, Torres finds not only her honor but also her love for Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), taking their relationship to another level.

War once again reared its ugly head on VOYAGER, in the form of the episode "Nemesis", written by Kenneth Biller, who would go on to write, produce, and direct a number of later installments in the series. Trapped on an alien planet, Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is brainwashed into thinking he is part of a conflict between two warring factions. The horrors of war are explored in this Vietnam allegory, bringing once again the unsettling reality that all is not what it seems.

As with the previous season, time travel once again played an important role on VOYAGER, this time around in the excellent two-part adventure "Year of Hell". Marking the first appearance of the ship's new astrometrics lab, "Year of Hell" centered around a mad scientist's attempting to rewrite history to save the lives of his family and his home planet, while his chronometric torpedoes damage the Voyager. It became an exciting race to the finish, seeing poor Voyager being constantly beat down, torn apart, damaged, with only Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) left to sacrifice herself and her ship to repair the space-time continuum. The shocking finale marked some of the best visual effects ever experienced on a television scale.

VOYAGER also explored its share of important moral and ethical issues, as in the episode "Mortal Coil", in which Neelix (Ethan Phillips) is accidentally killed and then brought back to life by Seven's Borg nanoprobes. The internal struggle Neelix experiences, as he lashes out at his crewmates is one of patient rights: Should he have died, as he was meant to, or should he be allowed to live, as his crewmates think? Is the Talaxian afterlife, as he has viewed his entire life, nothing but a hoax? This is not the first time that VOYAGER touched upon the issue of death versus life; the second season episode "Tuvix" also brilliantly explored how important a patient's life is, no matter who is affected. The later episode "The Omega Directive", also touched upon the value of life versus death, as the crew discovers a molecule long rumored to be fable but is in fact a reality. Again, Janeway is left with the moral dilemma of either examining the Omega molecule, despite a standing Starfleet order, or destroying it, against the wishes of Seven and an alien species dependent upon it.

One of the most powerful episodes of the series' fourth season, "Living Witness", touched upon the importance of setting straight the differences between fact and fiction. Ably written by Brannon Braga and directed by Tim Russ (Tuvok), the Doctor is put on trial hundreds of years into the future for the crimes of war apparently precipitated by Janeway and the Voyager. History has become distorted in the Kyrians' and Vaskans' eyes, and it's up to the Doctor and a fragmented amount of 24th century data to set the record straight. If the museum in this episode looks quite familiar, you're right: it would be re-utilized in 1997-98 as the Son'a medical bay for STAR TREK: INSURRECTION.

However important the mission of getting home was for the crew of the Voyager, it was not without its challenges. With the problems of the Kazon, the Borg, and Species 8472 seemingly behind them, they needed a new challenge. Midway through the fourth season Berman and company crafted a five-episode story arc introducing viewers to the Hirogen, a race of alien predators who think nothing of pursuing its quarry and mounting trophies from their hunts on the walls of their ships. In the episodes "Hunters", "Prey", and "Retrospect", the Hirogen made their threats pretty clear to the Voyager crew: let the hunt begin. This story arc culminated in the fascinating two-part adventure "The Killing Game", which saw the crew forced to enact out a World War II-style scenario on the holodeck, with the Hirogen as Nazis and the Voyager crew fighting to resist being hunted and killed.

For all of the better episodes, the fourth season of VOYAGER also had its share of clunkers mired in technobabble. Episodes such as "Random Thoughts", "Revulsion", "Waking Moments", and "Vis a Vis" didn't exactly strengthen the series. Still, the crew found more memorable moments during the season, as Janeway met and took flight with one of her mentors, Leonardo da Vinci in "Concerning Flight", Tom Paris furthered his love for 20th century cars in "Vis a Vis", and Seven and the Doctor rescued the ship, conquering Seven's fears of solitude, in "One". And alien life forms sought contact with the Voyager crew, replicating them on a distant planet in the episode "Demon", the repercussions of which would later be felt in future episodes.

The first signs that Voyager was in contact with Starfleet came in "Hunters", when the crew received messages from the Alpha Quadrant. It would not be until the season finale "Hope and Fear" that the crew was entertained with a most tempting prospect: a Starfleet prototype vessel, the U.S.S. Dauntless, with an experimental technology that can possibly take Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant, and with an apparent message from Starfleet Command to Janeway. Of course, it all turned out to be a ruse, and even the call letters on the Dauntless' hull added another layer of deception to the hoax, one that sharp-eyed fans would pick up on again in 2001 with the premiere of ENTERPRISE.

Without the benefit of a cliffhanger finale as with the previous two seasons, VOYAGER would head into an uncertain future that would lead the crew -- and viewers -- into the unknown. What would happen next? For this viewer it would not be until early 1999 before I would see what would transpire.