Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season Four (1990-1991)

·      Starring: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton
·      Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment
·      Video: 4:3 Fullscreen
·      Audio: English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0
·      Subtitles: English, English Closed Captions
·      Extras: Mission Overview: Year Four Featurette, Selected Crew Analysis: Year Four Featurette, Departmental Briefing-Year Four: Production Featurette, New Life and New Civilizations Featurette, Chronicles from the Final Frontier Featurette, Collectible Booklet
·      Length: 1,182 minutes
·      Rating: ****

The Complete Fourth Season of Star Trek: The Next Generation makes its DVD debut on September 03, 2002.  Packaged in the same silver cardboard outer-casing as the first three seasons' box sets, Season Four's insert and DVD color is forest green.  Season Four memorable moments include the return of Q in the episode QPid, the departure of Ensign Wesley Crusher in the episode Final Mission, Data's family reunion with his brother Lore and father Dr. Noonien Soong in the episode Brothers, and the introduction of Tasha Yar's daughter (played by Denise Crosby) in the season finale episode Redemption (Part I).  The entire 26 episodes from the 1990-1991 season are spread out over seven discs.  (Disc One: The Best of Both Worlds (Part II), Family, Brothers, Suddenly Human.  Disc Two: Remember Me, Legacy, Reunion, Future Imperfect.  Disc Three: Final Mission, The Loss, Data's Day, The Wounded.  Disc Four: Devil's Due, Clues, First Contact, Galaxy's Child.  Disc Five: Night Terrors, Identity Crisis, The Nth Degree, QPid.  Disc Six: The Drumhead, Half A Life, The Host, The Mind's Eye.  Disc Seven: In Theory, Redemption (Part I.)

The video quality of Season Four is very good and the best to date for The Next Generation box set releases.  Images are well detailed and colors are warm and rich with fully saturated hues.  There is solid contrast and dark black levels.  Picture defect mastering is near perfect with no major flaws or digital compression artifacts.  The overall audio quality is also very good with the English Dolby Digital 5.1 track serving as the basis for this review.  The soundtrack mix predominantly favors the forward channels.  Dialogue is crisp and natural sounding.  The surround channels are fairly active and are used for both ambient sound effects and the music score.  The quality and quantity of tactile sound effects varies amongst episodes, ranging from average to good.  The tactile effects are in the form of light and moderate impacts and they originate both from sound effects and the music score.

Reference equipment used for this review: [Video projector- Studio Experience Cinema 17SF; Projection screen- Da-Lite 106 Da-Snap; DVD player- Pioneer Elite DV-37; A/V Receiver- Sherwood Newcastle R-963T; Speakers- BIC DV62si mains, DV62CLRs center, Adatto DV52si rears, D1210R subwoofer; Tactile Transducers- Clark Synthesis TST 329 Gold; Cables and Wires- Bettercables.com]