Star Trek: Nemesis (Widescreen Collection) (2002)

· Starring: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Tom Hardy

· Directed by: Stuart Baird

· Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment

· Video: 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen

· Audio: English DD 5.1, English Dolby 2.0 Surround, French Dolby 2.0 Surround

· Subtitles: English and English Closed Captions

· Extras: Director commentary, “New Frontiers: Stuart Baird on Directing Nemesis” featurette, “A Bold Vision of the Final Frontier” featurette, “A Star Trek Family’s Final Journey” featurette, “Red Alert! Shooting the Action of Nemesis” featurette, deleted scenes, photo gallery, preview trailers for “The Hours” and the “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine DVD collection”, scene selection

· Length: 116 minutes

· Rating: ***

In this fourth movie voyage for the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew, a wedding celebration for Riker and Troi is delayed when the Enterprise is asked to travel to the Romulan home world for peace treaty discussions. There has been a political upheaval in the Romulan Senate and a new leader, the Praetor Shinzon, is now in sole power. Shortly after arrival, Picard discovers that the Praetor Shinzon is not actually a Romulan but a genetic clone of Picard himself. Furthermore, Shinzon has no intention of forming a peace treaty with the Federation; rather he is planning the annihilation of Earth with a powerful new weapon. Picard and the crew must find a way to defeat this new enemy, a task made all the more difficult since Shinzon and Picard share similar thought and intelligence.

The video quality of this DVD is excellent. Images are clean with nice detail. Black levels are deep throughout the film. Colors are dark and rich with fully saturated hues. Picture defect mastering is perfect with no major flaws or digital compression artifacts. The overall audio quality is also excellent with the English Dolby Digital 5.1 track serving as the basis for this review. The soundtrack’s mix actively incorporates all of the discrete channels. Dialogue is crisp, intelligible and properly anchored in the center channel. The surround channels are aggressive, utilized for both music and ambient sounds, and also incorporate several split rear effects. The low frequency effects channel is active and pumps out rumbling, explosive bass. Present in about one-half of the DVD’s chapters, tactile effects are present in the form of light to heavy impacts that originate from both the 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 Gold; Video Switcher- Key Digital SW4x1; Cables/Wires- Bettercables.com]