Star Trek Voyager – The Complete Fourth Season

26 episodes on 7 DVDs. 1997-98/color/19 hrs/NR/fullscreen. Amazon.com For many fans, Voyager hit its peak in the fourth season, due in no small part to a certain former Borg drone named Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 0-1, but you can call her Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Following the season 3 cliffhanger "Scorpion," the crew enters an unlikely alliance with the Borg against Species 8472, led by Seven of Nine, who ends up restoring (mostly) her human roots and trying to assimilate herself among Voyager's crew all the time feeling the pull of the Collective and resisting the mother-hen attempts of Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). While Seven's curvaceous figure and skin-tight uniform certainly won over many fans, she was helped by a commanding presence, good writing ("So you wish to copulate?" was a classic line), and a stage that was cleared for her by the coinciding departure of one of the most prominent characters of the series. Other significant developments of the season included the actors' getting to stretch themselves out "Mirror, Mirror"-like as evil counterparts in "Living Witness" (also Tim Russ's directing debut), the time- and mind-bending two-parter "Year of Hell," a battle with 1940s Nazis in the two-part "The Killing Game," the Doctor's comedic sparring with a new rival in "Message in a Bottle," the Alien-like "Prey," and Tom Paris (Robert Duncan MacNeill) taking a personal step and switching bodies with an alien in "Vis a Vis." The DVD set offers the usual 20-minute season overview, crew profiles of Seven of Nine (natch) and Harry Kim (both of whom show warm appreciation for the Trek crowd), features on Species 8472 and the art of matte painting, and episode spotlights. --David Horiuchi