Customer Reviews

Star Trek Voyager: Season 2

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

i watch, and like, all of the incarnations of star trek. voyager is my favorite.
a few of the best episodes from this season:
meld
the thaw
tuvix
resolutions
basics, part 1
unfortunatly, the price is too high. so, i decline to purchase
this set, as i have all of the star trek releases.

Less than one year following the concluding season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in 1994, executive producer/writer Rick Berman, along with Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor, created a fourth television series based upon the "Star Trek" universe originally created by Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) in the 1960's. This fourth television series, entitled "Voyager" (which is the name of the Federation of Planets starship used in the series), first aired in January 1995, and ran for seven seasons until it concluded in May, 2001. Because "Voyager" aired initially in the month of January (instead of the traditional September), only 16 episodes were filmed for the first season. The succeeding six other seasons had 26 episodes each, for a grand total of 172 episodes for the entire series.

Unlike the previous three "Star Trek" television series, which (for the most part) took place within the bounds of the Federation of Planets (or in nearby sovereign areas of space, such as the Klingon Empire or the Romulan Empire) in the Alpha Quadrant, the starship Voyager is hurled tens of thousands of light-years from home into the previously unknown and unexplored Delta Quadrant, which is located at the far side of the Milky Way Galaxy. Even while traveling at warp 8 (the fastest safe speed that a typical starship can travel), it would take Voyager several decades to return to Earth. Hence, the series focuses on the survival of Voyager's Starfleet crew, who are completely isolated and unable to even maintain normal communications with Earth, as well as the crew's ultimate desire to find a way home faster than their ship is capable of doing. Also, along the way, Voyager adopts a few Delta Quadrant natives.

The primary cast members of the second season of "Voyager" include Captain Catherine Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran), the half-Klingon Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson), Delta Quadrant native (Ocampan) Kes (Jennifer Lien), Lt. Thomas Eugene Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), Delta Quadrant native (Talaxian) Neelix (Ethan Phillips), the holographic Emergency Medical Holographic Program (a.k.a., "The Doctor", played by Robert Picardo), the Vulcan Lt. Cmdr. Tuvok (Tim Russ) and Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wang). Voyager's primary enemy in the second season is still the Delta Quadrant native species known as the Kazon. With less sophisticated technology than the Federation, several of the Kazon desperately want to capture Voyager to use against their own warring people. Seska (Martha Hackett), who left Voyager to join the Kazon during the first season, convinces a Voyager Maqui crewmember, Michael Jonas (Raphael Sbarge), to spy for the Kazon. Jonas' spying, the Kazon's desperation for technology and Seska's obsession for revenge culminate in the second season's cliffhanger final episode (a two-part episode that carries over into the third season).

Through the second season, the holographic doctor's personality continues to develop as he works with Kes, the crew encounters the phage-infected Vidians again, Neelix's duties expand beyond cooking and B'Elanna continues her inner human-Klingon battle. There are also several guest appearances from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" characters, including Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz) in episode "Projections", as well as William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Q (John de Lancie) in episode "Death Wish", which is one of the season's best episodes. The best second-season episodes, in order of airdate, include "Non Sequitur", "Tattoo", "Resistance", "Dreadnought", "Death Wish", "Lifesigns", "Deadlock", "The Thaw" and "Tuvix". The season's least memorable episodes include "Cold Fire" and "Investigations".

Overall, I rate the second season of "Voyager" with 4 out of 5 stars. Sadly, the continued participation of the Kazon started to get old, as was the appearance of Voyager's second traitor (Raphael Sbarge's character of Jonas); but several of the second season's episodes clearly demonstrated that the show could have some very good creative writing.

Star Trek Voyager really starts to evolve in the seconmd season and the episodes seem to get deepier. The Doctor also gets his ability to move out of sickbay.

I really love these dvd's. This season is the first one where voyager lands, ie, really cool effects. I also love the episode "deadlock", where voyager splits. Great idea! The special features are really awesome on this one. The "day with ethan phillips" is really cool, becuase it shows the application of his makeup. There is an awesome easter egg on this one too. It's one of Tim Russ's (Tuvok's) music videos! He sings Kushangaza (and has a nice voice might I add ;) )

I would really suggest these dvd's to anyone who loves all things star trek. I'm glad I added to my collection, and will watch these for years to come!

Although I enjoyed season 1 of Voyager, I felt some of its episodes could have been better--especially the anti-climatic season finale that consisted of Tuvok having to train unruly Maquis cadets. Season 2 does not have this problem. From start to finish, it was a season that left me wanting to watch just one more episode before going to bed and then rewatching them. Every main character is given a chance to shine from Tuvok going berserk in Meld to Torres dealing with a delusional mega-bomb to Chakotay dealing with Seska and the Kazon (with a great return of Aron "Nog" Eisenberg as a young Kazon ready to earn his name by attempting to kill Chakotay in Initiations) in a couple of episodes. I also enjoyed the multi-episode plot arc with Paris becoming more and more of a jerk that meshes with the rogue Starfleeter who was busy betraying his comrades to the Kazon and the pregnant crewmember and her improbable baby. There were plenty of my favorite type of episodes, the "what is real/what is actually going on here" concept. Watching the Doctor announce, to the Viidean he was hot for, in the middle of surgery--like he was asking her to pass the scalpel--that he was attracted to her made me cringe with delight and it made me glad that this series continued the fish out of water/emotionally clueless character that each series has employed (Spock, Data, Odo, and the EMH Doctor). Finally, the season finale, Basics Part 1 was a romping kick in the stomach that has me desperately awaiting for the release of season 3 so I can see how the crew regains their lost ship from, as my friend calls them, the garbage head Kazons. All in all, this was one of the best seasons of any of the Star Trek series.

What I used to find typical of every Star Trek Series since TNG was that the first two seasons seem to be very klunky and disjointed. It isn't until the third season that everything seems to come together: the writing, the plot lines, the acting even gets better as the actors get more familiar and more comfortable with their roles.

Star Trek-Voyager in this regard has quite a few memorable moments that need to be highlighted here. It was pretty much the ugly stepchild of DS9, which at this time had far better resources devoted to it than Voyager did.

However, those few memorable moments really stuck out whereas in DS9, it was focused on the central plot of the Emissary and his relation to Bajor and the growing threat of the Dominion looming over the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager's memorable 2nd season episodes include some of my favorite episodes of all time: "Death Wish". This is the story of an exiled Q Continuum member who wants to die and was banished for wanting that. Voyager encounters this being and then encounters the other that we are more familiar with and they take Janeway on a tour through the Continuum, which seems to resemble everything and yet nothing at the same time. No other series ever went to great lengths to explain or depict the Continuum the way Voyager did. We would revisit this again in the Third season as it is depicted as a US Civil War Battle.

"The Thaw" is also another episode of note. Voyager answers a distress call from a planet that suffered an environmental catastrophe and the survivors went underground and slept through this in suspended animation, only to be held hostage by their manifestation and personification of their fears, which was brilliantly played by Michael McKean, of "Laverne & Shirley" and "Saturday Night Live" fame. His depiction of fear personified was so over the top that you focus on him and on what he is going to do next rather than on Janeway and her crew, who are desparately running out of time.

"Tuvix" is another episode that stands out when two characters who barely got along with each other as it was get merged together with a plant through a transporter accident and become a fourth entity that wants to fight for its existence at the expense of the other three. This issue puts the crew and Janeway into an ethical dilemma: do we accept this new entity or do we get Tuvok and Neelix back.

The ongoing plot lines with the Kazon, the Treib and the Vidiians also show up here. But these seem to sputter out and exhaust themselves by the end of the second season, when we find Janeway and her crew in a worse situation than being stuck out in the Delta Quadrant--that's when they are thrown off their own ship, left with only the clothes on their backs and stranded on a planet.

I watched this series from beginning to end and saw it improve with age. Like TNG before it, the second season episodes depict a show finding itself and by the end of it, we find the show always going back to its main premise, an Alpha Quadrant ship stranded in some far-flung corner of the galaxy with its crew sometimes fighting each other and the many enemies they made while trying to get home.

DVDs were in excellent condition. This season has a few good episodes but this early on in the series still has too much Kazon and too much Kess.

Voyager looses Gene Roddenberry's respect in it's disregard for life in this season. Janeway has characters doing things Gene Roddenberry would never have allowed- A man with a homicidal temper murders a crewman (inspite of Piccard's statement that the seeds of criminal behavior have been rooted out of human society) Torres Murders a sentient robot she helped bring to life, and Janeway lets a Q commit suicide because he suffers from a sorching case of boredom. Of all the reasons for doing evil, boredom is absolutely the stupidest.

**************When items arrive damaged repeatedly Amazon doesn't blame it's shipping department, they blame the customer.. You are limited to one replacement, even if the manufacturer's packaging is partially to blame for the problem, as it is in this case. When they offer you a promotional certificate or partial refund to compensate you they take it away if they decide you've had too many returns and then blaclist you so yoyu can't shop with them anymore. deepdiscountdvd.com is almost always cheaper, shipping is always free no matter how much you buy, and their packaging is seldom a problem.

There was at least one scuffed disk in the set . Amazon.com was nice about extending me courtesies for a while but won't believe their packaging people could be this incompetant and so blacklisted me so I can't order from them anymore. I had to sign in under another account to write other similar reviews. All this trouble for a less than stellar season of Voyager. It would have been fine if they had an episode where the Captain lets someone kill himself and Torres commits murder against a sentient robot she created.

The second series of ST:Voyager comes in two pieces of thin plastic and you have to remove the top and bottom to get to the DVDs. This exposes the whole set to dust and who knows what will happen when the very thin plastic top and bottom rip.
Once again overseas viewers in R2 and R4 get hard plastic cases and R1 fans get flimsy thin covers. Why is this?
The series itself has some good episodes and some average ones and has good picture quality.
Series like Babylon 5,Firefly,Lost In Space and The Outer Limits all have good packaging and at a cheaper price,so Paramount deserves criticism for the poor packaging of the American DVD sets of Star Trek.

As for one person that(under different names)criticises Amazon,I have praise for their delivery service. I live in Australia and items arrive in very good condition. When one of the Star Trek:Deep Space Nine DVD sets that I ordered had a single scratch on one disc,Amazon was generous enough to send me as a replacement a whole new DVD set. When a Star Trek:The Next Generation DVD set disappeared in the post,again they straight away sent a replacement.
I order a lot of DVDs from Amazon and the service is eccellent.