Reviewers Mixed On Voyager Season Two DVDs

Online reviews pouring in for the Star Trek: Voyager season two DVD sets, released on May 18th, have praised the episodes and the quality of the picture and sound of the episodes, but have been less enthusiastic about the rather standard extras and the frustrating disc design.

Dan Phelps at DVD Fanatic praised the natural flow of the episodes and believed there were many strong entries in the second season. He found himself "mildly impressed" by the extras. "While these aren’t extras really worth watching over and over, they are indeed worth a watch at least once," he noted. Though Phelps expressed frustration with the set's packaging, he said, "Everything else, including the menus and transitions, as well as the transfer to DVD are great, and well worth [getting the set]." Phelps awarded the episodes an A grade, the special features a grade of C+, and gave the set overall a B grade.

TVShowsonDVD's Gord Lacey awarded the video quality on the set a 9/10, the audio an 8/10, and the extras a 5/10. Lacey found the second season of Voyager to be better than the first, and the video comparable to that of the DVD releases of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. However, Lacey objected to the lack of disc art, noting how difficult it was to read the episode titles on the individual discs:

When I reviewed the first season I didn't comment on the disc art, or lack of it, and a reader pointed out to me that I was doing Voyager fans a great disservice by failing to mention the shoddy work they did. You know... he was right. I've never been one to look at the artwork on a disc - sure, I'll glance at it, but the disc comes out of the package and goes into my player. The other day I was trying to find an episode of the show to put on for a friend and I sat there looking at the names of episodes spiraling around the center of the disc. Who designed this thing? It wouldn't have been so bad if it were around the outer edge of the disc, but the inside? No wonder the reader was ticked I didn't mention this before; it's a horrible way to package the discs.

Scott Kimball at Home Theater Forum said viewers will have to decide for themselves whether the number of good episodes in season two is worth the $100 price. He wrote that "the audio/video quality [of the Voyager season two set] is the best yet in Trek season sets" and that "[t]he quality of the full-screen video is the best thing this set has going for it." Kimball found the text trivia on "The 37s" episode interesting, but noted that "the size and style of this text track is extremely intrusive, using an opaque box with text inside, sometimes covering up about one quarter of the screen--occasionally even covering actor’s faces. Semitransparent text boxes, or plain subtitle text would have been preferred."

The second season of Voyager is available to order from Amazon.com.

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