The third season of STAR TREK: VOYAGER was one where the creators of the TV series regrouped and overcame some of the obstacles that came with the show's launch, yet still let opportunities slip by. Spread out over 26 episodes, the new Season Three set will let you pick and choose from your favorites, which in this reviewer's case is a mixed blessing.

The strength and weakness of VOYAGER this season was the decision to make the show as stand-alone as possible and try not to employ using story arcs (which its sister series, DEEP SPACE NINE, was steeped with doing.) The result of this was a season's worth of episodes that ranged from being pretty good to pretty silly, yet none that were truly outstanding or irredeemably awful. After two years, the show's major villains, the water envious Kazon, were thankfully retired and sent packing after the conclusion of the third season opener. This led to the creation of a year's worth of episodes where the villains came and went until "Scorpion, Part I", the season finale, which officially introduced the Borg to Voyager and debuted a new threat even more powerful, Species 8472. Both of these were good moves for the show but they were bookends for the season; in hindsight, perhaps the "Scorpion" episodes, which saw the greatest change to the show's characters and upping of the threat level, should have come during season three's halfway mark instead of at the end. Overall, character development for the seven regulars took a backseat to delivering action and moving each adventure along towards its satisfactory conclusion, with the main exceptions being episodes spent developing The Doctor's personality or Kes' emerging powers.

The best of this year's VOYAGER turned out to be those episodes that borrowed their basic idea from old school TREK. For example, the moral dilemma that faces the Hadrosaur scientist in "Distant Origin" is simply a take on the oppression of science over political correctness, an allegory episode that's at the heart of most of the best TREK stories over the decades. The two-part "Future's End" is VOYAGER's nod to the success of STAR TREK IV by finding a way to place Janeway and her cohorts on modern day Earth. "Real Life" sees The Doctor program himself a family to better understand what it's like to be a human being, only to find out that sorrow comes with the package a situation that the character most like the Doc in THE NEXT GENERATION, Data, also encountered when he created a daughter. And to rest my case on a decisive note, there's nothing like bringing back Captain Sulu for the episode "Flashback" and tying VOYAGER's Tuvok directly to the events in STAR TREK VI to appease fans like myself. Sulu = good. Case closed.

But for every "Flashback" which worked, there are the ones that didn't. Janeway doing her best impression of Ripley from ALIENS in "Macrocosm" comes to mind, as does Jennifer Lien's heavy-handed gender bending performance in "Warlord" or Harry Kim being suckered in (again!), this time believing he's really an alien in "Favorite Son". While these episodes are missteps, they're not on the same level as the MST3K worthy "Threshold" which still brings back nightmares for me...

If in this year of VOYAGER the show's creators had emphasize this transitional time facing the ship and its crew as it made its way back home my grading for the show itself would be higher. With the Kazon gone and hints that the Borg are around the corner, this should have been the season where we really saw Janeway forge the crew into a stronger family unit; instead, we're given plenty of scenes showing our character face danger and solve problems but not too many quiet moments for self-inspection or realization. I also think it was a blunder to remove secondary characters like Suder (played by the always great Brad Dourif), the Betazed empath that's serving out a sentence in his room for murdering a member of the ship back in Season Two. This was a guy that presented loads of story possibilities for the main characters; if he was truly sorry for his crimes, should he remain locked away in his quarters for the duration of the trip home and not contribute to the ship? If he's let out, how do Starfleet officers reconcile working right beside a member of the Maquis that killed one of their own? One or two appearances a season from characters like Suder; or Quinn, the demoted member of the Q Continuum that requested asylum on Voyager; or having the conflicted Hadrosaur scientist join Voyager on its trip back to the Voth homeworld of Earth, would have built up the sense that this was a family of explorers unlike any other STAR TREK series before as well as open up ideas for future episodes. Indeed, this kind of move was carried out in the next season with the inclusion of the Seven of Nine character into the main cast and looked how that worked out for the better. The same idea just should have been done on a smaller scale as well.

As with earlier seasons, Paramount's presentation of VOYAGER is in a full-screen format in the show's original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Audio and video quality is excellent with no visible flaws in the transfer. The highlight of the bonus material for this set was easily the "Flashback to 'Flashback'" featurette which took a look at the making of the Captain Sulu episode. Included in this short is an interview with George Takei and an examination on how the designers made it seem effortless to slip VOYAGER continuity in with what we saw in STAR TREK VI. An overview of season three is also on disc seven along with two VOYAGER time capsule shorts looking at the soon-to-be-ex-couple of Neelix and Kes. Two more standards, "Red Alert" and "Real Science With Andre Bormanis", are back to examine specific elements from this year's crop of stories and special effects sequences. A photo gallery and a promotional short but entertaining look at the "Borg Invasion 4D" theme ride are also included.

I'm still a fan of the multi-colored approach to the VOYAGER sets and like them even better than the DEEP SPACE NINE approach to the packaging. I know, I may have to face a jury by my peers for this admission, but it's true.

Better than its second season, but still not equal to the latter seasons of DEEP SPACE NINE, the third season of STAR TREK: VOYAGER bears more in common with the latter two seasons of THE NEXT GENERATION: not too much change for the main characters, just outer space weirdness to face and overcome. Casual viewers won't be blown away but they also won't feel burned, and the Trekkies out there probably already have this set in their collection already.