Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Season Four

In their quest to get all the seasons of DS9 out before Enterprise damages the franchise for good, the DS9 box-set, while sleek-looking, offers little surprises at volume number four. Obviously there's the entire fourth season, all 25 episodes of Trekkie goodness, and as has become standard fare, the requisite featurettes on the standout episodes of that season ("Our Man Bashir," "Little Green Men," "Rejoined," "Broken Link"), and a heavy featurette slant on Worf, as the fresh injection of new blood, but it seems any sort of episode commentary, either from the directors or writers, will not make the set. Pity, as commentary by Ira Steven Behr and others in the featurettes offers insight, but with Season Four being the season where DS9 (a Cardassian space station occupied by the Federation that orbits the world of Bajor, special because of the wormhole that connects the Alpha quadrant to the Gamma quadrant, got it, geek boy?) stepped it up and didn't let up until its ominous season finale, this is not a fatal mistake. You knew they were done playing when Sisko (Avery Brooks) shaved his head and fully committed to the goatee, and as Season Four opens with "The Way of The Warrior" and the introduction of Worf, a bald, totally bad-ass Sisko fights off a Klingon fleet bent on invading Cardassia in one Trek's best battle sequences. While still featuring the Dominion (the anti-Federation overlords of the Gamma quadrant) as the ominous big bad, the added development of the rift with the Klingons, not to mention the awesome battle scenes, set the stage for the space carnage to follow all series long. Season Four also features strong stand alone episodes, the best of which might be "Little Green Men," where a contingent of Ferengi (Quark, Rom, Nog) accidentally travel back in time and are exposed as the aliens that landed at Roswell. As with all the DS9 boxes so far, the extras aren't overwhelming but they're passable, including a sketchbook, another Michael Westmore Aliens featurette and a photo gallery to the previously mentioned. But the introduction of Worf, the Klingons and a bald Sisko equal Trek as good as it gets. Extras: featurettes; photo gallery; more. (Paramount)