The Movie: The second season of ST:TNG is regarded by many as the worst one of them all. Some people don't like it because the beautiful Dr. Crusher was replaced by Dr. Polaski, but I think the single biggest factor in the relative suckiness of the second season was the writer's union strike that went on that year. It was due to this strike that the season was cut short -- only 22 episodes, and I think it was also due to the strike that so many episodes from this season were based completely inside the ship.

But that doesn't mean that the second season didn't have its bright points. This was the year that 10-Forward was created and Whoopi Goldberg was brought on board as Guinnan. The episode Measure of a Man which questions whether or not Data is actually alive is a favorite among many. It was also during this season that we are introduced to the Borg for the first time.

And although during the second season you can see that the actors are now quite comfortable with their characters, overall, the second season just isn't as good as the rest of them. But I wanted to add it to my collection anyway, just so I could have the complete set when they all come out.

The DVD: The first thing you will notice when you will notice (besides the fact that this is only a 6 disc set, not 7 like the last one) is that the menu design had been changed. While the first season had a navigation computer look to it, the second season's menus look like medical computer screens, perhaps to accentuate the fact that there's been a change in ship's doctor this year.

The video transfer is comparable to the one from the first season's set, which is to say that though they are not perfect, it's still way better than you've ever seen these episodes on TV. The video quality on the bonus featurettes however, varied from "OK" to downright poor, with a lot of the sources being from old video tape, so I guess I can excuse those parts of it, but I just noticed that every time they put up a title or caption (ie. someone's name) on the screen, the entire image becomes pixelated, almost as if they were using some ancient video technology or something. Poor, poor job there.

The audio, also about the same as last time, which is to say, it sounds pretty good, with a nice new 5.1 mix, but nothing incredibly spectacular going on.

There are five bonus featurettes this time compared to the first season's four. "Mission Overview: Year Two" features cast and crew talking about what was new in season two, including again, some interview footage with Gene Roddenberry himself. in "Selected Crew Analysis" we have some actors talking specifically about changes in their characters. In "Departmental Briefing: Year Two - Production" we gain some insight into the behind the scenes production aspects of the second season. The addition of 10-Forward figured heavily into these three featurettes.

"Departmental Briefing: Year Two - Memorable Missions" we have some interviews with guest stars who came in to talk about their roles, including John Tesh who played a background role as a Klingon. Finally, there is "Inside Starfleet Archives" which is basically a tour of the huge stockpile of props, models, and gadgets that have been used over the years. Although this featurette was pretty cool to see, a lot of the stuff they showed centered around the movies (including the first 6 with Kirk), so I'm not really sure how relevant they were to a Next Generation DVD set.

Overall, I'd say that the extras were better than in season one, but the actual episodes were better in the second season. And I think it would be nice to include some commentary or something on at least a couple episodes per season, but well, I guess we'll have to settle for mediocre extras for now.