The Movie: The third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is the one in which many people believe the show really grew some legs and took off running. Dr. Crusher returns to the Enterprise, we see more of Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan the ship's bartender. There was no more writers strike, and actually, there was a whole new crop of writers on the show. The actors really got into their characters, and the show really found itself.

Unlike the second season, there are a lot of great episodes in this season, a lot of new aliens to meet, not the least of which are the Borg who assimilate Captain Picard in the season finale, "The Best of Both Words". Of course, you'll have to get season 4 to get the conclusion to that season-ending cliffhanger.

Some of my favorite episodes from this season include "The Ensigns of Command", where Data has to convince a bunch of colonists to evacuate, and when they refuse, he blows up their aqueduct (a very concise version of the plot!), "Who Watches The Watchers" where a team of scientists observing a primitive planet are discovered by its inhabitants, "Yesterday's Enterprise" where the Enterprise-C comes through a wormhole, upsetting the normal timeline, bringing back Tasha Yar (who died in the first season), "The Offspring" where Data builds another android -- his child, "Sarek" is the episode where Sarek mind melds with Picard to maintain his sanity (and what an awesome performance by Patrick Stewart!), and of course, "The Best of Both Worlds" -- the aforementioned episode where Picard is assimilated by the Borg.

The third season also sees the introduction of Dwight Schultz (aka Murdoch from the A-Team) as Ensign Barclay. So yeah. This is the turning point where the show really took off and found its way, so if you're not like me and trying to collect the whole set, but are thinking about getting one or two of the seasons... this is definitely one you should consider!

The DVD: It's basically the same as the other two, with 26 episodes on 7 discs, and four "behind the scenes" type featurettes. The menu interface this time looks like it comes from some sort of engineering display, with schematics of the Enterprise and whatnot.

I felt the featurettes were not quite as in depth as some of the ones from the second season, although some of those didn't even pertain to the series, and at least all the ones included with this season pertain directly to TNG, and not the movies. It was kind of humorous to see Levar Burton talk about how Geordi was the only sexually inept character on the show. There had been plenty of exploration of Klingon sexuality, of course Riker's sexuality, Troi, Picard, even Data, the android, gets more action than Geordi on this show!

The video actually looks slightly better than the first and second seasons, which were already, better than you'll ever see them on VHS or broadcast on TV. I think a lot of that has to do with computer graphics technology progressing as the show went into the third season, and the audio is about the same as the first two seasons, with a nice, subtle 5.1 mix going on.

Overall, not a bad collection of episodes, and like I said, if you're not nerdy enough to get all of the seasons, but you still want one or two, this is one you should definitely consider getting.