The Movie: Another great season of a great show, and there are some truly awesome episodes in this one that can be appreciated by ST:TNG fans, but also by non-fans as well. During the fifth season, we are introduced to Ensign Ro, and unfortunately, have to suffer through Alexander "but I don't wanna be a warrior" coming to live on the Enterprise. Anyway here are some of my favorite episodes from this season:

Darmok - This episode is actually shown in linguistics and communication classes at universities all of the country. The Enterprise encounters a race of people whose language seems totally incomprehensible... their primary source of communication is through metaphor... references to mytho-historical stories. Pretty interesting for anyone to watch.

Unification - This is a 2 part episode featuring Leonard Nimoy as Spock trying to stir up a movement toward the reunification of Romulus and Vulcan. Full of conspiracy (and also Denise Crosby as a half-Romulan officer) and intrigue, this is overall a pretty cool episode, if you're a TNG/TOS fan.

Hero Worship - This is the episode where a young boy who has lost his parents turns to emulating the emotionless Commander Data.

Conundrum - The crew of the Enterprise all lose their memories and they struggle to remember what their original roles and positions were... and there's some weird dude who appears to have been the first officer.

Cause and Effect - The Enterprise gets caught in a repeating time loop. 3,3,3,3.

The Next Phase - Geordi and Ensign Ro turn invisible, and everyone thinks they are dead. They even get to see their own funeral... but will they figure out a way to make themselves visible again?

The Inner Light - I think this could by my absolute favorite episode of ST:TNG. Picard gets zapped by a space probe, and he lives an entire lifetime in the span of about 25 minutes. He's married, has kids, even grandkids. It's sort of a look into what Picard's life would have been like if he wasn't in Starfleet. Very emotional, with an incredible performance delivered by Patrick Stewart. This is another one of those episodes you do not need need to be a fan of TNG to appreciate. You don't even really need to know any of the history behind any of the characters because the episode doesn't really take place on the Enterprise at all.

Time's Arrow, Part I - The cliffhanger season finale. At an archaeological dig site on Earth, they find an unusual artifact -- it's Data's head... but it's 500 years old! It's been there since the 19th century! How did it get there? Well you soon find out, and the crew goes on a romp back in time running into Mark Twain and some other historical characters. Fun stuff, but you won't get the conclusion until the beginning of season 6.

The DVD: The video quality from each season to the next seems to increase slightly, and this season continues that trend. As far as audio goes, it's more of the same.

As with the other season sets, we there are a number of featurettes included. These revolved mostly around visual effects, and there were some pretty cool bits showing the creative ways they put together various visual effects in an age before computers had progressed enough to where you could just create whatever you want, the way we can today. There was also a tribute to Gene Roddenberry who died during the shooting of this season. There are also featurettes looking back on some of the more memorable episodes of the season.

If you get your set from Best Buy during the first weeks, it also comes with another bonus disc with two more featurettes covering the famous guest stars, and also the design of alien languages on the show.

Oh yeah, the menus this time are of a holodeck-themed design. Hmm. That's about all I gotta say about the 5th season. Only 2 more to go!