Star Trek: First Contact, the eighth instalment in the lucrative film series, is the first to aim the spotlight solely at the "Next Generation" crew. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) must stop the race of pod people The Borg from assimilating planet Earth before "first contact" is made with an alien race, the identity of which is not revealed until the picture's final moments.

As with most 'TNG' outings, this one finds the crew time-travelling, holo-decking, and, in the case of emotionally challenged android Data (Brent Spiner), getting it on with the slimy Borg Queen (Alice Krige). Star Trek: First Contact has a few standout moments, most of them homages--there's a great Kubrickian sequence that evokes 2001 and another that paints director Jonathan Frakes ("Number One" Will Riker on screen) as a fan of Miller's Crossing. But the joie de vivre of the adventures that Shatner and company had has yet to find its way into new Trek; such a lack is never more evident in First Contact than during its passages set on Earth, which embarrass the whole 'enterprise'--why are we still listening to "Magic Carpet Ride" in 2063? Maybe the next film will fill us in.

Whatever ultimately possessed me to purchase Star Trek: First Contact on DVD I may never know--I craved space opera that day, I suppose, and I was looking for a title that would tout the capabilities of the format. As one of Paramount's first batch of DVD titles, Star Trek: First Contact is impressive in comparison to the early DVD efforts of, say, Warners or Universal. The movie is 16x9-enhanced (curiously, Paramount has decided not to bestow the same treatment upon their Top Gun DVD) and letterboxed correctly at 2.35:1. (No pan-and-scan version is available on open DVD...no skin off my nose.)

The DVD certainly improves upon the minimal flaws of the THX LaserDisc transfer: the image is free of video noise now, the colours more alive. But this version looks darker--the bridge sequences seem underexposed, and some tiny details are lost in pools of black. The DVD's Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is comparable to the LD's AC-3 track, which is to say, very, very good, with excellent split effects, throttling bass, and well-balanced dialogue. (A complaint that many alt.video.dvd users have is that Paramount's DVDs default to Dolby 2.0, and the audio can only be switched from the (dull) menu and not during playback of the film.) Included are two theatrical trailers (at 1.85:1) but that's all, folks.-Bill Chambers