Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3988 in VHS
• Released on: 1995-01-16
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Dolby, PAL, Surround Sound
• Original language: English, French
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In 1987, some 20 years after the original series had ended, Star Trek: The Next Generation was launched into a decade renowned for its materialistic greed, but also for its hesitant steps towards a more unified world order. Creator Gene Roddenberry revised his vision of humanity's future accordingly, shifting the Trek timeline 80 years on and reinventing the new Starship Enterprise as an Ark-like exploration vessel full of families, schools, soothing recreational facilities and a maternally pacifying computer voice (Roddenberry's wife, Majel Barrett). The Next Generation crew were not soldiers, but scientists and diplomats. Unlike the fiercely individualistic Captain Kirk, Patrick Stewart's patrician Captain Jean-Luc Picard was a model team leader: no matter how desperate the crisis, he ensured that everyone got to sit round the Conference Room table and talk it over. And in a true late-1980s touch, a key member of the Bridge crew was psychoanalyst Counsellor Troi, always on hand to discuss everyone's feelings.

Season Two saw the welcome introduction of the cybernetic horror that was the Borg. Originally a powerful symbol of technological misuse in an otherwise technologically utopian universe, ultimately their hive-like existence served to reinforce the message that everyone would be much happier as a team player. Even renegade super-entity Q (John De Lancie) relied on Picard as much as his fellow god-like playmates; Data followed Pinocchio and Spock in a quest to discard what made him an individual; and there was even an episode that rationalised why all aliens basically looked alike (we're all one big family). Even the slogan change to "Where no one has gone before" acknowledges that there's no "one" in a team. But for all its earnest political correctness and an over-reliance on "technobabble", good stories played by an appealing ensemble cast were at the heart of the show's success. After seven successful seasons, "All Good Things" finally came to an end. Until Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise, that is. --Paul Tonks

Synopsis
More adventures with the crew of the USS Enterprise in: 'The Best Of Both Worlds' and 'The Best Of Both Worlds - Part 2'.

Customer Reviews

Resistance is Futile
Best of Both World's sees the return of the Borg, who have chosen Picard to Oversee the Assimilation of Earth. This has to be one of the most griping episodes of the Next Generation I have seen.

Flawless
I like to think I've got good taste in television, The Wire, The Shield, The Sopranos, Oz, Rome, Star Trek's DS9 and TNG, Battlestar Galactca (RDM's) and Babylon 5 (seasons 2,3 and 4 only!) But believe me when I say that The Best of Both Worlds is the finest piece of television I've EVER seen.

It works on so many levels, the music, the characters, the drama, it's perfect.
Amazingly for a syndicated show which deep down I KNEW would be back next week, I remember first watching this thinking "How the heck can they get out of this! This must be the end of the series, I can't see how they can beat them!"

What really impresses though is the way the producers managed to build a quite unprecidented level of tension and drama using only limited special effects (take note George Lucas) and they did it purely and simply with dialogue:

"Change course to intercept!"

"Sir they have already changed course to intercept us!"

Even those two lines made you think "man, even when they try to take control the Borg are there first, THEY'RE in control at all times!"

"Mr Data your final report!"

"Standby."

"I can't standby" Riker shouts as the computer gives warnings of impending explosive decompressions. "It's over" Says Shelby...and you genuinely believe it is.

"A lot of people have been talking, the expect to be dead this time tomorrow, they like you, they trust you, but they don't believe anyone can save them..."

Riker: "I don't belive anyone can."

Awesome.

Speaking of Shelby, she was an outstanding guest actor and added a lot to this 90 minutes, Whoopie Goldberg had a small but crucual role to play too.

I strongly recommend watching this, you really will not regret it.