TV/American

The Warrior Princess' smash-hit fourth season riveted fans with a gripping collection of episodes that unveiled secrets of Xena's tumultuous past, revealed heroic triumphs and tragic failures destined in her future, and, in the end, left them stunned beyond words by the events of the electrifying episode, "The Ides of March." Though Xena discovers that Gabrielle is still alive, her joy is woefully tempered by the unsettling knowledge that Gabrielle's evil daughter, Hope, has survived and given birth to a monster.

The impending birth of Gabrielle's first child should be a time of joyous celebration for both she and Xena. However, within The Warrior Princess there lurks a terrible secret about the unborn child, a secret so powerful that it seems destined to break the once invincible bond between the two devoted friends. Can the friendship be saved? And to what desperate lengths must the two friends go to save it?

All 22 history-making episodes in their ultimate format, uncut and commercial-free. Thundering in on the success of her smash-hit first season, Xena's extraordinary Second Season bowled over audiences and critics alike to becomes television's highest-rated, first-run syndicated season.

Just four minutes into "Sins of the Past," the first episode of Xena, you'll gladly follow the warrior princess anywhere. Taking on a gang of marauders, she leaps onto an upright spear embedded in the ground and, with a cry of "Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi," does a circular wall of death on their chests. A syndication phenomenon, this audacious 1995 series was a spin-off from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Lucy Lawless stars as Xena, dressed to kill in leather and breastplate.

After seven long years trying to return home, it's no surprise that the seventh season of Voyager was emotional. It begins with the resolution to season 6's "Unimatrix Zero," in which Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Torres (Roxann Biggs-Dawson), and Tuvok (Tim Russ) must find a way off the Borg Cube and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) faces the loss of the precious bit of humanity she has just discovered. "Human Error" focuses on Seven's further attempts to explore her human side (a romance comes from out of the blue).

In their sixth season trying to return to the Alpha Quadrant, the crew of Voyager continues to find signs that they may be close to home. They ran across another Federation starship in the season 5 cliffhanger, "Equinox," which is concluded in action-packed fashion. Then they benefit from a brief communications link to home thanks to the ongoing efforts of The Next Generation's Lt. Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz), occasionally assisted by Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis).

After Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) spent much of Voyager's fourth season trying to resist the pull of the Borg, and just when the tide of battle seemed to be turning, she returns to the Collective in a memorable confrontation with the Borg Queen (Susanna Thompson) in the centerpiece story of the fifth season, the two-part "Dark Frontier." The Borg also factor into the nightmare-laden "Infinite Regress" as well as "Drone," in which a strange Borg-human-EMH hybrid teaches Seven the experience of parenthood, of sorts.

Facing an indeterminate sentence of weeks/months/years until new episodes, fans of The Sopranos are advised to take the fifth; season, that is. At this point, superlatives don't do The Sopranos justice, but justice was at last served to this benchmark series. The Sopranos rubbed out The West Wing to take home its first Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series. Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo also earned Best Supporting Actor and Actress honors for some of their finest hours as Christopher and Adriana.

Carmela to Tony: "Everything comes to an end." True enough, Mrs. Sope, but on The Sopranos, the end comes sooner for some than others. Though for some the widely debated fourth season contained too much yakking instead of whacking, and an emphasis on domestic family over business Family, what critic James Agee once said of the Marx Brothers applies to The Sopranos: "The worst thing they might ever make would be better worth seeing than most other things I can think of." And in most respects, The Sopranos remains television's gold standard.

Season Six revolves around Clark's discovery of who he is through two major storylines: 1) the tormented relationship between he and Lana Lang, as well as Lana's potentially strong affections for Lex, and 2) Lex Luthor's rapid loss of morality and Clark's realization that he alone can stop him. There is a third major storyline as well, dealing with a number of alien ghosts which escape from the Phantom Zone in the season premiere; Clark must round them up before they wreak too much havoc. There are a number of subplots too.