star trek 4 whale scene

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There Be Whales Here: ‘The Voyage Home’ at 30

| November 25, 2016 | By: Steve Vivona 93 comments so far

On November 26, 1986 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home debuted on movie screens across the United States.  The film’s lighthearted tone and environmental message struck a chord with moviegoers, and became the first Star Trek film to have crossover appeal with mainstream audiences who normally wouldn’t be interested in the adventures of the Enterprise crew.  The movie often referred to as “the one with the whales” continues to charm audiences today, and we wanted to mark its 30th anniversary with a remembrance not only of the film, but of the time it was made in. We hope you enjoy it.

“It’s going to have whales.”

Sitting in a dimly lit Knights of Columbus hall in Mineola, N.Y., sometime in 1985 I heard those words from Adam Malin, the co-founder of Creation Entertainment, during a slide presentation about the following year’s highly anticipated Star Trek IV.

“Whales and Eddie Murphy.”

My Star Trek fever had reached its apex after devouring Star Trek II and III, as well as all 79 episodes of the Original Series in very rapid succession between 1983-85.   After years of denying how awesome Star Trek was, now  I couldn’t get enough.

But whales and Eddie Murphy? Are you guys high? Try to picture a time with no Internet, no YouTube, when fandom was held together by  conventions,  fanzines ,  and genre magazines like Starlog and Cinefantastique .  Creation Entertainment  were  the purveyors of said conventions since the early 70s, and as luck would have it ,  they decided to open a comic shop mere blocks from my home.

I had yet to attend one of their bigger shows in New York City, but they would host local “mini-cons,” that were bare bones affairs (no celebs, no dealers, etc.) but they were fun nonetheless, and there they would share morsels of information they had gleaned from their contacts in fandom and I imagine, at Paramount.

I was less concerned about the whale thing as I was the presence of Eddie Murphy. Don’t get me wrong: I loved him. Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours are still favorites of mine. But with his name attached, Star Trek IV became akin to Superman III , a disaster that shoehorned Richard Pryor  together with the Man of Steel. The wounds were still fresh.

In this information stone age that was as much as we got. We knew Leonard Nimoy would direct, having earned his stripes on Trek III. I remember seeing William Shatner on Merv Griffin  saying he wanted “a little” more money.  Salary negotiations and his T.J. Hooker schedule were holding up production.

Fast forward to fall of 1986. I was feeling better about Trek IV. Eddie Murphy dropped out, and made The Golden Child. His character morphed into Gillian Taylor, the cetacean biologist played with pluck and zest by Catherine Hicks.  Everything I saw and read made me confident this would be a winner.

More than anything, I was confident Leonard Nimoy would deliver. And deliver he did. 

Star Trek IV could’ve been an unmitigated disaster. In lesser hands, it would’ve been. 

Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett felt as though a lighter touch was in order. After all the death, destruction (and resurrection) of the prior two films, it was time to lighten the mood.  With a script assist from Trek II director Nicholas Meyer they balanced the lighter tone with a grand sense of adventure and excitement, with no moustache twirling villain in sight (if there was a villain it was the human race hunting a noble species to extinction).

The story, that of a n alien  probe reigning destruction upon earth in a vain attempt to contact humpback whales ,  was a cautionary tale about  our short sighted tendencies as a race,  one that  was never preachy or overbearing. The light moment s sprouted organically from  our intrepid 23 rd  century crew ’s desperate attempts to  fit into 1986 San Francisco while fighting a ticking clock in their attempt to bring two humpbacks forward in time to answer the probe.

Nimoy had proven his worth as a director with Trek III. As he often said, the training wheels came off with Trek IV. He was allowed to make his movie.  He delivered a film that pleased fans and the general public in equal measure, and the crossover appeal led to huge box office returns, making The Voyage Home easily the most successful of the TOS films to date.   My Mom saw it .

Leonard was particularly sensitive to the needs of his castmates, all of whom railed against the perfunctory dialogue they were often given ,  as well as their marginalized roles. Already well respected by his colleagues, Nimoy made sure each of them had their moment in the sun. Taking them out of their familiar roles on the bridge (or the engine room) ,  each had an integral part to pl ay in completing this most critical  mission, and it was wonderful to see t hem stretch acting muscles left to atrophy .  What a talented group of performers!

Nimoy elicited wonderful performances from his actors (and himself!) and got the best from his talented crew. Not enough can be said about the man’s  professionalism, ravenous intellectual curiosity , and  human  decency . In all my years as a fan, I have never heard anyone criticize him, and one need only seek out his son Adam’s recent documentary, “For the Love of Spock,” to understand the esteem with which he was held by all who knew him.  Seriously, seek it out!

As much as I loved James Horner’s previous scores for Trek II and III, Nimoy hired his friend Leonard Rosenman to write the music for The Voyage Home , and he delivered a buoyant, joyful  soundtrack that perfectly matched the film’s tonal shift from heavy and operatic to light and  fun.  It remains one of my favorite Trek scores.

The Voyage Home represents perhaps the apex of my Star Trek fandom. That isn’t to say  it ever waned or wavered, but we were  in the midst of  an era when we still had new TOS movies on the horizon, and as much as I loved certain further iterations, nothing has ever eclipsed my love for the original crew. I was immersing myself in fandom, and meeting people who shared my love for Trek.  I was devouring books and ancillary material like mad. 

It took almost a year for Trek IV to be released on VHS (let that sink in). Repeating their prior strategy with Trek III , Paramount shrewdly released Trek IV at the sell through price of $29.99 and it was well within my 17-year old grasp. I watched it twice the day I bought  it  and  daily  for weeks  afterward .  In the thirty subsequent years, I have upgraded to laserdisc, DVD, and blu ray, from standard to special editions, from pan and scan to widescreen. 

It’s a film that richl y rewards repeated viewings, and  hasn’t lost a  step.  It’s the film that made the mainstream sit up and take notice.  It  is proof positive you don’t need a scener y chewing villain for our intrepid crew  to oppose, merely a heroic quest for the good of all mankind. 

At the end of the day ,  it’s a love letter to the fans from Leonard Nimoy, executed with technical brilliance, but more importantly, with great reverence and intimate understanding of that which we all love so much.

Thanks, Leonard. We love you too.

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‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’ Returns To Theaters In August For 2 Nights; Tickets Available Now

I watched the movie on DVD a few nights ago! It is still one of the best Star Trek movies ever made!

Wow, what a great tribute to this cozy, feels-like-home kind of movie. Mr. Vivona you have certainly succeeded in communicating your affection for this movie.

“… you don’t need a scenery chewing villain for our intrepid crew to oppose, merely a heroic quest for the good of all mankind.”

Boom! Exactly! This is precisely what we haven’t been getting in the last ST movies and what we need so much. Well said sir!

I agree 100% Stop the “villain” casting in the next ST movie. It’s all been just too repetitive. I understand the economics of Chris Pine stating you can’t make a cerebral ST movie in 2016 but the generalization he made too much. ST is not Marvel Comics! It never was. ST IV is a movie of heart, soul with comedy overtones and great intentions. Look at the success of “The Martian”. It’s got all that.

Right on. “The Martian” proved again you don’t always need a scowling, growling villain delivering speeches and megaweapons to make an entertaining movie. A survival tale and a race against time works too.

Arrival was a very good example too of sci-fi without a traditional villain. Great movie BTW.

Except Arrival had multiple villains that made the situation much more difficult.

We should really ask this: Either make a Star Trek movie, or make another movie! Call it Star Warfare or something!

Unfortunately, audiences want a Star Wars influenced Star Trek. Hopefully,the new show will be continue in the tradition of the good Trek shows.

http://trekcore.com/blog/2016/11/musical-surprises-fill-la-la-lands-trek-50th-soundtrack/

I fine Trek film and ending to the Genesis / Accidental Trilogy, shame about the music score tho. Finally watched Beyond a couple of times this week, that doesn’t get any better the more you watch it.

Respectfully disagree

Which, Beyond being average or the score to Voyage?

Nice article, but one nit-pick: “script assist” from Nicholas Meyer? How about “he wrote the dialogue for the entire body of the movie?”

He did acts two and three. From ‘judging by the pollution content in the atmosphere, we’ve arrived in the twentieth century’ before going out on the poem about the whales

Yes–what I”m loosely calling “the body/middle,” i.e. Acts 2 & 3. Harve wrote 1 & 4. In any case, writing half the movie and dubbing that an “assist” feels a bit understated here.

Let’s also give credit to Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes who wrote the original script that Harve and Nick Meyer added to.

I am tempted to say that this is the best Trek movie. The decisions to down play “Treknobabble”, traditional villains, and space travel were wise ones. My only complaint is the flaccid score. I know Horner would not have worked here but what about Alan Silvestri ? He would been terrific.

Great article about a wonderful film and probably my favourite of the original cast movies. I recall first seeing it on release in the UK in Spring 1987. Tears of joy for me at the end when NCC-1701-A leaves space dock accompanied by a majestic rendition of the Original Series Main Title/End Title credits music, before warping off-screen. Movie magic.

You just reminded me of another horrid thing. After we just sat through this terrible movie the neat and trite way they wrapped up the trial was nauseating. And then it seems they just happened to have a Constitution Class starship lying around they repainted and added an “A”. Pathetic. This was Trek at it’s absolute worst. It makes “The Final Frontier” look like Citizen Kane and “Encounter at Farpoint” a laugh a minute action packed adventure.

Dare I say sir, your opinion is in the minority.

Popularity does not = good.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments, Steve.

This film, above all the others, IMO, really captures the essence of “Star Trek” in all its wonder. The humor, humanity and love that the crew and actors feel for the material and for the whales is quite palpable.

If there will be another JJ Abrams universe Trek – I would advise him to watch this film….”Shore Leave” and “Mirror Mirror”. Those 3 elements would make for a great kind of big screen experience.

Its time for the JJ-verse to stop looking for its next “black hat”.

I wouldn’t hold my breath. The guy doesn’t care about Trek. He just wants a Star Wars clone. Hell, he can’t even direct a genuine Star Wars movie.

Maybe you would do well to watch The Doomsday Machine too

I was 31 when I saw Star Trek IV on opening night. After the wonderful drama of II and III, it was a HUGE disappointment. That’s when Star Trek “jumped the shark”for me and never fully recovered. What a piece of crap!

I’ve never heard anyone dump on Voyage Home before. You sir, are an idiot!

Well, I never ‘dumped’ on it per se, but I remember not being particularly impressed by it when I saw it in theaters. I thought it was just okay. It has grown on me since then, but it isn’t my favorite at all.

Harry… The movie was (and still is) garbage. Just because you disagree with opinions doesn’t make those people “idiots”.

Although I don’t think Trek jumped the shark then. It was in a pretty deep hole it didn’t crawl out of until “The Undiscovered Country”.

ML31 – It’s true, people who disagree with my opinion are idiots. I’ve gathered a large group of Scottish bagpipe singers and Vegas showgirls and spent a year researching my opinions and cross referenced them with the opinions of others and the data was clear – those who disagree with me are idiots and sometimes morons.

Voyage Home = Greatest Trek movie ever! Undiscovered Country was ok but come on, funny jokes and whales trump boring cold war references and bad cgi floating purple blood every time.

I was 31 when I saw STIV and loved it. So did my wife, mom and friends.

BTW: Great article and tribute to the film and Leonard Nimoy. Saw Nimoy at a speaking appearance at UNCC a few weeks before the film opened. He finished by saying he recently saw the final cut and said, “I think you will like it.”

Leonard Rosenman scored the COMBAT! TV series among his many noteworthy efforts. Vic Morrow, one of COMBAT!’s co-stars (along with Rick Jason) was a friend of Nimoy and may have helped Nimoy get cast for at least 3 episodes as a guest star. I wonder if this was how Nimoy met Rosenman.

Totally get the jumped the shark feeling. Having to go get whales IS a bit hokey. For me Trek 4 was always more a comfort food while TWOK was epic entertainment.

not hokey as the concept of the whales and probe are centre stage where as the genesis device a mere mgguffin to allow for a lot of space battles.

proper ‘trek’ concept used well.

There is definitely some suspension of disbelief in how easy it is to time travel. And ofcourse TVH makes the entire Orci-inspired Bad Robot crap fest moot as far as time travel.

But TVH was very enjoyable. They fought whatever urge might exist to make it completely stand alone and continued the story of II & III. Spock still learning to be himself led to some wonderful moments that sprung organically from the evolution of the character.

My favourite scene is still where Hicks asks them out for pizza and they do a yes, no, yes, no routine ending with Kirk saying “I love Pizza. And so do you”. Shatner got to be funny, showing off skills that would earn him awards years later. And he was good.

Little things like using the eye glasses Bones gave him Kirk in WoK…and ofcourse he got less money for them because he had carelessly broken the lenses.

And ofcourse, the chickens finally came home to roost as the crew faced judgement for their prior actions and it turned into a good news scenario.

@Harry Ballz

re: Star Trek “jumped the shark”for me and never fully recovered.

I agree completely, though there were some moments I enjoyed. The worst thing is the horrid music score, muddy/smoky/hazy cinematography, terrible optical shots (the bird of prey appearing/hovering over the whaling vessel for example), and of course the moronic floating CGI heads sequence. Oh, and uh…John Schuck. The worst of the original TOS-cast movies.

‘I love Italian. and so do you’ ‘yes’

shame paramount has not learned the lesson from this great film. not every ‘trek’ movie has to be a clone of ‘wrath/khan’.

Yes! That was the line (i wrote it as “pizza” above). Great scene. Great comedic timing by both Nimoy and Shatner.

Not funny. Lame. And out of character for both of them.

Hands down, Voyage Home is my favorite Trek movie. Yep it beats WOK, which is a close second.

I don’t think it’s right that Trek III was priced “sell through”. At least …not initially. It was the first movie I ever bought…and I KNOW I paid 80 dollars for it. That was a lot for me when I was 14 years old! I cherished it.

Trek 3 absolutely was priced sell through. I bought it the day it came out and was 14 also.

I was robbed!

Did you buy it on half-inch videotape or LaserDisc? In my area I found it strange that the LD was cheaper than the VHS or SuperBeta.

BTW the ad is from March, 1985.

http://www.terapeak.com/worth/store-display-shelf-talker-87-vtg-star-trek-iv-voyage-home-kirk-spock-vhs-8/311504398846/

Also, I remember Trek III coming out on video in early 1985, certainly not a year later (which would have been May-June.) I clearly remember walking in a K-Mart around late January and seeing Star Trek III running on all the TVs in the TV area.

Trek IV came out on home video in Sept. 1987 and had a preview for TNG. Trek III came out on home video in Feb. 1985.

I really enjoyed TVH because it was outside the box, not the usual round of space battles and bad guys. It was clever, with a great message. Only Star Trek could have pulled this one off. That was the greatness of Trek.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-trek-iv-voyage-home-writer-eddie-murphys-lost-role-950551

One really has to wonder how Eddie Murohy starring in a Trek film would have changed the franchise. This would have hands down been the highest grossing Trek film of all time, including the Abrams films …

This I have long argued is the thing that holds Trek back, the lack of star power. Abrams and Paramount gambled that their inexpensive up-and-coming cast would catapult them into super-stardom and thus Trek along with them, but sadly that gamble failed. None of them have really achieved that kind of status. It’s just so disappointing they don’t treat Trek like the Marvel and the DC universe franchises. Even Star Wars gets better treatment as they brought the original stars back, who if they didn’t achieve super stardom, they earned legendary status.

Had Eddie Murphy been in the film, it would have watered down the “Star Trek” part of the story. Did you notice that there was only like 1 or 1 1/2 scenes that tell Gillian’s (Catherine Hicks) backstory. With Eddie, he would have commanded a lot more screen time and rightfully so… The Star Trek cast was royalty and they didn’t need a heavyweight guest star that would take away from their screen time.

I would say Zoe Saldana is doing nicely

Eddie would have over-shadowed everyone and everything. It would certainly have tested Nimoy’s efforts. Shatner would have felt the need to out-shine Eddie and the race would have been on.

Regarding no big names in the JJ films, again, you wonder where all the money went. They paid for a big name producer and didnt get the results. Could have had big name guest stars and didnt. Although Peter Weller was great, but under-utilized by Orci’s self-serving script. And clearly, they didnt have any money for a big name actor. Then again, they did try to get Del Toro which would have helped…

Huh? Benedict Cumberbatch and Idris Elba? (To say nothing of Eric Bana and Peter Weller.) Those are certainly big names. Cumberbatch was miscast, IMO, but you can’t say they went small on the names.

I was there that first Friday night. It was and still is a great Star Trek film! I still have my Star Trek 4 poster magazine, movie magazine and a newspaper ad for the film!!!

It is the best of the Star Trek movies, but Star Trek Beyond is more than a competitive second place, even with the mustache twirling villain. I hope Simon Pegg gets to take a hand in another soon, he has it all down, a fun movie that rollicked from start to finish.

I hate when people say that the movie had no villain. It most certainly did! When I watched it growing up, that probe was a scary thing and very villainous. Hence the urgent need to stop it from… you know… destroying Earth.

it is man who is the real villain according to mr meyer.

short sightedness in the past led to this but can we say that the probe is attacking earth or its signal to the whales absent from the 23rd century merely causing unintended mayhem?

They never specify for sure that it is unintended though. Just random speculation.

i heard mr meyer say it in a featurette about the movie villains on the ‘trek’ TNG movie boxset

Aaron (Naysayers are gonna nay),

Re: that probe was a scary thing and very villainous

I hate when people watch STAR TREK and fail to pickup on its most basic precept: that because some other entity’s alienness and strangeness frightens you, it doesn’t automatically mean that it therefore has evil motives which are requisite to it actually being a villain.

If you go out for a morning jog listening to tunes and obliviously step on an anthill on your circuit, your oblivious action makes you a danger to the ant colony but not a villain.

I love The Voyage Home. It has all of the quirks necessary to make it fun all these years later. My Grandpa wasn’t a sci-fi guy – but he actually watched this one with me and enjoyed it. Good memories. Plus, my step-dad was on the Enterprise when they filmed this movie, so even more good memories.

Not to burst your bubble, but as I recall, the aircraft carrier posing as the Enterprise was actually the USS Ranger…

I have avoided the film for years. When the blu ray set came out the thing that gave me pause was the inclusion of this film in the set. I bought it anyway and gave the movie another chance since I hadn’t seen it in so very very long. Maybe seeing it decades later will give me a different perspective than the negative one I got when I watched it in the theater that one time. I have to say it. This film is STILL by far the worst Trek ever. I can appreciate the lighter tone but unlike “The Trouble with Tribbles” the jokes in this one NEVER worked and the characters were so far away from themselves they all were barely recognizable. The script was terrible and the story line was worse. The whale thing was so monumentally dumb words cannot accurately describe it. The message was so in your face it made “Let That be Your Last Battlefield” look nuanced by comparison. And then there was the time travel thing. A tool that had already become tired even then. Plus the way they did it made it seem like traveling through time was about as difficult as catching the 7:15 train to downtown.

There is so very much wrong with this movie from Nimoys sub par directing to the the awful Rosenman score to the afore mentioned plot. I found myself wishing they did a similar story but place it on Vulcan. Thought it would be a fun twist to see the humans need to blend in with the Vulcans instead of the other way around. Or they could have… Wait… There was far too much wrong with the film to list all the things they could have done to make it better.

And I thought I was the only one who doesn’t care for this film! After 3 films with amazing scores, I couldn’t stomach this one. And though I really appreciate the tone and lack of a villain, the film itself just comes off as schmaltzy to me. From the dialog, to the acting, to the half-assed composite shots… I would put this film at the bottom of trek films, only remarkable for it’s nostalgia and whatever merit you give for cross-over appeal.

The fact that this is the Trek film that actually has crossover appeal pretty much cements the concept that Trek will never be a popular movie series. The worst and most non-Trekish movie of all is the one that non Trek people flocked to.

And yes… You are not alone in your opinion of “The Voyage Home”.

How was time travel a tool that had become tired by then? It hadnt been used in the previous films and TNG hadnt even come out yet.

Characters were not far removed from themselves at all. They were ‘fish out of water’. I think its not that TVH was bad, its that it went over your head.

So you are saying that Scotty was too stupid to realize he was in the 1980’s. A time when one could not talk to a computer. And that it was quite normal for McCoy to run around a hospital screaming about what barbarians the doctors of 1986 are. Sorta like when he was when he was pumped full of cordrazine. This was hardly “fish out of water”. It was just full on stupidity on the part of our intrepid crew. It was quite embarrassing to see them act like children. Maybe if it were actually funny or clever. But it didn’t even have THAT going for it. It was just sad to see. As far as time travel is concerned, there were a number of time travel movies in the 80’s already. It was just a tired concept by then not just for Trek but in general.

Again, you’re so angry about making your point, you’re failing to use common sense. I dont recall if they knew they were in 1986. I do know they knew they were in “late 20th century”.

Bones wasnt running around screaming until he was actually exposed to the medical knowledge of the time. He didnt arrive with that knowledge. In fact he seemed quite surprised.

If Scotty had gone back to early 20th century, I could see your point. But your judging Scotty’s knowledge of events YOU know about a time YOU live in. If you were plopped in the “late 18th century”, you might not have intimately knowledge of the technology of the time. Especially of technology that was readily available within a few years.

Re: I dont recall if they knew they were in 1986

If their computer knew of humpback whales but not of this, “WWVB: A Half Century of Delivering Accurate Frequency and Time by Radio “:

https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/pml/div688/grp40/Bin-2702.pdf

and how to decode it to determine exactly that, I’d have been curious. Not to mention Uhura monitoring standard radio transmissions and not stumbling across it even if they didn’t know. The broadcast also has an audio component that identifies what it is etc. in plain English.

Re: A time when one could not talk to a computer.

I don’t think the fictional Scotty was the one being too stupid:

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/speechreco/

“By 1971, IBM had developed its next experimental application of speech recognition. The Automatic Call Identification system enabled engineers anywhere in the US to talk to and receive “spoken” answers from a computer in Raleigh, NC. It was IBM’s first speech recognition system to operate over telephone lines and respond to a range of different voices and accents.”

A great time travel plot, a smart take on the alien culture theme, superb performances all round and plenty of excitement. There’s literally nothing in that movie that doesn’t work. Well, apart from the score, obviously. And so many quotable lines! ‘Just one damn minute, Admiral.’ ‘Computer…hello computer!’ ‘Everyone remember where we parked.’ ‘How will playing cards help?’ ‘I think he took a little too much LDS.’… Oh and lest we forget, this is the first time in the franchise when we saw a female starship captain. And (quite wonderfully) African-American, no less. Take that modern Diversity Police!

Rosenman’s score did get nominated for an Oscar so it can’t be that bad. His music for all the space scenes is just fine in my opinion. Some of the music during the earth bound scenes are more average…but his best work is the music where our crew’s Klingon ship goes into time warp…and the post verdict music.

Thanks for reminding me…

“‘Computer…hello computer!’”

That was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back for me. After that weak joke (calling it weak is an insult to weak jokes everywhere) that made Scotty look like a blithering idiot I checked out of the movie. I finished it just because I already invested time so I might as well see where that tire fire would go. But that was point when all hope for an enjoyable or worthwhile time at the movies was gone.

In the hands of another actor that line may have seemed silly rather than funny, but I think Doohan’s delivery made it work. In any case, as a Trek joke i’ll take that over the ‘hilarity’ of Keenser sneezing on a doorknob any day of the week.

I’m sorry but it didn’t work because it made Scotty look like a moron. In fact, pretty much everyone forgot they were 300 years in the past. Except for Sulu who somehow knew how to operate a 300 year old flying machine. That’s quite a stretch. The jokes in “The Final Frontier” ALL worked better. For all the other problems with that movie at least the scenes with Kirk, Spock and McCoy around the campfire were excellent. “I’m sorry Doctor. Were we having a good time?”

Firstly, Scotty bumped his head in TFF and knocked himself out. That was stupid.

He didnt look like a moron in TVH. He looked like a genius working with technology that was very dated to him. Can we extrapolate that unlike most Star Trek character, Scotty was not an expert of late 20th century technology? Not sure where he was in the technology timeline…

He then began typing at lightening speed and within seconds had written the formula for transparent aluminum. Yup, moron.

Except… Bumping his head was actually funny because of the timing of it. “I know this ship like the back of me hand.” KLANG! Not a great joke but light years better than talking into a mouse like an ignorant fool. Twice. One does not need to be an expert in 300 year old tech to know that there were no automobiles around in 1500. What Scotty did was equivalent one of us knowingly being whisked back to 1517 and then waiting for a streetcar on a London corner. If he was THAT unfamiliar with I/O devices of early computers how is it he could whip up the complex formula on that ancient keyboard? I seriously doubt any newspaper printers could just whip up a page on a 1500’s printing press just like that. So yeah… Talking to an ancient computer… Moron. One of a number of instances that were completely out of character for our gang. Perhaps you loved it because it was geared for the lowest common denominator of non-Trek audiences. Aimed low enough for you?

You’re equating not knowing the computer couldnt respond to a microphone in the late 80’s to cars existing in the 1500’s? If you want your point to be taken seriously, compare apples and apples.

Scotty knowing he’s in the late 20th century, coming from 300 years in the future and he’s supposed to know? Come on…You act like computers couldnt handle voice commands for another 500 years. Which is clearly untrue. Use some common sense.

Re: not knowing the computer couldn’t respond to a microphone in the late 80’s

Actually, ML31’s making a fundamental mistake, and you are going right along with it, that because voice recognition didn’t exist in home computer models that it didn’t exist back then or that Mr. Scott would know that in an industrial setting the computer he was going to use was of such a home model with such a limited capability.

It’s the equivalent of assuming that because that Apple computer had no internet access that therefore the internet backbone didn’t exist and therefore it would be ridiculous if Scotty had instead used “the internet”, which I was using in 1980 to access a Cray supercomputer back then, in looking for answers to some problem back then as well.

Here’s that actual “history” that ML31 mucked up in ignorance:

“By 1971, IBM had developed its next experimental application of speech recognition. The Automatic Call Identification system enabled engineers anywhere in the US to talk to and receive “spoken” answers from a computer in Raleigh, NC. It was IBM’s first speech recognition system to operate over telephone lines and respond to a range of different voices and accents.”

‘how quaint’.

‘gentlemen, we’ve come home’

or “My friends (since Uhura was there), we’ve come home”.

…and because I thought the movie was so good…I felt like this was Shatner saying…the series had come full circle and we were back to the 2nd season where “Star Trek” was great.

damn it, knew I got it wrong.

I forgot. ‘Tell her…I feel FINE.’ Not a funny line, but still the best of the movie. The perfect end to the Spock arc begun in Khan. You know when I think back to the day I first saw that film, on a 20 inch tv on pan and scan vhs (sadly, the first Trek I ever saw in the theatre was The Final Frontier-yes, your sympathy is welcome) well, it’s just pure nostalgia. I almost wish I could go back to the eighties and live there. But at the same time, it makes me a little sad. If you’d have told my thirteen year old self, sitting there in blissful ignorance watching Spock swimming with whales and calculating impossible odds, that twenty years hence when I was all ‘grown up’, my favourite Vulcan would be beating the shit out of people and diddling Uhura-i’d never have believed you. Not in a million years. Say what you like about your perceptions of the film’s flaws. We didn’t know when we were lucky.

actually TMP gifted that spock character arc to the trilogy. melding with v’ger chilled him out about his heritage.

You are quite correct.

I’ve always wondered if Shatner’s involvement with Greenpeace in the ’70s had anything to do with the “save the whales” message of STIV. I saw him at a convention in ’78 and he spent most of his time talking about the importance of saving the whales, but then also talked about a movie idea with an environmental message: something about the ship being out of resources and finding a planet that could replenish their supplies — but doing so would wreak havoc on the environment of the planet. I’m not sure that’s the right plot, but I’ve always liked the idea of a movie where the crew is forced to make a really difficult decision.

Trek IV’s concept was all Nimoy. Bill was still busy with “TJ Hooker” at that time, but I do recall Shatner being interviewed on his horse ranch by Merv Griffin and Bill just being elated when he said how unique the storyline was for “Star Trek IV” which was already in production at the time of the interview.

I need guidance with something. After 4’s initial release on vhs..years Later a Director’s Edition was issued. I recall this vhs version had a making of featurette I believe never was ported over to the dvd/BD issues. It was a fair sized featurette on the fake whales/animatronics aspect. Am I correct and did this never again appear on future releases of this film?

I got the only copy I could find in mail yesterday. The cover was correct..however the vhs inside was NOT The Paramount Director’s Series release w/ Nimoy’s segment. Paramount only did 2 such releases…the other was “Fatal Attraction”. I have searched google, Amazon, ebay. Only a handful of the standard theatrical release version is out there. Help! This segment NEVER got ported over to dvd or Bluray! Need this!

but then the OS was known for silly humour.

“They are not the hell your whales.”

In 1986, Star Trek pushed a Greenpeace agenda as a blockbuster movie. It worked.

The legacy of 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage' is more than just a goofy movie time travel movie. Here's how it changed our world for the better.

After James T. Kirk stole Doc Brown’s ride, he decided to go back in time and save the whales.

You might think I’m describing some quirky fanfiction or a deleted scene from Ready Player One . But, the truth is, the Klingon ship Kirk and company commandeered in Star Trek IV to travel back in time to 1986, was owned by Klingon Commander Kruge, who, in 1984’s Star Trek III , was played by Christopher Lloyd (who went on to become much more famous as Doc Brown in 1985’s Back to the Future ).

By stealing that specific craft, the crew of the late Starship Enterprise was destined to go on a time-travel adventure. But unlike any other time-travel romp dating to the 1980s, this journey is a creative piece of commentary on a nascent environmentalism movement that put endangered species at its heart. In the fall of 1986, one year after Back to the Future , Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home not only became a transtemporal box-office hit, it also propelled climate change and concern for endangered species into the mainstream.

In short, Star Trek tried to literally save the whales in 1986, and it basically worked.

Welcome to FUTURE EARTH , where Inverse forecasts 100 years of possibilities, challenges, and who will lead the way.

Prior to J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot in 2009, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home held the record for the Star Trek feature film with the most successful box office, ever . The movie opened over Thanksgiving weekend in 1986 and went on to gross $109,713,132. To put this in perspective, Top Gun , which was the number one movie of 1986, made $176,781,728. Yes, Top Gun was the top gun, but The Voyage Home was right up there. Until J.J. Abrams, it was Star Trek’s most popular crossover film, which is saying something considering the film lacks both violence and sex. In 1986, the Trek franchise went toe-to-toe with the horror of Aliens and the sexy action of Top Gun and, while it didn’t quite win, it came out as a serious contender.

The mysterious probe in The Voyage Home . All it wants to do is to talk to some whales...

Co-written by Wrath of Khan maestro Nicholas Meyer , and directed by Leonard Nimoy, The Voyage Home was a political film imbued with environmental activism masquerading as a fish-out-of-water comedy. So, it turns out, humpback whales are just as intelligent as humans, and, at some point in the past, communicated only in whale song to this particular alien probe that looks like a smoother version of ʻOumuamua.

The movie sets out a humbling idea: If aliens were to make contact with Earth, they might not necessarily want to talk to humans. As Spock (Leonard Nimoy, directing himself) puts it “Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man.” When this alien probe rolls up on Earth, hoping to talk to some whales, the probe’s transmission sounds one way from the air, but totally different underwater. These signals are also destructive and require an answer that can’t be given because, in the Star Trek universe, humpback whales are extinct.

Once Spock and Uhura realize that the probe’s signals sound different underwater, there’s only one option; get some whales and hope those whales, as Bones says, “tell this probe what the hell to go do with itself.” Kirk decides time-travel to 1986 is the only possible solution. So, not only is their mission to find humpback whales in the past but also to bring them forward in time to the future. No one has ever called this movie Star Trek Some Whales Back to the Future , but that’s what happens.

The Voyage Home starts with this tough talk, and then, less than 15-minutes later, dumps the famous Starfleet crew into a comedy of errors on the streets of San Francisco in 1986. During the trip back in time, the stolen Klingon ship is broken (of course) and the crew has to figure out how to build a whale tank that can fit inside of their (broken) spaceship.

Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in a pawn shop, selling some antique glasses to have enough cash to get around in the 20th Century.

This means Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, and Chekov are super busy. Sulu flies a helicopter expertly but forgets how to use windshield wipers. Chekov gets mistaken for a quirky Russian spy. And, best of all, Spock tries out profanity for the first time, referring to swear words as “colorful metaphors.” There’s never been a science-fiction time-travel romp quite like The Voyage Home , probably best exemplified by the moment Spock uses a Vulcan nerve pinch to silence a rowdy punk’s boom box on a city bus.

But The Voyage Home’s overarching message comes to the fore in an over-the-top scene in which Spock literally connects his mind with that of a whale. The idea is elegant: If human beings possessed Spock’s telepathic powers, we too might connect with other creatures and, in turn, have a greater understanding and compassion for the other, defenseless denizens of our world. The heart of the movie is when Spock jumps into a giant whale tank and mind-melds with a humpback whale named Gracie. Later, when cetacean biologist Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) accuses Spock of “messing with my whales,” Spock fires back “They like you very much, but they are not the hell your whales.” The whales own themselves and Spock respects that.

The Star Trek characters come from a more enlightened future, and they’re ashamed of the actions of humankind in the “past” — the present for moviegoers of the ‘80s. In 1986, humpback whales really were on the endangered species list. In the movie’s final scenes, Kirk puts his stolen Klingon spaceship directly between a whaler’s harpoon and Spock’s new whale friends, saving them from humanity. For an audience unaware of environmental activism, it was a wake-up call.

“Greenpeace used to go out in rubber rafts in front of the Russian ships to try to prevent them from firing their harpoons, and that’s where that idea came from.”

“There’s a homage to Greenpeace in the movie because the idea of putting the spaceship between the whaling ship and the whales and being hit by the harpoon has Greenpeace roots,” Leonard Nimoy said in a 1986 interview. “Greenpeace used to go out in rubber rafts in front of the Russian ships to try to prevent them from firing their harpoons, and that’s where that idea came from.”

In 1986, Greenpeace representatives noted that while The Voyage Home played fast and loose with the truth, “the message is right on the money.″ After the movie’s release, there was an uptick in donations to Greenpeace, according to the organization. In fact, Greenpeace went so far as to say that the film “subtly reinforces why Greenpeace exists.”

Appropriately, Star Trek IV did not employ real whales in filming. Other than some stock footage toward the end of the film, the vast majority of the whales in the film were animatronic; a special effect so good that nobody noticed.

Star Trek IV’s influence on real conservation efforts in the 1980s is hard to quantify today. In 2016, the humpback whale was removed from a federal endangered species list, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the humpback whale comeback “an ecological success story.” When that happened, several publications pointed out a link between Star Trek IV and the resurgence of humpback whales. Quite literally, Star Trek’s cautionary tale seemed to usher in a better future in which whales didn’t go extinct in the 21st century.

It is impossible to prove a direct link between The Voyage Home and the de-escalation of whale hunting in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Correlation and causation are two different things, after all. In truth, years of dedicated environmental activism, political action, and education did the hard work. But it’s also true that Star Trek IV opened up a lot of people’s eyes to humanity’s cruelty toward whales and the perilous state of their survival.

At one point in the film, Bones quips that the 20th century is like “the Dark Ages” to his future, enlightened eyes. But, perhaps because of a quirky and bold Star Trek movie, some of us started to see the light.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is streaming for free on Pluto TV . It’s also streaming on Paramount+.

This article was originally published on April 20, 2021

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Film / Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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Gillian Taylor: Don't tell me — you're from outer space. James T. Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

The One With… The Whales . And the nuclear " wessels ".

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the fourth movie in the Star Trek film series, released in 1986. It is directed by Leonard Nimoy , with the screenplay by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennett and the story by Bennett and Nimoy.

James T. Kirk ( William Shatner ) is prepared to face the consequences of his actions in the previous movie , but a powerful alien probe is making its way to Earth ( yes, another one. Again. ), wreaking havoc with the environment and shutting down anything with power. Deducing that the probe is searching for humpback whales, which are extinct in the twenty-third century, Kirk and crew use a Klingon Bird-Of-Prey they stole in the last film to Time Travel to San Francisco in The '80s , where they hope to retrieve some and save Earth. Hilarity Ensues . Instead of the traditional Space Opera , this movie is an outright comedy. It even lacks a villain, outside of the whale probe and a whaler boat. Star Trek IV also concludes a loose trilogy arc that began with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .

The film also stars Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy , James Doohan as Montgomery Scott, George Takei as Hikaru Sulu, Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura and Catherine Hicks as Gillian Taylor.

The wild success of this movie (it was the most financially successful Trek film until the 2009 reboot ) proved to Paramount that Star Trek could survive as an expanded franchise . Not only did it greenlight another film , but it gave Gene Roddenberry the opportunity to create a brand new TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation , and kickstarted 18 straight years of Star Trek productions.

The Voyage Home provides examples of:

• Abandon Ship : Kirk orders this when the ship crashes in San Francisco Bay and starts to sink.
• Acronym Confusion : Kirk: Oh, him [Spock]? He's harmless. Back in the sixties, he was part of the free speech movement at Berkeley. I think he did a little too much LDS. note  This acronym refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons. He meant to say LSD, more commonly referred to as acid. Gillian: L D S?
• Except Scotty, who immediately laughs and in the process effectively disappears
• Adam and Eve Plot : With the whales George and Gracie that are brought from the 20th century to the future.
• Alice Allusion : Kirk's greeting to Gillian as she's beamed aboard the Klingon ship. "Hello Alice, welcome to Wonderland".
• The Blu-Ray releases include the Library Computer, an interactive database that will appear on screen as the movie plays offering entries on characters, ships, places, etc. with additional information on them.
• The novelization states the Federation planned to clone one or more infant humpback whales from previously collected humpback cell samples that George and Gracie could raise to adulthood in order to provide a basis to repopulate the species. It also explains that the reason this was never done before was because the cloned infants would need adults to teach them how to survive in the wild.
• And Starring : The opening cast roll ends with "and Catherine Hicks as Gillian".
• And the Adventure Continues : The film ends with the crew embarking on the Enterprise -A. Kirk: Let's see what she's got.
• Chekov apologizes to his interrogators before he tries to stun them, however his phaser doesn't work ("Must be the radiation").
• During their escape from the hospital, the crew barges into and knocks over a patient on a crutch. McCoy apologizes as he helps the patient up again in passing.
• Arc Words : "How do you feel?" Later, "I feel fine."
• By Sarek, in response to the Klingon ambassador's overblown accusations against Kirk. Ambassador: We have the right to preserve our race! Sarek: You have the right to commit murder?
• During Spock's memory test, the computer asks him, "How do you feel?" Spock is legitimately baffled by the question.
• As things are going wrong, Kirk laments that they have two perfectly good whales and could very well lose them. Spock: In likelihood, our mission would fail. Kirk: Our mission? Spock, you're talking about the end of every life on Earth. You're half-human. Haven't you got any goddamn feelings about that?!
• Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving : Stealing Starships, Disobeying Orders, And Saving The World.
• The scene where Kirk and Spock are walking and talking with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background was shot at Marine Drive, specifically the brief stretch of road that connects to Fort Point. That area is pretty far out of the way, especially if they're coming from Golden Gate Park; it's about four miles away on foot. However, it's conveniently close to where they shot the Marina district scene mentioned above, and the bridge makes for an awesome background.
• Take a closer look at the movie poster. It's a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the tourist viewpoint in Marin, but the city in the background has been flipped; the Transamerica Pyramid should be on the left side. Also, the bridge runs directly north and south, which means that the sun doesn't rise or set in that direction.
• Ironically, and this may be played with, just to show how unadvanced 20th-century medicine is, that the doctor is a lot closer to playing this straight, than Mc Coy is. Neither the doctor or Mc Coy really say anything incorrect, but a couple of the doctor's lines seem to be odd responses. Most notably responding to Mc Coy's diagnosis of a torn middle meningeal artery, is countered by asking him if his degree is in dentistry - despite it being the correct diagnosis (completely averting this trope). And when Mc Coy counters with asking him what he makes of it, the doctor initially responds with "fundoscopic examination". However, even then, Mc Coy's response shows he's familiar with such an examination, by stating that such a thing would be "unrevealing". Mc Coy doesn't chide the doctor about drilling holes in Chekov's skull, until after the doctor offers "A simple evacuation of the expanding epidural hematoma will relieve the pressure!" Which indicates Chekov suffered a skull fracture, which cut an artery, that led to blood pooling between the brain and the skull, putting pressure on the brain. In the 20th (and even 21st) century, drilling a hole/holes in the skull to relieve said pressure, is a valid strategy. Since, y'know, we don't have the technology yet to knit bone, repair arteries, and remove blood by waving a tricorder over the patient's head.
• Although averted in the park scenes, played straight when rescuing the whales. Cloaking may indeed make the ship invisible, but that whaling ship would likely have capsized well before they could have fired the harpoon. Between the air turbulence brought on by such a massive, generally non-aerodynamic ship as the Bird of Prey — especially at high speeds, and the thrusters required to keep the ship hovering, to say the waters would have been dangerously choppy, would be a great understatement. Of course, that would have deprived them of the memorable shot of the harpoon colliding with seemingly nothing, or the Bird of Prey decloaking and giving the whalers a massive Oh, Crap! moment.
• What he actually said was that acceleration was no longer a constant. That could be referring to the extra weight (particularly if it exceeded the ship's designed load, as the creaking during transport suggested), the state of the dilithium crystals (in the process of being reconstituted through 20th century nuclear energy), or both.
• An example with in-universe physics. In the previous film, the cloaking device caused a visual distortion field, "one big enough to hide a ship." No such distortion field is seen for the cloaked Bird of Prey. Then again, preventing the Bird of Prey from landing invalidates the entire plot .
• The Probe creates clouds which block the sun's rays. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, since the Federation is a civilization that has harnessed Antimatter, but the probe's carrier wave is also so powerful that it blankets all electrical systems like a continuous long-range EMP, shutting everything down.
• The sun is apparently NOT a good source for collecting "photons" to recharge the dilithium crystals, and a 20th century nuclear reactor will do. It's Justified by Spock when he says they need high-energy photons, which means gamma and x-rays given off by fission reactions, while most of the sun's energy hitting earth is lower on the spectrum, in ultraviolet and visible light. Then again, that entire subplot was just an excuse to set up the "FBI interrogates the Russian Chekov" scene and " nuclear wessels ". Totally worth it.
• The shuttles inside Spacedock drift to a stop when their engines fail due to the probe signal. Simple inertia should have resulted in some nasty crashes.
• And there's the question of how an audio signal travels through the vacuum of space, or alternately how a radio or similar signal resolves into whale song when it hits the water. Even more to the point, how did the probe (or its creators) ever get a response from the whales?
• "Ass" in Ambassador : The Klingon ambassador, to be specific. President Hiram Roth: Admiral Kirk has been charged with nine violations of Starfleet regulations. Ambassador Kamarag: " STARFLEET REGULATIONS"? THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS ! Remember this well: there shall be no peace as long as Kirk lives! Crowd Member: YOU POMPOUS ASS!
• Awesome, but Impractical : After setting the (cloaked) warbird down in a public park, Kirk makes a note of the inevitable drawbacks of hiding your invisible starship: Kirk: Everybody, remember where we parked.
• Sarek showing up to the hearing with the Klingons at the beginning of the film to speak on behalf of his son and his crewmates
• Spock and Sarek have a moment. After a brief icy exchange where Spock says (somewhat backhandedly) that he appreciated his father making the effort to attend the trial, Sarek countered softly with "it was no effort, you are my son". Probably as close to a gooey moment as you would get between a Vulcan father and son.
• Bait-and-Switch : As Kirk and the rest of the crew are being delivered to their new starship post, the Excelsior appears on the horizon and Sulu excitedly wonders if that's their new ship. The crew (and the audience) seem consigned to continuing their adventures on the "great experiment"... until the camera pans over the Excelsior 's saucer to show a newly-built Enterprise -A behind it.
• Band of Brothers : At the end Starfleet has a tribunal to sentence Kirk, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and McCoy for their actions in the previous film, and when they are called down Spock joins them. The President tells Spock that he was not part of this conspiracy, and Spock responds concisely that he stands with his crew members .
• Scotty and McCoy pretend to be a professor and his assistant from the University of Edinburgh, visiting Plexicorp to observe their manufacturing methods.
• Later, Kirk, McCoy , and Gillian get into the hospital to rescue Chekov by posing as doctors and a patient. See Expospeak Gag below.
• Big Damn Heroes : Kirk and the crew seem too late to stop the whalers, only to have the launched harpoon suddenly hit something invisible. Then Kirk's ship decloaks and reveals it had gotten in place to block the shot in time .
• Big Dumb Object : The "whale probe". Presumably to make a point about it being as thoughtlessly destructive to humanity as humanity supposedly is to whales.
• Black Boss Lady : Audiences applauded when Madge Sinclair appeared as the (unnamed) Captain of the USS Saratoga at the beginning of the film.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality : The probe, which is completely inscrutable.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma : Justified , as Spock has an incomplete grasp on life after being brought Back from the Dead . Kirk: If we play our cards right, we may be able to find out when those whales are being released. Spock: How will playing cards help? Dr. Taylor: Are you sure you won't change your mind? Spock: Is there something wrong with the one I have?
• Kirk refers to the others as 'My friends' when they commit themselves to help Spock in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ("My friends, Dr McCoy and I have to do this, the rest of you don't") and again after the resulting trial in this film's ending ("My friends, we've come home").
• Early in this movie, Spock is confused when the testing computer asks him "How do you feel?" and his mother tries to help him get in touch with his emotions. At the end, Sarek asks him if he has a message for her. Spock: Tell her... I feel fine.
• Brake Angrily : Gillian slams the brakes on her truck after Spock declares that Gracie is pregnant .

• Brick Joke : Kirk sells the reading glasses that Dr. McCoy gave him as a birthday present in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan so that they'll have money to live on while they're in 1980s San Francisco.
• Chekov is caught sneaking around a US Military installation and is mistakenly assumed to be a spy. Kirk had the same thing happen to him in the TOS episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday".
• In II , McCoy notes that the antique glasses were rare because "you don't find many with the lenses still intact." They get damaged at the end of II , and when Kirk sells them, the antiques dealer sighs they would be more valuable if the lenses were still intact. Presumably, the lenses in the Stable Time Loop are 100 years younger than the frames, but still "antique".
• In "The City On The Edge Of Forever", Kirk tried to explain away Spock's pointed ears to a 1930s police officer by claiming his ears got caught in "a mechanical rice-picker". This time, Spock simply covers his ears with an improvised headband.
• Calling Out for Not Calling : An alien species that used to chat with humpback whales before their extinction sends a probe to determine why they haven't called for the last 300 years. The probe removes water from the oceans to find them.
• Came Back Wrong : It's implied that maybe we didn't quite get all of Spock back at the end of the previous movie, that there's a certain... something missing. He gets better by the end though. Death apparently isn't something you can just get over straight away.
• Both Majel Barrett and Grace Lee Whitney make appearances in the film. Barrett reprises her role as Christine Chapel, now a Commander at Starfleet Medical. note  This is Majel Barrett's final appearance as Dr. Chapel, though she'd be far from done with Trek . Whitney also appears at Starfleet Command, and is credited as Janice Rand, also a Commander.
• Captain Obvious : Admiral Cartwright mentions during the probe's attack that the Earth can't survive without exposure to the Sun. The Federation President treats this statement as something everybody would know.
• Cassandra Truth : After failing to come up with a cover story she'll accept, Kirk flat-out tells Gillian exactly who he is and where he comes from over dinner. She naturally thinks he's full of shit.
• Cat Folk : The Caitian admiral at Starfleet headquarters.
• Celebrity Paradox : Given that there are references to various aspects of late-20th-century pop culture (punk rock, Jacqueline Susann, etc.), there's an underlying implication that the Star Trek series must not exist in Star Trek ' s universe. (The implication is even stronger in the novelization. Kirk actually introduces himself to Dr. Gillian Taylor by saying "I'm Kirk, and this is Spock," and she doesn't react as if that's significant of anything—this within a larger sequence in which she marvels at their lack of familiarity with everything from Waylon Jennings to pizza.)
• Changed My Jumper : The short notice for this particular mission results in the crew arriving in San Francisco in their 23rd-century Space Clothes . As it's San Francisco , they don't look that out of place. Truth in Television — they had unknown crew walk around San Francisco in the outfits for a week before shooting started, and got no comments whatsoever.
• The Klingon Bird-of-Prey, which was just the enemy ship and later a means of escaping from the exploding Genesis Planet in the previous film, ends up being a vital part of this film's storyline thanks to its ability to cloak and land.
• Kirk's glasses are an unusual case of this; from the perspective of the audience and Kirk himself, this is the last time the glasses are seen. However, 298 years down the line, they're going to be very important once again.
• Chekov's Gun : Doesn’t work due to radiation.
• *Click* Hello : Chekov is greeted by a Marine this way when he is found on board the nuclear carrier USS Enterprise .
• Cloudcuckoolander : Spock, but in all fairness he is still recovering from being dead.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like : Sort of. Spock initially feels that his shipmates, being the illogical humans they are, made a huge mistake in saving him because his one life would not seem to be worth the costs they incurred along the way (at least one other life — that of David Marcus (though he likely would have died anyway) — plus the destruction of the Enterprise and putting all their careers in jeopardy). To be fair, he's running almost entirely on logic at this point because his more abstract memories are returning more slowly — and from a pure logic point of view, he's not entirely wrong. It takes the crisis facing Earth and the time travel adventure to save it capped with a reconciliation with his father for Spock to accept that his crewmates made the right decision to save him and in the process save McCoy as well.
• Continuity Nod : Kirk mentions that they've done slingshot maneuvers around the sun before, which they first did in the episode " Tomorrow Is Yesterday ."
• Crapsack Only by Comparison : How the crew of the Enterprise see The '80s , largely Played for Laughs . Kirk warns the crew that they're dealing with a "primitive and paranoid culture", Spock confirms they're in the late 20th century by the pollution content in the atmosphere, McCoy remarks (on a newspaper headling concerning nuclear arms talks stalling) that "it's a wonder these people ever got out of the 20th century" and then shows characteristic disdain for 20th-century medical practices when Chekov has an accident and ends up critically injured in hospital .
• Crazy Enough to Work : Even though it's the crew of the mighty Enterprise we're talking about, the whole "get some whales from back in time" thing did sound pretty ridiculous. McCoy lampshades this, to which Kirk simply responds that if McCoy has a better plan, he should speak up. The film is also nice enough to explain why several saner-sounding plans wouldn't work—getting in weapons range would result in being crippled, and attempting to transmit whalesong themselves would just be shouting gibberish into space.
• Creator Cameo : The punk on the bus is played by associate producer Kirk Thatcher . He also co-wrote and recorded the song playing on the boombox ("I Hate You").
• Curb-Stomp Battle : Well, there's no actual battle , but the Probe gives V'ger a run for its money to completely decimate the entire Federation and Earth ships and defenses. It does this as a mere side effect of transmitting its signal and is otherwise completely oblivious to the damage it causes.
• Damage Control : Kirk asks when they can get their captured Bird-of-Prey under way, Scotty quips, "Damage control is easy; reading Klingon, that's hard."
• (Bones actually died in an episode of the The Original Series ((as did Scotty)) and its odd none of them remember it.)
• Dedication : To the crew of the Challenger at the beginning of the film.
• The Defroster : Spock has been coldly logical since he came back, and when Kirk finally gets upset with him (before having done his usual of pretending everything is fine, much to McCoy's wariness), he starts acting more like his developed self.
• Demoted to Extra : Saavik, who was a major character in The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock , made a brief appearance in one early scene on Vulcan in this movie, and then was never seen again note  She was supposed to be in the 6th film, but it was decided to create a new character, Valeris; the events of that film come across somewhat differently with that in mind .
• Doctor Jerk : The surgeon who was about to operate on Chekov was justifiably upset about McCoy and Kirk intruding into the operating room, but there was no need for him to insult Dr. McCoy's credentials.
• Don't Call Me "Sir" : Due to Spock's mental retraining, he insists on calling Kirk "Admiral". Kirk is nonplussed and keeps insisting that Spock used to call him "Jim".
• Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help : McCoy helping the woman on dialysis during their rescue of Chekov. Admittedly, the "stop" didn't take more time than it took to give her a couple of pills, but it still (A) potentially draws attention to what's supposed to be a covert mission and (B) has the possibility of changing history.
• Eiffel Tower Effect : The very first shot of the Federation headquarters includes the Golden Gate Bridge to establish it is in San Francisco .
• The '80s : The crew travels back to the year of the movie's release: '86. Also, one of the test questions Spock gets are events of historical significance from 1987.
• Emergency Refuelling : After the crew use the Klingon Bird of Prey to travel back in time, the dilithium crystals in the Bird of Prey start disintegrating due to the amount of effort required to travel back in time. This leads to a subplot where Uhura and Chekov have to find a nuclear vessel, collect high energy photons from a nuclear fission reaction and use those to recrystalise the dilithium crystals.
• Everybody Lives : The only Trek film that can boast this.
• Everything Is an iPod in the Future : In the brief shot of the Enterprise -A's bridge at the end of the movie, the entire bridge is painted white with black touchscreen control panels.
• Exact Words : Spock's plan. Spock: We could try to find some humpback whales. McCoy : But you said there aren't any, except on Earth of the past . Spock: Yes, Doctor, that's exactly what I said.
• Explosive Instrumentation : During the time trip, Uhura's panel explodes almost in her face, along with various wall panels and pipes bursting .
• Expospeak Gag : With Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness , for cramps after eating: McCoy : This woman has acute post-prandial upper-abdominal distension! Kirk: What did you say she's got? McCoy : Cramps. note  In the novelization, Gillian is momentarily angry at this, apparently mistaking McCoy for saying she had menstrual cramps. The actual translation, however, is closer to "food baby."
• Extinct in the Future : While Star Trek ' s Earth is generally positive, whales went extinct sometime in the 21st century. Which becomes a problem for Earth when an alien probe arrives wanting to talk to them.
• Exty Years from Publication : From 2286 to 1986, the crew travel back exactly 300 years in to the past.
• Every Helicopter Is a Huey : Sulu tells a helicopter pilot that he trained on Hueys at the Academy, as a hobby (though the pilot probably didn't know he meant Starfleet Academy). The Novelization expands on it.
• Face Palm : Kirk's reaction to Spock diving into the whale tank without warning him, following a Jaw Drop .
• Failed Future Forecast : The probe is causing bad weather in 23rd-century Leningrad (the name of Saint Petersburg between 1924 and 1991), although the oblast (province/state) still retains that name.
• Fish out of Temporal Water : The whole premise of the film, figuratively and almost literally, thanks to the cetaceans out of temporal water.
• The Klingon ambassador mentions attempts to negotiate a peace treaty, and that there would be no peace while Kirk lived. This may or may not have been intentional, but it's picked up as the central theme of the plot in the sixth movie—where, interestingly enough, the same character (and actor) is one of the first to applaud Kirk and the Enterprise crew when they prevent the sabotage of the eventual Federation/Klingon treaty.
• As the crew travels back in time, the audience can hear various lines of dialogue that will later be said throughout the course of the movie. Furthermore, the sequence starts with a brief shot of Kirk sitting in a white room. While it's still the Klingon ship's bridge, the white background is very evocative of the bridge of the Enterprise-A.
• Funny Background Event : While fleeing the aircraft carrier, Chekov happens to run past a sign painted on the bulkhead which reads "Escape Route."
• Whales are extinct in the 23rd century. The probe tries to communicate until something responds... if nothing responds, it never stops trying. (It just so happens that its communication drains Starfleet power supplies and screws up's Earth's surface weather...) The designers of the probe were callous and uncaring what side effects this would have, just as the 20th-century humans were callous and uncaring regarding the plight of the whales — at least that's the idea.
• The novelisation expands on this. The probe travelled to Earth to find out why its creators had lost contact with whales (implying whalesong can travel interstellar distances) in a cetacean version of a cut-off distress call. By the time the probe has reached Earth orbit, it has concluded that there will most likely be no response (humanity trying to talk to it does not count any more than fish trying to talk to us) and starts pumping energy into the oceans to create cloud cover and thus freeze the planet in order to start over, but continues to send a signal on the off chance there will be a response. When Kirk and co bring the whales back and they start to sing, the probe immediately pauses (noticable in the movie) and tries to think what to do about a completely unprecedented event. After a brief discussion with George and Gracie, it basically says "good luck with rebuilding" and heads off for parts unknown.
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card : Starfleet can't really punish Kirk and crew too much just after they saved the world, can they?
• Going Down with the Ship : Kirk is the last one to leave the sinking Bird-of-Prey, after opening the cargo bay to release the whales.
• Good Old Ways : A perfect example of the ways in which Bones subverts this trope. See We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future .
• Gracefully Demoted : Kirk has no problem being demoted from Admiral to Captain, as it takes him from his boring desk job and puts him back in the big chair.
• Green Aesop : "To hunt a species to extinction is not logical." Gillian: Whoever said the human race was logical?
• Hand Signals : After Chekov falls off the carrier Enterprise , one of the Marines signals "hold" before calling for a corpsman.
• Happy Ending Override : Downplayed. The multiple criminal acts that Kirk and his officers committed in the last movie can't just be Easily Forgiven too quickly — the only reason they don't all get cashiered (and likely imprisoned) is because they save Earth from the alien probe. Even so, Kirk still gets demoted from Admiral to Captain, which everybody knows is an act of Unishment .
• "I Hate" Song : "I Hate You" by Edge of Etiquette, the song played by the punk in the bus scene, is about how rotten humanity is and how we'd be better off nuking ourselves into oblivion.
• Immediate Sequel : Picks up shortly after Star Trek III , with Kirk's Captain's Log specifying it has been three months since the events of that film.
• Fridge Brilliance: This is the exact same rationale Kruge gave for breaking protocol, crossing the Neutral Zone, and firing upon a Federation vessel in the first place. He did so completely on his own initiative (even telling Torg "share this with no one"), but it becomes brilliance when you consider that the Klingons figured out in hindsight WHY Kruge would have gone to Genesis, and latched on to that as the only defensible explanation. Not having all the facts hurt them (the Ambassador specifically says the Genesis device was test-detonated by Kirk himself, which is a double falsehood), but with Genesis' existence already causing galactic controversy, protecting their interests makes sense for them.
• The Klingon ambassador's attempts at rebutting Sarek fall into this: Yes, we killed Dr. David Marcus in cold blood. Yes, we blew up a Federation science vessel and killed 80 Starfleet officers. Yes, we committed espionage and stole classified materiel. But it's ok since we are trying to preserve our culture which prizes honor and courage above all else. Sarek calls him out on this with a glorious Armor-Piercing Question in front of the entire Federation Council.
• Just Ignore It : Kirk’s usual trait rears its ugly head for a while, as he wants to assume that everything is fine with Spock when it’s clearly not. Bones stops just short of a What the Hell, Hero? .
• Large Ham : John Schuck as the Klingon Ham bassador makes William Shatner look positively subdued. "Behold, the quintessential devil in these matters: James T. Kirk, renegade and terrorist!" "Starfleet regulations, that's outRAGEOUS!!!"
• Kicked Upstairs : Inverted : Kirk has violated orders to save the world. They "punish" him by taking away his cushy desk job and demoting him to a "mere" starship captain. So Starfleet gets what it wants (a public punishment to demonstrate they don't tolerate such behavior, not to mention their best captain back in the field) and Kirk gets what he wants (the Enterprise ).
• Language Barrier : Spock gently shoots down Kirk's idea to 'simulate' a whale song in response to the probe. Just because humans can mimic the whale sound doesn't mean they know how to speak Humpback Whale.
• Laser-Guided Karma : Kirk and Company survived to save the world because they were off-planet rescuing Spock when the probe arrived.
• Lighter and Softer : This is pretty much the most lighthearted Trek film there is. Not so much for the novelisation, which while still light in places, goes into detail over Kirk’s PTSD over losing Edith Keeler, the Enterprise, his son, Gary Mitchell, and his brother and sister in law, while Uhura and Chekov have to be more careful with regards to racism, and Bones is still struggling with the dregs of Spock in his head.
• List of Transgressions : After saving the world, Kirk and his crew appear before the Federation Council, with the president reading the list of offenses they committed over the last two movies. Kirk pleads guilty to all of them, and then the president dismisses all but one, using that to demote Kirk to "Captain"— which made him very happy .
• Literal-Minded : Chekov during the interrogation, much to the frustration of his interrogator. A possible case of Obfuscating Stupidity .
• Magical Security Cam : When the Klingon Ambassador shows the Council footage of the Enterprise blowing up with Kruge's crew aboard, it's the exact footage from the previous film. The bit with Kruge's crew on the bridge has an overlay added to suggest that it was somehow recorded and transmitted by one of the crew before they died; no effort is made to explain who recorded the external shots of the ship going down in flames.
• Meaningful Rename : McCoy dubbed their stolen Klingon ship the HMS Bounty , with Kirk noting the irony in his log.
• Mistaken for Spies : Chekov. An interesting example as Chekov's behavior eventually leads one of his interrogators to suspect he's more probably an escaped mental patient than a Soviet spy.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence : An interesting version, seeing as it was applied to what was then the real-life present day, in which the Enterprise crew crosses a street in 1986 San Francisco and Kirk is called a "dumbass" by an angry taxi driver. The background music seems to be a standard '80s rock tune. It was a jazz/fusion tune that was created for the movie by the group Yellowjackets which was accurate of music adults listened to in the '80's. Also, an unlucky hoodlum is shown jamming on a boombox with music that fit the style of 80's era punk. The song was written specifically for that scene, and performed by the actor that played the punk.
• When Gillian starts showing videos of actual whale disassembling. In theaters, the audiences often got very quiet at this point. Sorta-mimicked in the Novelization, in a way: most of the tour group watch the videos without much trouble, but Kirk and Spock are disturbed to say the least, because to them such violence was uncommon in their century.
• A Downplayed example in the pizza restaurant. Gillian starts tearing up at the thought of saying goodbye to the whales while worrying about their survival in the open sea—and then Kirk gets a call on his "pocket pager." His pathetic attempt to be discreet about it, as well as the dialogue between him and Scotty (including Scotty calling him "Admiral", just like Spock), produce a " You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! " look on Gillian's face as she clearly wonders just what the hell she's gotten herself involved in.
• A captured Chekov plays the fool for his captors, escapes despite his phaser malfunctioning (complete with wacky noises), leads the crew of an aircraft carrier on a merry chase to upbeat music — then runs out of carrier and falls onto concrete hard enough to be fatally injured — at least, by 20th-century medical standards...
• Mundanization : They've triumphed many times in space, but how well do they do on present-day Earth? ( er, again ... for the third time ).
• The Bridge Computer Sound Effects from The Original Series can clearly be heard in the background as Kirk says "Let's see what she's got".
• An In-Universe example. "Sir! Ve have found the nuclear wessels! And Admiral....it is the Enterprise !"
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero : Everyone's reaction to the Humans of the past for hunting the Humpback to extinction.
• No Antagonist : Even the probe is just trying to find out what happened to their friends on Earth.
• Non-Malicious Monster : The probe doesn't even seem to understand that its signal is causing massive weather and geological disruptions to Earth. It's simply broadcasting the same message it always has, believing that being closer to the whales will solve the lack-of-response.
• No One Gets Left Behind : When Chekov is at the mercy of 20th-century medicine, Bones insists on going to save him. Spock backs him up. When asked if it's the logical thing to do, he admits that it is not that; however, it is the human thing to do.
• Not This One, That One : A notable inversion/subversion at the end: The crew arrives at Space Dock to take charge of their new ship. The crew argues about which ship they will get. Dr. McCoy trusts the bureaucrats to give them a freighter, while Mr. Sulu opines he would like the Excelsior . Scotty, of course scoffs at Mr. Sulu, asking why he would want that "bucket of bolts". Their shuttle starts its approach on the shiny new Excelsior ... then flies over it to reveal the smaller ship hiding behind it: the Enterprise -A. Kirk: My friends... we've come home.
• Obfuscating Stupidity : How Chekov deals with his (brief) interrogation by the FBI could be interpreted to be this instead of simple Fish out of Temporal Water naivety. You decide.
• Oddball in the Series : Whereas every other TOS movie is set in the 23rd century and features Captain Kirk & company flying around the galaxy on the USS Enterprise , this movie takes place almost entirely in the mid 1980's, on Earth, with the crew being Fish out of Water , trying to literally "Save The Whales" (and hence becoming the Trope Namer for Space Whale Aesop ). The crew is also not flying on the Enterprise as it was destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and they are instead using a hijacked Klingon Bird of Prey; the Enterprise only appears at the very end when a new one is built and assigned to the crew as a reward for saving Earth. And it's the only Star Trek movie where Everybody Lives ; the only times we see weapons used are Chekov trying and failing to stun his FBI interrogators, and Kirk welding a door shut.
• The whaler's crew upon seeing the Bird-of-Prey decloak. Not only could the entire whaler fit in the Bird-of-Prey's torpedo launcher , but these are late-20th-century humans. They have never seen an alien (or even human ) starship of any kind before. Naturally, they bend the speediest retreat they can.
• Kirk when Gillian tells him the whales are being released tomorrow .
• Once More, with Clarity : During the time travel sequence, the lines spoken by the crew during the sequence are spoken later on.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business : Kirk is amazed when The Spock of all people has to make a guess . Kirk: Mr. Spock, did you account for the variable mass of whales and water in your time re-entry program? Spock: Mr. Scott cannot give me exact figures, Admiral, so...I will make a guess. Kirk: A guess ? You , Spock? That's extraordinary . [leaves with Gillian] Spock: I don't think he understands. McCoy : No, Spock. He means that he feels safer about your guesses than most other people's facts . Spock: Oh. So you're saying it is a compliment? McCoy : It is. Spock: Hmm. Then I will try to make the best guess I can.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot : Gillian's co-worker Bob, who spends his few scenes alternately hitting on her and patronizing her, all while doing this constantly; she's never amused, to say the least.
• Out-of-Character Moment : At the end when the crew are in the water outside the sinking ship, just after the whales have successfully communicated with the probe , Spock appears to be laughing.
• Photographic Memory : Gillian Taylor mentions that she has one — "I see words!" — but it comes into play only once, during Spock's Time-Travel Tense Trouble .
• Precision F-Strike : Kirk advises Spock to blend in by "swearing every other word". While he has difficulty at first he finally grasps it, and, in perhaps a running gag, Spock has at least one in parts 5 and 6 as well. Spock: Are you sure it isn't time for a colorful metaphor?
• Product Placement : Used to hilarious effect in the scene where Sulu, Scotty, and Bones were discussing where they can find a a large quantity of plastic to make a whale tank. And they manage to walk exactly by a giant ad for Pacific Bell's Yellow Pages.
• Promotion, Not Punishment : At the end, Kirk actually experiences a subversion. After stealing the Enterprise and subsequently blowing it up in the process of stopping the Earth from being destroyed and saving the humpbacked whales from extinction , he and his bunch manage to almost completely duck the surefire court-martialing and dismissal from Starfleet. Instead, Kirk is demoted from Admiral back down to Captain, a role both he and his superiors prefer him in.
• The Quincy Punk : Kirk and Spock encounter such a punk on a bus in 1980s San Francisco. When he refuses to turn down the loud punk rock music he is playing, Spock nerve pinches him into silence, and everyone else on the bus applauds.
• Rapid-Fire Typing : Scotty goes from not even understanding the concept of a computer without voice commands to apparently being able to type three million words per minute. Also combines with Hollywood Hacking — the action on the computer's screen doesn't even remotely synch with his keystrokes.
• There was another scene written where Sulu, Bones, and Scotty meet a young boy who mistakenly thinks Sulu is his uncle; it turns out the child is Sulu's great great grandfather. The young boy chosen to play the part was overcome with stage fright (not helped by his showbiz mom) and the scene also had to be scrapped. It appears in the novelization.
• Refuge in Audacity : Chekov, in an obviously Russian accent, going around the streets asking about "nuclear wessels" and getting away with it . Doesn't help him when he is found on board one, however.
• Replacement Goldfish : The Enterprise NCC-1701-A for the Enterprise NCC-1701, beginning a Star Trek tradition.
• The Bird of Prey's bridge set is completely different from its appearance in the previous movie : its layout is much more similar to the Enterprise 's bridge, and the captain's chair is no longer on a raised dais.
• All of the Enterprise crew are wearing the same clothes they wore when they stole the Enterprise , except for Chekov who has replaced his awful pink jumpsuit with a cool leather jacket.
• Rogue Agent : The Klingon Ambassador tries painting Captain Kirk as this, in an attempt to get him extradited.
• Scary Science Words : McCoy bluffs getting Gillian past a police officer guarding the hospital room Chekov is in by claiming she's suffering from "acute post-prandial upper-abdominal distension". Afterwards, when asked about by Kirk, he reveals it to mean "cramps."
• Scotty and McCoy obtaining a supply of Plexiglass (to house the whales) by trading the formula for transparent aluminum to a Plexiglass engineer;
• Chekov and Uhura illegally boarding a US Navy vessel and stealing power (for the purposes of recrystallizing the dilithium matrix in the warp drive, allowing them to get home);
• Then Kirk and company removing a criminal suspect under arrest (Chekov, who gets captured in the process) from police custody.
• They also flatten a garbage can and damage the lawn of Golden Gate Park when they land the ship.
• Relations between the Federation and the Klingons are left in bad shape because of the Genesis Incident. The Klingons vow there will be no peace as long as Kirk lives, setting up Klaa's pursuit of Kirk in the next film (and the eventual resolution of the antagonism with the Khitomer Confrence in VI).
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness : Combined with Expospeak Gag , for saying "cramps after eating": McCoy : This woman has acute post-prandial upper-abdominal distension! Kirk: What did you say she had? McCoy : Cramps.
• Sherlock Can Read : Spock suggests a complicated strategy for finding the whales, but Kirk immediately points out that there are 2 of them at the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito. Spock asks how he knows this, and he replies "simple logic", pointing to an advertisement for the whale exhibit on a bus that just pulled up.
• The Whales are named after George Burns and Gracie Allen .
• Gillian refers to Kirk and Spock as Robin Hood and Friar Tuck .
• Sulu still pines for Excelsior , but Scotty refers to her as a " bucket of bolts ."
• Simple Solution Won't Work : When Spock deduces that the probe is seeking humpback whales to communicate with, Kirk suggests trying to answer it with simulated whalesong based on recordings, which would certainly be much easier than traveling back through time to try and find living instances of a long-extinct species. Spock points out that since they have no idea about the language of whalesong, they'd effectively be speaking gibberish note  Also, even if they played back recordings for the probe, they still wouldn't know what the whalesong was actually saying. Even if not gibberish, if the response doesn't match the question ("How are you doing on your planet?" "This is nice weather." "Hello? Can you hear me?" "I will go look for food now."), the probe could become, for lack of a better term, angry about the attempted deception and make things even worse .
• Kirk tries to be this, with middling success. " Double dumbass on you!"
• Spock tries even harder, with less success.
• Snap Back : After all the trial and tribulation the crew goes through in the last three films, they all end up back where they started: on the bridge of the Enterprise ready for a new adventure .
• A line from the Bus Punk's song:
• So Proud of You : Sarek to Spock at end of the film, with his customary Vulcan reserve.
• Space Friction : As with the Excelsior in the previous film, when the shuttles in Spacedock lose power they come to a stop, rather than drifting forward until they hit something.
• Spaceship Slingshot Stunt : The crew slingshots around the sun at a high enough warp speed to create a time-space warp that carries them back to the 1980s. While it's explained that the star's massive gravity field is used to bend space-time, the logistics of how they choose exactly where and when they end up is explained away as Spock just being that good.
• Only an example, though, for the most Literal-Minded interpretation. The intended Aesop is more along the lines of "you don't know what you've got till it's gone", specifically the permanence of extinction.
• Also, don't play your music too loud on the bus or you will be nerve-pinched.
• Just because somebody claims to have come from the future to save the Earth doesn't mean they're crazy or trying to scam you. They're only almost certainly crazy or trying to scam you.
• Spotting the Thread : Security Guard: How's the patient, Doctor? Kirk: He's going to make it. Guard: He? They went in with a she! Kirk: One little mistake... [runs]
• In the Novelization , Scotty practically fanboys over the engineer, Marcus Nichols, when they are introduced, because Scotty recognizes Nichols' name as that of the inventor of transparent aluminum; Scotty hints that he and Bones might be required to tell him about it.
• Nichols says himself it will take years to figure out the matrix, so they aren't even giving him the formula — just enough hints.
• When Kirk sells his glasses at a pawn shop. Spock: Admiral, weren't those a gift from Dr. McCoy ? Kirk: And they will be again. That's the beauty of it.
• Stay with the Aliens : Downplayed, with Gillian deciding to leave her life and come along with Kirk's group into the future aboard a modified Klingon spaceship that is manned by the half-alien Spock.
• Stopped Dead in Their Tracks : After Spock foolishly jumps into the whale tank and performs a mind-meld on Gracie, Gillian gives the two a ride back to San Francisco Proper in her pickup truck. As she drives on, Spock unexpressively blurts out a line that shocks Gillian and makes her slam on the brakes. Spock: Gracie is pregnant.
• Stunned Silence : The reaction of Kirk and his crew when they learn that Earth is in danger.
• Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard : During the FBI's interrogation of Chekov: Agent #1: What do you think? Agent #2: He's a Russkie. Agent #1: That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Of course he's a Russkie, but he's a retard or something.
• Theme Music Abandonment : James Horner's themes from The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock , as well as Jerry Goldsmith's themes from the first film, were not used in Leonard Rosenman's score for The Voyage Home . Though they still keep the "Enterprise fanfare" at the beginning, which goes all the way back to the original series.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich : Actually averted in the restaurant; for once, a movie remembers that that there's an interval of time between ordering and receiving food that they can put dialogue into. And when Kirk bolts just as the pizza arrives, Gillian has the waiter box it to go. Kirk actually brings his pizza back to share with the crew.
• This Is Gonna Suck : Kirk does this just before they go back in time: "May fortune favor the foolish."
• Time-Travelers Are Spies : Chekov and Uhura, big time. Though it might have gone better if one of them wasn't Russian. In the Novelization , the fact Uhura is African doesn't help matters. note  Ethiopia's relationship with the USSR, for one.
• Time-Travel Romance : Kirk finds a Love Interest wherever and whenever he goes, doesn't he? Though it's very low-key (especially for Kirk) and doesn't really become much more than some flirting and a hug. Which makes sense considering the character becoming a female scientist was actually a fairly late revision to the script... in prior drafts, the character was a conspiracy theorist played by Eddie Murphy invoked .
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble : Spock of all people screws up here. Leonard Nimoy stresses the tense loud and clear, so it wouldn't take eidetic memory to remember it, too.
• Time Traveler's Dinosaur : The humpback whales George and Gracie are this due to being Extinct in the Future .
• Totally Radical : Kirk doesn't quite have a grasp on 1986 idioms. Nor does Spock. Kirk: Well, double dumbass on you !
• Tranquil Fury : Sarek is incensed with the Klingon Ambassador's attempted justifications for Commander Kruge's actions in the previous movie. Of course, being a typical Vulcan, Sarek is still reserved about it but his tone and words make it clear what he thinks. Sarek: Your vessel did destroy U.S.S. Grissom . Your men did kill Kirk's son. Do you deny these events? Klingon Ambassador: We deny nothing! We have the right to preserve our race! Sarek: You have the right to commit murder?
• Troll : Scotty referring to Bones as "his assistant". Scotty's look after implies that he said it just to mess with him. Also, one wonders if Spock's misuse of swears didn't become purposeful over time, especially after Kirk criticized him for it. Kirk: Spock, where the hell is the power you promised? Spock: One damn minute, Admiral.
• Trouble from the Past : The humans of the past hunted whales to extinction, and that turned out to be a bad idea.
• Unishment : When Kirk is demoted back to the Captaincy of a starship... which is what he wanted all along anyway.
• Universal Driver's License : Sulu manages to learn how to fly a helicopter in just one day. Granted, he did quickly learn to pilot a Klingon starship in the previous movie , but learning to fly a helicopter as opposed to a starship that quickly is a bit of a stretch.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee : Chekov gives Kirk a simple explanation for how he and Uhura plan to collect high-energy photons from the aircraft carrier Enterprise . It works perfectly — until the transporter fizzles out and Chekov is captured. And critically injured trying to escape. Although it didn't help that he tempted fate by saying "No one will ever know we were there."
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight : Most people are willing to accept the slightly out-of-touch Spock as a harmless stoner , even as he does weird things like jump into the whale tank...until he says things about the whales that he shouldn't be able to know. Truth in Television as anyone who lives in San Francisco could tell you.
• Villain of Another Story : Admiral Lance Cartwright, who makes his debut here, but does not become one of the primary villains until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , which is a interesting aspect as this installment had No Antagonist unlike the other films and Cartwright doesn't show any signs of villainy at all, unless he is good at concealing it to get on Kirk's good side .
• Visible Boom Mic : A variation: in the scene of the crew on San Francisco streets, the film crew wearing Star Trek IV badges can be seen inside a building through a large plate glass window.
• Weapons Understudies : The nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is here played by the non-nuclear USS Ranger . The Enterprise ' s reactor area was highly classified and radioactive to the point the film would have been unusable, and even if filming was feasible, she was at sea at the time. If you look closely, you can see several sailors wearing Ranger insignia.
• Weather-Control Machine : The Probe creates devastating storms in Earth's atmosphere as a side effect of its transmission.
• Weld the Lock : Kirk uses a phaser to melt the lock on a door he locked some 20th-century medstaff in. This, incidentally, is the only time a phaser is fired throughout the entire movie (successfully—Chekov's attempt fizzles due to a malfunction), showing just how Lighter and Softer IV is compared to pretty much all the other films. note  No phasers, handheld or otherwise, were fired in The Motion Picture either, though that film did feature several torpedoes from Klingons, Enterprise , and V'Ger.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy : Spock and Sarek, by human standards anyway. To a Vulcan, the two were all but weeping Manly Tears and bear hugging each other.
• We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future : Demonstrated when McCoy , visiting a twentieth-century hospital, is horrified that a woman is undergoing kidney dialysis. "Dialysis? What is this, the Dark Ages?" He gives her a pill, and minutes later, doctors are dumbfounded by her miraculous recovery as she grows a new kidney .
• "Gracie is pregnant."
• Kirk, when he realizes the only way to save Earth: Kirk: Begin computations for time warp.
• Wham Shot : The Enterprise -A is revealed behind the Excelsior at the end of the movie.
• What a Piece of Junk : For all the crap the crew give the Bird-of-Prey compared to the Enterprise , it holds up remarkably well through all the insane things they put it through.
• What We Now Know to Be True : See We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future .
• Subverted. All official material indicates they travel back to 1986 (the year the film was released), but Spock determines from the pollution in the atmosphere as being "the latter half of the twentieth century" and Kirk doesn't ask to get more specific than that as it doesn't matter.
• Later, Kirk is seen looking at a newspaper machine , but only to confirm that the time period still has a currency-based economy and they will need to acquire some money in order to complete the mission.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve : Gillian tells Kirk that the whales will be shipped out at noon on the following day, forcing him to go into a panic. Subverted, as the whales end up getting shipped in the middle of the night to avoid a media circus.
• Wiper Start : Sulu with the helicopter, though it's while he's already in flight.
• Yes-Man : The Klingon ambassador regards the Vulcans as being this to the Federation as a whole. Or as he puts it, they are the "intellectual puppets" of the Federation.
• You Can See That, Right? : The two sanitation workers who witness the landing of the cloaked Bird of Prey in Golden Gate Park. "Did you see that?" "No, and neither did you, so shut up."
• Your Size May Vary : The Bird of Prey rechristened "HMS Bounty" will change size and shape depending on what shot is taken, especially when compared to the previous movie. It varies from about 100 meters wide with maybe three levels to about 50 meters with only space for one level. The famous image of the Bird of Prey decloaking over a whaling ship is considerably upscaled to about 150 meters. Given they were able to fit two humpback whales in the cargo space, the largest size makes more sense. Given the popularity and proclivity of this ship design used across the franchise and the wildly different scale used, the actual canon implies that Klingons made this exact design in about four different sizes.

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After being brought back to life, Spock has learned logic from Vulcan culture but is unfamiliar with the emotions of human culture.

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Stardate: 1986

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Alternative Title(s): Star Trek IV

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How Does Spock ...

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Published Jan 4, 2019

Star Trek IV: Did You Know That...

We're sharing some of our favorite fun facts about the making of the film

startrek.com

During April of 1986, I (John) was getting ready for final exams and couldn’t accompany my parents on a vacation they were taking to California. Little did I know my voluntary absence from that year’s family vacation meant I missed an opportunity to watch the filming of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . By luck, my parents—Vincent and Josephine—happened to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium on April 29, 1986. With a 1980s behemoth video camera in tow, my parents forwent their planned tour, and stayed all day to film William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Catherine Hicks as they rehearsed and filmed the important exposition scene where the plight of whales is explained. In the era before the ubiquity of camera phones and social media, there were no restrictions on the audience filming the action. When my parents returned from their vacation, they surprised me with almost an hour's worth of footage of the filming of the next Trek adventure. I couldn’t understand why Kirk and Spock were walking around a modern-day aquarium, but that footage – watched again and again – gave me a lifelong appreciation for the hard work that the actors and behind-the-scenes crew undertake to shoot a Star Trek movie.

That footage also inspired a desire to learn all there was about the making of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home .  Here are some of the favorite fun facts about the making of the film that we have learned while researching the behind-the-scenes memos, scripts, and production information available at the University of Iowa Library’s “Papers of Nicholas Meyer Collection.” What’s in a Name?

• Admiral Lance Cartwright (played by Brock Peters) was originally the character of Admiral Harry Morrow (played by Robert Hooks) in the first several versions of the script. Morrow was the Admiral who fans were familiar with from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , who ordered the decommissioning of the U.S.S. Enterprise and forbade Admiral Kirk from going to the Genesis Planet.
• Gillian Taylor’s character was for a time named Shelley Clarke.
• George and Gracie were originally named the more Biblically inspired monikers of Adam and Evie.

• The real name of the whale museum, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, could not be used because the script required the action to take place in Sausalito, closer to San Francisco.
• The October 18, 1985, Revised First Act draft of the script by Harve Bennett listed the name of the film as Star Trek IV: The Adventure Continues

Could Have Beens:

• In a scene that has not yet appeared as a bonus feature on home video, the October 18, 1985, version of the script has a scene where Commander Christine Chapel greets Ambassador Sarek as he arrived uninvited to the Federation Council’s meeting about the fate of Admiral Kirk and crew. A Federation Guard will not allow Sarek into the meeting because he does not have the proper entry medallion credentials. Chapel puts the guard in his place, telling him that “This man is Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan, as any school child would know.” The scene is interesting because it implies that Sarek may have been called to Earth by Chapel to testify and not at the request of the Council, and it is also appropriate that Chapel—whose love for Spock is documented in the original show—would stand up for Sarek in his attempt to help his son and Chapel’s former crew mates. The Official Star Trek Communicator Magazine (the publication of the Official Star Trek Fan Club by Dan Madsen) included a picture from the scene at the time.

• Saavik was indeed pregnant with Spock’s child in the early versions of the script. During Spock and his mother Amanda’s conversation, the script has Amanda trying to tell her son the news, but she hesitates and does not. Kirk and Saavik discuss the situation, with Saavik eventually not telling Spock. Had this scene been included as written, it would have meant that Saavik and Spock’s situation very likely would have had to have been dealt with in a future film. As is, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was Saavik’s last on-screen appearance (although the character of Valeris was originally written as Saavik in drafts of the Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country script).

What date does the crew arrive in 1986 San Francisco? This is a difficult question to answer. One of the scripts (again the October 18, 1985, Revised First Act version) lists the date as December 19, 1985 for the crew’s arrival back in time. However, a careful look at the newspaper the crew reads upon first landing appears to reveal the date to be Thursday, December 18, 1986. If that is the date, then the audiences on opening night in the United States was doing a bit of time traveling themselves, watching events unfolding several weeks after the actual date of the premiere of the film! Complicating December 18th being the official date of the crew’s arrival in San Francisco is a prop that was on display at Star Trek: The Experience . The prop was the pawn store ticket given to Admiral Kirk when he sold his glasses for cash. The date on the ticket is August 19, 1986, four months before the newspaper date the crew looks at a few moments earlier (however, the ticket is not visible on screen directly). By the way, the name of the pawn store according to the prop ticket is Feinberg’s Loan & Pawn. It appears that Kirk gave the pawn store owner the alias name of Sydney Carton and the fake telephone number of... wait for it... 555-1701!

I never did get a chance to see the filming of a Star Trek film. But, by missing my chance in 1986, I learned two important lessons. First, I got to experience another great example of why my Dad and Mom were such great parents, sacrificing a good portion of their day to film something only because their son was a fan. Second, I learned that there are many talented people required to make a Star Trek film. When the credits roll, we continue to marvel at the contributions of the men, women, and whales, that helped make The Voyage Home so incredibly special.Special thanks to: The University of Iowa Libraries, Memory Alpha, Nicholas Meyer, Dan Madsen, and Vincent and Josephine Tenuto. Maria Jose and John Tenuto are both sociology professors at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, specializing in popular culture and subculture studies. The Tenutos have conducted extensive research on the history of Star Trek , and have presented at venues such as Creation Conventions and the St. Louis Science Center. They have written for the official Star Trek Magazine and their extensive collection of Star Trek items has been featured in SFX Magazine . Their theory about the “20-Year Nostalgia Cycle” and research on Star Trek fans has been featured on WGN News, BBC Radio, and in the documentary The Force Among Us . They recently researched all known paperwork from the making of the classic episode "Space Seed" and are excited to be sharing some previously unreported information about Khan's first adventure with fellow fans. Contact the Tenutos at [email protected] or [email protected].

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George and Gracie

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George and Gracie, features at the Cetacean Institute

George and Gracie were a pair of humpback whales who wandered into San Francisco Bay as calves , and were brought to the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito .

By 1986 , they had become fully grown, each weighing 45,000 pounds . However, that year it was decided that they had to be released back into the wild because the Institute no longer had the money to feed them their two- ton requirement of shrimp per day .

In the 23rd century , the powerful signal from a deep space probe had caused disruption of Earth 's weather patterns, threatening the entire planet . Spock theorized that an alien species had sent the probe to Earth to determine why they had lost contact with humpback whales (which had become extinct in the 21st century ).

George and Gracie came to the attention and interest of Admiral Kirk , who had time traveled to 1986 in search for some of these whales .

Upon visiting the Institute, Kirk and Spock determined that they were ideal specimens for their mission. Spock mind melded with the whales to communicate their intentions of taking them back to the 23rd century, wanting to avoid making the same kind of arrogant assumption that those who had hunted the whales to extinction originally had made. In doing so, he learned that the whales were unhappy with the way their species had been treated by man , although they were apparently willing to help the time-travellers. He also learned that Gracie was pregnant . Dr. Gillian Taylor noticed his melding after a visitor pointed him out, and Taylor was initially angry with Spock, but eventually believed Kirk's explanation.

George and Gracie aboard the " HMS Bounty "

The following day, the whales were flown in a special 747 to the Bering Sea , off Alaska , where they were released. The radio frequency of their tracking tags was 401 megahertz .

With Taylor's assistance, Kirk and his crew managed to locate the whales after they were released; although they were targeted by whalers, the crew frightened them off, and then was able to beam the whales into a specially designed tank aboard a Klingon vessel which the crew had commandeered.

After returning with Kirk to the 23rd century, George and Gracie were released into San Francisco Bay , amid the chaotic weather caused by the Whale Probe. George communicated with the probe via the sounds made by the male of his species and the probe replied. Following a brief conversation, the probe ceased its disruptive signal and turned away from Earth, heading out into space . The pair of whales were last seen heading to open water . ( Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home )

External link [ ]

• The George and Gracie models gallery at Walt Conti's site
• 3 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

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Genres Drama, Mystery, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Network SyFy

Where To Watch Peacock

Screen Rant

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Resident Alien

*Availability in US

Not available

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