the voyage home script

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Stardate: 8390.0

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Star Trek IV The Voyage Home 1986 Film

Fugitives of the Federation for their daring rescue of Spock from the doomed Genesis Planet, Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew begin their journey home to face justice for their actions. But as they near Earth, they find it at the mercy of a mysterious alien presence whose signals are slowly destroying the planet. In a desperate attempt to answer the call of the probe, Kirk and his crew race back to the late twentieth century. However they soon find the world they once knew to be more alien than anything they've encountered in the far reaches of the galaxy.

Steve Meerson , Peter Krikes , Harve Bennett , and Nicholas Meyer

• Science Fiction
• Paramount Pictures

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STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME: ORIGINAL MOVIE SCRIPT

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) - full transcript

The most acclaimed Star Trek adventure of all time with an important message. It is the 23rd century, and a mysterious alien probe is threatening Earth by evaporating the oceans and destroying the atmosphere. In their frantic attempt to save mankind, Admiral Kirk and his crew must time travel back to 1986 San Francisco where they find a world of punk, pizza and exact-change buses that are as alien to them as anything they have ever encountered in the far-off reaches of the galaxy. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy return as Kirk and Spock, along with the entire Star Trek crew.

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Page #2

Not good, Mr. President. The probe is headed directly toward us. Its signal is damaging everything in its path. Klingons have lost two vessels. Two starships and three smaller vessels have been neutralized. Neutralized? How? We don't know. Get me the Yorktown. Emergency channel2130. Code red. It has been three hours since our contact with the alien probe. All attempts at regaining power have failed. It's using forms of energy our best scientists do not understand. Can you protect us? We're launching everything we have. Our chief engineer is trying to deploy a make shift solar sail. We have high hopes that this will, if successful, generate power to keep us alive. Systems report, communications. Communications systems all ready, sir. Communications officer as ready as she'll ever be. Mr. Sulu? Guidance is functional. Computer will interface with federation memory bank. Weapons systems. Cloaking device now available on all flight modes. That's a lot of work. I do not wish to be shot down on the way to our own funeral. Engine room. Report, Mr. Scott. I've converted the dilithium sequencer into something a little less primitive, and I have replaced the Klingon food packs. They were giving me a sour stomach. Prepare for departure. Everybody not going to Earth had better get off. Saavik... this is goodbye. Yes, Admiral. Thank you. Sir...l have not had the opportunity to tell you about your son. David died most bravely. He saved Spock. He saved us all. I thought you should know. Good day, Captain Spock. May your journey be free of incident. Live long and prosper, Lieutenant. Permission to come aboard. Permission granted. Thank you, Admiral. Jim. Spock, Jim. Don't you remember? It wouldn't be proper to call you Jim while you're in command. Also, I must apologize for my attire. I seem to have misplaced my uniform. Station. You sure this is such a bright idea? What do you mean? I mean him back at his post like nothing happened. He's not exactly working on all thrusters. It'll come back to him. Are you sure? That's what I thought. Mr. Sulu... take us home. Thrusters functional. One quarter impulse power. Space dock, this is Starfleet. Launch all vessels. Launch all vessels. Space dock doors are inoperative. All emergency systems are nonfunctional. Engage reserve power. Starfleet, this is space dock on emergency channel. We have lost all internal power. Estimating planet Earth, 1.6 hours, present speed. Continue on course. Mr. Chekov, any sign of federation escort? There are no federation vessels on assigned patrol stations. That's odd. Uhura, what's on the comm channels? Rate this script: 0.0 / 0 votes

Steve Meerson

Steve Meerson is an American screenwriter who contributed to the screenplay for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).  more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a 1986 motion picture released by Paramount Studios. It is the fourth feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series. It completes the story begun in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan and continued in Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock . Intent on returning home to Earth to face trial for their crimes, the former crew of the USS Enterprise travels to Earth's past in order to save their present from a probe attempting to communicate with long-dead humpback whales.

After directing The Search for Spock , cast member Leonard Nimoy was asked to direct the next feature, and given greater freedom to the film's content. Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett conceived a story with an environmental message. After dissatisfaction with the first script produced by Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes, Paramount hired The Wrath of Khan writer and director Nicholas Meyer , who collaborated with Bennett to rewrite the script. Principal photography started on February 24, 1986, with many real locations used as stand-ins for locations around San Francisco. Industrial Light & Magic assisted in postproduction and the film's special effects, including animatronic whales. Composer Leonard Rosenman wrote the film's score.

The Voyage Home was well received. It earned $133 million worldwide. The film earned four Academy Award nominations, for Best Cinematography, Best Effects, Best Music and Best Sound.

• 3.1 Development
• 3.3 Filming
• 3.4 Effects
• 4.1 Release
• 4.2 Critical response
• 4.3 Home video

A large cylindrical probe moves through space towards Earth, sending out an indecipherable signal and disabling the power of any vessel or station that it passes. As it takes up orbit around Earth, it continues signaling, disrupting the global power system and causing extreme weather patterns to develop over the planet while evaporating the oceans. Starfleet Command, on the last of its power reserves, sends out a subspace signal warning of the danger.

On the planet Vulcan , the former officers of the USS Enterprise are living in exile after the events of Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock . Accompanied by the Vulcan Spock , still recovering from his resurrection, the crew takes their stolen Klingon starship and head to Earth to face trial for their theft and destruction of the Enterprise . As they enter the solar system, they hear Starfleet's warning and the alien signal; Spock determines that it matches the song of humpback whales , long since extinct on Earth, and that the object will continue to wreak havoc on the planet until its call can be answered. The crew use their ship to travel back in time by a slingshot maneuver around the Sun; the plan is to go to the past and return with whales to repopulate the species.

The crew travels back in time to the year 1986, but their ship's power is drained in the process. Hiding their ship using its cloaking device in San Francisco , the crew splits up to accomplish their tasks: James T. Kirk and Spock attempt to locate humpback whales, Montgomery Scott , Leonard McCoy and Hikaru Sulu must create a holding tank for the return trip, and Uhura and Pavel Chekov search for a way to recharge the ship. Kirk and Spock discover a pair of humpback whales—"George" and "Gracie"—in the care of Dr. Gillian Taylor at the Sausalito Cetacean Institute and learn they will soon be released into the wild. Kirk attempts to learn the tracking codes for the whales from Taylor, but is rebuffed. Scott, McCoy, and Sulu procure the necessary materials for the holding tank by giving the formula for transparent aluminum to a local manufacturer; Uhura and Chekov beam aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and draw some of its power to recharge their ship, but are discovered. Though Uhura is beamed back, Chekov is severely injured in an escape attempt and captured. Kirk and company rescue him from a hospital and return to the ship.

The ship is successfully recharged, but Taylor learns the whales have been moved early. Kirk reluctantly lets her tag along on the ship to get the tracking codes. The crew locates George and Gracie before they are killed by whalers, and transport the creatures into the waiting tank. With the intended cargo, the crew returns to the future. On approaching Earth, the ship loses power and crashes into San Francisco Bay . Once released, the whales respond to the probe's signal, causing the object to restore Earth and return to the depths of space. Charges against the Enterprise crew are all waived in light of their heroism; only Kirk is punished for disobeying a superior officer, and is demoted from Admiral to the rank of Captain. Having been brought to the future, Taylor takes a position on a science vessel. The crew departs for their ship, the newly-christened USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A) , and depart on another mission.

William Shatner plays James T. Kirk , former captain of the Enterprise . Shatner was initially unwilling to reprise the role of Kirk until his salary was increased to $2 million and that he was promised that he could direct the next film. [1] Shatner described The Voyage Home Template:'s comic qualities as one "that verges on tongue-in-cheek but isn't, it's as though the characters within the play have a great deal of joy about themselves, a joy of living [and] you play it with the reality you would in a kitchen-sink drama written for today's life." [2]

Leonard Nimoy plays Spock , resurrected by the effects of a powerful terraforming device in the previous film, and whose "living spirit" was restored to his body.

DeForest Kelley portrays Doctor Leonard McCoy . McCoy was given many of the film's comedic lines; Kelley biographer Terry Lee Rioux wrote that in the film "he seemed to be playing straight man to himself". On Earth McCoy was paired with engineer Montgomery Scott ( James Doohan ), as Bennet felt that Kelley worked well with [Doohan's] "old vaudeville comic". [3] The other members of the Enterprise crew include George Takei as helmsman Hikaru Sulu , Walter Koenig as Commander Pavel Chekov , and Nichelle Nichols as Uhura . Koenig commented Chekov was a "delight" to play in this film because he worked best in comedic situations. [4]

Catherine Hicks plays Doctor Gillian Taylor, a biologist on 20th century Earth. During production a rumor circulated that the part had been created because Shatner had demanded a love interest, something Kirk had frequently had in the television series but that had been absent in the films; writer Nicholas Meyer denied this, saying that the inspiration for Taylor came from a woman biologist featured in a National Geographic documentary about whales. [5] The choice for Taylor came down to Hicks and another actress. Nimoy invited them to lunch with Shatner and ultimately picked Hicks, as she and Shatner had the better chemistry. [6]

Majel Barrett reprised her role as Christine Chapel , the director of Starfleet Command's medical services. Many of her scenes—some reportedly very large—were omitted in the final cut, angering the actress. Her final role in the film consists of one line of dialogue and a reaction shot. [7] Mark Lenard and Jane Wyatt play Ambassador Sarek and Amanda Grayson , respectively, Spock's parents. [8] Wyatt commented that although she disliked working with actors who were directing, she found Nimoy an exception because he could concentrate on working with being part of the cast as well as setting up the crew. [4] Robin Curtis reprises the role of Saavik , a Vulcan member of Starfleet. Saavik's role is largely minimal in the film—originally, she was intended to have remained behind on Vulcan because she was pregnant with Spock's child after they mated in The Search for Spock . In the final cut of the film, all references to her condition were dropped. [7]

The film contains several cameos and smaller roles. Madge Sinclair made an uncredited appearance as captain of the USS Saratoga . [8] Jane Wiedlin appears as a Starfleet officer seen briefly at Starfleet Command. John Schuck appears as a Klingon ambassador, Robert Ellenstein as the Federation President , and Brock Peters as Fleet Admiral Cartwright . Grace Lee Whitney reprises her role as Janice Rand from the original television series.

Production [ ]

Development [ ].

Leonard Nimoy was asked to return to direct The Voyage Home before The Search for Spock was released. Whereas Nimoy had been under certain constraints in filming the previous picture, Paramount gave Nimoy greater freedom for the sequel. "[Paramount] said flat out that they wanted my vision," Nimoy recalled. [9] In contrast to the drama-heavy and operatic events of previous Star Trek features, Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett wanted a lighter movie that did not have a clear-cut villain. [6] As William Shatner was unwilling to return, Nimoy and Bennett spent eight months considering a prequel concept by Ralph Winter about the characters at Starfleet Academy , before Shatner received a pay increase and signed on to star. [1]

Despite Shatner's qualms, [6] Nimoy and Bennett selected a time travel story where the Enterprise encounter a problem which could only be fixed by something only available in the present day (the Star Trek characters' past). They considered numerous ideas including violin makers and oil drillers , as well as a disease which had its cure destroyed with the rainforests . "But the depiction of thousands of sick and dying people seemed rather gruesome for our light-hearted film, and the thought of our crew taking a 600 year round trip just to bring back a snail darter wasn't all that thrilling!", explained Nimoy. The director then read a book on extinct animals and conceived the used storyline. [1] Nimoy hit upon the idea of humpback whales after talking with a friend—their song added mystery to the story, and their size added logistical challenges the heroes would have to overcome. [10]

Nimoy approached Beverly Hills Cop writer Daniel Petrie, Jr. to write the script when a concept that executive producer Jeffrey Katzenberg described as "either the best or worst idea in the world" arose— Star Trek fan Eddie Murphy wanted a starring role. Both Nimoy and Murphy acknowledged his part would attract non- Star Trek fans to the franchise following the rising popularity of Murphy, but it also meant the film might be panned. Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes ( The Long Way Home ) were hired to write a script with Murphy as a college professor who believes in aliens and who likes to play whale songs . Murphy disliked the part, explaining he wanted to play an alien or a Starfleet officer (Nimoy was unaware of this) [11] and chose to make The Golden Child (a decision Murphy later said was a mistake). Murphy's character was combined with a marine biologist and a female reporter to become Gillian Taylor. [12]

Paramount was dissatisfied with the script, so head of Paramount Dawn Steele asked The Wrath of Khan writer and director Nicholas Meyer to help rewrite the script. Meyer never read the earlier script, reasoning that since the studio did not like it there was no reason to. Instead he and Bennett split up the plot. Bennett wrote the first quarter of the story, up to the point where the crew goes back in time. Meyer wrote the story's middle portion, taking place on 20th century Earth, and Bennett finished with the ending. [13] After 12 days of writing, Meyer and Bennett combined their separate portions. [10] In this version, Gillian Taylor stays in 1986 Earth and vows to ensure the survival of the humpback whale despite the paradox it would create. Meyer preferred this "righter ending" [5] to the film version, explaining "The end in the movie detracts from the importance of people in the present taking the responsibility for the ecology and preventing problems of the future by doing something today, rather than catering to the fantasy desires of being able to be transported in time to the near-utopian future." [12] Meyer and Bennett also cut out Krikes and Meerson's idea of the Klingon Bird-of-Prey flying over the Super Bowl (where the crowd assume it is part of the halftime spectacle) and the hint that Saavik remained on Vulcan because she had become pregnant with Spock's child. [12]

Nimoy said Meyer gave the script "the kind of humor and social comment, gadfly attitude I very much wanted". [4] Nimoy added his vision was for "no dying, no fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical bad guy. I wanted people to really have a great time watching this film [and] if somewhere in the mix we lobbed a couple of big ideas at them, well, then that would be even better." [14] Meyer's film Time After Time had been largely based in San Francisco, and when he was told by the producers that The Voyage Home had to be set in the same city, he took the opportunity to comment upon cultural aspects not covered by his earlier film, among them punk rock — The Voyage Home Template:'s scene where Spock knocks out an annoying punk rocker with a stereo via a Vulcan nerve pinch was based on a similar scene cut from Time After Time . [5]

Meyer described the writing process as running smoothly. He would write a few pages, go to Nimoy and Bennett and show it to them. After a conversation about the pages Meyer would return to his office and wrote some more. Once Nimoy, Bennett, and Meyer were happy, they showed the script to Shatner, who offered his own notes and started the rewriting process over again. [15] The completed script was shown to Paramount executives, who loved it. [10]

The alien probe was the responsibility of ILM's model shop. The modelmakers started with Rodis' simple design, which was a simple cylinder with whalelike qualities. The prototype was covered with barnacles and colored. The probe's ball-shaped antenna that juts out from the bottom of the craft was created using a piece of irrigation pipe with machinery to turn the device. Three models were created; the primary Template:Convert probe model was supplemented by a smaller model for wide shots and a large Template:Convert model that used forced perspective to give the probe the illusion of massive dimensions. [16]

During the Earth-based scenes, the 23rd century crew continues to wear their future clothing. Nimoy debated about whether the crew would change costumes, but after seeing how some people in the city dressed, he decided that they would still fit in. [6]

Filming [ ]

Nimoy chose Donald Peterman, ASC , as director of photography. [17] Nimoy said that he regards the cinematographer as a fellow artist, and that it was important for him and Peterman to agree on "a certain look" that Peterman was committed to delivering. Nimoy had seen Peterman's work and felt that his work was more nuanced than simply lighting a scene and capturing an image. [18]

The film's opening scenes aboard the starship Saratoga were also the first to be shot, with principal photography commencing on February 24, 1986. [8] The set was a redress of the science vessel Grissom bridge from The Search for Spock , which in turn was a redress of the Enterprise bridge created for The Motion Picture . The scenes were filmed first to allow time for the set to be revamped to stand in for the new Enterprise -A at the end of filming. [8]

The Voyage Home was the first real look at how Starfleet Command operated. Bennett and Nimoy visited NASA JPL to learn how a real deep space command center might look and operate. Among its features was a large central table with video monitors that the production team nicknamed "the pool table"; the prop would later find a home in the engine room of the USS Enterprise-D on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation . [8]

As with previous Star Trek films, existing props and footage were reused where possible to save money. The Voyage Home Template:'s Earth-based story required less of this than The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock . The Earth Spacedock interiors and control booth sets were reuses from The Search for Spock , although the computer monitors in these scenes featured new graphics (the old reels had deteriorated in storage.) Stock footage of the destruction of the Enterprise and the Bird of Prey moving through space were reused. While the Bird of Prey bridge was a completely new design, other parts of the craft's interior was also redresses (the computer room was a modification of the reactor room where Spock died in The Wrath of Khan . [8] After all other Bird of Prey bridge scenes were completed, the entire bridge was painted white for the one shot that transitioned into the dream sequence.

Vulcan and the Bird of Prey exterior was created with a combination of matte paintings and a soundstage. Nimoy had searched for a suitable location for the crew's deliberations to go back to earth, but various locations did not work, so the scene was instead filmed on a Paramount backlot, with creative ways to mask the fact that buildings were Template:Convert away. [6] A wide angle shot of Spock on the edge of a cliff was filmed at Vasquez Rocks , a park north of Los Angeles. [8]

The Voyage Home was the first Star Trek film to extensively film on location (only one day was spent doing so in The Search for Spock .) [10]

The Federation council chamber was a large set filled with representatives from many alien races. Production manager Jack T. Collis economized by building the set with only one end; reverse angle shots used the same piece of wall. The Federation President's podium and the actors filling the chamber's seats simply switched positions for each shot. Much of the production was filmed in and around San Francisco in ten days of shooting. The production wanted to film scenes that were instantly identifiable as the city. [19] The use of extensive location shooting caused logistical problems; a scene where Kirk is nearly run over by an irate driver required 12–15 cars that had to be repositioned if the shot was not correct, taking a half-hour to reshoot. Other scenes were filmed in the city but used sets rather than real locations, such as an Italian restaurant where Taylor and Kirk eat. In the film, the Bird-of-Prey lands cloaked in Golden Gate Park , surprising some trashmen who flee the scene in their truck. The production had planned to film in the real park (where they had filmed scenes for The Wrath of Khan ), but heavy rains before the day of shooting prevented this (the garbage truck would have become bogged down in the mud.) Will Rogers Park in western Los Angeles was used as the stand-in instead. [6]

When Kirk and Spock are traveling on a public bus, they encounter a punk rocker blaring his music on a boom box, to the discomfort of everyone around him. Spock takes matters into his own hands and performs a Vulcan nerve pinch , stunning the man. The inspiration from the scene came from Nimoy's personal experiences with such a character on the streets of New York. "[I was struck] by the arrogance of it, the aggressiveness of it, and I thought if I was Spock I'd pinch his brains out!" [6] The character (credited as "punk on bus") was played by Kirk Thatcher, an associate producer on the film. [20] On learning about the scene, Thatcher convinced Nimoy that he could play the role; he shaved his hair into a mohawk and bought clothes to complete the part. [6] Thatcher also wrote and recorded "I Hate You," the song in the scene, and it was also Thatcher's idea to have the punk (once rendered unconscious by Nimoy), hit the stereo and turn it off with his face. [20]

Much of the Cetacean Institute was created by using the real-life Monterey Bay Aquarium . A holding tank for the whales was added via special effects to the Aquarium's exterior. [6] For close-ups of the characters watching the whales in the tank, the Aquarium's walls and railings were measured and replicated for a set on the Paramount parking lot. One scene takes place by a large glass through which observers can see the whales (and Spock initiating a mind meld ) underwater. This was a combination of footage of actors reacting to a brick wall in the Aquarium (shot from the front) and shots created using a large blue screen at ILM (shot from the back.) The footage of Spock melding with the whales was shot weeks later in a large water tank used to train astronauts for weightlessness. [6]

In the film, Uhura and Chekov visit the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise . The real Enterprise , being at sea at the time, was unavailable for filming , so the non-nuclear powered carrier USS Ranger (CV-61) was used. [21] Oakland International Airport was used for the foreground element of Starfleet Headquarters. Scenes in the San Francisco Bay were shot at a tank at Paramount's backlot. [22]

The scene in which Uhura and Chekov question passersby on the location of nuclear vessels was filmed with a hidden camera. However, the people whom Koenig and Nichols speak to were extras hired off the street for that day's shooting, and, despite legends to the contrary, knew they were being filmed. In an interview with StarTrek.com , Layla Sarakalo , the extra who said, "I don't know if I know the answer to that... I think it's across the bay, in Alameda", stated that after her car was impounded because she refused to move it for the filming, she approached the assistant director about appearing with the other extras, hoping to be paid enough to get her car out of impoundment. She was hired and told not to answer Koenig's and Nichols' questions. However, she did answer them and the filmmakers kept her response in the film, though she had to be inducted into the Screen Actors Guild in order for her lines to be kept. [23]

When Sulu, Scotty and McCoy are standing in front of the Yellow Pages ad, they encounter an arguing Asian couple. This scene was supposed to end with Sulu encountering his young ancestor, Akira Sulu, but the child actor hired for the part began to cry and was unable to finish the scene. [6] [24]

Effects [ ]

Industrial Light & Magic created the visual effects. Nimoy approached the effects house early in development and helped develop storyboards for the optical effects sequences. [18]

Most shots of the humpback whales were scale models shot at their studio or life-size animatronics shot at Paramount. [14] The USS Enterprise was destroyed in the previous film partly because visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston wanted to build a "more state-of-the-art ship for the next film", but the filmmakers made the less costly decision to have the crew return to serve on the duplicate USS Enterprise A , and six weeks was spent repairing the old model. A travel pod from Star Trek: The Motion Picture was also reused for the ending, although the twenty-foot long interior set had to be rebuilt. Graphic designer Michael Okuda designed smooth controls with backlit displays for the Federation which were eventually dubbed " Okudagrams ". Okudagrams were also used for displays on the Klingon ship, though large buttons remained for that set. [25]

A scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge was used, which was two feet tall at one end and sixteen feet tall at the other. The shorter end was filmed in front, creating a forced perspective which made it look longer. For the alien probe, Ralston had it painted black to make it look more mysterious after viewing the first few shots of it. Computer graphics were used for the crew's time traveling. [22]

James Horner , composer for The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock , declined to return for The Voyage Home . Nimoy turned to his friend Leonard Rosenman , who had written the music to, among other films, Fantastic Voyage , Ralph Bakshi 's The Lord of the Rings , and two Planet of the Apes sequels. [26] [27] Rosenman wrote an arrangement of Alexander Courage 's Star Trek television theme as the title music for The Voyage Home , but Nimoy suggested that he write his own instead. As music critic Jeff Bond writes, "The final result was one of the most unusual Star Trek movie themes," consisting of a six note theme and variations set against a repetitious four note brass motif; the theme's bridge borrowed material from Rosenman's Frodo March for The Lord of the Rings . [27] The melody makes appearances in the beginning of the film at Vulcan as well as when Taylor seeks Kirk's help finding her whales. [28]

The Earth-based setting of the filming gave Rosenman leeway to write a variety of music in different styles. Nimoy intended the crew's introduction to the streets of San Francisco to be accompanied by something reminiscent of George Gershwin , but Rosenman changed the director's mind [29] and the scene was scored with a contemporary jazz fusion piece by Yellowjackets . When Chekov flees detention aboard the aircraft carrier, Rosenman wrote a bright cue that incorporated classical Russian compositions, while the escape from the hospital was done in a baroque style. More familiar Rosenman compositions included the action music as the Bird of Prey and a whaling ship face off in open water, while the whale's communication with the probe utilized atmospheric music reminiscent of the composer's work in Fantastic Voyage . After the probe leaves, the music turns into a Vivaldiesque "whale fugue". The first sighting of the Enterprise -A uses the Alexander Courage theme before the end title music. [28]

Mark Mangini served as The Voyage Home Template:'s sound designer. He described it as different from working on many other films because Nimoy appreciated the role of sound effects and made sure that they were prominent in the film. Since many sounds familiar to Star Trek had already been established—the Bird of Prey's cloaking device, the transporter beam, et al.—Mangini focused on making only small changes to them. The most important sounds were those created by the whales and the probe. Mangini's brother lived closed to biologist Roger Payne , who had many recordings of whale song. Mangini went through the tapes and chose sounds that could be mixed to suggest a sort of language and conversation. The probe's screeching calls were the whale song in distorted form. The humpback's communication with the probe at the climax of the film contained no dramatic music, meaning that Mangini's sounds had to stand alone. He recalled that he had some difficulty with envisioning how the scene would unfold, leading Bennett to perform a puppet show to explain. Nimoy and the other producers were unhappy with Mangini's attempts to create the probe's droning operating noise; after 18 attempts, the sound designer finally asked Nimoy what he thought the probe should sound like, and recorded Nimoy's response. Nimoy's voice was distorted with "just the tiniest bit of dressing" and used as the final sound. [30]

The punk music that blares during the bus scene was written by Thatcher after he learned that the audio to be added to the scene would be " Duran Duran , or whoever" and not "raw" and authentic punk. [20] Thatcher collaborated with Mangini and two sound editors (who were in punk bands) to create their own music. They decided that punk distilled down to the sentiment of "I hate you", and wrote a sound to match. Recording in the sound studio as originally planned produced too clean a sound, so they moved to the outside hallway and recorded the entire band in one take using cheap microphones to create the distorted sound intended. [19] The song was later used for Paramount's " Back to the Beach ". [20]

Reception [ ]

Release [ ].

The movie begins with a dedication from the cast and crew of Star Trek to the memory of the astronauts killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986.

Since Star Trek had traditionally not performed well internationally, the producers created a special trailer for foreign markets which de-emphasized the Star Trek part of the title, [31] as well as retelling the events of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock . Winter recalled that the marketing did not seem to make a difference. [32]

The Voyage Home was the first Star Trek film shown in the Soviet Union. It was screened by the World Wildlife Fund on June 26, 1987 in Moscow to celebrate a ban on whaling. Nimoy and Bennett attended the screening. Bennett was amazed the film got the same laughs as it did with an American audience; he said "the single most rewarding moment of my Star Trek life" was when the Moscow audience applauded at McCoy's line, "The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe. We'll get a freighter." To him, it was a clear "messenger of what was to come." [4]

A novelization of the film, written by Vonda N. McIntyre , was released alongside the film. Publisher Pocket Books ' biggest tie-in novel, [33] it spent eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, [34] with a top spot of #3. [35]

The film was a major commercial success for Paramount, with five of the top ten films of the year released by the studio, [36] and 22% of all money taken in at American theaters. [37] In six weeks, it sold $81.3 million in tickets, more than the second or third films, and almost as much as Star Trek: The Motion Picture . [38] Much of the credit for Paramount's success was given to chairman Frank Mancuso, who moved The Voyage Home Template:'s release from Christmas to Thanksgiving after research showed that the film might draw filmgoers away from The Golden Child . [39] In Australia the film took in $A39.6 million in its first five days, beating The Search for Spock Template:'s three-day opening by $A14 million. [40] In its first week it knocked "Crocodile" Dundee from the top box office spot, [41] which it had held for eight weeks. [42]

It grossed $109,713,132 in the U.S. and another $133,000,000 in the rest of the world, [43] against a $23,000,000 budget. [39]

Critical response [ ]

The Voyage Home was well-received by critics; Nimoy called it the most well-received of all the Star Trek films made to that point. Template:Citation needed Producer Ralph Winter also added that this film did very well as it was liked by both fans and non-fans of the Star Trek phenomenon. Template:Citation needed Due to the success of this film, Paramount greenlit a new Star Trek television series (after failing to get one off the ground in 1977). The series ultimately became Star Trek: The Next Generation , which premiered in major markets on September 28, 1987.

USA Today gave the film a positive review, declaring "Kirk and company turn into the most uproarious out-of-towners to hit the Bay area since the Democrats in 1984," and felt the lack of special effects allowed the actors to "prove themselves more capable actors than ever before." Janet Maslin of The New York Times noted The Voyage Home "has done a great deal to ensure the series' longevity." [14]

The Voyage Home garnered 11 nominations at the 14th annual Saturn Awards , tying Aliens for number of nominations. Nimoy and Shatner were nominated for best actor for their roles. [44] It was nominated in the "Best Cinematography" category at the Academy Awards. [45]

Home video [ ]

The Voyage Home was first released on VHS home media on September 30, 1987. Paramount Home Video spent $20 million marketing the film's release alongside 10 episodes of the original series. [46] The video sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the United States and Canadian markets, [47] and was in the top ten rankings for sales and rentals in December and January 1987.

Paramount rereleased the film on March 12, 1992 with Fatal Attraction as part of a "Director's Series"; these editions had additional commentary and were presented in a widescreen letterbox format to preserve the film's original cinematography. Nimoy was interviewed on the Paramount lots and discussed his acting career as well as his favorable opinion of the widescreen format. [48]

The film was given a "bare bones" DVD release on November 9, 1999, containing the film with no extra features. Three and a half years later, a two disc "Collector's Edition" was released with supplemental material and the same video transfer as the original DVD release. It featured a text commentary by Michael Okuda and an audio commentary from director Leonard Nimoy and star William Shatner . [49]

The film was released on Blu-ray Disc in May 2009 to coincide with the new Star Trek feature, along with the other five films featuring the original crew in Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection . [50] The Voyage Home was remastered in 1080p high-definition from the 1999 DVD transfer. All six films in the set have new 7.1 Dolby TrueHD audio. The disc features a new commentary track by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman , the writers of the 2009 Star Trek film. [50] [51]

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Hughes, 31.
• ↑ Dillard, 83.
• ↑ Rioux, 265.
• ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Dillard, 85-87.
• ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Fischer, 37.
• ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 Nimoy & Shatner.
• ↑ 7.0 7.1 Gire, 4.
• ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 Okuda.
• ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Special features: "Future's Past: A Look Back".
• ↑ Template:Cite news
• ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Hughes, 32-33.
• ↑ Fischer, 36.
• ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Reeves-Stevens, 233.
• ↑ Fischer, 38.
• ↑ 18.0 18.1 Lee, 46.
• ↑ 19.0 19.1 Special features: "On Location".
• ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 Template:Cite web
• ↑ Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda . The Star Trek Encyclopedia Second Edition 1997 Pocket Books Page 137.
• ↑ 22.0 22.1 Reeves-Stevens, 240-241.
• ↑ "Visions of Layla: Taking the Voyage Home" startrek.com October 27, 2005
• ↑ William Shatner. Star Trek: Movie Memories
• ↑ Reeves-Stevens, 236-237.
• ↑ 27.0 27.1 Bond, 119.
• ↑ 28.0 28.1 Bond, 120.
• ↑ Bond, 131.
• ↑ Special features, "Below-the-Line: Sound Design".
• ↑ Template:Cite web
• ↑ Cine, 46.
• ↑ The New York Times January 7, 1987, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition Paramount Films Lead at Box Office BYLINE: AP SECTION: Section C; Page 20, Column 5; Cultural Desk
• ↑ 39.0 39.1 The New York Times December 22, 1986, Monday, Late City Final Edition PARAMOUNT'S SURPRISE STREAK BYLINE: By GERALDINE FABRIKANT, Special to the New York Times SECTION: Section D; Page 1, Column 3; Financial Desk
• ↑ Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) December 4, 1986 Thursday Late Edition TODAY'S PEOPLE BYLINE: Edited by Anthony Dennis SECTION: NEWS AND FEATURES; Today Page; Pg. 18
• ↑ The Advertiser December 5, 1986 Friday STAR TREK: Still soaring after 20 years SOURCE: aap BYLINE: BRUCE GUTHRIE
• ↑ TELEGRAPH December 9, 1986 Tuesday SPOCK'S MANY HAPPY RETURNS SOURCE: QNP BYLINE: GUTHRIE B
• ↑ 50.0 50.1 Template:Cite web
• 1 Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
• 3 Star Trek (2009)

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Published Nov 25, 2016

The Voyage Home: 30 Facts for 30 Years

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home marks its 30th anniversary on November 26th. To celebrate, we are sharing 30 favorite facts from the production we learned while researching the film's co-writer Nicholas Meyer's library archives at the University of Iowa. Let's sling shot around the sun, pick up enough speed, and time warp back to the 1980s for a celebration of one of Trek 's most enduring and beloved adventures.

• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was originally named “The Adventure Continues” in its early drafts, a nod to the ending title card of the previous film The Search for Spock which promised “…AND THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES…”
• Contrary to the myth that no Star Trek sequels were planned until the previous film had been released, The Voyage Home actually began preliminary preproduction and story development during the spring of 1984, a few months before the premiere of The Search for Spock .
• Producer Harve Bennett and director Leonard Nimoy agreed that they wanted to use time travel and also avoid the use of villains and violence in the film very early in the story development process – in essence, to make what they called a “nice” movie.
• Bennett referred to The Voyage Home as a “local location” production (a TV term referring to shows that use near-by outdoor locations as a setting to save money on building sets). He referred to The Wrath of Khan as a “bottle show” because almost 65% of the movie was made on the same set (the Enterprise and Reliant were the same sets).
• When time travel was mentioned as a story possibility for The Voyage Home , Gene Roddenberry suggested the use of a story he had previously developed about the Enterprise crew going to the 1960s and interacting with the actual historical event of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

• Leonard Nimoy was inspired by the book Biophilia by Edward  O. Wilson, which outlined the concept of a “keystone species” – that if a keystone species were to go extinct, it would threaten all other species.
• Bennett originally suggested that the species that the Enterprise crew needs bring back to the 23rd century could be the then-recently discovered species of the snail darter, a small species of fish about the size of two paper clips. Bennett joked that the reason for his suggestion was the cost saving, but really it was an inspired idea because the notion that something very small, the tiny of creatures, could have the greatest of impacts is very much a Trek -ian idea.
• Whales were chosen because of their epic and cinematic size in addition to their gentility and intelligence.
• It was Paramount executive Jeffrey Katzenberg who contacted Nimoy and Bennett with what he called either the best idea or worst idea: having Eddie Murphy, an avowed fan, appear as the film’s guest star. A script was written by Peter Krikes and Steve Meerson featuring Murphy’s character, an English professor who believed in UFOs.
• An interesting sequence of that script had the Klingon Bird of Prey decloaking above a football field during the Super Bowl. Everyone there, except Murphy’s character, would have believed it to be part of the halftime show. The idea of having Murphy star in the film was eventually abandoned. Eddie Murphy and William Shatner eventually would team up... in the 2002 film Showtime .

• With production looming and script concerns, Nimoy and Bennett asked Wrath of Khan director and writer Nicholas Meyer to help by joining Bennett in co-writing a new version of the script. Meyer accepted because his friends needed him, and because he liked the duo’s goal of making a “nice” Star Trek movie.
• Meyer’s portion of the script begins with the line “Judging by the pollution content of atmosphere…” and ends right before the D.H. Lawrence poem, which was co-writer Bennett’s contribution.
• Admiral Lance Cartwright’s character, played by the amazing Brock Peters, was originally not in the script. Instead, the character was supposed to be Admiral Harry Morrow, played by Robert Hooks, previously in The Search for Spock .
• Speaking of names, Gillian's character was at one time named Shelley.
• At one time, George and Gracie were called Adam and Evie.

• Filming began in February 1986. Cinematographer Donald Peterman was nominated for an Academy Award for his amazing work on Star Trek IV . At the time of his passing, Leonard Nimoy called him a "gentleman and a talent." Nimoy had wanted an unusual style for the film and one of Peterman’s contributions, along with production designer Jack Collins, was to use panels to light characters on the Klingon ship to be a contrast to how the characters were usually presented on the Enterprise.
• There was a sequence scripted, but not filmed, explaining the reason for Saavik staying behind on Vulcan - she was pregnant from her Ponn Farr experience with Spock.
• The Voyage Home used not only real world external locations, but also real world interiors. The antique store, U.S.S. Enterprise and Cetacean Institute were all real world exterior and interior locations. The Cetacean Institute was actually the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium. John Tenuto's parents happened to be there during filming at the aquarium during the April 1986 production and brought this footage back with them: www.youtube.com .
• Showing the contribution that special effects technicians, set builders and editors make to a film, the sequences where Spock jumps into the tank with George and Gracie and Kirk reacts while on the tour conducted by Gillian is a masterful example of behind-the-scenes artistry: no less than four locations were required to make that scene work (the real Monterey Bay Aquarium, an ILM created blue-screen environment, a swimming pool in El Segundo, and a set at Paramount). Through editing tricks and slight of hand, all appear to be the same location in the various sequences.
• The U.S.S. Enterprise CV-65 was actually unavailable for filming. The USS Ranger CV-61 stood in for the Enterprise and if you look very closely you could see the Ranger name on a few of the hats of the real military who served as extras.

• An unseen tag used by the antique dealer to catalog Kirk's glasses gives the date of the crew's visit to Earth as August 19, 1986. However, the newspaper that Kirk and crew look at a few minutes earlier in the film has the date December 18, 1986.
• The Plexicorp company that "Professor" Scott and his "assistant" Leonard McCoy visit was actually the Reynolds & Taylor Plastics factory in Santa Ana. Interestingly, the real company made custom plastic panels, including ones reportedly for the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
• The police officer at the hospital was played by Joe Lando, who would go on to fame as Byron Sully from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
• This film includes the first contributions of one of Star Trek 's most important behind-the-scenes geniuses, Michael Okuda.
• The dream sequence used to symbolize time travel was originally envisioned by the immensely talented Ralph McQuarrie, the creator of the look of Star Wars. McQuarrie contributed also to the look of  Starfleet Headquarters in The Voyage Home. His unused designs for the refitted Enterprise of Star Trek: The Motion Picture are an inspiration for the look of the U.S.S. Discovery of the new Star Trek: Discovery . The final dream sequence, with ideas from Leonard Nimoy, was created using Cyberware's pioneering 3D scanning and morphing technologies.

• The effects of the film are so incredible that the production received letters of protest for getting that close to real whales during filming. In reality, there are only a few images of real whales in the film, mostly in the breaching sequences. What is usually seen are remote-controlled models created and manipulated under the supervision and design of Michael Lanteri, Walt Conti and their teams of artists.
• The probe was designed by Nilo Rodis Jamero and built by ILM's model shop. It was meant to be five miles long script-wise, but in reality were an approximately 8 foot and 20 foot model. The probe is meant to be whale-like, with barnacles and the light being reminiscent of a whale's blow-hole.
• Composer Leonard Rosenman earned an Academy Award nomination for the music of The Voyage Home .
• The "punk" rocker on the bus was played by Kirk Thatcher, who also created the music used in the famous nerve-pinch sequence. Thatcher was an associate producer on The Voyage Home and was the voice of the testing computer at the start of the film. In fact. Kiri-kin-tha's First Law of Metaphysics, which Spock identifies as "Nothing unreal exists," is named for Kirk Thatcher. Thatcher had worked on Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in the creature shop, and is now a talented director for The Jim Henson Company productions
• In 1987, Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett were invited to screen The Voyage Home in Russia at the Spaso House to celebrate Russia agreeing to join the world community in banning factory whaling. This afforded Nimoy a chance to visit the town his family was from in the Ukraine, his parents being from the same community and both having to escape to the United States from the terrible pogroms against Jews that were occurring at the time. This was the first time a Star Trek film screened in Russia. Bennett wondered if the humor would translate, and was happy that it did... another symbol of the universal connection between people that The Voyage Home celebrates.

Happy Birthday Voyage Home!

Special thanks to Dan Madsen for allowing us to digitize images from the pages of the Star Trek Communicator fan club magazine of the era and to share these special photographs from the set of the film.

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Making Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Released in 1986, coinciding with the franchise’s twentieth anniversary, The Voyage Home remains the most successful of the Star Trek feature films.

It is also the most lighthearted of the series, despite its lofty themes. Director Leonard Nimoy was responsible for both attributes.

Back in time

Early in the planning stage with Producer Harve Bennett, Nimoy had decided, “no dying, no fist fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical ‘bad guy’.”

I wanted people to really have a great time watching this film, to really sit back, lose themselves and enjoy it. That was the main goal. And if somewhere in the mix we lobbed a couple of bigger ideas at them, well, then that would be even better.

Nimoy told Cinefantastique in 1987 that the first idea was to return the Enterprise crew to the Stone Age. The next idea was traveling back in time to 1890s. But the team quickly decided that the then-present day (1986) provided the greatest opportunities for fun, as the twenty-third-century characters would collide with contemporary life on Earth.

The next question was why the crew should travel back in time in the first place?

“There were several possibilities,” Nimoy said.

One, it could be an accident because they’re driving a ship they don’t know well. We decided not to do that. Then we thought, maybe they’re chasing somebody. We had done that before in Star Trek . Then we thought, what if there’s a problem in the twenty-third century and the solution lies in the twentieth century?

An epidemic? “We didn’t want to make a movie about people dying of diseases all over the place.”

The answer came when Nimoy was talking with a friend about endangered species “and up came the subject of the humpback whales and the mysterious song they sing.”

We don’t know exactly what it is or what it means. I thought, that’s it! If we can pull that off, sending humpback whales 300 years through space, that would be exciting.

Nimoy gave the story to screenwriters Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes. They drafted a 140-page script, which went through two rewrites. But the result still wasn’t very convincing.

Nicholas Meyer — who had cobbled together the best parts of the various scripts for Star Trek II — was called in to once again put the story together.

Meyer to the rescue

In an interview with the official Star Trek website in 2014, Meyer recalled that Paramount told him not to read the scripts but talk to Bennett and Nimoy.

They told me the story. Harve said, “Can you write the parts on Earth and I’ll do the bookends? I’ll do the beginning and the end.” I said, “Okay. Do they have to go to San Francisco in a time travel movie, because I’ve already done that? Can’t we go to Paris?” They said, “No, we can’t go to Paris.” So, I wrote all the stuff on Earth, beginning from when someone says, “When are we?” And Spock says, “Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, we’ve reached the late twentieth century.” And from there until they go back into outer space, was all my stuff.

William Shatner was involved toward the end. Meyer told Cinefantastique in 1987 that Shatner came back “with a whole bunch of notes,” which they incorporated.

He credited Bennett with keeping the process on track through numerous rewrites:

At times, when I would have long before thrown my hands up and told somebody to start suing, Harve would always go the extra mile, one more meeting, one more conversation, patiently holding everybody’s hand, and in the meantime also writing.

Acting and directing

Meyer had no desire to direct. “I was directing another movie.” Nimoy, who had successfully directed Star Trek III , was the obvious choice.

Nimoy told Cinefantastique he was lucky to be surrounded by people whose tastes he could trust:

I established very good contact with my cinematographer, so that he was watching carefully and he knew what I wanted to see. I’m very meticulous about the camera. I look through the camera on every shot and help line up the shot. I like my own compositions. If the cameraman shows me a composition I like, I say, “Great, that’s it.” Once I knew I could trust him, I knew I was technically covered.

The real challenge was balancing acting and directing.

You’re in the scene playing with one or two other performers and you’re giving your own performance, but you’re making mental notes like, “On the next take, I want to tell her to do something different here.” That gets complicated. But we managed to get through it.

Sharing the spotlight

The setting made it possible to give the supporting cast — James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei — bigger parts.

Nimoy told Starlog in 1987 ( My Star Trek Scrapbook has the full interview ) that it is difficult to keep everybody happy all the time. “They know that, and I know that.”

We have tried from picture to picture to see that there was a balance from one film to the next. A person who perhaps had a little bit less to do in one would hopefully have a little bit more next time.

Filming in San Francisco

The twentieth-century also freed the production to shoot on location without the need to create an expensive illusion of the future in every frame. With half the movie set in the present, The Voyage Home contained the least amount of science-fiction design of any of the Star Trek films. Which, ironically, accounted for its wide general appeal.

Nimoy had fond memories of shooting on location in San Francisco. “I loved being there. I loved the whole idea of bringing Star Trek home to today.”

Visual effects

Bennett and Nimoy wisely retained the winning visual-effects team that had contributed to the success of the previous two movies. Industrial Light and Magic was excited about the opportunity.

“ Star Trek has been in space so long,” Ken Ralston, the film’s consulting effects supervisor, told Cinefantastique .

You’ve seen it all before, many times. But to see those ships that you’ve become accustomed to put into a more terrestial environment is refreshing. When I have a ship in front of a starfield, I have no opportunity to be creative. Sure, I could put another nebula out there, but we’re really locked into things. When we come down to a more interesting environment, boy, the possibilities are endless.

One of the most memorable images of the film was the Klingon Bird of Prey swooping under the Golden Gate Bridge. Ralston also remembered it as one of the most difficult shots to get right.

ILM built an almost 5 meter-long model of a section of the bridge. Because it had a forced perspective, the foreground roadway measured about 16 inches [40 centimeters] wide while at the very end, on the other side of the tower, it was 2 inches [5 centimeters] wide.

Originally, ILM model shop supervisor Jeff Mann had hoped that by photographing storms in San Francisco, they would be able to save themselves the trouble of creating one artificially. No such luck.

Even though it was storming, on film it looked pretty tame. We wanted the storm in the film to be wild.

So they built a tank, “and then we tried everything to create rain and wind and smoke levels and clouds, using wind machines and water sprayers.”

Mann remembered the end result as “quite a thing to see”.

We had the Golden Gate Bridge sitting in the water tank, wind machines, foggers and sprayers, and the wire rig with the Bird of Prey flying past as it crashed into the water. That was fun.

Another effect was so realistic that few viewers noticed it wasn’t real: the humpback whales themselves were either miniatures shot at ILM or life-sized robotic replicas filmed in the Paramount parking lot.

The studio had hoped to use stock footage of humpback whales, but there wasn’t much available and the movie needed them to behave in certain ways. That also meant miniatures weren’t always sufficient.

To make sure both the miniatures and the life-sized mechanical whales looked accurate, they were built under the watchful eye of Peter Falken of the Oceanic Society.

Critical response

For the first time, the critical response to a Star Trek film mirrored its fortunes at the box office.

Understanding its appeal, USA Today wrote that the film would “delight those who don’t know a tribble from a Romulan” and that the funny script “turns Kirk and his followers into the most uproarious out-of-towners to hit the Bay area since the Democrats in 1984.” Referring to the film’s reduced use of visual effects, the review went on to note that without the usual special-effects camouflage, “the performers prove themselves more capable actors than ever before.”

Janet Maslin of The New York Times summed up the film’s impact best when she noted that The Voyage Home “has done a great deal to ensure the series’ longevity.” That there would be a fifth film was a near certainty.

Movie Reviews

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When they finished writing the script for "Star Trek IV," they must have had a lot of silly grins on their faces. This is easily the most absurd of the " Star Trek " stories - and yet, oddly enough, it is also the best, the funniest and the most enjoyable in simple human terms. I'm relieved that nothing like restraint or common sense stood in their way.

The movie opens with some leftover business from the previous movie, including the Klingon ambassador's protests before the Federation Council. These scenes have very little to do with the rest of the movie, and yet they provide a certain reassurance (like James Bond's ritual flirtation with Miss Moneypenny) that the series remembers it has a history.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise is still marooned on a faraway planet with the Klingon starship they commandeered in " Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ." They vote to return home aboard the alien vessel, but on the way they encounter a strange deep-space probe. It is sending out signals in an unknown language which, when deciphered, turns out to be the song of the humpback whale.

It's at about this point that the script conferences must have really taken off. See if you can follow this: The Enterprise crew determines that the probe is zeroing in on Earth, and that if no humpback songs are picked up in response, the planet may well be destroyed. Therefore, the crew's mission becomes clear: Because humpback whales are extinct in the 23rd century, they must journey back through time to the 20th century, obtain some humpback whales, and return with them to the future - thus saving Earth. After they thought up this notion, I hope the writers lit up cigars.

No matter how unlikely the story is, it supplies what is probably the best of the "Star Trek" movies so far, directed with calm professionalism by Leonard Nimoy . What happens is that the Enterprise crew land their Klingon starship in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, surround it with an invisibility shield, and fan out through the Bay area looking for humpback whales and a ready source of cheap nuclear power.

What makes their search entertaining is that we already know the crew members so well. The cast's easy interaction is unique among movies, because it hasn't been learned in a few weeks of rehearsal or shooting; this is the 20th anniversary of "Star Trek," and most of these actors have been working together for most of their professional lives. These characters know one another.

An example: Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) and Mr. Spock (Nimoy) visit a Sea World-type operation, where two humpback whales are held in captivity. Catherine Hicks , as the marine biologist in charge, plans to release the whales, and the Enterprise crew need to learn her plans so they can recapture the whales and transport them into the future.

Naturally, this requires the two men to ask Hicks out to dinner.

She asks if they like Italian food, and Kirk and Spock do a delightful little verbal ballet based on the running gag that Spock, as a Vulcan, cannot tell a lie. Find another space opera in which verbal counterpoint creates humor.

The plots of the previous "Star Trek" movies have centered around dramatic villains, such as Khan, the dreaded genius played by Ricardo Montalban in " Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ." This time, the villains are faceless: the international hunters who continue to pursue and massacre whales despite clear indications they will drive these noble mammals from the Earth. "To hunt a race to extinction is not logical," Spock calmly observes, but we see shocking footage of whalers doing just that.

Instead of providing a single human villain as counterpoint, "Star Trek IV" provides a heroine, in Hicks. She obviously is moved by the plight of the whales, and although at first she understandably doubts Kirk's story that he comes from the 23rd century, eventually she enlists in the cause and even insists on returning to the future with them, because of course, without humpback whales, the 23rd century also lacks humpback whale experts.

There are some major action sequences in the movie, but they aren't the high points; the "Star Trek" saga has always depended more on human interaction and thoughtful, cause-oriented plots. What happens in San Francisco is much more interesting than what happens in outer space, and this movie, which might seem to have an unlikely and ungainly plot, is actually the most elegant and satisfying "Star Trek" film so far.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

119 minutes

William Shatner as Adm. Kirk

Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock

Deforest Kelley as McCoy

Brock Peters as Federation President Robt. Ellenstein Cartwright

Catherine Hicks as Gillian Taylor

John Schuck as Klingon Ambassador

Jane Wyatt as Spock's Mother

Screenplay by

• Peter Krikes
• Steve Meerson
• Nicholas Meyer

Photographed by

• Don Peterman

Produced by

• Harve Bennett
• Leonard Rosenman

Directed by

• Leonard Nimoy

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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.

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"Star Trek IV": The Voyage Home - Original Movie Script Paperback – 28 Jun. 1996

• Print length 129 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Movie Script Library
• Publication date 28 Jun. 1996
• ISBN-10 1566933110
• ISBN-13 978-1566933117
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Movie Script Library (28 Jun. 1996)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 129 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1566933110
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1566933117
• 418 in Screenplays
• 8,029 in The Performing Arts

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Five Cut Lines Completely Changed The Ending Of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

The "Star Trek" franchise was nearing a crossroads in 1986. 20 years after the premiere of The Original Series on NBC, moviegoers were showing up in significant numbers to follow the big-screen exploits of Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise. But while 1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and 1984's "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" were hits for Paramount (they both grossed in the $78 million range domestically), they were not blockbusters. So when stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy asked for salary bumps, the studio had some tough decisions to make.

Paramount almost received an unexpected windfall when their under-contract box office juggernaut, Eddie Murphy, asked to be in the fourth "Star Trek" movie . Murphy had just starred in "Beverly Hills Cop," the highest-grossing movie of 1984, and, as a hardcore Trekker, wanted to be a part of Gene Roddenberry's sci-fi universe. The studio was thrilled, and Nimoy, who was set to direct the film, understood the commercial potential of Murphy's involvement. This could massively expand the Trek fanbase, with Murphy being the rising tide that lifts all ships salary-wise.

So Paramount hired the screenwriting duo of Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes to write the first draft of what would become "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home." The film would bring Kirk and company from the 23rd century to the 21st, where their quest to bring two humpback whales back to the future would receive assistance from an uber-nerdy college professor played by Murphy. This obviously did not come to pass, but the writers, emboldened by Paramount's eagerness to take big narrative swings, almost complicated Spock's life in a fascinating way.

The De-Murphy-cation of Star Trek IV

Speaking to Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman for their book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years," Krikes and Meerson revealed that Murphy's role was essentially turned into Catherine Hicks' marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor. Per Krikes:

"If you look at our script and the movie you saw, basically everything is still there, like Eddie Murphy going to meet the aliens in the park to bring them gifts, and he runs into the invisible ship ... which is what Catherine Hicks did when she ran into the park to find Kirk. The structure really is exactly the same."

The rewrites were handled by Nicholas Meyer (who arguably saved the franchise with "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan") and Harve Bennett. Meyer claims he never read the Meerson-Krikes draft, which rankles Krikes, who is adamant that many of the film's fun elements — Taylor getting beamed aboard the Bird of Prey and Spock nerve-pinching the surly punk on the city bus — existed in their version of the script. As he told Gross and Altman, "You can't imagine the frustration of them trying to take all the credit for something that was completely blocked out for them. Plus, they removed a lot of the emotional qualities that we thought it would have."

One of those qualities would have altered the course of the Trek film franchise in a major way.

Saavik should've played a bigger role in the Trek universe

Beginning with "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," the Vulcan character Saavik emerged as an intriguing component of the franchise's ever-expanding universe . Played initially by Kirstie Alley, and then, in the next two films, by Robin Curtis, her path seemed destined to merge with Spock's. Leaving aside the Eddie Murphy of it all, the biggest departure from Meerson and Krikes' screenplay was the omission of an exchange between Kirk and Saavik. According to Krikes:

"There was a scene with Kirk on the bridge of the Bird of Prey. They cut out five lines where Kirk says to Saavik, 'Have you told him yet?' And she says, 'No. I'm taking a maternity leave.'"

That would've been a bombshell development in Trekland. "That's why she's standing with Amanda [Grayson, Spock's human mother] when the Bird of Prey leaves," said Meerson. "Because Amanda knows Saavik is carrying Spock's kid. All they did was cut out five lines of dialogue, and you lost that whole thing."

Had Nimoy, Meyer, and Bennett kept that moment, "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" would be a completely different (and possibly good) movie. I think we still get "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" because Kirk's blood feud with the Klingons had to get resolved, but Spock would've had more to do than hang out on the Enterprise while Kirk and McCoy are subjected to a show trial.

The biggest bummer here is how Saavik was unceremoniously written out of the Trek narrative. I'm not sure making her the mother of Spock's child was the most interesting direction in which to take the character, but I do wish we could've gotten more of her in the official canon. And I'm still waiting for Murphy to make his triumphant "Star Trek" debut as a member of the Jenkins clan from Vulcan .

THE EXORCISM: Russell Crowe Faces His Demons In New Trailer

Russell Crowe is back to face his demons (again) in  The Exorcism , the upcoming cursed-movie-set horror from director Joshua John Miller ( The Final Girls ) hitting theaters on June 7 – and today’s first trailer from Vertical promises that things are about to get gloriously sacrilegious.

Also starring Ryan Simpkins (the Fear Street trilogy) Sam Worthington ( Avatar: The Way of Water ), Chloe Bailey ( Praise This ), Adam Goldberg ( The Equalizer ) and David Hyde Pierce ( Frasier ),  The Exorcism follows:

Anthony Miller (Crowe), a troubled actor who begins to unravel while shooting a supernatural horror film. His estranged daughter, Lee (Simpkins), wonders if he’s slipping back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play.

Scream legend Kevin Williamson produced the religious horror, formerly known as The Georgetown Project , alongside Ben Fast and Bill Block.

In a director’s statement, Miller (who co-wrote the script with M.A. Fortin ( The Final Girls )), revealed more about his inspiration for  The Exorcism and what he hopes the film will achieve within the genre:

The origins of the film stem from my childhood spent watching my father, Jason Miller, playing the doomed Father Karras flinging himself out a window at the climax of The Exorcist . If that wasn’t haunting enough on its own, my dad never shied away from telling me stories of just how “cursed” the movie was: the mysterious fires that plagued the production, the strange deaths, the lifelong injuries— the list went on and on. The lore of any “cursed film” has captivated me ever since. With The Exorcism, we wanted to update the possession movie formula (“Heroic man rescues woman from forces she’s too weak and simple to battle herself!”) for a world where no one group owns goodness and decency over another. We were gifted with an extraordinary cast and creative team to tell a story about how we’re all vulnerable to darkness, to perpetuating it, if we fail to face our demons.

Following its theatrical release,  The Exorcism will hit Shudder later this year. Here’s that brand new trailer and a shiny new poster!:

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