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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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STAR DATE: 1986. HOW ON EARTH CAN THEY SAVE THE FUTURE?

" A catastrophe in the future can only be averted by a journey into Earth's past. "

Admiral James T. Kirk is prepared to take the consequences for rescuing Spock and stealing and then losing the starship Enterprise , but a new danger has put Earth itself in jeopardy. Kirk and his crew must travel back in time in an old Klingon Bird-of-Prey to right an ancient wrong, in the hopes of saving Earth – and the Federation – from certain doom.

• 1.1 23rd century
• 1.2 20th century
• 1.3 23rd century
• 2 Memorable quotes
• 3.1 Creation and production
• 3.2 Continuity
• 3.5.1 Merchandise gallery
• 3.6 Awards and honors
• 3.7 Apocrypha
• 4.1.1 Opening credits
• 4.1.2 Closing credits
• 4.2.1 Performers
• 4.2.2 Stunt performers
• 4.2.3 Production staff
• 4.3.1 Other references
• 4.3.2 Unreferenced material
• 4.3.3 Related topics
• 4.4 External links

Summary [ ]

23rd century [ ].

Sensor analysis

It is the year 2286 , and an alien vessel is moving through space . The huge vessel is detected by the USS Saratoga , and sensor analysis reveals it to be some sort of probe . The captain of the Saratoga contacts Starfleet Command and informs them that this alien probe is apparently headed to the Terran solar system . Starfleet tells Saratoga to continue the tracking and they will analyze their transmissions and advise.

" James T. Kirk, renegade and terrorist! "

Back on Earth, the Klingon Ambassador to the United Federation of Planets demands the extradition of Admiral James T. Kirk for murdering a Klingon crew and for stealing a Klingon vessel. The ambassador also denounces the failed Genesis Project as a mere weapon and the Genesis planet as a staging area from which to launch the annihilation of the Klingon race. Just then, Ambassador Sarek arrives in the council chambers and says that Genesis was named for creating life and not death. He goes on to accuse the Klingons of shedding the first blood in attempting to possess the secrets of Genesis. Sarek points out that the Klingons destroyed USS Grissom and killed Kirk's son , which the Klingon ambassador does not deny, saying they have the right to defend their race. Sarek then asks if the Klingons have the right to commit murder, which causes an uproar in the council chambers; breaking his silence by calling for everyone else to make silence, the President states that there will be no further outbursts. Sarek says that he has come to speak on behalf of the accused, which the Klingon ambassador decries as a personal bias, as Sarek's son was saved by Kirk. The president tells Sarek that the council's deliberations have already concluded. He then tells the Klingon ambassador that Admiral Kirk faces nine violations of Starfleet regulations . The Klingon ambassador says that the fact Kirk is only facing Starfleet regulations is outrageous and decries that as long as Kirk lives, there will never be any peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire . As he and his aides storm out of the council chambers, someone in the council chambers calls the ambassador a "pompous ass."

The crew of the Enterprise

On Vulcan, Kirk surveys his crew and they all vote " Aye, sir. " Kirk states then to them " Let the record show that the commander and the crew of the late starship Enterprise have voted unanimously to return to Earth , to face the consequences for their actions in the rescue of their comrade, Captain Spock . " Scott tells Kirk that it'll take him one more day to get their Klingon ship, named by McCoy as the HMS Bounty , ready to go; saying that while damage control is easy, reading Klingon is hard. McCoy laments that Starfleet could have at least sent a ship to pick them up as it's bad enough to know they will be court-martialed and likely imprisoned but the worst is going home in the "Klingon flea trap." Kirk says the "Klingon flea trap" has a cloaking device "which cost [them] a lot." McCoy comments that he wishes they could cloak the stench. Kirk looks up and sees Spock standing at a cliff looking down at them and the ship. Spock then walks off and goes back in a room and resumes computer testing of his mental faculties. While the tests show Spock has regained full control of his faculties once again, he is confused when the computer asks him how he feels.

Spock retrains his mind

Then, Spock's mother Amanda enters and reminds Spock that as he is half-Human he has feelings and the computer is aware of this. Spock says he must go to Earth with the others and offer testimony because he was there when the events occurred. Amanda asks if the good of the many outweighs the good of the one and Spock says it does. Amanda then says that it was a mistake by his flawed, feeling, Human friends for them to sacrifice their futures because they believed that the good of the one, Spock, was more important to them. Spock says that Humans make illogical decisions. Amanda smiles and agrees that they do indeed.

Saratoga disabled

Just then, at the Neutral Zone, the probe comes close to the Saratoga . The captain orders yellow alert , but the probe, issuing a powerful signal, begins draining the ship of all power. As the Saratoga begins to drift, the captain tries to issue a distress call to Starfleet Command.

" Saavik… this is goodbye. " " Yes, Admiral. "

Meanwhile, at Starfleet Command, the President asks Starfleet Admiral Cartwright for a status update and he tells the president that the probe is headed directly toward Earth and that its signal is disabling everything it comes into contact with. According to Cartwright, two Klingon ships have been lost while two Federation starships and three smaller vessels have been neutralized. He then orders contact with the USS Yorktown and their captain says his chief engineer is trying to deploy a makeshift solar sail hoping they can generate enough power to keep themselves alive.

Heading home

As the probe continues toward Earth, on Vulcan the Bounty is almost ready for launch. Kirk comes on the bridge and asks for status reports, Uhura says communications systems are ready and the communications officer is "as ready as she'll ever be." Sulu reports the on-board computer will now interface with the Federation memory bank. Chekov reports the cloaking device is repaired and is now available in all flight modes. Kirk admits to being impressed with all that work for such a short flight. Chekov then tells Kirk since they're in an enemy vessel, he didn't want to risk being shot down on the way to their own funeral. Kirk compliments Chekov's thinking and then calls Scott, who tells him that they are ready to go. Scott says the dilithium resequencer has been converted into something not quite so primitive and that he has personally replaced the Klingon food packs as they were giving Scott a sour stomach. Kirk turns and tells all who are not going to Earth that they better get off. He then turns to Saavik , who is remaining on Vulcan, to tell her goodbye and to thank her. Saavik says that she's not yet had the opportunity to tell Kirk how bravely his son David died and that he saved her and Spock and she wanted Kirk to know. Just then, Spock arrives on the bridge and Saavik wishes him a good day and hopes his journey be free of incident. Spock tells Saavik to " Live long and prosper. " Spock gets permission from Kirk to come aboard, and Kirk tries unsuccessfully to get Spock to call him "Jim" as he is in a command situation. Spock also apologizes for only wearing his Vulcan robes as he seems to have misplaced his uniform. Kirk tells Spock to take his station, a move that concerns McCoy as after all that Spock's been through, he's not liable to be ready to assume such responsibilities but Kirk expresses confidence that it will all come back to him. Kirk then tells Sulu and Chekov to take them home. Sulu and Chekov gently lift the Bounty off the surface and as Saavik and Amanda watch, the Bounty heads off into the Vulcan sunset, on course for Earth.

The probe disables Spacedock

At the same time, the probe has reached Earth and begins the process of neutralizing Spacedock One before they can get the space doors open. All ships inside the dock, including the USS Excelsior , are neutralized and disabled. The probe then continues into Earth orbit and begins pulling water and moisture from the oceans, and clouds begin gathering over the Earth as the probe continues its transmission.

"You really have gone where no man's gone before!"

Sulu reports planet Earth 1.6 hours away, and Chekov reports there are no Federation vessels on assigned patrol stations, which Kirk finds odd. Uhura tells Kirk that the comm channels are flooded with overlapping multiphasic transmissions sounding almost like gibberish. She asks Kirk for some time to try to sort it all out. Just then, McCoy sits next to Spock and asks if he's busy. Spock says that he is simply monitoring and that Uhura is busy. McCoy says that it's sure nice for Spock's katra to be back in Spock's head and not his, stating that he might have carried Spock's soul but he couldn't fill Spock's shoes. When Spock doesn't understand the quip, McCoy drops it and asks if he and Spock could speak about philosophical matters such as life and death but Spock says he didn't have time on Vulcan to review philosophical disciplines. McCoy tells Spock, " You really have gone where no man's gone before " and is amazed that Spock can't tell him what it felt like. Spock says that they can't discuss the subject because they don't have a common frame of reference. When McCoy asks if Spock is joking, Spock defines a joke as "a story with a humorous climax." McCoy is amazed that Spock is inferring that McCoy would have to die in order to discuss Spock's insights on death. Just then Spock tells McCoy he's receiving a number of distress calls , which McCoy doesn't doubt as he gets up and walks away.

Starfleet emergency

Back on Earth, the situation is worsening. Reports from all over the world pour into Starfleet Headquarters . These reports include weather conditions worsening around the planet, such as how temperatures in Juneau , Alaska were dropping and cloud cover was up to 96%. In Tokyo , Japan , all power was gone and only available from reserve banks. Both it and Leningrad had 100% cloud cover and their temperatures were decreasing rapidly. The president asks about worldwide cloud cover and a report of 78.6% comes in. At that point, Cartwright orders a planet-wide emergency and declares red alert . Just then, the influence of the probe comes over and power begins to fade. Cartwright tells the president that even with planetary reserves, they are doomed without the sun. The president states he is well aware of that fact. Just then, Sarek enters into the command center and the president laments that there may be no way to answer the probe. Sarek comments that one cannot answer easily if you don't understand the question. Then Sarek suggests that the president issue a planetary distress signal while there is still time.

" Avoid the planet Earth at all costs!"

Still en route to Earth aboard the Bounty , Uhura tells Kirk that a signal is finally coming through from the Federation. Kirk tells her to put it on screen and they all watch in shock as the president tells all ships everywhere to not approach the planet Earth as the probe is causing critical damage to the Earth, almost totally ionizing the atmosphere. The president says that all power sources have failed and all Earth-orbiting starships are powerless. The probe, according to the president, is vaporizing Earth's oceans and that everyone on Earth will not survive unless they can find a way to respond. The president warns all ships to save their energy and to save themselves and they should avoid the planet Earth at all costs. He then bids farewell and the transmission fades. A stunned Kirk and crew are amazed at what they saw and heard. After a moment, Kirk asks to hear the probe's signal and Uhura patches it through. Spock says that the probe signifies aliens of great intelligence that somehow, are unaware of the signal's destructive nature and that he thinks it illogical that the probe's intention is hostile. When McCoy asks if this is the probe's way of saying hello to the people of the Earth, Spock points out that only Human arrogance assumes the message must be meant for them. When Kirk asks if it could be for some other lifeform, Spock does point out the signal is pointed at Earth's oceans. Kirk asks Uhura to adjust the probe's signal to account for what it would sound like underwater. When she does so, Spock theorizes there can be no response to the message. He then excuses himself to test the theory and he is quickly followed by Kirk and McCoy.

Spock's theory

In the Bounty 's lab, Spock discovers that it is in fact a whale song , specifically that of the humpback whale . McCoy at first wonders who would send a probe across the galaxy to speak to whales, but Kirk and Spock recognize that whales were on Earth ten million years before Humans. Humpback whales, Spock points out, have been extinct since the 21st century , and so it is possible an alien intelligence sent the probe to establish why they lost contact. Kirk wonders if they could simulate a response to the probe's call, but Spock says the language would be gibberish. Kirk asks if the species could exist on some other planet, but Spock answers that they were indigenous to Earth. When Kirk says they must find a way to destroy the probe before it destroys Earth, Spock reminds Kirk the probe would neutralize the Bounty with no effort. Spock does say then that they could theoretically go find some humpback whales. McCoy realizes what Spock is suggesting and is about to ask Kirk to " wait just a damn minute, " but is interrupted by Kirk, who orders Spock to start computations for a time warp .

Kirk's bright idea

In the Bounty 's cargo bay, Kirk asks Scott if they can enclose it to hold water and Scott says he could and McCoy agrees that Kirk is about to go swimming " Off the deep end, Mr. Scott! " Kirk tells Scott they have to go find a couple of humpback whales. McCoy asks Kirk if he is seriously going to attempt time travel in " this rust bucket. " Kirk responds that they have done it before . As he and McCoy head back toward the bridge, McCoy wonders aloud about the plan;

Kirk says that's it and McCoy comments that Kirk's plan is crazy. Kirk tells McCoy if he has a better idea now's the time to tell him. On the bridge he asks Spock about the computations and Spock is working on them. Meanwhile, Kirk has Uhura open a channel to Starfleet Command.

"We're going to attempt time travel. "

Meanwhile the situation on Earth is worsening. A faint transmission believed to be from Admiral Kirk is received and Cartwright orders it put through. Kirk advises Starfleet of their analysis of the probe's signal, tells them that Spock's theory is that only the extinct humpback whale can properly answer the probe and they are going to try time travel. At that moment, Kirk's signal degrades. Cartwright orders the transmission picked back up, but just then the windows behind him shatter and the wind and rain begin to blow into Starfleet Headquarters. At this point, all anyone in the command center can do is wait.

On the Bounty , Spock has completed his calculations and informs Kirk their target is the late 20th century . Unfortunately he can't be more precise because of the limits of the equipment aboard the Bounty . Additionally he had to program some of the variables for his time travel computations from memory. When McCoy worriedly recites a line from Hamlet , " Angels and ministers of grace, defend us, " and Spock recognizes it as act one, scene four, Kirk establishes his faith in Spock's memory and has the ship prepared for warp speed. Kirk orders Chekov to raise the shields and then tells Sulu to engage the Bounty 's warp drive. " May fortune favor the foolish, " Kirk says as the Bounty engages to warp speed.

The Bounty slingshots

The ship slowly accelerates up over warp nine and then as they get closer and closer to the Sun, the ship begins to shake seriously between the effects of high warp and the high solar gravity. A console next to Uhura blows out, but she says she's ok. At the last moment, Kirk orders Sulu to kick in the last of the thruster power, and the Bounty successfully performs the slingshot effect around the Sun . For a brief time, the crew is unconscious as Kirk dreams of their voices and faces (quotes from later are heard here, including Scott saying " Admiral, there be whales here! "), of a whale, and eventually of a person falling from space, through Earth's atmosphere and landing in a lake in a tranquil forest, with a sound of what may be a ship landing.

20th century [ ]

20th century Earth

Kirk awakens to find ship and crew seemingly still intact. He rouses Sulu from his unconsciousness and Sulu finds the braking thrusters have successfully fired. When the viewer is activated Spock determines by the atmosphere's pollution content they have successfully arrived in the latter half of the 20th century. He then reminds Kirk they may already be visible to the Earth's tracking devices of the time and so Kirk orders the cloaking device engaged. The Bounty crosses over the terminator into night and Spock homes in on the west coast of North America . There, Uhura finds a whale song , but is confused to find it coming directly from San Francisco . Just then Scott calls needing to see Kirk immediately.

Dead in the water

Scotty reports a new problem, informing Kirk and Spock the Klingon dilithium crystals have been drained by the time travel and are de-crystallizing. Unfortunately, even in the 23rd century, re-crystallization is not possible and Scott gives them 24 hours before they lose all power and become visible – and dead in the water. Spock theorizes that because of the use of nuclear fission reactors in this time period, they could construct a device to collect some high-energy radioactive photons safely which could then be injected into the dilithium chamber which, in theory, could cause crystalline restructure. Spock then points out that nuclear power was widely used on Naval vessels.

Mission briefing

From his seat at the Bounty 's helm, Sulu recognizes San Francisco and tells everyone he was born there. McCoy remarks that it really doesn't look all that different from the San Francisco of their time. Kirk instructs Sulu to set the ship down in Golden Gate Park . He then assigns everyone to teams, Uhura and Chekov will take care of the photon collection. McCoy, Sulu, and Scott are assigned to find materials to construct a whale tank aboard the ship; and Spock and Kirk are to attempt to find the two humpback whales they detected in San Francisco. Kirk then tells everyone to be very careful as most of the local customs will doubtless be surprising to the time travelers. Everyone then looks at Spock and Kirk says " It's a foregone conclusion none of these people have ever seen an extraterrestrial before. " With that, Spock tears a piece of fabric from his robe and wraps it around his head like a headband which covers his eyebrows and ears. Kirk calls late 20th century culture extremely primitive and paranoid. Chekov is to issue everyone a phaser and communicator but the crew is to maintain radio silence except in emergencies, and anyone in uniform should remove their rank insignia. Kirk firmly tells everyone that they should do their job and get out of there as their own world is waiting for them to save it, if they can.

The Bounty lands in Golden Gate Park , accidentally crushing a trash can (as well as indenting the surrounding ground) under its invisible landing gear, and when the hatch opens, it scares two sanitation workers, who drive out of the area leaving trash behind. Oblivious to this, the Enterprise crew continues onward, Uhura gives the coordinates of the whales to Kirk who quips, " Everybody remember where we parked! "

"Well, double dumbass on you!"

In San Francisco, the crew has trouble adjusting, from watching out for traffic – to which Kirk swears back at a taxi driver – to Kirk's realization that they're going to need some money , being that Earth of then still saw it as a driving force. Kirk and Spock go to an antique shop to sell the glasses McCoy earlier gave Kirk on his last birthday . Kirk receives one hundred dollars (wondering aloud if that's a lot) and then divides it among the teams. He and Spock walk down the streets of San Francisco and Kirk wonders how they're going to find the whales. Spock finds a city map and starts to work out the coordinates on the map. Kirk sees an ad for the Cetacean Institute and the two attempt to get on a bus , only to be tossed back off because they don't have "exact change" and don't know what the term means, either.

In another part of town, McCoy, Scott, and Sulu walk the streets. McCoy wonders how they'll make the whale tank. Scott says he'd normally do it with transparent aluminum but he and Sulu both realize the material doesn't exist yet, so they'll have to make do with a 20th century equivalent. Just then they notice a mural ad on a wall for the Yellow Pages .

"Nu-cle-ar… wessels."

Elsewhere, Chekov and Uhura have also been perusing the phone book and have found the address for the Alameda Naval Base . Unfortunately, their luck in getting those directions isn't entirely successful with people (including one SFPD police officer ) completely ignoring them and a lady telling them the ships are in Alameda , which they already knew but they don't know how to get to Alameda.

Spock takes a dip

Kirk and Spock finally find a bus and, after Spock renders a punk rocker unconscious with a nerve pinch , they arrive at the Cetacean Institute and join in with a tour group which is being led by Dr. Gillian Taylor , a guide and whale lover. Taylor escorts the tour group to the Institute's pride and joy, the only two humpbacks in captivity, named George and Gracie . Kirk comments on the amazing stroke of luck in finding a male and a female humpback in a contained space, they can beam them up together and be on the way home. Spock jumps into the whale tank and performs a mind meld with one of the whales. During Spock's mind meld, he is noticed by a completely astonished Kirk and then an elderly lady in the tour group, which raises Taylor's ire and she and Kirk run back up to the tank and she confronts Spock. Spock tries to explain that he was trying to communicate. Kirk attempts to act as if he's there to help Taylor, but when Spock tells him that if they think the whales are theirs to do with as they please, then they'd be as guilty as those who caused the whales' extinction. At that point, Taylor throws both of them out, threatening to call the police as Spock was messing with her tanks and whales. Spock says the whales like her very much, but they are not " the hell "her" whales, " and when she asks if they told him that, he admits they did.

Kirk and Spock review

As they walk away, Kirk asks about Spock's mind meld. Spock says the whales are not happy with how Humans have treated their species, which Kirk finds understandable and asks if they will help. Spock says he believes he was successful in communicating the Enterprise crew's mission.

Dr. Taylor is outraged by their actions, but later tries to relax with the whales and tells them the intruders didn't mean them any harm. Just then her boss, Bob Briggs , steps up and asks how Gillian is doing and she admits she's very upset. Briggs sympathizes but points out again that they endanger the whales' lives by keeping them at the Institute and they take the same risk letting them go. He tries to calm her by reminding her that they've never been proven to be as intelligent as Humans, but Taylor doesn't buy it, angrily saying she doesn't limit her compassion for someone based on an intelligence estimate.

The nuclear wessel

Chekov and Uhura finally find the location of a nuclear vessel. Chekov begins attempting to make contact with Kirk as Uhura locates the exact coordinates of the reactor. Once Kirk is reached, Chekov reports they found the ship which pleases Kirk, and then Chekov tells Kirk "And Admiral… it is the Enterprise ." Kirk acknowledges and asks the plan. Chekov says they'll beam in that night, get the photons and beam out before anyone can ever know they were there. Kirk approves the plan and tells them to keep him informed.

"I love Italian… and so do you."

Just then Taylor approaches in her truck and agrees to give Kirk and Spock a ride back to San Francisco. Taylor asks Kirk where he's from and he says Iowa . Then asking what Spock meant about the whales' extinction, Kirk says he meant if things go as they are, the humpbacks will disappear forever, but Taylor recounts what Spock said exactly, including referring to the whales as already extinct. Kirk promises that they have nothing to do with the military teaching whales to retrieve torpedoes or "dip shit stuff" like that. Spock then blurts out the fact that Gracie is pregnant , which causes Taylor to slam on her brakes, stopping the truck in amazement because this is something nobody outside the institute knows. She demands to know how Spock knows this. Kirk says he can't say but if she gives them a chance, he'll promise they're not in the military and have no harmful intentions toward the whales. He then says that they may be able to help them in ways she can't imagine. Taylor figures she probably won't believe it either. Kirk and Spock manage to agree that she's not catching them at their best. Kirk then suggests that they all go out to dinner and discuss this further. Taylor asks if they like Italian food and Kirk and Spock banter back and forth for a moment before Kirk can get out that he loves Italian and he tells Spock he does too.

"Professor Scott" and his assistant

In the meantime, Scott and his team have managed to find a manufacturer of large plexiglass walls – Plexicorp – and he and McCoy masquerade as scientists from Edinburgh who are to tour the plant – unbeknownst to the plant's head, Dr. Nichols . Scott makes a scene, but is given a tour of the plant by Nichols and Scott, playing the role, asks if McCoy (his "assistant") can accompany. Nichols says he can and as he commandeers a forklift for them to ride on, McCoy tells Scott " Don't bury yourself in the part! "

Sulu approaches a helicopter pilot and begins speaking to him about the old Huey 204 helicopter on which the pilot is working. The pilot asks Sulu if he's flown any and Sulu says he's flown "here and there." Sulu then tells the pilot that he flew something similar during his Academy days, and the pilot recognizes that the helicopter must be old to him which Sulu admits, but says it's still interesting. He then asks if he can ask a few questions and the pilot agrees to answer them.

Altering the future or preserving history?

Meanwhile, at Plexicorp, after the tour, Scott tells Nichols that they have a very fine plant here and Nichols compliments Scott's impressive knowledge of engineering skill. Scott then says he sees Nichols still working with polymers . Nichols asks what else he'd be using. Scott asks how big a piece of the plexiglass need to be at the measurements they'll need for the Bounty 's cargo bay , holding the pressure of the water that will be inside. Nichols says that a six inch piece would do it. Scott then supposes he shows Nichols a way to make a wall that would do the same thing but only be one inch thick. At first Nichols thinks Scott is joking but McCoy suggest Scott make use of Nichols' computer and he obliges. Although Scott mistakes the old computer for one he can talk to, when Nichols finally tells him to just use the keyboard , Scott does so and quickly comes up with the formula for transparent aluminum. Nichols says it'd take years to work out the dynamics of the matrix, but McCoy tells him he'll be richer than he can dream. When Nichols asks what Scott wants, McCoy excuses them and they go over to the corner. McCoy tells Scott that if they give Nichols the formula, they alter the future . Scott then asks how it is they know Nichols didn't invent transparent aluminum? McCoy agrees to Scott's logic and they go off to make the deal.

Out to dinner

Kirk and Taylor bring Spock back to Golden Gate Park. She asks if Spock won't change his mind about dinner and Spock wonders if there's a problem with the one he has. Kirk says that's a little joke and then tells Spock goodbye. Taylor asks how Spock knew that Gracie is pregnant when nobody knows that. Spock says that Gracie knows she's pregnant and he'll be here in the park. Taylor asks Kirk if Spock is going to just hang out around the bushes and Kirk just shrugs and says it's his way. As Gillian and Kirk drive away, Spock is beamed back aboard the Bounty . Kirk and Taylor are at a pizza restaurant and Kirk allows Gillian to order for them. He then asks how she ended up as a cetacean biologist. She says she is just lucky and a sucker for hard luck cases, mentioning that while she'll never see the whales again after they're released, they'll be tagged with radio transmitters so they can keep track of them. She then asks why Kirk hangs around with " that ditzy guy who knows that Gracie's pregnant and calls you admiral. " Just then, Kirk's Klingon communicator beeps. He tries to ignore it, but it keeps beeping and Taylor notices, calling his communicator a pocket pager and then asks Kirk if he's a doctor. Kirk finally answers it and feigns irritation, saying he said not to call him. Scott is the one calling, he apologizes for the interruption but he thought Kirk would want to know he's beaming Chekov and Uhura in now. Kirk says to tell them to set their phasers on stun and wishes them good luck. He then kills the transmission. Taylor asks for an explanation, Kirk asks when the whales are leaving. Gillian asks who he is, he asks who she thinks he is. Taylor then speculates he's from outer space. Kirk reiterates he's from Iowa, but that he works in outer space. Taylor says she was sure outer space would play a role sooner or later. Kirk then decides to tell her the truth to try and gain Taylor's cooperation in getting the whales. Kirk reveals that he is, by her calendar, from the late 23rd century and he's come back in time to bring two humpback whales with him so they can repopulate the species in his century. Taylor is enthusiastic about getting the details (while not believing a word of it). Kirk asks again when the whales are leaving. Taylor decides to go ahead and tell Kirk that Gracie is indeed very pregnant and that at noon the next day, the whales will be shipped out. At that point, Kirk jumps up and tells Taylor they have to leave just as the pizza arrives. Gillian asks if they can have it to go and then asks Kirk if they use money in the 23rd century and Kirk confirms they don't.

Sneaking aboard

At the same time, aboard the Enterprise , Chekov and Uhura hide briefly from a guard and his dog. They then finish their way to the reactor and Chekov attaches the collector to the reactor. When Uhura asks how long this is going to take, Chekov says it will depend on how much shielding there is between them and the actual reactor.

Back at Golden Gate Park, Taylor tells Kirk that was the briefest dinner she's ever had and the makes it clear she doesn't believe Kirk's story at all. Kirk asks what the whale's radio transmitter's frequency is, but Taylor refuses to tell him, citing that it's classified information. Kirk then tells Taylor that he is here to take two humpbacks to the 23rd century and if he has to do so, he will go to the open sea to get them but he'd much rather have hers as it'd be better for him, for Taylor, and for the whales. Gillian once again implores Kirk to tell her who he really is, but he ignores the question and asks her to think about this but not to take too much time and if Gillian changes her mind about helping them, he'll be right there in the park. As Taylor drives off, Kirk walks toward where the Bounty is parked and Taylor hears the transporter beam taking Kirk aboard and sees the light in the corner of her eye. She looks back and sees Kirk gone and drives on, puzzled.

Aboard the Bounty , Kirk asks for an update. Spock says the tank will be finished by morning and there has been no word yet from Chekov and Uhura since beam-in. Kirk grows frustrated that they are so close with two whales that will work great for them if they don't let them slip from their grasp. Spock says there is a possibility then their mission will fail. Kirk reminds Spock he's talking about the future of everyone on Earth and as he walks away angrily ask Spock that as he's half-Human does he not have any feelings about that? McCoy and Scott look at Spock but he does not answer and simply stands there contemplating Kirk's words.

Wrong place, wrong time

Chekov and Uhura continue to collect the photons. On the Enterprise bridge, their attempts have been noticed in the form of a power drain evidently coming from somewhere aboard and the Enterprise crew begins investigating. Meanwhile, in the reactor area, Chekov and Uhura have gained enough photons and Uhura calls for transport but the signal is very weak. At that same time, the Enterprise crew confirms the power drain and the duty officer calls the commanding officer and reports intruders aboard. Uhura finally makes contact with Scott but as power is down to minimum, he'll have to transport them out one at a time. Chekov sends Uhura first with the collector. Uhura transports out safely with the collector, but due to radiation, Chekov's beam-out fails, and as soldiers converge on the reactor area, Chekov continues to try to contact Scott but his signal fails and he is discovered and taken prisoner. Chekov is held for interrogation. Chekov kept his Starfleet ID with him which is discovered by the investigator. He asks Chekov why he is on the Enterprise and what the communicator and phaser are for. Chekov simply reiterates the truth about being a commander in Starfleet and gives his rank and serial number. The investigator and his aide see that he's obviously Russian but the main investigator says about Chekov " …of course he's a Russkie, but he's a retard or something! " While they're distracted, Chekov picks up the phaser and tries to hold the investigators saying if they don't lie on the floor he'll have to stun them. The investigator tells him to go ahead and do so. Chekov apologizes and tries, but the radiation has disabled his phaser. He attempts to escape captivity but just before he can get off the Enterprise , he falls off a ledge landing in the ships elevator shafts and is injured. The Marines who were chasing Chekov call for a corpsman.

On the Bounty Uhura is desperately searching for any sign of Chekov. Kirk comes on the bridge and asks if she's found anything and Uhura says she should never have left Chekov behind, but Kirk tells her to keep looking and that she did what was necessary. He then contacts Scott and asks for a progress report on the recrystallization. Scott says it'll be well into the next day but Kirk says that's not going to be good enough and he needs to speed it up. Scott acknowledges and mutters to Spock how Kirk is in "a wee bit of a snit." Spock agrees and offers that Kirk is a man of deep feelings and Scott wonders what else is new.

That same day, Taylor arrives at the Institute and lets herself in. She then heads back to the aquarium where she is shocked to see the whales gone. She runs back inside, horrified, only to be intercepted by Briggs who tells her that to avoid a mob scene with the press they were taken away the night before and they felt it would be easier for her. In tears and anger, Taylor slaps Briggs hard across the face and calls him " You son of a bitch! " before storming out of the Institute, getting back in her truck and speeding back to the park in hopes of finding Kirk.

Desperately seeking Kirk

" Hello Alice. Welcome to Wonderland. "

Sulu meanwhile, has the helicopter he was speaking to the pilot about earlier and is using it to transport the large pieces of plexiglass to Golden Gate Park to be installed aboard the Bounty . Just then, Taylor arrives in the park and begins yelling for Kirk, when she sees the helicopter lower itself down and then she sees a man seemingly appear waist up out of thin air. After being stunned for a brief moment, Taylor begins running toward that spot still screaming for Kirk when she bumps into something invisible. She stands and feels along the cloaked Bounty 's landing gear, screaming for Kirk still and saying she needs his help as the whales are gone. Scott notices her and yells down at Kirk that they have a problem. Kirk sees Taylor screaming for him on a monitor and then transports her aboard. When Taylor materializes in the transporter chamber Kirk tells her " Hello Alice , welcome to Wonderland . " Taylor is amazed then that what Kirk had told her before was true. Kirk shows her the whale tank and she tells him that the whales were taken the night before without her knowledge. She says that while they're in Alaska by this point, they're tagged, as she said, so they can track them. Kirk says that they can't go anywhere just yet. When Taylor wonders what kind of a ship this is, Kirk says it's a ship with a missing man. Just then Spock appears to tell Kirk full power has been restored. He then greets Gillian and welcomes her aboard and Taylor can only nod back at Spock, seeing him without the headband for the first time and his ears and eyebrows are exposed to her. Just then an upset Uhura calls Kirk and says she's found Chekov in Mercy Hospital . Chekov is going into emergency surgery and he is not expected to survive. McCoy comes up and tells Kirk he's got to be able to go to the hospital and begs Kirk not to leave Chekov in the hands of 20th century medicine. Spock comes up and tells Kirk he believes McCoy to be correct and they must help Chekov. Upon questioning from Kirk, Spock concedes that it is not the logical thing to do, but it is the Human thing to do. Kirk asks if Gillian can help them. She asks how and McCoy says they'll have to look like physicians.

Unexpected guests

In the hospital, McCoy, Kirk, and Dr. Taylor begin their search for Chekov. While McCoy walks down a hall he passes by an elderly woman who is in serious pain. He stops and asks what's wrong with her and she says it's kidney dialysis . McCoy mutters to himself about this being the Dark Ages . He reaches into his bag, gives the woman a pill and tells her to swallow it and if there's any problem for her to call him, then very kindly touches her face. She takes the pill and he walks away. Kirk and Taylor finally locate Chekov and after meeting up with McCoy, the three grab a stretcher, put Gillian on it, cover her up, and run for the elevator. They reach the next floor and when they try to go into the operating room where Chekov is in, they're stopped by hospital security. Taylor screams as if in pain and McCoy tells the police guards that the woman has " Immediate postprandial upper abdominal distention! " The guards let them in, Kirk asks McCoy what he said she had and he says cramps. Just then, McCoy steps up to the operating table before the attending surgeon can start drilling on Chekov's head. The surgeon demands to know who they are and then what sort of device McCoy is using. McCoy diagnoses Chekov's problem as tearing of the middle meningeal artery. The surgeon asks if McCoy's degree is in dentistry. McCoy gets angry and asks how the surgeon would explain a slow respiratory rate and pulse with coma and he says fundoscopic examination , which McCoy argues is useless in this case. The surgeon says the pressure can be relieved by a simple evacuation of the expanding epidural hematoma. McCoy passionately tells the surgeon that the artery must be repaired and you can't do that by drilling holes into the patient's head. He then asks the surgeon to " put away [his] butcher knives, " and let him save Chekov before it is too late. The surgeon threatens to have the new arrivals removed, but Kirk takes his phaser out and moves the surgeon and the nurses into a small room where he melts the lock. McCoy heals Chekov's injury with a cortical stimulator . When Chekov comes to, Kirk asks him his name and rank. Chekov recites his name and gives his rank after looking at Kirk as admiral.

McCoy, Kirk, and Taylor come out with Chekov on the stretcher. The guards ask how the patient is doing and Kirk says he'll make it. But the guards realize they came in with a woman, to which Kirk simply mutters " One little mistake! " The guards run in, see the surgeon and others are trapped, and are informed the patient has escaped.

"Surprise!"

Realizing their cover has been blown, the three start running the gurney down the hospital corridors with the police guards after them. They run around several corners and pass the elderly woman to whom McCoy gave the pill, who is happily telling everyone that a doctor gave her a pill and she grew a new kidney, which has all the hospital doctors and nurses stunned. They continue running and when Chekov tries to look up, Kirk puts his head back down on the gurney. They finally run into an elevator and the police officers run down the stairs intending to catch them at the next level but the four have disappeared from the hospital and have been beamed to safety while the elevator was in motion. When Kirk asks where the whales might be, Gillian says she can show them if there's a chart on board. But all Kirk wants is the radio frequency. Taylor wants to go with Kirk but Kirk says their next stop is the 23rd century but Taylor, saying she has no one there, insists on helping the whales but Kirk won't hear of it. He then asks her again for the radio frequency and Taylor tells Kirk it's 401 megahertz . Kirk thanks her for everything and then orders himself beamed up but Taylor jumps into his arms just as he's being beamed aboard.

On a whale hunt of their own

On the Bounty , Kirk and Taylor come on the bridge just as Scott calls Spock to tell him that he's ready. Sulu is taking a few moments to readjust to the Bounty 's helm console as he got used to the Huey. Kirk accuses Taylor of tricking him but Taylor says Kirk will need her. He tells Taylor to sit down and orders Sulu and Chekov to take off. The Bounty , still cloaked, lifts off from Golden Gate Park just as a couple of joggers are running by and they get blown over by the dust and wind. The Bounty lifts up into the skies above San Francisco and head toward Alaska. As power settles in and stabilizes, Kirk orders Uhura to start scanning for the whales on the frequency Gillian gave him. When they reach the proper altitude, Kirk orders full impulse power which Sulu estimates should get them to the Bering Sea in twelve minutes. Scotty reports the whale tanks are secured but this will be the first time he's ever beamed up four hundred tons before. When Kirk asks why it's that much, Scotty reminds Kirk they're having to beam aboard not just the whales, but the water around them as well. Kirk then checks with Uhura but the whales haven't been located yet.

The Bounty over the whalers

At that same time, McCoy checks on Spock who appears to be concerned. Spock says that he has tried to use the calculations he used to get them to the 20th century as a reference when calculating to return to the exact moment they left the 23rd unfortunately there are some issues with the calculations that just aren't working out. McCoy says Spock will have to take his best guess. Spock says guessing isn't in his nature and McCoy says that no one is perfect. Just then, Taylor recognizes the whales' signal and Uhura confirms. She detects another signal, which is determined to be a whaling ship. Kirk orders the Bounty into a full power descent and they arrive over the whales just in time to prevent the whaler's harpoon from hitting one of them. When the harpoon bounces off seemingly nothing the whalers are confused. Then the Bounty decloaks over the whaling ship causing the whalers to panic and turn away from the whales in terror. Scotty asks for ten seconds to redirect power from all over the ship to the transporter. Scotty then beams the whales and the surrounding water into the whale tank. The tank creaks, but holds the whales and water securely. Scotty tells Kirk they have full power and as the Bounty leaves Earth behind and enters warp, Kirk takes Taylor to see the whales. But first, he stops and asks Spock about his time calculations and because Scotty couldn't give Spock exact figures he will have to make a guess. This statement surprises Kirk, who calls it extraordinary. When he and Gillian leave, Spock thinks Kirk is confused but McCoy tells him that means Kirk feels better about Spock's guesses than he would most anyone else's facts. Spock then understands it as a compliment and endeavors to make the best guess he can.

"There be whales here!"

At the whale tank, Kirk quotes a line from "Whales Weep Not," which Taylor recognizes. Kirk then notes the irony of how in the past when men were killing the whales, they were destroying their own future. Scotty notes the whales seem happy to see Gillian and hopes she likes the tank. She calls it a miracle but Scotty says that's still to come and Kirk explains that their chances of getting home aren't great and she might have been better off staying where she belonged. Taylor says she belongs with the whales as she is a whale biologist. And suppose they do make it to the 23rd century, who there knows anything about humpback whales? Kirk admits her point there. Just then the ship shudders and Scotty reports a power fall-off. Kirk tells Gillian to stay with the whales and heads to the bridge.

Altering the trajectory

The ship is at high warp approaching the sun and Scott reports that warp 7.9 is the best he can do. Spock reports that not only can they not make breakaway speed, they might not even escape the sun's gravity so he shall try to compensate by altering their trajectory. Spock then requests thruster control which Kirk grants. At the right moment, Spock orders the thrusters fired and the Bounty again disappears behind the Sun.

Abandoning ship

Everyone wakes up again and Kirk asks if the thrusters fired. Spock reports they did and Kirk wonders where they are. Just then, he hears the drone of the probe as the Bounty begins to lose power. As the ship's systems shut down, the Bounty plunges through the Earth's atmosphere and when McCoy wonders where they might be Kirk can only tell him " Out of control and blind as a bat. " At Starfleet Command, the original transmission from Kirk to Starfleet fades. Cartwright calls for it to be restored just as the window shatters as it did before. This time Sarek points at something which is revealed to be the Bounty , and Cartwright notes it's heading right for the Golden Gate Bridge. The Bounty sails under the bridge and crash lands in San Francisco Bay . Kirk orders the hatch blown . He looks outside, sees it's the right place and now the task at hand is to get the whales out before the Bounty sinks. Kirk orders everyone to abandon ship. When he can't reach Scott, Kirk runs toward engineering after telling Spock to ensure the safety of everyone else. Kirk runs down toward the whale tank and manages to force the door open, and pulls Scott and Taylor out of the tank area which is almost completely submerged. Taylor notes the whales are trapped and if they're not freed, they'll drown. Scott says the bay doors have no power and that the explosive override is underwater. Kirk sends them out through the bridge hatch and he swims underwater to the explosive override and pulls it open, knocking the hull of the Bounty open and allowing Kirk and the whales to swim out of the ship. Kirk reaches the surface just in time and is pulled up to safety by Spock and Taylor. After a few moments the whales are seen swimming. Meanwhile, the probe keeps calling for the whales and everyone at Starfleet just watches and waits as the power completely fails.

Whale songs

Having oriented himself pointing straight downward, George begins to sing back to the probe, to which it also orients itself downward to a vertical position before replying. After a few minutes of communication with the whales the probe deactivates its scanner and the weather on Earth begins to calm. Power begins to be restored all around the planet and as the probe leaves the way it came, it passes Spacedock and power is restored aboard the station. As the skies clear over Earth, the Enterprise crew and Gillian celebrate at the Bounty 's crash site.

Vulcan overboard

Kirk pulls Taylor in the water and everyone else except Spock jumps in. Kirk gets up on the ship and manages to toss Spock in, going with him as well. The crew celebrates the end of the crisis in the water as a Starfleet shuttle heads toward them to pick them up. Having saved the Earth, George and Gracie head towards the Golden Gate Bridge for open water to explore the new world they've entered, free from the threat of Human hunters.

Standing trial

However, Kirk and crew still have to face court martial. In the Federation Council Chambers, the President calls the trial to order. Kirk, McCoy, Scott, Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura are brought in from where they were being held, only to be joined by Spock, who was sitting in the Council with his father. The president reminds Spock that he does not stand accused, but Spock intends to stand with his shipmates and the president accepts. He then lists the charges and specifications against the Enterprise crew: conspiracy (which is directed at Bones), assault on Federation officers (which is directed at all of them), theft of Federation property (the starship Enterprise ) (which is directed at Kirk, Scotty, Bones, Sulu, and Chekov), sabotage of the USS Excelsior (which is directed at Scotty), willful destruction of Federation property (again, the USS Enterprise ) (which is directed at Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov), and disobeying direct orders of the Starfleet commander (which is directed at Kirk). The president asks Kirk for his plea, and on behalf of all the officers, Kirk announces he is authorized to plead guilty. The president then says that because of "certain mitigating circumstances," though, all charges are dropped, except for one, and that charge: disobeying a superior officer, is directed solely at Admiral Kirk. The president asks Kirk if he recognizes the need for keeping discipline in any chain of command and Kirk tells the president he does. The president announces that Kirk's punishment is that he will be reduced in rank to captain, and as a consequence of that rank, he is given the duty for which he has demonstrated unswerving ability: the command of a starship. The council chamber begins to cheer until the President silences them and he then tells Kirk that he and his crew have saved Earth from its own short-sightedness and the people of Earth are forever in their debt. At that point, the council chambers breaks into cheering and applause, with people coming down to congratulate the Enterprise crew.

"See ya around the galaxy."

Kirk sees Taylor and she says how happy she is for him and thanks Kirk before starting to leave. Kirk stops her and asks where she's going. Taylor says since she's got three hundred years of catchup learning to do, she's going on board a science vessel. Kirk asks if this means goodbye, especially as one might say back in the 20th century, he doesn't even have Gillian's telephone number and asks how he'll find her. Taylor says she'll find him and kisses him goodbye. " See you around the galaxy, " she says just before departing.

Father and son

Meanwhile Spock has caught up with Sarek and as his father is planning to return to Vulcan, he wants to take his leave of Spock. Spock thanks Sarek for the effort he put out for them, Sarek says there was no effort as Spock is his son and in any case, he was very impressed with Spock's performance during the crisis. Sarek then recalls how he initially opposed Spock's entrance into Starfleet, saying that his judgment may have been incorrect. Sarek says that Spock's associates are people of good character. Spock tells Sarek they are his friends. Sarek accepts that and then asks if Spock has a message for his mother. Spock says he does, and to tell Amanda that he feels fine. He raises his hand in the Vulcan salute and tells his father to " Live long and prosper, " and Sarek reciprocates. Then Spock turns from Sarek, who starts to leave Council chambers en route to Vulcan, and Spock rejoins Kirk and they walk out of the chambers themselves.

"My friends…we've come home."

Flying through spacedock in a travel pod , following an orbit shuttle leading them, the crew heads toward their new assignment. McCoy, saying the bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe, expects they will get a freighter, while Sulu hopes for Excelsior . When Scott asks why Sulu would want "that bucket of bolts " Kirk simply tells Scott that " A ship is a ship ," to which Scott begrudgingly agrees.

" Let's see what she's got. "

From the forward window, the crew notes the Excelsior come into view, but, rather than docking with it, the travel pod continues over it revealing their true destination – a Constitution II -class starship, USS Enterprise , with the primary hull proudly displaying its Starfleet registry : NCC-1701-A. The crew beams as Kirk joyfully announces " My friends… we've come home. " As the new Enterprise departs the Spacedock, the crew takes up their familiar positions on the bridge. With eager anticipation, Sulu informs the captain that the helm is ready. As Kirk takes the center seat, he gives the order: " Let's see what she's got! " With a flash, the Enterprise engages her warp drive, ready to once again boldly go where no man has gone before.

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Behold the quintessential devil in these matters! James T. Kirk, renegade and terrorist! Not only is he responsible for the murder of a Klingon crew, or the theft of a Klingon vessel! See now the real plot and intentions. Even as this Federation was negotiating a peace treaty with us, Kirk was secretly developing the Genesis torpedo, conceived by Kirk's son and test-detonated by the Admiral himself! And the result of this awesome energy was euphemistically called the Genesis planet, a secret base from which to launch the annihilation of the Klingon people!! "

" We demand the extradition of Kirk! We demand justice! " " Klingon justice is a unique point of view, Mr. President. Genesis was perfectly named the creation of life, not death. The Klingons shed the first blood while attempting to possess its secrets. " " Vulcans are well known as the intellectual puppets of this Federation! "

" Your vessel did destroy USS Grissom . Your men did kill Kirk's son . Do you deny these events? " " We deny nothing. We have the right to preserve our race! " " Do you have the right to commit murder? "

" Mr. Ambassador, with all respect, the Council's deliberations are over. " " Then Kirk goes unpunished? " " Admiral Kirk has been charged with nine violations of Starfleet regulations. " " Starfleet regulations?! That's outrageous!! Remember this well. There shall be no peace as long as Kirk lives! "

"You pompous ass!"

" You'd think they could at least send us a ship. It's bad enough to be court-martialed and to have to spend the rest of our lives mining borite, but to have to go home in this Klingon flea trap? " " We could learn a thing or two about this flea trap. It's got a cloaking device that cost us a lot. " " I just wish we could cloak the stench! "

" Emergency channel 0130. 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 we do not understand. " " Can you protect us? " " We are launching everything we have. " " Our systems engineers are trying to deploy a makeshift solar-sail. We have high hopes that this will, if successful, generate power to keep us alive. "

" Cloaking device now available on all flight modes. " " I'm impressed! That's a lot of work for a short voyage. " " We are in an enemy wessel, sir. I did not wish to be shot down on the way to our own funeral. " " Good thinking. "

" …and Admiral, I have replaced the Klingon food packs. They were giving me a sour stomach. " " Oh, is that what that was? "

" Saavik… this is goodbye. Thank you. " " Sir, I 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. " (to Spock) " Good day, Captain Spock. May your journey be free of incident. " " Live long and prosper, Lieutenant. "

" I don't know if you've got the whole picture, but he isn't exactly working on all thrusters. " " It'll come back to him. "

" I may have carried your soul but I sure couldn't fill your shoes. " " My shoes? " " ...Forget it. "

" Come on, Spock. It's me, McCoy! You really have gone where no man has gone before! "

" You mean I have to die to discuss your insights on death? " " Forgive me, Doctor. I am receiving a number of distress calls. " " I don't doubt it! "

" There are other forms of intelligence on Earth, Doctor. Only Human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man. "

" Are you planning to take a swim? " " Off the deep end, Mister Scott. "

" You're proposing that we go back in time, find humpback whales, then bring them forward in time, drop 'em off, and hope to hell they tell this probe what to go do with itself?! " " That's the general idea. " " Well, that's crazy! " " Got a better idea? Now's the time. "

" Angels and ministers of grace, defend us. "

" May fortune favor the foolish. "

" Did you see that? " " No, and neither did you, so shut up! "

" Everybody remember where we parked! "

" Why don't you watch where you're going, you dumb-ass! " " Well, a double dumb-ass on you! "

" It's a miracle these people ever got out of the twentieth century. "

" The rest of you, break up. You look like a cadet review. "

" Weren't those a present from Doctor McCoy? " " And they will be again. That's the beauty of it. "

" I'll give you one hundred dollars. " " Is that a lot? "

" What does it mean, exact change? "

" Excuse me, sir. Can you direct me to the naval base in Alameda? It's where they keep the nuclear wessels . " (no response) " Nu-cle-ar wes-sels. "

" Ooh, I don't know if I know the answer to that. I think it's across the bay. In Alameda." " That's what I said, Alameda. I know that. " " But where is Alameda!? "

" Excuse me! Excuse me! Would you mind stopping that noise? (punk rocker turns up boombox louder) EXCUSE ME! WOULD YOU MIND STOPPING THAT DAMN NOISE?! (punk rocker flips Kirk off) "

" Your use of language has altered since we arrived, Admiral. It is currently laced with... shall we say, more colorful metaphors." " You mean the profanity. " " Yes. " " Well, that's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you unless you swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period. " " Such as? " " The collective works of Jacqueline Susann. The novels of Harold Robbins. " " Ah. The giants. "

" To hunt a species to extinction is not logical. " " Whoever said the Human race was logical? "

" They like you very much, but they are not the hell your whales. " " I … I suppose they told you that, huh? " " The hell they did. " " Right. "

" If we play our cards right, we may be able to find out when those whales are leaving. " " How will playing cards help? "

" Very little point in my trying to explain. " " Yeah, I'll buy that. What about him? " " Him? He's harmless. Back in the sixties he was part of the free speech movement at Berkeley. I think he had a little too much LDS . " " LDS? "

" I have a photographic memory. I see words. "

" Are you sure it isn't the time for a colorful metaphor? "

" You're aren't one of those guys from the military, are you, trying to teach whales to retrieve torpedoes, or some dipshit stuff like that? " " No, ma'am. No dipshit. "

" Gracie is pregnant. " (Gillian suddenly stops her truck) " Alright, who are you, and don't jerk me around anymore. I wanna know how you know that? "

" You're not exactly catching us at our best. " " That much is certain. "

" I love Italian. " (Kirk looks at Spock) " And so do you. " " Yes. "

" I find it hard to believe that I've come millions of miles! " " Thousands! Thousands! " " Thousands of miles on an invited tour of inspection! "

" Don't bury yourself in the part! "

" Hello, computer. "

" NOT NOW, MADELINE!!! "

" You realize, of course, if we give him the formula, we're altering the future. " " Why? How do we know he didn't invent the thing? "

" Are you sure you won't change your mind? " " Is there something wrong with the one I have? "

" Wait a minute! How did you know Gracie's pregnant? Nobody knows that. " " Gracie does. "

" Don't tell me. You're from outer space. " " No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space. "

" Okay, the truth. I am from, what on your calendar, would be the 23rd Century. I have come back in time to retrieve a pair of humpback whales in an attempt to... repopulate the species. " " Well, why didn't you just say so? Why all the coy disguises? "

" You play games with me, mister, and you're through! " " I am? May I go now? "

" All right, make nice. Give us the ray gun. " " I warn you, I will have to stun you. " " Go ahead. Stun me. " " I'm very sorry, but... " (Chekov uses the phaser but it doesn't work, making only a weak noise) " Must be the radiation. "

" They left last night. We didn't want a mob scene with the press; it wouldn't have been good for them. Besides, I thought it would be easier on you this way. " " You sent them away without even letting me say goodbye?! You son of a bitch!! " (slaps him hard)

" Hello, Alice. Welcome to Wonderland. "

" Is that the logical thing to do, Spock? " " No, but it is the Human thing to do. "

" Well, what's wrong with you? " " Kidney dialysis. " " "Dialysis"? What is this, the Dark Ages? (McCoy gives her a pill out of his bag) Now you swallow that. And if you have any more problems, just call me. "

" This woman has immediate post-prandial upper abdominal distension! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! " " What did you say she's got? " " Cramps. "

" Tearing of the middle meningeal artery. " " What's your degree in, dentistry? " " How do you explain slowing pulse, low respiratory rate and coma? " " Fundoscopic examination... " " Fundoscopic examination is unrevealing in these cases! " " A simple evacuation of the expanding epidural hematoma will relieve the pressure. " " Good God, man! Drilling holes in his head's not the answer! The artery must be repaired! Now put away your butcher knives and let me save this patient before it's too late!"

" We're dealing with medievalism here! Chemotherapy! Fundoscopic examinations! "

" Pavel, talk to me. Name! Rank! " " Chekov, Pavel. Rank, admiral! "

" He's gonna make it! " " He? You went in with a she! " " One little mistake. "

" Doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney! The doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney! "

" Where would the whales be by now? " " At sea. If you have a chart on board, I'll show you. " " No, no, no. All I need is the radio frequency to track them. " " What are you talking about? I'm coming with you. " " You can't. Our next stop is the twenty-third century. " " Well, I don't care! I've got nobody here. I have got to help those whales!! " " I have no time to argue with you, or even tell you how much you've meant to us. The radio frequency, please. " " The frequency's 401 megahertz. " " Thank you, for everything. Scotty, beam me up! " " Surprise! "

" Spock, where the hell's that power you promised? " " One damn minute, Admiral! "

" Guessing is not in my nature, Doctor. " " Well, nobody's perfect. "

" Admiral! There be whales here! "

" He means that he feels safer about your guesses than most other people's facts. "

" They say the sea is cold but the sea contains the hottest blood of all. "

" My God, Jim. Where are we? " Out of control and blind as a bat."

" Captain Spock, you do not stand accused. " " Mr. President, I stand with my shipmates. "

" The charges and specifications are: conspiracy, assault on Federation officers, theft of Federation property, namely the starship Enterprise , sabotage of the USS Excelsior , willful destruction of Federation property, specifically the aforementioned USS Enterprise , and finally, disobeying the direct orders of the Starfleet Commander. Admiral Kirk, how do you plead? " " On behalf of all of us, Mr. President, I'm authorized to plead guilty. " " So entered. Because of certain mitigating circumstances, all charges but one are summarily dismissed. The remaining charge, disobeying the orders of a superior officer, is directed solely at Admiral Kirk. "

" James T. Kirk, it is the judgment of this council that you be reduced in rank to Captain, and that as a consequence of your new rank, you be given the responsibility for which you have repeatedly demonstrated unswerving ability: the command of a starship. "

" I'm so happy for you I can't tell you! Thank you so much. " " Wait a minute! Where are you going? " " You're going to your ship, I'm going to mine. Science vessel. I've got 300 years of catch-up learning to do. " " You mean, this is goodbye? " " Why does it have to be goodbye? " " Well... like they say in your century, I don't even have your telephone number. (they laugh) How will I find you? " " Don't worry. I'll find you. (kisses Kirk) See you around the galaxy. "

" I am returning to Vulcan within the hour. I would like to take my leave of you. " " It was most kind of you to make this effort. " " It was no effort. You are my son. Besides, I am most impressed with your performance in this crisis. " " Most kind. " " As I recall, I opposed your enlistment in Starfleet. It is possible that judgment was incorrect. Your associates are people of good character. " " They are my friends. " " Yes, of course. Do you have a message for your mother? " " Yes. Tell her... I feel fine. "

" The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe. We'll get a freighter. " " With all due respect, Doctor, I'm counting on Excelsior . " "Excelsior? Why in God's name would you want that bucket of bolts? " A ship is a ship, Mr. Scott. " " Whatever you say, Sir. Thy will be done. "

" My friends. We've come home. "

" All right, Mr. Sulu, let's see what she's got. "

Background information [ ]

The dedication displayed at the beginning of the film

Australian poster for The Voyage Home

• The film is dedicated " to the men and women of the spaceship Challenger ", which exploded shortly after liftoff on 28 January 1986 , almost ten months before the release of Star Trek IV .
• Prior to the release of the 2009 film Star Trek (which as of October, 2009, grossed over $384.9 million), The Voyage Home was the highest-grossing Star Trek film, making $109.7 million in the United States. Due to the success of this film, Paramount decided to make the second Star Trek TV series a reality (after the unsuccessful attempt of Star Trek: Phase II ). That series eventually became Star Trek: The Next Generation , which premiered the next fall. The first US VHS tape release of the movie contained a small promo clip for The Next Generation , briefly introducing the new Enterprise and characters.
• Outside of North America, the film's title was changed to The Voyage Home: Star Trek IV (see UK trailer below), and references to the Star Trek brand were consciously avoided. This was done largely because Star Trek III: The Search for Spock had suffered badly from competition with Ghostbusters outside of North America and only grossed just over ten million dollars. A special prologue (see Trivia section below), in the form of a captain's log was created to detail the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock to aid newcomers, narrated by William Shatner himself. [1] (X) While the tactic was somewhat successful, the rest-of-the-world gross of around $24 million was still less than a fifth of the film's overall total, and so Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was marketed as normal worldwide ( Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was not theatrically released in most countries). Although the early VHS releases also carried the inverted title, when the film was eventually released on DVD, its title reverted to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home worldwide.
• The Voyage Home was released in the United Kingdom on 10 April 1987 . It launched at the top of the box office and stayed there for two weeks. It earned £2,697,776 overall. [2]
• The Voyage Home is ranked #2 out of the #11 Star Trek-based films according to Box Office Mojo, not adjusting for inflation, which makes it the most successful film until the 2009's Star Trek . [3]

Creation and production [ ]

• This film marked the start of Michael Okuda 's nineteen year relationship with the Star Trek franchise, both movies and television. For this film, he designed the computer displays as well as introducing the "touch screen" computer consoles, seen in the rest of the Star Trek films and television shows (except for Star Trek: Enterprise ).
• According to several issues of the DC Star Trek comics letters page, the film was originally scheduled for release in the summer of 1986, but was delayed due to William Shatner still filming episodes of TJ Hooker and they had to wait until its shooting season was completed before Shatner could join the project.
• The letters page of at least one issue (26) of the DC Star Trek comic also refers to the film by its apparent working title, Star Trek IV: The Adventure Continues .
• The character of Dr. Taylor was originally a male character who was a wacky college professor who was a " UFO nut," and, for added humor to the lighthearted script, actor Eddie Murphy was offered the role. Mike Okuda 's DVD text commentary, as well as William Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories , indicate that Murphy, as a fan of Star Trek, had approached Nimoy and Bennett about a role in the film, but later he decided to appear in The Golden Child instead (a decision he admits later was a big mistake), and Catherine Hicks won the rewritten and revised role. Nicholas Meyer later stated that when he came in to write the 20th century section of the film, he realized the earlier drafts were written with Murphy in mind.
• An early draft of the script had Sulu meeting a young child on the streets of San Francisco who was his distant ancestor . According to William Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories , the scene was an idea pitched to Harve Bennett by George Takei, who was delighted when he discovered the scene was to be shot. However, when it came time to film the scene, the child they hired to play the role of Sulu's great-great-great grandfather was not a professional actor, and his mother was on set, causing the child to be extremely nervous. Consequently, they couldn't get anything done with the boy and eventually they had to move on. The scene was scrapped, much to the heartbreak of Takei. The scene survives in Vonda McIntyre 's novelization . In the novel, while Sulu, McCoy and Scotty are walking the streets of San Francisco, a young Japanese boy walks up to Sulu, thinking him a relative and begins speaking to Sulu in Japanese and Sulu would find out the boy's name was Akira Sulu. After the boy leaves, McCoy asks who that was and Sulu tells him that the boy was in fact, his great-great-great grandfather.
• Early drafts of the script had Saavik remaining on Vulcan due to her being pregnant with Spock's child, following the events of the previous movie when young Spock went through pon farr as he aged rapidly, implying that he had sex with Saavik on the Genesis Planet .
• The scene where Kirk says "LDS" instead of "LSD" originally called for Gillian Taylor to ask if he was dyslexic on top of everything else.
• Most of the shots of the humpback whales were taken using four-foot long animatronics models. Four such models were created, and were so realistic that after release of the film, US fishing authorities publicly criticized the film makers for getting too close to whales in the wild. The filmmakers reportedly said that they enjoyed telling those same authorities that except for the live shots toward the end of the film, the whale scenes weren't real. The scenes involving these whales were shot in a swimming pool in a Los Angeles area high school. A large animatronic tail was also created, for the scene on the sinking Bird-of-Prey, filmed on the Paramount car park, which was flooded for the shoot. The same spot was previously seen as a part of planet Vulcan in Star Trek: The Motion Picture . The shot of the whales swimming past the Golden Gate Bridge was filmed on location, and nearly ended in disaster when a cable got snagged on a nuclear submarine and the whales were towed out to sea.

The crew of the USS Enterprise in San Francisco, 1986

• Some of the Bird-of-Prey footage is reused from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock .
• A shot of the Bird-of-Prey heading to the Sun at warp speed was reused, with added disruptor fire in TNG : " Redemption II ".
• The aircraft carrier sequences were actually filmed aboard the conventionally-powered Forrestal -class carrier USS Ranger (CV 61) . Ranger can be distinguished from Enterprise by her longer rectangular superstructure (barely visible behind the hair of Nichelle Nichols ) and different arrangement of aircraft elevators. Enterprise was out at sea at the time and unavailable for filming. Even if available, in 1986, the engineering spaces of the nuclear carriers were deeply classified and filming a movie in them would have been impossible. All Enterprise sailors and marines were played by Ranger personnel (in certain scenes, freeze-frame reveals sailors wearing Ranger ball caps rather than Enterprise ones).
• Dr. Taylor orders Michelob beer over dinner, one of the few instances where an actual product is named in Star Trek . While the beer's label was never shown, another company managed to have a rare Trek moment of product placement . The computer used by Scotty at the Plexicorp factory is clearly a period-appropriate Macintosh Plus , and Apple Computer Company – as it was then known – receives a credit at the end of the film. Pacific Bell advertising is also prominently visible. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier offers one of the few other instances of product placement in the franchise's history, when Kirk, Spock and McCoy go camping wearing Levi's jeans. Another instance of this was in the opening sequence of Star Trek Generations , when a bottle of Dom Perignon was smashed on the hull of the Enterprise -B at the ship's christening. In Star Trek , a young Kirk uses an integrated Nokia mobile car phone, while Uhura is seen ordering Budweisers in an Iowa bar .
• The Voyage Home is the first Star Trek production to be directed by a member of the main cast. While Leonard Nimoy had also directed the previous film, he was not a member of the main cast, only appearing at the end.

Continuity [ ]

• This film establishes that Hikaru Sulu was born in San Francisco.
• This marks Majel Barrett 's final performance as Christine Chapel .
• The slingshot effect used by the Bounty to travel into the past was previously used in " Tomorrow is Yesterday " and " Assignment: Earth ". Kirk directly references these events when he says " We've done it before ", referring to the slingshot maneuver. In Assignment: Earth and this movie, the Enterprise travels back exactly three hundred years, a fact perhaps explained by Spock's comment that he had to program some of the variables from memory.
• The film marks the last on-screen appearance of a Starfleet commodore , seen as a non-speaking extra in the Federation Council chambers, until the Star Trek: Enterprise episode " First Flight ". It remained the chronologically-latest sighting of the rank in-universe prior to the appearance of Commodore Oh in Star Trek: Picard .
• The city of San Francisco would be visited by time-traveling Star Trek characters again, in the episodes TNG : " Time's Arrow " and TNG : " Time's Arrow, Part II ", and DS9 : " Past Tense, Part I " and DS9 : " Past Tense, Part II ".
• Brock Peters, who plays Admiral Cartwright in this film (and later in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country ), also played the father of Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .
• This film establishes that Kirk is from Iowa. However, Kirk doesn't specifically say he was born in Iowa but was from there. According to Roberto Orci , one of the writers of Star Trek , the USS Kelvin was headed to Earth where James T. Kirk was eventually going to be born in Iowa and not on the Kelvin or Medical shuttle 37 in the alternate reality created by the Narada 's arrival in 2233 .
• During the final courtroom scene, one shot of the crew filing in has the entire main TOS cast in it: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu are entering the room, and Rand and Chapel are visible in the audience behind them. This is the only shot in the entire franchise in which all of these characters are on screen at the same time.
• A copy of the San Francisco Register seen in the film dates the 20th century part of the film to Thursday, 18 December , 1986 . This is consistent with marketing for the film, which used the phrase "Stardate: 1986". Leonard Nimoy, in an interview about the film's release on "Good Morning America" in November 1986, mentions that the crew journeys back in time "300 years to now," which strongly suggests 1986 as the destination year and, perhaps less strongly, suggests the crew's own time is 2286.
• The headlines and text in the newspaper are fictional, and can't be straightforwardly linked to real events. Notably, however, one headline mentions that a "Geneva summit [is] in doubt". This is in the context of "nuclear arms talks". Two Geneva summits have been held between the US and other nuclear powers; one in 1955 and one in 1985.
• Kirk states in his Captain's log near the opening of the film that he and his crew are in "our third month of our Vulcan exile", following the final events of Star Trek III . The date of the events of Star Trek III however are not entirely clear . Upon traveling to the 23rd century , Gillian mentions that she has "three hundred years of catch-up learning to do" after being transported to the future, though may have been casually approximating the time difference. StarTrek.com , Star Trek Chronology and Star Trek Encyclopedia  (3rd ed., p. 691) use this the line from Gillian to date the film to 2286. Memory Alpha also uses this year.
• Kirk makes a reference to the HMS Bounty mutiny having occurred five hundred years ago (from his own time). Since that event took place in 1789, it suggests his own time is 2289, though he, too, may have been casually approximating.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium , used as the setting for the Cetacean Institute . The top picture shows how the aquarium looks in real life, and the bottom is how it was adapted for the film

• The lighted table in Starfleet Command eventually became the famous "pool table" located in main engineering of the USS Enterprise -D .
• The USS Saratoga seen in early scenes was actually a slightly modified shooting model of the USS Reliant from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .
• The bridge set for the aforementioned USS Saratoga was a simple redress set of the bridge of the Grissom from Star Trek III (which itself was a redress of the Enterprise bridge from the first three films). The camera angles used for scenes aboard the Saratoga do not make clear whether modifications seen to the bridge set at the end of the film had yet been made. The shot of the Captain from the Yorktown , which sent a transmission to Starfleet HQ, was also filmed on this set.
• The Bridge of the HMS Bounty was different from its appearance in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock .
• This film has a sense of historical irony regarding ship names. The film depicts the USS Saratoga and mentions the USS Yorktown (which Roddenberry claimed became the Enterprise -A) while featuring the aircraft carrier Enterprise (which was actually portrayed by the real life USS Ranger ). During the period before World War II, the aircraft carriers USS Enterprise , USS Saratoga , USS Yorktown , and USS Ranger , were four of the seven fleet carriers in United States Navy service. The other three were Saratoga 's sister-ship, Lexington , the unique Wasp , and Enterprise 's sister, USS Hornet . All seven of these ships served in the Pacific. Only Enterprise, Ranger, and Saratoga survived the conflict, and were decommissioned shortly after its conclusion.
• The clothes worn by Leonard Nimoy as Spock during his swim in the whale tank were auctioned off in the It's A Wrap! sale and auction . [5]
• During Spock's retraining, an original configuration Constitution -class ship appears on the monitor.
• The whaling ship used in the film was a World War II minesweeper called Golden Gate . [6]
• The whale hunters speak Finnish , even though the script called for a crew of famous humpback hunters like the Norwegians, Icelanders or Russians to be used. [7] Finland has never had any sort of whale hunting industry. However, Norway, a prominent whaling country, has a minority of Kvens, who speak a dialect of the Finnish language.
• Director Nimoy mentioned in the film's DVD commentary that in the scene where Gillian Taylor slaps Bob Briggs for letting the whales leave without letting her say goodbye to them that Catherine Hicks really did slap Scott DeVenney rather hard, and that while DeVenney was neither expecting it nor very happy about it, he took it and was a good sport about it later.
• Since the producers decided not to use subtitles for the Finnish dialogue or the probe/whale song sequence (although Paramount at one point did want subtitles for the film's climax), this is the only film of the first six Star Trek movies to not have any subtitles – not even to establish location or timeframe.
• Due to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock being released direct-to-video in some European and South American territories, a prologue recapping the events of The Search for Spock , narrated by Shatner, was added to release prints of this film in the territories listed above. The UK home video masters were also used for the Australian video release. Some of these releases omitted the Challenger dedication in order to make room for this prologue, but some releases kept both the prologue and the dedication.
• Though he had been distinctly unimpressed by Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , US President Ronald Reagan viewed this film, at the White House , on 20 December 1986 . ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 160 , p. 53)
• Several costumes, props, and items from this movie were sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay, including a puppet which stood in as an alien ambassador. [8]
• The Voyage Home and Star Trek Beyond are the only two Star Trek films to not feature a starship Enterprise as the primary setting of the film. In both cases, it is due to the destruction of the Enterprise , and its replacement, the Enterprise -A, is seen at the end of the film.
• The Saratoga is popularly assumed to have been harmlessly disabled by the probe even though it's not seen again. And it is generally surmised that the probe just made a big mess on Earth for everyone to clean up. The overall light, comedic nature of this film tends to lead credence to the widely popularized sentiment of Star Trek IV being the only film in the series in which absolutely no one dies.
• This is the only film where none of Star Trek 's signature weapons (phasers, photons, and disruptors) are fired at a ship or individual with the intent to neutralize, kill or destroy. Only two attempts at using a handheld weapon are made; once by Chekov aboard the Enterprise , which fails, and once by Kirk, in which he melts the lock on the door to the room where the surgical staff is confined adjunct to Chekov's operating room at Mercy Hospital.
• Due to the events of the movie, DC Comics' first set of comics had to change course with their stories to accommodate the events of the movie. To this end, they had Spock's mind ravaged by a virus, forcing Kirk and his crew to take the HMS Bounty , which was docked within the Excelsior , and return to Vulcan. Thus, Kirk and his crew were fugitives again, this time for abandoning the Excelsior .
• This is the last Star Trek film to use the 1975-1986 Paramount Pictures logo.
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home 's network television premiere occurred on the March 4, 1990 edition of The ABC Sunday Night Movie , the fourth consecutive and last such TV broadcast debut of a Star Trek film on the American Broadcasting Company until the 1999 TV premiere of 1996's Star Trek: First Contact .
• For the occasion of the film's 35th anniversary , Fathom Events organized a limited theatrical release on 19 and 22 August 2021 in select North American cities of the 4K Ultra HD version of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , whose remastering to such had just been completed. Aside from the film itself, the 2009 The Three Picture Saga special feature was also shown. [9] [10] [11]

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• US Betamax release: 1987

Merchandise gallery [ ]

Awards and honors [ ]

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home received the following awards and honors.

Apocrypha [ ]

• The novel The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One established that Chekov's Klingon phaser and communicator, which he threw at the investigators on the Enterprise in order to make his escape attempt, were sent to Area 51 and then subsequently recovered by Roberta Lincoln (who was sent by Gary Seven ) before they could be analyzed and potentially alter history.
• In the novelization of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , during the court martial, when the president tells Spock that he's not accused, Spock tells the president " Mr. President, I stand with my shipmates. Their fate shall be mine. "
• The novelization also expands on McCoy and Scotty's discussion on whether or not they should give Dr. Nichols the formula for transparent aluminum. In the novel, Scotty knows for certain that Nichols did indeed invent transparent aluminum and so it is OK for them to give him the formula and it may well be essential that they do so .
• The unfilmed scene between Sulu and his great-great-great grandfather (see above) was also featured in the novelization .
• In the novelization Kirk recaps the tragic events of " The City on the Edge of Forever " while discussing a possible time travel with Spock and McCoy.
• After her initial shock, Gillian begins to like the transporter and is actually quite surprised when she finds out Doctor McCoy dislikes and distrusts it.

Links and references [ ]

Credits [ ], opening credits [ ].

• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• James Doohan
• George Takei
• Walter Koenig
• Nichelle Nichols
• Mark Lenard as Sarek
• Jane Wyatt as Amanda
• Majel Barrett as Commander Chapel
• Robert Ellenstein as the Council President
• John Schuck as the Klingon Ambassador
• Brock Peters as Admiral Cartwright
• Robin Curtis as Lt. Saavik
• Catherine Hicks as Gillian
• Gene Roddenberry
• Leonard Rosenman
• Peter E. Berger
• Jack T. Collis
• Don Peterman , ASC
• Ralph Winter
• Leonard Nimoy & Harve Bennett
• Steve Meerson & Peter Krikes
• Harve Bennett & Nicholas Meyer
• Harve Bennett

Closing credits [ ]

• Kirk – William Shatner
• Spock – Leonard Nimoy
• McCoy – DeForest Kelley
• Scotty – James Doohan
• Sulu – George Takei
• Chekov – Walter Koenig
• Uhura – Nichelle Nichols
• Amanda – Jane Wyatt
• Gillian – Catherine Hicks
• Sarek – Mark Lenard
• Lt. Saavik – Robin Curtis
• Federation Council President – Robert Ellenstein
• Klingon Ambassador – John Schuck
• Admiral Cartwright – Brock Peters
• Starfleet Communications Officer – Michael Snyder
• Starfleet Display Officer – Michael Berryman
• Saratoga Science Officer – Mike Brislane
• Commander Rand – Grace Lee Whitney
• Alien Communications Officer – Jane Wiedlin
• Starship Captain – Vijay Amritraj
• Commander Chapel – Majel Barrett
• Saratoga Helmsman – Nick Ramus
• Controller #1 – Thaddeus Golas
• Controller #2 – Martin Pistone
• Bob Briggs – Scott DeVenney
• Lady in Tour – Viola Stimpson
• 1st Garbageman – Phil Rubenstein
• 2nd Garbageman – John Miranda
• Antique Store Owner – Joe Knowland
• Waiter – Bob Sarlatte
• Cafe Owner – Everett Lee
• Joe – Richard Harder ( deleted scene )
• Nichols – Alex Henteloff
• Pilot – Tony Edwards
• Elderly Patient – Eve Smith
• Intern #1 – Tom Mustin
• Intern #2 – Greg Karas
• Young Doctor – Raymond Singer
• Doctor #1 – David Ellenstein
• Doctor #2 – Judy Levitt
• Usher – Theresa E. Victor
• Jogger – James Menges
• Punk on Bus – Kirk Thatcher
• FBI Agent – Jeff Lester
• Shore Patrolman – Joe Lando
• CDO – Newell Tarrant
• Mike Timoney ( Electronics Technician #1 )
• Jeffrey Martin ( Electronics Technician #2 )
• Marine Sergeant – 1st Sgt Joseph Naradzay , USMC
• Marine Lieutenant – 1st Lt Donald W. Zautcke , USMC
• R.A. Rondell
• Gregory Barnett (also Starfleet technician )
• Steve M. Davison
• Clifford T. Fleming (Stunt helicopter pilot)
• Eddie Hice ( Mercy Hospital patient )
• Bennie E. Moore, Jr. ( Starfleet technician )
• Charles Picerni, Jr.
• Sharon Schaffer ( Mercy Hospital nurse )
• Spike Silver ( Stunt double for Walter Koenig )
• Patrick Kehoe
• Douglas E. Wise
• Frank Capra III
• Ken Ralston
• Brooke Breton
• Kirk Thatcher
• Amanda Mackey
• Bill Shepard
• Keith Peterman
• Kenneth Nishino
• Jay Peterman
• Gene S. Cantamessa , CAS
• Steven G. Cantamessa
• Mark Jennings
• Michael Lantieri
• Clay Pinney
• Brian Tipton
• Don Elliott
• Robert Spurlock
• Robert Fletcher
• Eric Harrison
• Joseph Markham
• Dan Bronson
• Mary Etta Lang
• James L. McCoy
• Silvia Abascal
• Carol O'Connell
• Monique DeSart
• Lily LaCava
• Kal Manning
• Lloyd Gowdy
• Frank McKane
• Calvin Sterry
• Waverly Smothers
• Mike Brooker
• Richard Dow
• Ron Greenwood
• Bart Susman
• Charles Sertin
• Dick Bayard
• John H. Matheson
• Ed Charnock
• Jerry Gadette
• Joe Hubbard
• James Bayliss
• Richard Berger
• Michael Mann
• Michael Meehan
• Stu Statterfield
• Ray McLaughlin
• Andrew Lipshultz
• Bruce Birmelin
• George Villaseñor
• Thomas Bryant
• Reel People, Inc.
• Harry Moreau
• Mark Mangini
• David Stone , MPSE
• Michael J. Benavente
• Warren Hamilton , MPSE
• Stephen Flick , MPSE
• John Pospisil
• Alan Howarth
• George Budd
• Solange Schwalbe
• Tim Mangini
• Dan O'Connell
• Ellen Heuer
• Destiny Borden
• Christopher Flick
• Doug Hemphill
• Else Blangsted
• David Marshall
• Leonard Rosenman and The Yellowjackets
• Ralph Ferraro
• Record Plant Scoring
• Terry Porter
• Dave Hudson
• Mel Metcalfe
• Jack Cooperman , ASC
• Gina Neilson
• Robert Cecil Thorson
• John R. Craig
• Joe Adamson
• Barbara Harris
• Sylvia Rubinstein
• Brigette Roux-Lough
• Rebeca R. Brookshire
• Susan Sackett
• Susan Smith
• Kevin F. Barry
• Industrial Light & Magic , Marin County, CA
• Ralph Gordon
• Mike Gleason
• Chris Evans
• Ellen Lichtwardt
• Warren Franklin
• Erik Jensen
• Selwyn Eddy III
• John V. Fante
• Peter Daulton
• Toby Heindel
• Pat Sweeney
• Ray Gilberti
• Pete Kozachic
• Marty Rosenberg
• Jim Hagedorn
• Bruce Vecchitto
• Lori J. Nelson
• Tim Geideman
• Todd Heindel
• Rick Anderson
• Tony Hudson
• Mark Miller
• Pete Romano
• Craig Barron
• Frank Ordaz
• Caroleen Green
• Randy Johnson
• Eric Christensen
• Bruce Walters
• Ellen Ferguson
• Ralph McQuarrie
• Bob Finley, Jr.
• Brad Jerrell
• Mike Olague
• ILM Computer Graphics
• Craig Caton
• Allen Feuerstein
• Shannon Shea
• Nancy Nimoy
• Richard Hollander
• Mark Peterson
• Michael Okuda
• Hal Landaker
• Alan Landaker
• Donald Hansard, Sr.
• Music by Alexander Courage
• Craig Huxley
• Written by Kirk Thatcher
• Arranged by Mark Mangini
• Performed by Edge of Etiquette
• MCA Records and Tapes
• Monterey Bay Aquarium , Monterey, California
• Humpback Whale Sounds, Courtesy of Roger Payne and New York Zoological Society
• Mark Ferrari and Debbie Glockner-Ferrari of the Humpback Whale Fund
• Howard Weinstein
• Apple Computer Company
• Roy Danchick
• RAdm Charles Reynolds McGrail
• Capt. Walter Davis
• Lt. Sandra Stairs
• Lt. Lee Saunders
• Mr. John Horton
• Marine Detachment, USS Ranger
• US Coast Guard , Long Beach
• US Coast Guard, San Francisco
• Westheimer Company
• Todd-AO/Glen Glenn Studios
• Technicolor
• Industrial Light & Magic

Uncredited [ ]

Performers [ ].

• Joe Adamson as Mercy Hospital doctor
• Cynthia Brian as street passerby
• Michelle Chateau as nun
• Ron Cragg as Federation Council guard
• Jay Crimp as Vulcan electrician
• Monique DeSart as Madelaine
• Michael DiMente as Deltan ambassador
• Paul Giebner as Enterprise (CVN-65) sailor
• Brooks Gulledge as Enterprise (CVN-65) sailor
• Christine Hansen as nun
• Robert Jack as Enterprise (CVN-65) sailor
• Stephen Liska as Torg (archive footage)
• Joel Marston as Starfleet Admiral
• Genevieve Martin as Vulcan noblewoman
• Mary Mascari as Mercy Hospital patient
• Nanci Meek as mental patient
• Ralph Moratz as Mercy Hospital visitor
• Leonard Nimoy as Mercy Hospital visitor
• Ken Peacock as Enterprise (CVN-65) sailor
• Trainee Enterprise crewmember
• Layla Sarakalo as street passerby
• Louise Schulze as Female cafe employee
• Melanie Shatner as Female jogger
• Madge Sinclair as Saratoga captain
• Teresa E. Victor as Aamaarazan councilor
• Philip Weyland as tourist
• Rhoda Williams as alien vocals
• Aamaarazan councilor
• Andorian admiral
• Andorian commodore
• Arcadian delegate
• Arcadian councilors
• Ariolo councilor
• Caitian officer (brown)
• Caitian officer (black)
• Civilian FBI agent
• Three Deltan ambassadors
• Mercy Hospital nurse 1
• Mercy Hospital nurse 2
• Mercy Hospital OP nurse 1
• Mercy Hospital OP nurse 2
• Mercy Hospital PA announcer
• Eleven Mercy Hospital staffers
• Nine Mercy Hospital visitors
• Five street passersby
• Aquarium tourists
• Bus passengers
• Plexicorp workers
• Restaurant cooks
• Restaurant patrons
• Street passersby
• Whale hunters
• Kasheeta councilor
• Purple-skinned alien councilor
• SFPD officer
• Saratoga navigator
• Saratoga bridge crewman and woman
• Tellarite dignitaries
• Vulcan Federation councilor 1
• Vulcan Federation councilor 2
• Vulcan female delegate
• Vulcan delegate
• Xelatian councilors
• Animatronic puppet – Bzzit Khaht councilor

Stunt performers [ ]

• Vince Cadiente
• R.A. Rondell as taxi driver
• Unknown stunt performers as two Starfleet technicians

Production staff [ ]

• Gregory Barnett – Assistant Stunt Coordinator
• Jim Bissell – Technical Advisor: Opening Sequence
• Tom Boyd – Musician: Oboe
• Al Fleming – Makeup Artist
• Pieter Folkens – Advisor, Designer, and Sculptor: Humpback whales mechanics
• Casey Simpson – Lighting Technician
• Rick Stratton – Makeup Artist

References [ ]

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blue whale ; BMR ; BMW 2002 ; bolt ; " Bones "; borite ; Bounty , HMS ; bowhead whale ; brain ; braking thruster ; breadstick ; breakaway speed ; brochure ; bucket ; Buick LeSabre ; Buick Riviera ; bumper sticker ; bureaucratic ; " bury yourself in the part "; bus ; bus stop ; Busch Gardens ; bush ; buster ; butcher knife ; button badge ; Bzzit Khaht ; Cab Co. ; cable car ; cadet review ; Caitian ; calendar ; calf ; California ; California State Assembly ; camera ; candy striper ; cannula ; Canon ; Captain Video ; captivity ; cargo bay ; cargo bay door ; Carlton ; case ; Cernan, Eugene ; cetacean ; cetacean biologist ( whale biologist ); Cetacean Institute ; chain of command ; chance ; charge ; chemotherapy ; Chevrolet ; Chevrolet C 30 Step Van ; Chevrolet Caprice Classic ; Chevrolet Chevette ; Chevrolet Townsman ; Chevrolet truck ; China ; choice ; CIC ; City Council ; Chrysler LeBaron ; classified ; climax ; cloaking device ; closing speed ; cloud ; cloud cover ; clue ; Coca-Cola ; Code Red ; coefficient ; coffee ; coffeemaker ; coin operated laundry ; Coit Tower ; collector ; colorful metaphor ( profanity ); Columbus Avenue ; coma ; combat information center ( CIC ); command duty officer ; commanding officer ( commander ); common sense ; communicator ; comm channel ; communications ; communications officer ; communications system ; compassion ; compliment ; computation ; computer ; comrade ; conclusion ; condition report ; conspiracy ; constant ; Constitution IIi -class ( unnamed 1 and 2 ); contact ; coordinates ; Copernicus , USS ; court martial ; contact ; corpsman ; country ; cops ; crab ; cramps ; creature ; credit card ; crisis ; critical condition ; crop top ; Crown ; crutch ; crystalline restructure ; cubic foot ; culture ; custom ; damage ; damage control ; damage report ; Dark Ages ; data ; Datsun ; Datsun 510 ; Datsun Truck ; day ; " dead in the water "; death ; degree (academic); degree (angle); deliberation ; demotion ; density ; dentistry ; departure ; deposition ; destruction ; device ; devil ; DeSoto Cab ; dialysis ; Diet Coke ; Diet Pepsi ; dilithium chamber ; dilithium crystal ; dilithium sequencer ; dinner ; discipline ; distance ; distress call ; Doctor ( physician ); Dodge 600 ; Dodge Lancer ; dollar ; Do not enter sign ; door ; Earth ; Edinburgh ; Efrosian ; elapsed time ; electrical power ; electronics technician ; Embarcadero ; emergency ; emergency channel ; emergency channel 0130 ; emergency light ; emergency reserve ; emergency surgery ; emergency system ; emergency thruster ; enemy ; energy ; energy reserve ; engineering ; Enterprise , USS (CVN-65); Enterprise , USS (NCC-1701); Enterprise , USS (NCC-1701-A); epidural hematoma ; escape hatch ; escape route ; estimated time of arrival (ETA); estimating ; Excelsior , USS ; exile ; exit sign ; explosive override ; extinction ; extradition ; extraterrestrial ; E-Z Scrub ; fact ; Fairground Hotel ; false killer whale ; farm boy ; Federal Bureau of Investigation ; Federation ; Federation Council ; Federation President ; feeling ; Feinberg's Loan and Pawn ; Fiat 124 Sport Spider ; Fiat X1/9 ; figure ; " fill your shoes "; fin whale ; finger, the ; Finnish ; fire alarm ; fireman ; fish ; fishing ; " fish story "; Fisherman's Wharf ; flea trap ; floor ; floor plan ; Flyer Industries E800 ; fog ; foot ; Ford Escort ; forklift ; formula ; frame of reference ; Free Speech Movement ; freighter ; frequency ; Friar Tuck ; friend ; friendship ; fuel component ; fundascopic examination ; funeral ; fusion era ; gangway ; garbage can ; garbage truck ; garbageman's significant other ; Genesis ; Genesis Device ; Genesis Torpedo ; Geneva ; genocide ; George and Gracie ; ghetto blaster ; giraffe ; glasses ; GM New Look ; God ; " God damn "; Gold Dust ; Golden Gate Bridge ; Golden Gate Park ; Gottlieb ; Gramalkin ; gravity ; gray whale ; Great Northern Railway ; Grissom , USS ; ground cushion ; Grumman LLV ; guest ; guidance system ; guide ; guilt ; gumball machine ; gums ; gun ; habit ; Hamlet ; Handi-Wrap II ; hangar deck ; harm ; harpoon ; harpoon gun ; hatch ; hate ; head ; headline ; heat shield ; helicopter ; hello ; high school ; " hit the deck "; home ; Honda Accord ; Honda Civic ; horoscope ; hostility ; hospital bracelet ; hospital gown ; hour ; Huey 204 ; Human ; humpback whale ; hundred ; hunting ; Hyster ; " I Hate You "; ice cream sandwich ; idea ; identification card ; " If we play our cards right "; image therapy ; impulse power ; inch ; infrared ; insight ; intelligence ; intention ; International Harvester Scout ; intruder ; Iowa ; irony ; Italian food ; job ; jogger ; joke ; judgment ; judo ; Juneau ; Junior Mints ; justice ; juxtapose ; Karmann Ghia ; Kasheeta ; katra ; Kearny Street ; kelp forest ; keyboard ; kilometer ; kidney ; kidney pill ; killer whale ; Klingon ; Klingon crew ; Klingon food pack ; Klingon language ; Klingon vessels lost to Whale Probe ; Knott's Berry Farm ; knowledge ; " kook "; L.A. 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ray gun ; red alert ; reentry ; reference ; renegade ; rescue ; reserve bank ; reserve power ; respiratory rate ; result ; " rich beyond the dreams of avarice "; right ; Robbins, Harold ; Robin Hood ; " Roger "; room ; Russian language ; Russkie ; rust bucket ; sabotage ; St. Paul Hotel ; salinity ; Saloon, The ; Sam ; San Diego Zoo ; San Francisco ; San Francisco Bay ; San Francisco City Hall ; San Francisco Chronicle ; San Francisco Department of Sanitation ; San Francisco Ferry Building ; San Francisco Municipal Railway ; San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge ; San Francisco Police Department ; San Francisco Register ; Saran Wrap ; Saratoga , USS ; Sausalito ; scene ; Scots language ; screen ; scrubs ; Seaboard Air Line Railroad ; seal ; sea otter ; seat ; seawater ; SeaWorld ; secret ; Sector 5 ; security corridor ; service number ; Shepard , USS ; shield ; shipmate ; shoes ; short-sightedness ; shrimp ; shorts ; side effect ; signal ; silence ; singing ; slaughter ; slingshot effect ; 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" wee "; Weintraub ; Wendy's ; west ; West Coast ; whale ; whale hunter ; whale song ; " Whales Weep Not! "; whale tank ; whaling ; whaling ship ; whiteboard ; White Rose ; White GMC Xpeditor ; Winchell's Donut House ; Winchester Model 1200 ; Wonderful World of Whales, The ; Wonderland ; word ; year ; yellow alert ; Yellow Pages ; Yerba Buena Island ; Yorktown , USS ; Yorktown chief engineer ; zebra ; Zober, Sandi

Other references [ ]

Memory test: 1987 ; anti-graviton ; anti-neutron ; bioengineering ; Cambridge ; carrot ; checkmate ; Constitution -class ; electron configuration ; gadolinium ; Kiri-kin-tha ; Kiri-kin-tha's First Law of Metaphysics ; Klendth ; Klingon mummification glyph ; knight ; Loonkerian outpost ; New York Times ; magazine ; magnetic envelope ; Massachusetts ; matron ; metaphysics ; molecular formula ; object ; pawn ; queen ; rook ; sensor ; sine wave ; three-dimensional chess ; toroidal space-time distortion ; T'Plana-Hath ; universal atmospheric element compensator ; Vulcan philosophy ; white ; yominum sulfide

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San Francisco locations : 101 California Street ; 123 Mission Street ; 30-Stockton ; 345 California Center ; 44 Montgomery ; 50 Fremont Center ; 580 California Street ; 601 California Street ; 650 California Street ; Baker Beach ; Bank of America Center ; Bathhouse Building ; Bay Street ; Embarcadero Center ; Fort Mason ; Fort Point ; Gateway, The ; Greenwich Street ; Holiday Inn Chinatown ; Hoyt Street ; Hyatt Regency San Francisco ; Marina Green ; Mason Street ; Mount Davidson ; Mount Sutro ; One Maritime Plaza ; One Market Plaza ; One Sansome Street ; Sentinel Building ; Stockton Street ; Sutro Tower ; Treasure Island ; Twin Peaks ; Van Ness Avenue ; Yerba Buena Island

Unreferenced material [ ]

A-13 ; Adams ; Argus ; Bandit V ; bio-sterilization capsule ; Clampett ; Com Sat 4 ; Com Sat 12 ; Delta V ; dirt bike ; dyslexia ; Engineering Control ; four dimensional time gate ; great flood ; hiber-sedative ; Intrepid , USS ; Jesus ; Joe ; K-12 ; Leaning Tower, The ; Lee ; maternity leave ; Mona Lisa ; Noah's Ark ; parallex matter echo ; Pleadian Quadrant 5 ; Pleadian Quadrant 7 ; Quadrant 12-340 ; Reon VII ; rescue shuttle ; Rigel ; Rigel IV ; Rigel V ; San Francisco Bay Area ; Sector 15 ; Seron, Ralph ; shore patrol ; Shres ; Sphinx, The ; Sulu, Akira ; Vegan D virus ; warp drive regulator ; Zanxthkolt Dynasty

Related topics [ ]

alternate timeline ; Riverside ; Starfleet ranks ; time travel

External links [ ]

• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home at StarTrek.com
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home at Wikipedia
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home at the Internet Movie Database
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home screenplay  at Star Trek Minutiae
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home screenplay at CCDump.org
• Filming locations at FilmInAmerica.com
• " Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) Cast and Crew

Star trek: the original series collection.

Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection contains the first six Original Series films starring the U.S.S. Enterprise's cast and crew from the 1960s TV series of the same name.

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The full cast of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Here you will find an overview of the cast of the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home from the year 1986, including all the actors, actresses and the director. When you click on the name of an actor, actress or director from the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home-cast you can watch more movies and/or series by him or her. Click here for more infomation about the movie.

We have made an overview that includes: actors , directors , the production team , the camera team , writers and other crew members .

Leonard Nimoy

Nicholas Meyer

Harve Bennett

Peter Krikes

Steve Meerson

Actors & actresses.

William Shatner

DeForest Kelley

Catherine Hicks

James Doohan

George Takei

Walter Koenig

Nichelle Nichols

Mark Lenard

Majel Barrett

Robert Ellenstein

John Schuck

Brock Peters

Robin Curtis

Michael Snyder

Kirk R. Thatcher

Michael Berryman

Madge Sinclair

Grace Lee Whitney

Jane Wiedlin

Vijay Amritraj

Philip Weyland

Kimberly L. Ryusaki

Artistic design.

Nilo Rodis-Jamero

Peter Landsdown Smith

Douglas Freeman

Jack T. Collis

John M. Dwyer

Donald Peterman

Costume & makeup.

Robert Fletcher

Movie editing.

Peter E. Berger

Amanda Mackey

Armen Ksajikian

Leonard Rosenman

Mark A. Mangini

Special effects.

Ken Ralston

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Using a Klingon ship, the crew of the Enterprise returns to 1980s Earth to retrieve two whales that may save the planet from destruction in their own era.

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Where to watch.

Watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is perhaps the lightest and most purely enjoyable entry of the long-running series, emphasizing the eccentricities of the Enterprise's crew.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Leonard Nimoy

William Shatner

Captain Spock

Catherine Hicks

Dr. Gillian Taylor

DeForest Kelley

Commander Leonard H. McCoy, M.D.

James Doohan

Captain Montgomery Scott

Movie Clips

More like this, movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Cast

Meet the cast, kirk (william shatner), spock (leonard nimoy), bones (deforest kelley), gillian taylor (catherine hicks), chekov (walter koenig), tired of ads, cite this source, logging out…, logging out....

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MPAA Rating

Produced by, released by, star trek iv: the voyage home (1986), directed by leonard nimoy.

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Synopsis by Bruce Eder

Characteristics, related movies.

Catherine Hicks (I)

IMDbPro Starmeter See rank

• Contact info
• 2 wins & 4 nominations total

• Karen Barclay

• Annie Camden
• 1996–2007 • 242 eps

• Carol Heath

• Fairy (voice)

• Hazel Burroughs

• Linda Sullivan

• Annette Bramble

• Anna Walker
• performer: "I've Got A Crush On You"
• performer: "Love is Sweeping the Country", "The Man Upstairs"
• performer: "The Rhythm of Life" ...

• performer: "Rainbows"

• performer: "Happy Birthday", "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" (uncredited)

Personal details

• Catherine Hicks Online
• 5′ 3″ (1.60 m)
• August 6 , 1951
• Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA
• Kevin Yagher May 19, 1990 - present (1 child)
• Catie Yagher
• Parents Jackie Hicks
• Other works Article: "Ready for Prime Time". _Guideposts_ vol. 56 no. 12 (Feb. 2002), pp. 18-22.
• 7 Interviews
• 1 Pictorial
• 3 Magazine Cover Photos

Did you know

• Trivia Never watched Star Trek (1966) before getting a starring role in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) .
• Quotes Acting is about giving yourself away, like the U2 song, "With or Without You". You just don't stay behind a character and make people laugh or cry. At some point, you have to take off that mask and, when you do, you're a human being, not just an actor. After all, I'm Catherine the person, first. You share that. There's a oneness to showing yourself to an audience. They feel that. It's healthy. That's what acting is all about. I love the theater, but I realized a few years ago that there are only a couple of hundred people seated in the theater, maybe a couple of thousand. I would rather do it in a big way. A camera is right there to capture it, forever. If you're going to give yourself away, I would rather do it for millions and have it available to people on video for the rest of their lives.
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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, star trek iv: the voyage home.

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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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Film Credits

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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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Full Cast & Crew

• 1 hr 59 mins
• Comedy, Action & Adventure, Kids, Science Fiction
• Watchlist Where to Watch

Sci-fi adventure, with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. The Enterprise crew travels back in time to save Earth from being destroyed. DeForest Kelley is among the co-stars.

Screenwriter

Sound effects, assoc. producer.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Star trek iv: the voyage home.

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!

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Cast & crew.

William Shatner

Admiral/Captain James T. Kirk

Catherine Hicks

Dr. Gillian Taylor

Leonard Nimoy

Captain Spock

DeForest Kelley

Commander Leonard H. McCoy, M.D.

James Doohan

Buoyant, farcical time-travel Enterprise escapade.

• Average 7.1

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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William Shatner (Kirk) Leonard Nimoy (Spock) DeForest Kelley (McCoy) James Doohan (Scotty) George Takei (Sulu) Walter Koenig (Chekov) Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) Jane Wyatt (Amanda) Catherine Hicks (Gillian) Mark Lenard (Sarek)

Leonard Nimoy

To save Earth from an alien probe, Admiral James T. Kirk and his fugitive crew go back in time to San Francisco in 1986 to retrieve the only beings who can communicate with it: humpback whales.

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Film / Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Voyage Home provides examples of:

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

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

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Alternative Title(s): Star Trek IV

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DeForest Kelley Made A Change To Star Trek's Dr. McCoy In The Voyage Home

It's unlikely that any of the actors who appeared on "Star Trek" in 1966 would assume they would be playing the same roles 18 years later, but "Star Trek" has had a curious habit of longevity. Each time the franchise dies out, the landscape shifts and the series is revived. That's certainly what happened in 1979 with the release of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (which isn't boring, despite its reputation) . After the original series was canceled in 1969, it was put into eternal syndication, allowing new audiences to find it for years thereafter. Trek conventions began in earnest in the mid-1970s, interest was renewed, and, lo, "Star Trek" returned. Sequel movies were put into production, and by 1986, the franchise released Leonard Nimoy's "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," the biggest hit in all of "Star Trek" until the release of J.J. Abrams' film in 2009. 

Also by 1986, the characters had aged from their mid-30s to their mid-50s, and the cast had to consider the long careers of Starfleet officers. They were clearly eager to keep serving together but were now sporting higher ranks and were perhaps even aging out of the space adventure game. If you ask me, "The Voyage Home" still should have ended with the heroes all being drummed out of Starfleet for their many transgressions. 

Back in 2014,  StarTrek.com unearthed a 1986 audio interview with DeForest Kelley , who had played Dr. McCoy on and off for essentially two decades at that point. In the interview, the actor commented on the progress Dr. McCoy had made since the early days, and how large character developments had to be made from film to film, as opposed to the incremental character development he worked on during a weekly TV series. Notably, he said, Dr. McCoy had mellowed out a lot.

McCoy and Spock

Kelley talked about the timeline of four feature films vs. the timeline of the 79 episodes of the original series, and how character arcs must be condensed for the latter. On a weekly show, a character isn't necessarily going to change in two weeks, but with a year or more between movies, new changes must be considered. Most notably, McCoy had to develop a new relationship with the Vulcan Spock (Nimoy). On the series, McCoy was openly annoyed by Spock's cold logic. After working with Spock for 20 years, though, that relationship had to evolve. Kelley said: 

"It's very difficult to expand or flesh a character out in a motion picture, so to speak. When we're doing them, it takes a couple of years to get one out. If we were still doing the series, why, it would be a lot of fun to see how these characters change during the aging process. So what I tried to do in ['The Voyage Home'] is kind of ... not soften McCoy, but he's become a little more attuned to Spock and he's looking at him more or less with a bit of amusement, as opposed to becoming so irritated with him."

This made sense, especially after the events of "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock." In that film, McCoy carried Spock's consciousness inside his brain so that it could be salvaged and placed back in an empty body late in the movie. He also committed a brazen act of mutiny, helping Kirk (William Shatner) and his other crewmates hijack the U.S.S. Enterprise for entirely selfish ends. The hijacking would eventually lead to the destruction of the Enterprise. After so much sacrifice, McCoy would necessarily have to be warmer and more peaceful about working with Spock.

Being likeable

Kelley also noted that a TV schedule allowed for more creative opportunities, specifically the opportunity to get things wrong every once in a while. When one is making 20-odd episodes a season and shooting on a tight, weekly schedule, there are bound to be stories that are a little rushed, and perhaps half-baked. Audiences would be forgiving, however, as there would be a new episode seven days later to "reset" any ill feelings. Kelley knew that a movie had to get everything right the first time, as they were released as major, infrequent events. He also continued elaborating on McCoy's relationship to Spock, saying: 

"Not that he doesn't become irritated with Spock, but McCoy has mellowed a little bit during this timeframe. As I say, if we were doing even six 90-minute shows a year we could expand on that, but when you shoot one motion picture every two years, it's rather a problem because it's very difficult to satisfy everyone. We only did 79 episodes, but during those episodes, there was bound to be one episode that perhaps everybody would like. You can't do that with a motion picture because there's going to be somebody who's not going to like something about it." 

Kelley went on to admit in the 1986 interview that he was a lazy actor, and that he would have been content with the "Star Trek" gig, even if it didn't lead to a prolonged film franchise. He, like several other Trek actors , didn't think the show would last very long and that a sci-fi series might even eat into some co-stars' professional credibility. "[W]hen I saw Leonard with his makeup with the ears," Kelley said. "I thought 'Well, he's had it.'"

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…and of course, this full-cast photo was released by the streamer earlier this year.

The final season of  Star Trek: Discovery runs through May 30 on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery  Season 5 continues on Paramount+ May 2 with “Whistlespeak,” followed the next day on SkyShowtime in other regions.

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Screen Rant

Discovery’s mirror universe enterprise just set a star trek enterprise record.

Star Trek: Discovery brought back the ISS Enterprise, revealing that the Mirror Universe ship set a new Star Trek record for ships named Enterprise.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 5 - "Mirrors"

• The Mirror Universe's ISS Enterprise outlasted any USS Enterprise, surviving over 900 years in a pocket of interdimensional space.
• Despite being a warship, the ISS Enterprise endured longer than any USS Enterprise built for exploration.
• Starships named Enterprise, like USS Enterprise-D and USS Enterprise-F, have shorter life spans compared to the immortal ISS Enterprise.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 brought back the ISS Enterprise, revealing that the Mirror Universe ship set an impressive record for starships named Enterprise. Written by Johanna Lee and Carlos Cisco and directed by Jen McGowan, Star Trek: Discovery season 5, epsiode 5, "Mirrors" was an unexpected download of new information about the Mirror Universe. In their pursuit of Moll (Eve Harlow), L'ak (Elias Toufexis), and the Progenitors' ancient treasure, Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) ended up piloting the Mirror Universe's Starship Enterprise into Star Trek 's Prime Universe.

In Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5 , "Mirrors," the Mirror Universe's ISS Enterprise was abandoned in a pocket of interdimensional space. The ISS Enterprise was damaged, including its warp core, but it had enough systems functioning to make the journey through a wormhole with the help of the USS Discovery. Because the Mirror Universe's version of the Enterprise originated in the 23rd century and crossed over into Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd century, this makes the ISS Enterprise over 900 years old , meaning it survived far longer than any other version of the Starship Enterprise.

The Mirror Universe debuted in Star Trek: The Original Series season 2, episode 4, "Mirror, Mirror," when Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and some of his crew members find themselves in the brutal parallel universe.

5 Ways Star Trek: Discovery’s Mirror Enterprise Is Different From USS Enterprise

Star trek’s mirror universe iss enterprise has lasted longer than any uss enterprise, the iss enterprise remained hidden in a pocket of interdimensional space..

As the flagship of the United Federation of Planets, the USS Enterprise often participates in dangerous missions, and the Star Trek films have a habit of finding ways to destroy the Enterprise. Starfleet ships go through a lot, and it's impressive enough for a ship to survive for decades, let alone centuries. As Captain Burnham and Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) explore the ISS Enterprise, they find a plaque detailing the ship's journey from the Mirror Universe. Captain Kirk's visit in Star Trek: The Original Series had a profound influence on Mirror Universe Spock (Leonard Nimoy) , who later initiated a series of reforms to make the Terran Empire more peaceful.

It's ironic that the ISS Enterprise, a warship, endured for far longer than any of the USS Enterprise starships built for exploration.

Spock eventually became the Terran High Chancellor but was later killed by those who opposed him. Despite this, Spock's beliefs inspired the crew of the ISS Enterprise to mutiny, with the help of "a Kelpien slave turned rebel leader" — aka Mirror Universe Saru (Doug Jones) . These refugees fled the Mirror Universe on the ISS Enterprise, and the ship ended up in a pocket of interdimensional space where it sat for the next several centuries. Aside from this visit, the ISS Enterprise remained in the state it had been left in for centuries until Moll, L'ak, Captain Burnham, and Cleveland Booker boarded the ship in their pursuit of the Progenitors' treasure.

One of the original refugees named Dr. Cho paid a visit to the Mirror Universe Enterprise sometime in the 24th century to hide a clue leading to the location of the Progenitors' technology.

How Long Has Each USS Enterprise Lasted In Star Trek?

Starships named enterprise see their fair share of dangerous missions..

Many incarnations of the USS Enterprise were completely destroyed through Star Trek , but some were simply decommissioned. The original Enterprise NX-01 commanded by Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) survived its historic mission in Star Trek: Enterprise , eventually winding up on display at the Fleet Museum on Athan Prime. The USS Enterprise commanded by Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Captain James Kirk saw 40 years of service before it was destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock . The Kelvin Universe version of the Enterprise in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies was destroyed by Krall (Idris Elba) in the third film, Star Trek Beyond .

Star Trek: Picard season 3 left the fate of the USS Enterprise-E commanded by Captain Worf (Michael Dorn) as an open question, and what happened to the USS Enterprise-B is unknown.

After being commissioned at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , the USS Enterprise-A served for only 7 years before finding a home at the Fleet Museum. The USS Enterprise-C was fated to be destroyed in Star Trek: The Next Generation 's "Yesterday's Enterprise." The USS Enterprise-D of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was the Federation flagship for 8 years before it crashed on Veridian III in Star Trek Generations. The D was restored in Star Trek: Picard season 3, which also revealed the USS Enterprise-F was retired to make way for the USS Enterprise-G. Ultimately, no version of the USS Enterprise has survived anywhere near as long as the ISS Enterprise found in Star Trek: Discovery .

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Star Trek: Discovery