Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

When they finished writing the script for “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” released in 1986, they must have had so many pointless smirks on their faces. This is easily the most convoluted of the “Star Trek” stories – however, strangely enough, it is also the best, the funniest and the most enjoyable in laymen’s terms. Roger Ebert admitted, “I'm relieved that nothing like restraint or common sense stood in their way.”

The movie starts with some unfinished work from the previous movie, including the Klingon ambassador’s protests before the Federation Council. These scenes don’t have much to do with the rest of the movie, but they give a certain encouragement (like, how Ebert described, “James Bond's ritual flirtation with Miss Moneypenny”) that the series remembers it has a history.

The Starship Enterprise team is still stuck on Vulcan with the Klingon starship they confiscated in “Star Trek 3.” They choose to return home on this alien ship, but on the way they find a strange deep-space inquiry. It is sending out signals in some strange language which, when translated, turns out to be the song of the humpback whale.

It’s around this mark that the script talks must have really taken off. See if you can wrap your head around this: The Enterprise team decides that the inquiry is targeting on Earth, and if no humpback songs are responded, the planet could be destroyed. Therefore, the team’s mission becomes this: Because humpback whales are extinct in the 23^rd Century, they must travel back in time to the 20^th century, steal some humpback whales, and return with them to the future – which will save Earth. Ebert said, “After they thought up this notion, I hope the writers lit up cigars.”

No matter how questionable the story is, it gives what is probably the best of the “Star Trek” movies so far, directed with cool professionalism by the late Leonard Nimoy. What happens is that the Enterprise team land their Klingon starship in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, cloak it with an invisibility shield, and separate into the teams through the Bay area looking for humpback whales and a complete source of reduced nuclear power.

What makes their search entertaining is we already know the members of this team really well. That cast’s laidback contact is unique among movies, because it hasn’t been figured out in a few weeks of rehearsal or shooting. By the time this movie was released, it was the 20^th anniversary of “Star Trek,” and most of these actors have been working together for most of their professional lives. These characters know one another.

For example, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock visit a Sea World-type aquarium, where two humpback whales are held in custody. Catherine Hicks (who played the mother in the horrendous “7^th Heaven” show), as Gillian, the marine biologist in charge, plans to release the whales, and the Enterprise team need to find out her plans so they can recapture the whales and go back to the future.

Obviously, this requires the two men to ask Gillian out to dinner.

She asks if they like Italian food, and Kirk and Spock do a wonderful little verbal jazz based on the running joke that Spock, as a Vulcan, cannot tell a lie. Ebert advised, “Find another space opera in which verbal counterpoint creates humor.”

The stories of the previous “Star Trek” have focused around dramatic villains, such as Khan, the feared genius in “Star Trek 2.” This time, the villains are faceless: the international hunters who continue to follow and kill whales despite clear signs they will annihilate these decent 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 giving a single human villain as counterpoint, “Star Trek 4” gives a heroine, in Hicks. She obviously is moved by the dilemma of the whales, and although at first she understandably questions Kirk’s story that he comes from the 23^rd Century, eventually she joins in the mission and even claims on returning to the future with them, because of course, without the humpback whales, the 23^rd Century also doesn’t have humpback whale experts.

There are some major action scenes in the movie, but they aren’t the highlights. The “Star Trek” series has always depended more on human contact and thoughtful, cause-leaning stories. What happens in San Francisco is must more interesting that what happens in outer space, and this movie, which might seem to have an unlikely and inconvenient plot, is actually the smartest and satisfying “Star Trek” film so far.

I liked this better than 2, just like James Rolfe admits. The environmental message in this movie was needed at the time, and they pulled it off perfectly. Plus, the comedy in this movie is the best of all of them thus far, especially with how the crew is trying to fit in the 20^th Century. Nimoy really followed this movie up from 3 very well, so it ended the trilogy very well. Now, when I mean “Trek Trilogy,” I mean 2, 3 and 4. These three are connected very well to one another and I highly recommend everyone to check this one out. If you liked 2 and 3, you’ll love this one, I promise you.

Look out next Monday when I review what Trekkies and regular moviegoers like to call the worst “Star Trek” movie. Trust me, I’m not looking forward to it either.