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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Movie Review

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Actors: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Catherine Hicks

Review Summary and Plot Commentary about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
An alien space probe threatens to destroy the Earth and, the crew of the Enterprise must travel back in time to save humanity. They have to bring home a pair of humpack whales to answer the probe. In this movie you see how short-sighted humanity can be when it comes to preserving the enviroment. One of the most important themes of the movie is that future humanity has to redeem mistakes made in the past. --trotsky, Resident Scholar
Like TOS Star Trek 4 make a social commentary on how we live our lives. This time around we see a light hearted trek movie minus the space battles and the phaser/disrupter fights that had become the staple of ST2.With save the whales as the underlying message in this film, the crew of the Bounty (Enterprise) embark on a mission to the earth's past to retrieve Humpback whales, so that an alien probe that's wreaking havok on earth can communicate with them. In the process Scotty gives the formula for transparent aluminum, Chekov gets hurt and Kirk uncharacteristically passes on a chance at romance with Gillian. The cast must have been very happy to be working again and gave no input to the script because somebody should have remembered that the crew made 3 journeys to the past, 4 worlds that copied ancient earth history and they would not have been looking like .. . It would have been a better movie if they had brought back the Gary Seven character to help them. Now that would have been interesting. --, Resident Scholar
When a massive, destructive alien probe arrives at Earth in search of extinct humpback whales, James Kirk leads his crew back to the 20th Century in order to find the creatures and save the future Earth. The most fun and accessible Star Trek movie of the series. --Artemis, Resident Scholar
This is the Star Trek movie with the lightest touch -- probably the most appealing to the non-fan. A giant unidentified space probe heads toward Earth in the 23rd century, sucking up all of Starfleets' space vehicle and command energy, churning up the oceans, and endangering the entire planet while broadcasting a mysterious signal. Spock and Kirk figure out it's attempting to communicate with whales, which are extinct, so they take their Klingon vessel (from Star Trek III) back in time to the 20th century -- San Francisco, 1986, to be exact -- in order to find and retrieve some humpback whales who could respond to the probe's call. Catherine Hicks guest stars as the beguiling cetologist who helps our heroes. The script, partly conceived by director Nimoy and doctored by Nicholas Meyer, contains a lot of humor (much of it at Spock's expense). The film is very amiable, rather too politically correct, and remains the only Star Trek film in which nobody dies. Its success (more than $100 million stateside, $133 million worldwide) inspired the creation of the new TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" the following year. --David Loftus, Resident Scholar
Admiral Kirk must go back in time to the 20th century and save the whales.

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