Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home starts with our heroes on planet Vulcan, loading up to go home and face punishment from the Federation for their hijacking of the Enterprise and its subsequent destruction, as well as the sabotage of the Excelsior. As they approach Earth, they find that a giant space probe is threatening to destroy the planet, emitting a signal to which those on Earth are baffled how to respond. Scientists determine that the probe is sending messages in the language of humpback whales, which have been extinct for over 200 years.
With seemingly no obvious solution, Kirk and crew decide to use their Klingon Bird-of-Prey to time warp back to the late 20th Century to snatch a couple of humpbacks to bring back with them in the hopes of saving the Earth. They discover two whales in captivity at a Bay Area Cetacean Institute (Monterey Bay Aquarium substitutes). Still, they have only a limited amount of time to figure out how to transport these whales in tons of seawater. To get close, they need the help of Cetacean Institute expert, Dr. Gillian Taylor, in addition to needing to find ‘nuclear wessels’ and harvest enough atomic energy to send their tapped out ship back to the future.
A breath of fresh air in the Star Trek movie series, and easily the lightest of them all, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home rounds out the trilogy which started in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, albeit with a decidedly different tone. While it does continue three months after Star Trek III: The Search for Spock left off, it is still easily accessible for those who have a passing familiarity with the series but who haven’t seen the previous chapters. What sets it apart from all other Star Trek adventures, whether movie or television show, is the ingenious idea behind the story, which boldly goes where no other has gone before, with a heartfelt ecological message and thoroughly entertaining premise and execution. It shouldn’t have worked, but it does, and quite wonderfully at that.
The kick-off to the making of Star Trek IV starts with Paramount’s announcement a few weeks after the release of Star Trek III into theaters that they were negotiating with Leonard Nimoy to return to direct the fourth entry in the cinematic Star Trek series. Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett decided that the next movie should be much lighter in tone than the darker one experienced in The Search for Spock. To date, it’s the only “Star Trek” film in which no one dies, unless you count the whales harvested for their blubber in a video shown at the Cetacean Institute. It’s also the first to contain stronger language, which supplies potent and humorous commentary on 20th Century culture.
A goal of Star Trek IV was to tie up Star Trek III‘s loose ends and return the film series to a status quo for future entries. The franchise returned to the motion picture wing of the studio, after doing two films with the television division to keep costs down. Bennett came up with a top-ten favorite “Star Trek” episodes list, and it coincided with what many fans considered the cream of the crop as well. The time-travel episodes were a particular highlight, particularly “City on the Edge of Forever,” which turned on the lightbulb in their heads that the next film should have the crew go back in time. The method to achieve time travel comes from the episode, “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” where the Enterprise slingshots around a star, sending the Enterprise back to the 1960s. After discussing what era to shoot the film in, they felt the modern-day worked best. They would set it in the home base of what would be the Federation, San Francisco, where their future uniforms might not seem out of place. The modern setting provides some choice fish-out-of-water moments and satirical commentary on the “primitive and paranoid culture” of contemporary society.
As Nimoy was performing in an NBC miniseries in Europe of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” and came up with an outline during an in-person meeting with Harve Bennett in August of 1984. He consulted with professors at MIT, Harvard, and the University of California in Santa Cruz’s SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Topics included theories related to extraterrestrial probabilities, the difficulty of communication, and how civilizations might connect across distances in space that might take eons to traverse. The inspiration for Nimoy on centering the film around conservation came from a 1984 book he was reading by Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson called “Biophilia” about the many species of animals and plants set to go extinct and what their loss might mean to the future of humankind. As he contemplated what the loss of millions of species might mean for Earth’s future, Nimoy based the plot of the film on the need to save a species that predicted to be extinct within three centuries, the humpback whale.
In addition to fitting nicely with the San Franciso setting, Nimoy chose the humpback whale because of its size and grace, but especially for its distinctive and sophisticated use of songs to communicate, for reasons that remain a mystery. The crew would come back to Earth’s past to get a pair of humpback whales needed to sing their song to an alien civilization who were trying to communicate with this intelligent Earth species. Inspired by a favorite Ray Bradbury story called “The Foghorn,” in which a sea monster is attracted to the sound of a lighthouse’s foghorn because it sounds like itself, then destroys the tower when the men inside turn it off). It was adapted before into a movie called The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Still, the concept would seem new and fresh in the context of a “Star Trek” adventure, except with an alien race possibly destroying Earth with a powerful probe to search the oceans when the songs of the whales that sounded like their language stopped.
Harve Bennett was less hands-on with the script, assigning duties to the inexperienced writing team of Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes. Paramount liked the story idea but not any of the Meerson/Krikes scripts. One hindrance had to do with trying to incorporate a role for renown “Trekkie’ Eddie Murphy. Murphy had told Jeffrey Katzenberg, former president of production for Paramount, that he would kill to be in a Star Trek movie as part of his multi-picture deal with the studio. Nimoy went to Murphy’s new palatial home in Hollywood Hills, very interested in figuring out a way to get him on board, but cautious about making a poor choice. Murphy’s involvement could be a box-office boon, but could also backfire for both the Star Trek franchise and Murphy’s skyrocketing career if not done well. Trekkers also began criticized the casting of Murphy as potentially derailing the series, much in the way casting Richard Pryor in Superman III did.
Nimoy, Bennett, and the screenwriters explored for weeks how a character for Murphy might fit in with their story. Murphy thought he might play some other officer in Starfleet and do “Star Trek” things,” but there was no place in the screenplay for that to happen unless it was a cameo. They toyed with ideas of making him a comical 1980s college professor, con artist, conspiracy theorist, or even a comic-relief version of himself. They combined some of these ideas and made his character the host of a late-night talk show exploring psychic phenomena, including interactions with UFOs and aliens. His character would spend the film trying to prove he was right about the Enterprise crew and try to out them for his show. No one was keen on this needless story angle, feeling like the message would be lost, and the character would come across as unlikeable. Later drafts had Murphy become an astrophysicist at Berkeley that must be consulted by a couple of the Enterprise crew. Murphy ended up declining the role in the end to do The Golden Child, which he felt would be better for his career. He has since regretted that decision.
Another major snag involved William Shatner holding out. He demanded a salary of $2 million, and 10% of the profits to return. Nimoy and Shatner had “favored nations” clause in their contracts that guaranteed they would receive equal terms, and Shatner was upset that Paramount passed him over to direct Star Trek IV. Paramount CEO Barry Diller refused to meet with Shatner, putting the project in jeopardy of moving forward. Rumors circulated among Trek fanzines that Paramount might ditch the original cast and hire younger actors portraying the core Enterprise crew in their early days in Starfleet. Indeed, Harve Bennett would allow for a “Plan B” in case things didn’t work out for this idea, tentatively entitled “Starfleet Academy.” Paramount used this as leverage to pressure Shatner in the negotiations when things were at an impasse and gave the rest of the crew pause that everyone could be expendable if asking for too much.
Discussions resumed after Frank Mancuso and Ned Tanen took over at the studio, and gave Nimoy the green light to proceed with the film despite nothing being settled with Shatner yet. After five months of negotiations, Paramount struck a deal with Shatner, giving him increased pay and consideration for the director and executive producer’s chair for Star Trek V. However, production delays occurred when CBS picked up ABC’s canceled show “T.J. Hooker” for one more season, requiring Shatner to come back to shoot another season of episodes.
After additional drafts with Meerson and Krikes that the studio didn’t like, Nimoy and Bennett decided they needed to bring in someone with a fresh approach. Nicholas Meyer, who directed and did uncredited work on the final script for Star Trek II, came in late in 1985 to help with a new script, based on the existing plot concepts that the studio could accept. With very little time, Meyer suggested that they split up screenwriting chores. Meyer would write the middle act of the film where the comedy comes into play regarding the Enterprise crew going back to the 20th century. He questioned the need for a San Francisco setting, as he had already done this for his 1979 flick, Time After Time, resulting in a few narrative and character similarities between the two films. Bennett revised the first and third acts set in space, while Nimoy and Shatner, who had final-approval rights, revised scenes involving Spock and Kirk, respectively. During this phase, they morphed the remnants of the astrophysicist character written for Eddie Murphy along with a role for a female reporter into a marine biologist and potential love interest for Kirk, Dr. Gillian Taylor. The studio execs loved the new script, and the production was a go.
For fans of the TV series, there would be the return of some members from the 1960’s show in smaller roles. Mark Lenard returns from his stint in Star Trek III playing Spock’s father, Sarek, and Jane Wyatt, who played Spock’s mother, Amanda Grayson, on the original episode, “Journey to Babel,” alongside Lenard makes a brief but significant appearance. Majel Barrett, Gene Roddenberry’s wife, returns to her recurring TV role as Christine Chapel. Grace Lee Whitney, who appeared several times on the show as Yeoman Janice Rand, also returns.
Not everything made the final cut. Some fans may be disappointed to see relative newcomer Lt. Saavik not join the crew on their adventure. She has one moment of drama not afforded in Star Trek III to address the death of Kirk’s son, David, before deciding to stay on planet Vulcan for “medical reasons.” Earlier drafts of the script had Saavik’s medical reasons as a pregnancy with Spock’s child after performing Pon Farr in the prior movie. Majel Barrett’s scenes mostly ended up on the cutting room floor. There was also a scene that didn’t get shot where Sulu meets a great, great ancestor in San Francisco. Still, the child actor grew despondent and uncooperative, and, after spending most of the day’s shoot trying to get the kid to come around, they ran out of time with nothing to show for it.
Paramount increased the budget of Star Trek IV to $18 million, though the final cost would run about $23 million. After its window for a summer release for 1986 was not going to work, Paramount slated it to be released a week before Christmas. However, they ended up getting moved up to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to make way for Eddie Murphy’s comedy, The Golden Child, for the Christmas-period slot.
Veteran composer Leonard Rosenman, a longtime friend of Nimoy, crafted the jaunty score, adding some contemporary jazz pieces to the traditional orchestral scoring. Industrial Light and Magic returned for visual effects. When the release schedule moved up a few weeks, some problems emerged due to issues with ILM completing their effects work on Howard the Duck, but they managed to resolve this to Paramount’s satisfaction. The space probe itself, which looks mostly like a giant metallic tube, was a prop laying around at Paramount built for an aborted adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama.” The whales are a mix of real whales for and radio-controlled and robotic portions of the whales for use when in tanks or near humans because, unlike killer whales, humpbacks aren’t trainable to perform on cue.
Some viewers might dismiss The Voyage Home as too slight to truly consider a substantial Star Trek film, but I think this is a misguided conclusion. While it is the funniest of the series, it isn’t a pure comedy at all. It is a real Star Trek adventure with some moments of seriousness, except that the creators knew well enough that the plot couldn’t play too seriously, or people would laugh at it, and not in a right way. It is one of the smartest Star Trek stories ever created, with a perfect sense of the characters and some scenes that are easily some of the best in series history.
Star Trek IV was the biggest hit in the Star Trek franchise starring the original cast. It raked in $109 million in the United States alone off of its $23 million budget (it added that exact amount in its international take), enough to land as the fifth highest-grossing film of 1986. It was the number one film in the United States for its first two weeks of release, and had a run of five straight weeks at number two (behind the film Eddie Murphy abandoned his role to do, The Golden Child), remaining in the top ten for eleven consecutive weeks. Not only was it a commercial hit, but it also scored quite well with the critics, who enjoyed seeing a film unlike any they had seen before, and who praised the use of all of the characters in their most appealing light to date. The film would also receive four Academy Award nominations for its cinematography, Rosenman’s score, sound, and sound design.
Due to its ecological message on behalf of humpback whales, the film was praised by conservation groups like Greenpeace and the American Cetacean Society. Upon its release on home video in 1987, RKO Warner announced it would donate one dollar from each sale to the Animal Welfare Institute’s “Save the Whales” campaign. Leonard Nimoy provided the voice-over narration, reading poems and prose from famous authors for an album of humpback whale songs called “Whales Alive” by Paul Winter and Paul Halley, which features whale sounds used in the film. Proceeds for “Whales Alive” went to the World Wildlife Fund.
There was a conscious decision on the part of the makers of this film not to have a discernible enemy. They also wanted to return the series out of the dark and violent path trend of the previous movies. While it does have an overt message, the use of it is so outlandish, that it is just part of the overall fun, and never heavy-handed in the approach. It’s one of the best of the Star Trek films in the minds of many viewers and my personal favorite.
The success of Star Trek IV sent a message to Paramount to think broader for “Star Trek” as a property. It not only continued the film series but brought back a weekly “Star Trek” series to television, now that the television division of the studio no longer had to make movies. There were discussions for a new series to debut in March of 1987 on the soon-to-launch Fox Television Network, then run by former Paramount head Barry Diller. This show would be the prequel idea showing the Enterprise characters’ origins in Starfleet Academy.
However, Paramount worried that a TV series might lessen the interest in their lucrative movie franchise as well as the appetite for the original TV show still showing in many markets around the world in syndication. Roddenberry soon began to work on a different idea for a series that would feature an all-new cast of characters set a century ahead of the ones from the Original Series, dubbed, “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Paramount decided it would be more lucrative for them to put the program directly into syndication by selling to the independent stations they already had relationships with for the original series, and they’d have better creative control. The “Next Generation” made its debut in September 1987, and ran for seven successful seasons, eventually continuing the movie franchise for four feature films.
Qwipster’s rating: A+
MPAA Rated: PG for some language and mild violence
Running Time: 118 min.
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Catherine Hicks, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Jane Wyatt, Robert Ellenstein, Mark Lenard, Robin Curtis, John Schuck, Brock Peters, Jane Wiedlin (cameo)
Director: Leonard Nimoy
Screenplay: Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Harve Bennett, Nicholas Meyer