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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

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Published Nov 26, 2021

Kirk Thatcher Went From a Punk on Bus to a Special Effects Juggernaut

Today, we're catching up with The Voyage Home icon.

StarTrek.com

This article was originally published on February 4, 2021.

How long does it take to become an icon in the Star Trek universe? For Kirk Thatcher, just under two minutes. In 1986, the associate producer of Star Trek: The Voyage Home made a rare on-screen appearance as the orange-mohawked Punk on Bus, in which Spock gave him a Vulcan nerve pinch after he refused to turn down his boombox. While this memorable scene made Thatcher a bold-faced name among Trek fans, it’s just one facet of a multi-decade career in front of and behind the camera on such geek-friendly properties as Star Wars , Gremlins , Robocop , and The Muppets . Recently, StarTrek.com caught up with Thatcher to find out about his memorable cameo and learn more about what he’s doing now.

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StarTrek.com: Were you a Star Trek fan as a kid?

Kirk Thatcher: I was! I liked it as a show that looked at hardcore science-fiction tropes, mirroring our society and playing with the what-if. To me, science fiction — and fantasy, to some degree — answer “what if” with different trajectories. For Christmas I got an Encyclopedia Britannica , and the next year I got a wildlife encyclopedia… My mom, to round out my interests a bit, said to me, “What if you try science fiction? [Those are] books based on the ‘what if’ but following a more science trajectory.” So then I got hooked and all I read was science fiction and the science encyclopedia. And Star Trek just hit me between the eyes, because it was obviously entertaining — it had pretty women in skimpy outfits and cool ideas of what aliens looked like — but more importantly to me, the concepts of it (were appealing). I was primed to love Star Trek from the get-go, and I did!

What was your career like before Star Trek ?

KT: I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which was essentially the bedroom community of Hollywood. Everyone who was employed as a worker bee most likely lived in the Valley. I knew it was a job. It wasn’t something done halfway around the world, where I saw the resulting product but I didn’t know how it happened.

I’d already been interested in special effects and sci-fi and fantasy before Star Wars came out, but when [ A New Hope ] came out, I said “I wanna work on those movies.” Not only were they doing it with a sense of fun, but the design, the aesthetic of it, was just amazing, from the creatures to the spaceships. I’d already decided I wanted to work for Walt Disney Imagineering or work in the movie business. I happened to be fortunate enough to work down the street from (Industrial Light & Magic) where it was originally based in Van Nuys.

My mom came home from church one day and said a lady from church had a son who worked on Star Wars . It was Joe Johnston, who designed all the spaceships and storyboarded the parts of the movie with the spaceships. I met Joe, he gave me a tour, we stayed friends through my high school years, and I told him “I want to work for you guys.” I was super excited because I could ride my bike to ILM, but I was only 15. I kept in touch with him. ILM moved to San Francisco, which was a bummer as we would say, because I couldn’t get a summer job there.

After a year at UCLA, I wrote to Joe, said “I’d like to work there — I’ll sweep the floors there,” and he put me on a list of people to interview for the creature shop. I worked on Return of the Jedi for a year and a half, making creatures — molding, casting, painting, puppeteering in a couple bits.

[After that] I worked on Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan , helping cast and paint the Ceti Eels, and on The Search for Spock I worked on set for about a week, either puppeteering the bacteria worms that came out of Spock’s space coffin or the lizard dog, the Klingon pet that sat next to Christopher Lloyd’s chair in the Bird of Prey. There was a hollow space under Christopher Lloyd’s chair, and I was curled up under there with a monitor so I could see what I was doing. I was just keeping him alive and making him look around — I didn’t want him to steal the scene.

After that, I went back to UCLA to learn computer animation, because I figured that was going to take over the effects business. While I was there, Star Trek set up a production office for The Voyage Home . They [contacted me and] said “Leonard Nimoy is looking for an assistant who knows special effects and the film business.” What [Nimoy] said when I interviewed with him was that he was frustrated because he wanted someone on his team — literally his guy — to consult with him about the effects. We hit it off. I got the job as his assistant, and when we started filming he said, “I wanted to make you associate director, but the Director’s Guild won’t allow that. ‘Director’s Assistant’ sounds like you [run errands], and you’re very much a creative part of this. Would you mind if we called you Associate Producer?”

I said “are you kidding me? You could call me Chief Chucklehead and I’d be happy!” I had a background in effects and design and production design and all the things he wanted someone on his team to know, but he didn’t want to deal with the minutiae. I think he also felt overwhelmed, and he said “I want you to take care of all of that. If someone asks what color a Klingon’s beard should be, you tell them.”

How did you get the role of Punk on Bus? Were you a punk fan?

KT: As a high school student I loved punk music a lot. What I liked about punk was not only the catharsis of jumping around and screaming and going “I’m angry” — I also liked the joyful anarchy about it, particularly the sense of humor.

The script came in with this punk scene. I felt just close enough to Leonard to say “hey, I’d like to play the punk,” ‘cause I was, what, 23 — I was still in that age range. I just said to him, “I’d like to play the punk,” and he said [impersonating Nimoy] “Reeeeeeally,” and I said “yeah! I think I’d do a good job. I was in a punk band. I know the music. I’ll get a mohawk.”

He said, “All right, let me think about it.” I hadn’t badgered him about it because I knew that would not go well. I worked with the guy, I had to work with the guy for another year, so I wasn’t going to become a pain in the neck. About a week later, we had our chat to wind down the day, and I was literally walking out the door, and he said “And one more thing...You can do it.”

I said “wait, are you serious?” I knew what he meant; I probably wasn’t that great at covering. He said, “Yeah, yeah, and don’t disappoint me.” And I said “Oh! No! Don’t worry! It’s gonna be great!”

I went down to Melrose [Avenue], the big punk fashion district, and bought the earrings and the dog collar and the iron cross earring. And the cheap-ass leather jacket. The makeup I just did with the makeup gals. I had my friend who did my hair when I was a demi-punk bleach my hair twice to get it almost white so the orange would really show up, and then she shaved the sides the week before we shot, so I had an orange mohawk for about three months.

We shot it on the day on the actual Golden Gate Bridge. I think we went up and down about five to six hours of driving just to get the scene — not just me, but also him and Bill [Shatner] talking. We had to wait because we were only driving north to Sausalito, so we could only shoot that two-and-a-half–minute drive and then turn around, come back, and start again. My take of the thing, I think we did that in two runs. Mine might have been the last scene [that day].

All the camera equipment was on the back of the bus. We had a joke about “aliens at the back of the bus,” but that was the easiest place to pull all the seats because we had to pull the dolly and the camera and the sticks in there. There was no music on the boom box and I was just miming it and keeping a rhythm of “duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh”—some fast beat, knowing what punk was like.

You also wrote the song that’s playing on your boom box.

KT: We were in post-production and the music department had said, “oh, we’ve got Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet for the music,” and I said “Oh Leonard, that’s not punk! You want the Dead Kennedys or the Sex Pistols.” The music guy said, “They’re going to want too much money for one song, and it’s not an important song.” So I looked at Leonard and said “Dude, I’ll write the song! I know what punk is!”

He said, “okay, show me what you’ve got,” and I wrote the lyrics out in 15-20 minutes. They came to me really fast. I didn’t know how to play an instrument at that point, so I said to [sound designer] Mark Mangini, “Do you want to write the music for this song?” He wrote the guitar chords and played them. Three of the sound guys were the musicians and I was the vocalist. We recorded it in the hallway, so it sounded horrible.

Leonard came in to [the editing bay] to listen to the whale sounds, so we played it for him and he was frowning and looking slightly disgusted. When it was over he said, “Oh, it’s terrible, it’s awful.” I’m trying to figure out how to save it, and he says “So it’s perfect!” That was his sense of humor.

Where did the band name Edge of Etiquette come from?

KT: It was a joke, because my personality is kind of garrulous and silly. I would say things in these production meetings to the head of the studio, just making a joke and keeping it light. [After one of the meetings] someone said, “Man, you just walked the edge of etiquette.” So I put that in the back of my head, so that when someone asked me “what do you want to call this ersatz band you threw together for the song?” I said, “Oh, the Edge of Etiquette!”

More recently, you narrated an episode of Star Trek: Short Treks .

KT: I played the Punk on the Street in Spider-Man: Far from Home . I’m in that for a quick bit with the boombox. That was all Kevin Feige. He was a big Star Trek fan. Michael Giacchino, who scored JJ’s Star Trek movies, did the score for my Muppets Wizard of Oz movie and we’ve been friends ever since. He’s a big Star Trek guy with a sense of humor. He was talking to me about his Star Trek short and was showing me the [story] boards, and I was like “Wow, this is great! It’s a love letter to the fans of The Original Series .” And he said “Hey, would you like to do the narration.” We played around and I went with a British naturalist documentary voice. I recorded a scratch track, and as the animation got finessed, I recorded it two or three times as a scratch track and then went in for the final recordings. It was one of the last things they were doing. The Trek world is a small world!

Kirk Thatcher is currently working on two projects that should be released before the end of the year.

Chelsea Spear (she/her) is a frequent contributor to The Arts Fuse and Crooked Marquee. She lives in Boston. You can find her on Twitter at @travelswbrindle.

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Making Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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

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

Back in time

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

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

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

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

“There were several possibilities,” Nimoy said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meyer to the rescue

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

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

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

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

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

Acting and directing

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

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

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

The real challenge was balancing acting and directing.

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

Sharing the spotlight

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

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

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

Filming in San Francisco

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

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

Visual effects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical response

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

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

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

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Entry updated 8 April 2019. Tagged: Film.

Film ( 1986 ). Paramount. Directed by Leonard Nimoy. Written by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Harve Bennett , Nicholas Meyer , based on a story by Nimoy and Bennett. Cast includes the lead players from the Star Trek television series, along with Catherine Hicks. 119 minutes. Colour.

Returning to Earth on their captured Klingon spacecraft to stand trial for exceeding orders in various ways (see Star Trek III: The Search for Spock [ 1984 ]), Kirk and the crew of the (late) Enterprise are faced with an unidentified probe evaporating the oceans in order, it is somehow deduced, to communicate with humpback whales (now extinct). The only thing to do is to go back to twentieth-century San Francisco, get a couple of whales, and use them to talk the probe out of destroying Earth; this they do. It is perhaps unkind to criticize the Star Trek people for their liberalism, but why do they always choose such safe issues? There is some lively humour connected with the crew's attempts to come to grips with twentieth-century culture. This was by consensus the most relaxedly watchable of the series to date.

The novelization is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ( 1986 ) by Vonda N McIntyre . [PN]

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is pure, joyful cinema

Entertainment Geekly's 'Star Trek' series looks at the best whale movie ever made

Darren is a TV Critic. Follow him on Twitter @DarrenFranich for opinions and recommendations.

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise – and the release of Star Trek Beyond , the 13th feature film in the series. To celebrate this big year, and ponder the deeper meanings of Trek ’s first half-century, the Entertainment Geekly column will look at a different Star Trek film each week from now till Beyond . This week: The only Trek film that feels like a Howard Hawks comedy. Last week: The Trek film about the clashing egos of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy . Next week: Shatner unleashed .

In 1965, Leonard Nimoy said the first words ever uttered in the Star Trek universe. “Check the circuit!” says Spock at the start of “The Cage,” the original pilot for Star Trek and the first time Star Trek was boring. To modern eyes, Spock doesn’t look like Spock: Eyebrows too big, hair too mussed, a noose-collar atop a too-baggy uniform, flanking an un-Kirk Captain who looks too much like Jay Leno’s chin chest-bursting out of Ray Liotta’s face.

NBC didn’t like Star Trek , didn’t like Spock. A year later, Gene Roddenberry filmed a new pilot. He fired everybody — he fired his mistress! — but he kept Nimoy.

Twenty years later, Roddenberry was gone — to Next Generation , not for long — and Nimoy was in control. Tricky thing, applying words like “control” or “authorship” to anything Star Trek . Nimoy directed Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , and received a “Story By” credit. So did Harve Bennett, the producer of Movie Two through Movie Five, making him another Man Who Saved Star Trek and another Man Who Almost Destroyed Star Trek . Bennett shares screenplay credit alongside three other men. One of those writers later wrote Double Impact , the movie where Jean-Claude Van Damme headbutts Jean-Claude Van Damme.

And one of those writers was Nicholas Meyer, the man who made Wrath of Khan . Meyer’s generally credited with writing the film’s 20th Century-set Act 2. Perhaps not coincidentally, The Voyage Home has one of the greatest and daffiest Act 2’s of any film ever. Here is a movie that begins as A Race Against Time To Save The Earth and then takes a sharp detour into aquarium etiquette and Bay Area geography; a movie where the stakes are global, and there’s plenty of time for Kirk to take a marine biologist out for an Italian dinner; a movie where Kirk is a noble romantic protagonist who makes his date foot the bill. There’s a wonderful lack of seriousness powering The Voyage Home , recalling Howard Hawks’ loopy genre exercises To Have and Have Not or The Big Sleep . It is the kind of movie where characters spend the whole movie taking a break from the movie.

So it was a team effort, in front of the camera and behind the scenes. But it was a team effort with a leader. And the leader wanted to make a different kind of film. Nimoy later explained the core concept: “No dying, no fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical bad guy.” His previous Star Trek film had all those things, and outer space, and aliens, and sets. Nimoy wanted to make a movie about Earth, right now, shot on location, with human people.

Nimoy was an actor, a director, a photographer, a memoirist, a musician, a cameo cartoon voice, a face in advertisements that baited your nostalgia and dared you not to smile. In all things he was Spock. Sometimes that bothered him: He wrote I Am Spock , but also I Am Not Spock . Nimoy was never a dilettante, a preening highbrow — never the Alan Rickman character from Galaxy Quest, that self-loathing Shakespearean slumming for fanboy dollars and residual fame. Nimoy liked Spock, truthfully. He liked the work, occasionally. He liked the money, naturally: $2.5 million for Trek IV . (That’s more than Hemsworth made on Avengers — and that’s mid-’80s dollars, unadjusted.) Nimoy was frustrated with Spock, but it wasn’t merely the frustration of typecasting or of repetition. It was the internal struggle, the human condition: Nimoy struggled with Spock the way Hamlet struggles with Hamlet.

And Nimoy loved people. That sounds like a simple thing to say, until you watch The Voyage Home , one of the loveliest and strangest and lightest comedies ever made, and you realize that “loving people” can be something tangible, like an added filter on the camera. Nimoy loved the supporting players, and his film bestows each of them with a Hall of Fame moment. Scotty: “A keyboard. How quaint .” Chekov: “Nuclear wessels .” Uhura: “But where is Alameda ?” McCoy, undercover as a surgeon, asks an old lady in a hospital what’s wrong with her. Kidney dialysis, she says. “Dialysis!” McCoy sputters — an actual honest-to-god sputter, DeForest Kelley’s voice like an old engine cackling. “What is this, the Dark Ages ?”

Sulu was supposed to get a showcase scene meeting his own great-great-great-grand-something. It didn’t work out — the kid got scared — and Nimoy was still bummed about it a decade later when he wrote I Am Spock . But oh, how I treasure Takei, in his baritone voice, narrating the Enterprise’s warpspeed run into the center of our solar system: “Nine point five! Nine point six! Nine point seven! NINE POINT EIGHT! ” (And The Voyage Home continues one of the great embedded subplots in Trek history: The love story between Sulu and the Excelsior .)

Did I mention that they’re warping straight into the sun so they can travel through time? There’s an energy-sapping probe destroying Earth, apparently because no one can respond to the probe’s message. Is the probe saying “hello” to humanity? “Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man,” Spock chastises.

It’s been said there are no villains in Star Trek IV. In the future, the probe hails from some unknown intelligence that almost destroys Earth by accident. In the past, every hint of antagonism is quickly undercut. At one point, Chekov is captured by the FBI, and there’s a much simpler, more on-the-nose version of this movie where the FBI becomes the bad guys. Maybe that wouldn’t be terrible; maybe it would be sharp, playing the utopian sensibility of the Federation against Cold War paranoia. But in The Voyage Home , it’s an opportunity for a “Who’s On First” routine:

FBI AGENT: Let’s take it from the top.

CHEKOV: The top of what?

FBI AGENT: Name?

CHEKOV: My name?

FBI AGENT: No, my name.

CHEKOV: I do not know your name!

FBI AGENT: You play games with me, mister, and you’re through.

CHEKOV: I am? Can I go now?

At this point, the FBI agent — who looks like the uncanny valley between Paul Rudd and Armie Hammer — whispers to his partner, “What do you think?” His partner says, “He’s a Russkie.” The FBI agent, completely deadpan, missing a beat: “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life.” Every one-scene character in The Voyage Home is smarter than they should be, wittier than they have to be. Chekov grabs his phaser and tries to fire it, but it’s run low on batteries. He tosses it to the FBI agent, and watch closely here.

The actor is Jeff Lester — who naturally played both “Lane Brody” and “Lance Jarvis” on Baywatch — and he catches the phaser with a look of weary amusement. Here’s a film where the shady FBI guys feel tired, and a bit embarrassed, about being shady FBI guys.

The Voyage Home reminds me of something Dan Harmon told Vulture regarding Cheers : “The characters were so distinct. As with Peanuts , you could put them in outer space and still know which one was Charlie Brown.” The Voyage Home is the inverse of that theorem: It takes its characters from outer space and sets them down on the streets of San Francisco, in the halls of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in the front seat of a truck. And here’s something strange. You’ve seen Kirk and Spock on alien planets production designed like pop art comic strips, in cosmic mountain ranges battling aliens beyond our ken; you’ve seen them battle gods and monsters.

Yet I don’t think there is any single moment in Star Trek history where Kirk and Spock look better — at once grander and more approachable, like statues of the Founding Fathers buying rounds at sports bar — than the moment when they walk along Marina Boulevard. Behind them: The bay, the Bridge, the fog.

Kirk’s still wearing his magenta-maroon disco suit, looking like the communist dictator of Studio 54; Spock’s wearing a karate bathrobe. You can giggle at the buried joke of the movie — they fit right into pre-digital San Francisco — but you can also appreciate how the movie makes them seem so much bigger by bringing them down to Earth.

No other Star Trek film has done location shooting like this; maybe The Voyage Home is Trek as neo-realism. Legend holds that the “nuclear wessels” scene was shot in secret, with Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols talking to random passers-by. That’s maybe not true — counter-legend holds that those are all paid extras — but in the most memorable part of the scene, Russian Chekov asks a nearby policeman for directions to the closest nuclear reactor. The cop says nothing, doesn’t even move; he was an actual San Francisco, working with the production crew in an official capacity. So, actually, hang the neo-realism: The Voyage Home is as close as Trek ever gets to the start of “Duck Amuck,” when Daffy walks off his own film strip.

The humor of The Voyage Home is playful without ever becoming sarcastic, self-aware without ever feeling like self-loathing. The characters feel engaged — watch how Takei is constantly looking around San Francisco, a great grin on his face. Think of how this movie shifts from Act One to Act Two: Spock says they need to save the whales; Kirk says “Let’s time travel!”; and then they aim their ship right into the sun. Think, too, of Catherine Hicks, in a tricky role. She plays Gillian, the whale-loving marine biologist. She thinks Kirk and Spock are crazy, but intriguing; she doesn’t really believe they’re from the future, but she intuitively understands that they’re people she should hang out with.

A lesser film might try to architect this interaction somehow. (Maybe Gillian is an FBI agent; maybe the wrong thing for America circa 1986 is the right thing for the world .) Hell, one of the greatest hours of television ever is a Star Trek time travel episode where Kirk goes to the past and falls in love with the most important woman in history. The Voyage Home has no time for such pretensions. Gillian’s an obvious love interest, but they never really have a “romantic” scene. Gillian thinks Kirk is interesting; Kirk likes how much she cares. And Gillian is allowed to come to the future — where she promptly says goodbye to Kirk, because there’s just so much more to see.

Their final scene together is one of the most graceful light-comedic romance moments in any movie I can think of. “How will I find you?” he asks her — kidding but not quite, Shatner’s laugh a bit too forced. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll find you.” Nimoy holds his camera for two long moments, first of Gillian saying farewell:

Then of Kirk, astonished. What do you think is going through his mind?

Is he amazed that, for once, he’s the one left behind? Is he bemused at the grand divine comedy of existence? Maybe I’m a shameless romantic, but I can’t help but imagine his thought bubble in Shatnerian overspeak: “My god, Bones! I think I’m in love!”

Shatner! My god, Shatner! Another one of the graceful jokes powering The Voyage Home is that, here in the past, Captain Kirk remains the most confident man in the galaxy, despite all indications that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Needing money, he pawns McCoy’s birthday glasses at an antique shop. The owner will pay a hundred dollars for them. “Is that a lot?” Kirk asks, smiling wide like a con man.

Later, at the aquarium, Kirk spots Spock swimming with the whales, and his wild overreactions belong in a silent movie museum:

Of course, Kirk is a con man in The Voyage Home . To his crew, he pretends to know everything about the past. (“Double dumb ass on you!”) To people in the past, he offers one BS line after another. (“I think he had a little too much LDS.”) The joke of his brimming confidence paired against Spock’s Holy Fool confusion reaches Chico-and-Harpo levels:

But the film isn’t some shallow self-parody of Kirk, or Star Trek . It has heart, and passion — Save the Whales! — and a tremendous sense of fun. When the crew crash-lands into the Bay, they need to climb out of their sinking ship. The whales start singing; the probe is vanquished. Another film might cut away, but Nimoy’s camera lingers, and we watch the crew of the Enterprise cheerfully jump into the water. The line between character and actor falls away, phasered into nonexistence. James Doohan does a bellyflopping dive into the water; Nichelle Nichols splashes water toward DeForest Kelley. At one point, Kirk pulls Spock into the water — or maybe that’s Shatner and Nimoy, fooling around.

And yet, there is a seriousness to the wonderful, exuberant silliness of The Voyage Home . At the film’s beginning, the resurrected Spock is asked a question: “How do you feel?” At the end of the film, Spock has traveled across space and time, has rescued a dead great species from the dustbin of existence, has saved the Earth one more time. And none of that plot stuff matters half so much as Spock saying, nonchalant: “I feel fine.” To feel “fine” is not to feel “perfect” or even “happy,” does not imply tremendous success nor some massive personal change.

To feel “fine” in The Voyage Home is to be aware of your place in the great scheme of existence, content in your place among your fellow creatures. There is such optimism in this movie, and perhaps that optimism is residual from Roddenberry — but Roddenberry preferred grand statements, not whimsy. The Voyage Home needed Nimoy, a thoughtful man with a sense of humor, a leader who loved his people, and loved people in general, and damn it, who loved the whales, and Earth, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and the nightmare intersection where Columbus and Kearny and Jackson hit each other right in front of the Zoetrope Building.

Nimoy died last year, age 82: A long life, and prosperous. Spock will live forever, of course — and The Voyage Home is his magnum opus. Quickly, listen to the theme music for Voyage Home by Leonard Rosenman.

Can you hear the festive melody? Aren’t those bells ringing vaguely yuletidal? There’s no obvious comparison in movie history for Star Trek: the Voyage Home , not many time travel message movies about family and friends and the fear that we’re all doomed because of sins in the past, and how that fear will always crash like waves against the shore of the eternal human hope that it’s not too late, that we can change.

But there is that famous story about heavenly visitors and time travel, a myth about how any person can change a dark-sad future into a happy-better one, a parable that argues that the great heroic act of existence is being an engaged part of a community. So maybe The Voyage Home is our new A Christmas Carol . Maybe Ebenezer Scrooge can save Tiny Tim; maybe the Earth isn’t doomed; maybe, in 2286, whales will still be swimming through oceans unrisen; maybe our descendants will be here, too, in this world someone saved for them. Probe bless us, every one.

THE WHOLE MOVIE IN ONE SHOT:

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home – revisiting the movie

William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy lead the Star Trek crew on a quest to rescue some whales. Yep, it's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home...

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Star Trek IV remains the oddity of the Trek films. There’s no real villain for large swathes of the film, there’s no Enterprise, and the emphasis is squarely on comedy. Yes, a Star Trek comedy. Three words that ordinarily send shivers down the spine of any Trek fan and conjure up images of Ferengis in drag and sodding Neelix getting everyone killed. But let us not forget that this is William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy we’re talking about here. Nimoy in particular played Spock as deadpan, rather than stoic, so perhaps a fish out of water comedy is the right way to go.

That’s not why everyone remembers it though. No, The Voyage Home will forever be the one where they go to the 80s to get some whales.

The story conception began in the same vein as all the even numbered films – the producers, writers and director (in this case a returning Leonard Nimoy) gathered around a table and decided to distill the successful elements of the previous films and shed the baggage.

See also: Looking back at Star Trek: The Motion Picture Looking back at Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan Looking back at Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

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In a remarkable display of movie making common sense, Paramount not only asked Nimoy back for another crack of the megaphone, but even said to him ‘we want your vision’, and allowed him to oversee this distillation free of meddling. This meant that the pervading gloom of  Star Trek III was out the window immediately, but the focus on character from  Star Trek II and  Star Trek III remained. The heavy sci-fi themes of life, death and revenge across time were gone, to be replaced with a gentle environmental theme that was considered to be ‘on message’.

Naturally, this resulted in a story where the Enterprise has to travel back in time because everyone in the 23rd Century is dying of an ebola like disease. It’s a light-hearted movie that effectively begins with trillions of people coughing up their own pancreas.

Eventual rewrites steered the story towards something more familiar, with modern day (well, 80s) San Francisco being the main hub of the film, and a pair of humpback whales being the target. Nimoy felt their song added mystery, which remained in the final film as the whales’ way of telling a cylinder to stop boiling the oceans in the future. I realise that by putting it that way I’m making the film sound weirder than it actually is. Although since the moral of this story happens to be ‘don’t needlessly kill animals because one day it might turn out angry aliens put them here deliberately and they’ll make it rain on you’, maybe I’m not giving the writers enough credit. 

With Nicholas Meyer on board to actually make something saleable, Nimoy on board to get the best from the characters, and even Paramount on board to not needlessly meddle, the only thing left was the cast.

William Shatner in particular had pay demands that made some at Paramount consider continuing Trek as a TV show again rather than a film series. In the end Shatner (and Nimoy) agreed a new deal worth a comparatively low $2.5 million, but that figure was enough for Paramount to go for the cheap option, and so work began on a new series featuring new and cheaper actors. Thus, The Voyage Home accidentally created Star Trek: The Next Generation . The other bridge crew were of course on board, but the 1986 San Francisco setting meant there was an opportunity to bring on board a big star name to promote the film to a wider audience. This tied nicely in with Shatner’s (alleged) demands that he be given a love interest to seduce and “teach about this Earth thing you call making love”, like in [insert any original Trek episode here].

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Paramount’s first choice for Kirk’s love interest was Eddie Murphy. However, Murphy wasn’t interested in playing an expy of himself and wanted to play a starfleet officer or an alien, and turned down the role. And to think that in 1986 we could have seen Trek ’s first interracial gay time travelling sex scene. Ah well, we can only hope. Interesting note: Eddie Murphy also turned down Ghostbusters . Just think, we could have had a Ghostbusters / Trek crossover. Anyway, the part was rewritten for Catherine Hicks, meaning her two most famous roles have been alongside captains of the Enterprise.

The last step was to bridge the film to the wider Star Trek storyline. After III the crew were trapped on Vulcan, fugitives for stealing (and then blowing up) the Enterprise, but going back to Earth would require facing punishment. Harve Bennett wrote the first and final sections dealing with this to form something of a trilogy, and also to provide a framing device for the time travel story which makes up the meat of the film. It’s actually quite surprising how quickly the dangling threads from Wrath and Search are dealt with, yet it never comes across as a cheat. The Klingons want Kirk because of Genesis, Starfleet wants him to stand trial for stealing the Enterprise, and Kirk is quite willing to hand himself in and face the music. Starfleet tells the Klingons to Klingoff (setting up the events of Star Trek VI ), and then give Kirk a slap on the wrist demotion and issue him with another Enterprise. This is the civilised 23rd century after all, no eye for an eye here.

Of course, if I were in charge of starfleet I would have ordered him to be burned at the stake, but this is The Voyage Home we’re talking about, where there the rule was ‘no dying, no fighting, no shooting, no photon torpedoes, no phaser blasts, no stereotypical bad guy’.

There is one oft-cited criticism in all this though, and it is one that would be levelled at other even numbered films – The Voyage Home is Trek- lite. This was deliberate, and even played up in the marketing – in this country, the official title is The Voyage Home: Star Trek IV , designed to give a wider audience. As such, much of the philosophy that defines Trek is absent. The one big question posed, when McCoy asks Spock to describe death, is brushed off with a glib (although unnervingly deep) remark that there is no frame of reference that could make the conversation make sense. I have to admit, this lack of a big idea is what put me off the film for a long time, although my opinion has softened over the years. I’m as conflicted as the film is about its message.

I get that the theme is supposed to be ‘be careful with nature because you won’t know how valuable it is until it’s gone’, but by having the whole time travelling whale probe thing, you could easily interpret the theme as ‘don’t worry about the environment, because sufficiently advanced technology can overcome anything’. After all, the probe didn’t seem to particularly care about keeping the whales alive, just in making sure it had enough technology to punish anyone who killed them. And in the end it didn’t even matter, because a bunch of criminals in a stolen spaceship just used that technology to make everything better. Is that really the message we’re supposed to take away? No. The fact that I do take this away means that, as philosophical Trek goes, this one has problems. There’s only so far you can water down a message.

I do have another beef with this film, and much bigger than any philosophical worries (after all, no one watches an 80s time travel comedy because the library was out of Kant) – I think a lot of 80s comedies were crap. Not all comedies, but the broad appeal, PG rated comedies generally starring Steve Guttenberg. The kind that didn’t really have any jokes in but were somehow supposed to be funny.

Star Trek IV  is a film that pretty much has no jokes. There’s setup, there’s characters playing off each other, but there’s no payoff. Just situations that might make you smile, and the occasional Spock one liner. Nimoy would go on to direct Three Men And A Baby , a film I’m certainly ambivalent about. It’s funny because they don’t know how to take care of a baby! I think there was a moustache involved. The point is, I can’t remember much about it, because it’s so insubstantial. And I don’t enjoy those films. Unless there’s some sort of edge, some interesting hook, I can’t get excited.

Take Short Circuit . First film, Steve Guttenberg teaches a robot to tell bad jokes. Hmmm. The second? Childlike robot gets involved with a criminal gang and a con artist, and then gets brutally hacked to death. That kind of stuff gets my interest. I think I might need help.

Point is, I was never the biggest fan of  Star Trek IV – a favourite amongst the series for many – but that’s mostly because I don’t like this sub genre. Yet if this weren’t a Trek film, I’d probably think much better of it. I need to explain that otherwise you’ll wonder why I’m being such a double dumbass.

Onto the film in more detail, then.

It begins with a bombastic transporter effect as the title beams in, and then descends into quite possibly Trek ’s worst theme tune (and I’m including Faith Of The Heart in that). To be fair, it does sound like a rejected score for a 70s sitcom. It also sounds like someone’s getting married. Stop toying with me, film, I already know that Shatner and Murphy don’t get it on. It doesn’t even sound like any of the other films, even in a series with little musical continuity. It also liberally borrows from Rosenman’s other works, including Ralph Bakshi’s Lord Of The Rings . And to think, only two films ago people were borrowing Star Trek music, not the other way around. Probably should say something nice. Okay, I like the font.

The opening itself, however, is much more effective. For all I’m not the fan many are of the comedy bits, the sci-fi stuff is great. The Cetacean probe is a damn odd piece of design – a giant, screaming pipe armed with a testicle that turns the lights off. There are also the Klingons. While the whole trial thing is a way of tying up Star Trek III ’s loose ends, it also provides a neat backdrop for non-fans. Klingons hate Kirk because of stealing their ship, Kirk hates Klingons because they murdered his son, Vulcans are emotionless, and there’s no Enterprise because that maniac Kirk blew it up (as shown by Star Trek III itself being played to the jury).

Finally, there’s Spock. He doesn’t feel emotions, but he’s half human so he should. We are told this at great length, presumably because otherwise the non-Trekkies would get confused about the pointy eared dude in a dressing gown. 

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So there’s the setup. Bad things are happening on Earth, Kirk et al are conveniently the only ones who can help because they start the film on Vulcan, and Spock isn’t quite right in the head yet having spent much of the last few months stuck in the head of a guy who hates him. It’s good: the setup is quite clever in bringing all the pieces together. The meat of the film though? Let’s see…

Good: That time travel sequence makes me wonder if Nimoy really did do a little too much LDS. It makes the stargate sequence from 2001 seem accessible.

Bad: Learning to swear like only a Trekkie can. Don’t try and fool me into thinking Kirk doesn’t know how to use colourful metaphors. Get him in bed and I bet he swears like a ginned up 50 year old dock worker.

Good: The crew are endearingly awkward.

Bad: The heavy handed ‘killing whales is bad’ bit. Look, I know killing whales is bad, which is why I have only eaten whale a few times. Tastes like rabbit.

Good: Kirk creates a time paradox to make money. Screw you universe.

Bad: Kirk is still dressed as a bad lampshade

Good: Spock is the hell mentally ill.

Bad: Chekov doesn’t realise he nearly starts World War III, idiot. I don’t care if he can’t say ‘nuclear vessels’, he can’t even say ‘diplomatic incident’. The whole subplot is daft. They need to rekerfooble the dilithium crystals and the solution is “high energy photons”. In other words, x-rays and gamma rays. Just hold the thing up to the sun!

Good: The glue on Shatner’s toupee is incredible. Just look at it ‘naturally’ blowing in the wind.

Bad: Transparent aluminium can hold a whale tank but can’t withstand rain? The future is an idiot. And if Scotty can make the tank with acrylic, why doesn’t he just use that? Why does he take the formula for transparent aluminium to a plastics manufacturer? Surely somewhere that actually deals with aluminium would be better? 80s comedies – sacrificing plausibility for laughs, then not bothering with the laughs.

Good: Sulu seduces a pilot. No one can resist that man.

After these hijinks, it’s time to go back to the future. Whales released, everyone a bit damp, probe sods off (and is never mentioned ever again), Kirk is given a slap on the wrist demotion and he gets another Enterprise to blow up. Which is a bit of a shame, because as a trilogy, the end is a let down. After all the crew have been through, you’d expect they’d be in a different place at the end. That there would be some sort of growth. But no, by the end they’re back on the Enterprise, back exploring the galaxy, and not a single one has changed. In fact the only character development in The Voyage Home is Spock, and all that serves is to turn him back into the Spock we know. Ultimately, it’s a bit of fluff, where nothing really matters and nothing really changes.

Entertaining fluff? Sure. But fluff? Yes.

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, A Fan’s Film Review

As with the previous film, my first impression of it began with my dad’s description over the phone. (He was still stationed at Tydall AFB in Florida. My brother and I were at Mountain Home AFB in Idaho for what would be my step-dads last assignment before retiring from the Air Force.) His description didn’t mention anything about humpback whales, only that our heroes become stranded in 1986 San Francisco in their commandeered Klingon Bird of Prey, which our heroes have dubbed the H.M.S. Bounty (a homage to our heroes’ similarities to the crew on Mutiny on the Bounty) The Bounty’s power levels are dropping and the only way our heroes can get back to their own time is to steal nuclear power photons from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise.

Sounded pretty cool to me. Of course, like everyone else, I was wondering what would become of the former Enterprise crew in the wake of The Search for Spock . Would they be exonerated somehow?

Fortunately, writers Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer (who didn’t want to be involved in Spock’s resurrection but obviously didn’t mind returning to the Star Trek fold once Spock was back) and director Leonard Nimoy were thinking not only of this, but also of providing Star Trek fans with a broader spectrum of colors and tones to the Star Trek movies in general. The last two films were filled with wonderful operatic action, drama, and themes, but Nimoy was foresighted enough to realize that to continue on with more of the same a third time would be pushing it. Fortunately, Nimoy had a much more free reign this time. Michael Eisner, Paramount’s studio head, was immensely pleased with the performance of The Search for Spock and told Nimoy, “Leonard, the training wheels are off! We want YOUR Star Trek! Give us your vision!”

Needless to say, this was music to Nimoy’s unpointed human ears. He along with Bennett and Associate Producer Ralph Winter mandated that a lighthearted adventure without a villain would be the way to go this time. Nimoy really wanted to do a theme about the earth’s ecology where the crew would return home to discover that Earth was facing a problem due to humanity’s short-sightedness in the past. For a while, he was thinking that there might be a plant that would be extinct in the 23rd Century that could be found in our present, but they could not come up with a satisfactory adventure with that.

When someone brought to Nimoy’s attention the plight of the whales, particularly humpbacks, they had found their niche. Kirk and company would travel through time utilizing the same time speed breakaway slingshot manoeuvre they had used in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” and bring two humpback whales back with them to communicate with an alien probe whose communication would be (inadvertently) dangerous to humans but with whom the whales could communicate.

The story presented all kinds of great opportunities: humor that flowed naturally from the characters in their ‘fish out of water’ situation (Kirk’s “Double dumb ass on you” line still makes me chuckle to this day), a new love interest for Kirk in the person of Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks), the entire cast once again being brilliantly utilized to where no one’s role in uncritical to the mission, and the wonderfully inspired Greenpeace scene where the whaling ship’s harpoon bounces off of the cloaked Bounty. When the ship de-cloaks (coincidentally, our heroes just happen to be flying in a green-coloured ship), the whalers tuck tail between their legs and run. It’s a wonderful climax that had audiences, fan and non-fan alike, cheering. But for those of us who are fans, it is our crew’s exoneration, Kirk’s demotion back to Captain (having realized his mistake in accepting promotion before) and the unveiling of the new U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A that is the real payoff. Upon seeing her, Kirk then tells his smiling crew, “My friends…we’ve come home.” Just as the previous film gave us Spock back, this film gives us back the greatest spaceship of all time.

Although the studio was no longer breathing down Nimoy’s neck, making The Voyage Home would still not be an easy task. The ante had been increased both with a story that demanded weeks of location shooting in San Francisco (the first Star Trek film to have any significant outdoor location shooting) and the fact that Nimoy would have to simultaneously deal with a logistically more difficult shoot than TSFS and act full time as Spock. In the interview/documentary “Mind-Meld” , Nimoy described to William Shatner (and us) that this was a very painful time for him.

Although it was quite rewarding in the end, Nimoy had apparently taken some of his frustrations during this period on both the cast and Harve Bennett, straining his relationship with Bennett to the point where Shatner would have to give him a good verbal shoulder-rub to get him to agree to line produce Star Trek V later down the road. How much this had to do with why Nimoy didn’t direct another major feature after Three Men and a Baby is anyone’s guess, but we are glad that he was able to stick it out and give us a feel-good film that brought the “Genesis Trilogy” started in The Wrath of Khan to a tremendous and uplifting conclusion.

While the mainstream appeal of The Voyage Home cannot be denied, I ironically find myself actually watching this film the least of all of them. Perhaps this is because of the lack of spaceship action, the fact that it takes place in contemporary American society (which we normally watch Star Trek escape from), or James Horner’s absence in the music (although Leonard Rosenman’s score would work just fine thanks to the addition of Alexander Courage’s fanfare). Every time I do watch it though, I always find myself smiling and remembering how good it is. It may not be the spectacle for me that The Search for Spock was, but it stands out as proof that ILM does not need the black backdrop of space to make a spaceship look real.

I give Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home an 8 on the 1-to-10 scale. It is certainly a great Star Trek film, but regardless of what the box-office numbers say, I feel that there are better ones.

Star Trek IV would be the last entry in the movie-only era of the 1980’s. Ten months later, its success would lead to the triumphant return of Star Trek to television with Star Trek: The Next Generation , boldly taking the franchise into the next 18 years.

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Star Trek IV. The Voyage Home

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• "Latest excursion is warmer, wittier, more socially relevant and truer to its TV origins than prior odysseys." Variety Staff : Variety
• "Mr. Nimoy directed this Star Trek installment, and indeed he should probably direct all of them. His technical expertise leaves much to be desired. But his sincerity is unmistakable" Janet Maslin : The New York Times
• "A happy, heartfelt chapter that reunites the original cast with the original TV format, shying away from the cold and epic scale of the preceding movie adventures."  Rita Kempley : The Washington Post
• "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 (...) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"  Roger Ebert : Chicago Sun-Times
• "An effective and enjoyable sample of entertainment -- not good science fiction, but a lightweight piece of comic fantasy utilizing characters so familiar that they feel like old friends."  James Berardinelli : ReelViews
• "The most enjoyable film of the series so far, also returning to the simplistic morality-play format that gave the original TV series its strength." Stephen Garrett : Time Out

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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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Leonard Rosenman

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Leonard Rosenman ( 7 September 1924 – 4 March 2008 ; age 83) was the Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning composer who wrote the music score for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . For this score, he earned an Academy Award nomination (his fourth) and won an ASCAP Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

A short part of his main title theme from the film can be heard in the Star Trek: Picard third season episode " The Bounty ".

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Rosenman moved to California following World War II. A skilled piano player since his teenage years, Rosenman began studying music composition with composers Arnold Schoenberg and Roger Sessions . Afterward, in 1952, Rosenman studied with Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola in Massachusetts.

Rosenman was teaching piano and writing chamber music in New York when film director Elia Kazan approached him to compose the score for East of Eden (1955, featuring Gil Perkins ). Following this film, Rosenmann composed for such classic films as Rebel Without a Cause (1955, featuring Corey Allen , Ian Wolfe , Chuck Hicks and photographed by Ernest Haller ), Pork Chop Hill (1959, featuring Biff Elliot , Barry Atwater , Ken Lynch , Paul Comi , Bert Remsen and William Wellman Jr. ), Fantastic Voyage (1966, story by Jerome Bixby ), and Barry Lyndon (1975, featuring Steven Berkoff ). He won his first Academy Award for the latter film, and won a second for Bound for Glory (1976, starring Ronny Cox and Gail Strickland and featuring Bobby Bass ). A third Academy Award nomination came his way for Cross Creek (1983, starring Alfre Woodard and featuring Ike Eisenmann , Malcolm McDowell and cinematography by John A. Alonzo ), and he received his fourth and final Academy Award nomination for Star Trek IV .

In addition, Rosenman earned two Emmy Award nominations – winning both – for his scoring of the TV movies Sybil (1977) and Friendly Fire (1979, featuring Paul Baxley ). He also received a Golden Globe nomination for scoring Lord of the Rings (1978, featuring Lou Elias , Felix Silla , and Dennis Madalone ).

Rosenman's other film scoring credits include The Cobweb (1955), The Savage Eye (1960), Hell Is for Heroes (1962, featuring Chuck Hicks ), Countdown (1968, featuring Steve Ihnat , Ted Knight and Garrison True ), and A Man Called Horse (1970, starring Judith Anderson ). He also scored Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970, featuring Jeff Corey and James Gregory ) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973, featuring France Nuyen , Paul Williams , David Gerrold and cinematography by Richard H. Kline ). More recent credits include 1980's The Jazz Singer , RoboCop 2 (1990, starring Peter Weller and featuring John Glover ), and 1994's The Color of Evening (featuring Bill Erwin ). He also scored for episodic television, including The Defenders , Combat! , and Marcus Welby, M.D. , and The Twilight Zone .

In his later years, Rosenman suffered from Frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative brain condition similar to Alzheimer's disease. Regardless, Rosenman continued to compose music into his 80s. He died of a heart attack at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 83. A memorial service was held for Rosenman on 28 April 2008. Among those in attendance was Star Trek film director and writer Nicholas Meyer and Star Trek: The Original Series guest actor Robert Brown , the latter of whom was a close friend of Rosenman's. Brown also spoke at the service, relaying his memories of the times he spent with Rosenman. [1]

Rosenman is credited with helping to modernize film music in the 1950s and 1960s. Through the application of modern techniques not commonly used at the time, Rosenman brought a more contemporary approach to film composition. [2]

External links [ ]

• Leonard Rosenman at Wikipedia
• Leonard Rosenman at the Internet Movie Database
• Leonard Rosenman turns 80
• 3 Ancient humanoid

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Star trek iv: the voyage home.

1986 Directed by Leonard Nimoy

The key to saving the future can only be found in the past.

It's the 23rd century, and a mysterious alien power is threatening Earth by evaporating the oceans and destroying the atmosphere. In a frantic attempt to save mankind, Kirk and his crew must time travel back to 1986 San Francisco where they find a world of punk, pizza and exact-change buses that are as alien as anything they've ever encountered in the far reaches of the galaxy. A thrilling, action-packed Star Trek adventure!

William Shatner Leonard Nimoy DeForest Kelley James Doohan George Takei Walter Koenig Nichelle Nichols Catherine Hicks Mark Lenard Jane Wyatt 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 Nick Ramus Philip Weyland Kimberly L. Ryusaki Scott Devenney Monique DeSart Bob Sarlatte Everett Lee

Director Director

Leonard Nimoy

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Frank Capra III Pat Kehoe Douglas E. Wise

Producers Producers

Harve Bennett Kirk R. Thatcher Brooke Breton

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Ralph Winter

Writers Writers

Harve Bennett Peter Krikes Nicholas Meyer Steve Meerson Leonard Nimoy

Casting Casting

Amanda Mackey

Editor Editor

Peter E. Berger

Cinematography Cinematography

Donald Peterman

Production Design Production Design

Jack T. Collis Peter Landsdown Smith

Art Direction Art Direction

Joe Aubel Peter Landsdown Smith Nilo Rodis-Jamero

Set Decoration Set Decoration

John M. Dwyer

Special Effects Special Effects

Michael Lantieri

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Ken Ralston

Stunts Stunts

Eddie Hice John C. Meier R.A. Rondell Chuck Picerni Jr. Sharon Schaffer Steve M. Davison Cliff Fleming Bennie Moore Gregory J. Barnett Spike Silver

Composer Composer

Leonard Rosenman

Sound Sound

David J. Hudson Noyan Cosarer Mel Metcalfe Terry Porter

Costume Design Costume Design

Robert Fletcher

Makeup Makeup

Jeff Dawn Wes Dawn James Lee McCoy Rolf John Keppler Rick Stratton Richard Snell

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Silvia Abascal Monique DeSart Deborah Holmes Dobson Carol A. O'Connell

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English Finnish

Releases by Date

26 nov 1986, 13 dec 1986, 10 jan 1987, 26 mar 1987, 10 apr 1987, 17 apr 1987, 31 jul 1987, 12 aug 1987, 02 feb 1988, 24 mar 1989, 06 may 2003, releases by country.

• Theatrical PG
• Physical L DVD/VHS
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical M/12
• Theatrical APTA
• Theatrical 11

119 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 7

Beginning with "save the world" importance and ending with life-affirming joy, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a film which shreds its urgency as it goes along, supplanting stakes for a sweet dose of environmentalism and shaggy comedy. Our characters are already so iconic in their traits that creating a humble hangout film feels like a natural progression in the Star Trek series. The heroes are obviously involved in the imminent threat, but the audience is carried away by slack scenarios and sublime mini narratives; slices of comedy which could only be achieved by a molecular understanding of these personalities. The hilarious chemistry is built around this team, their pasts, and the iconic energy their adventures hold, and even when the tone couldn't be breezier, it feels authentic. You'd have to be a double dumbass not to enjoy this.

Review by matt lynch ★★★½ 3

can you imagine a fourth entry in a lucrative franchise taking a hard swerve into comedy like this these days? although it's certainly choppy since it's still got a goofy, expository and "relevant" sci-fi adventure to deal with, you put a few beers in me and i'll start arguing for it as a Hawksian hangout movie born inadvertently out of nostalgic familiarity and outright fan service.

Review by Branson Reese 5

Insane that this works. On paper it's a mess. A bunch of visibly aging people from the future travel back in time to save two whales and the whole thing has a lightly comedic fish-out-of-water tone. What if this was the first Star Trek anything? I'll tell you what if: it would work. I know because this is the first Star Trek thing I saw as a kid. That's not totally true. I saw Worf at Paramount King's Dominion when I was, like, three. There's a picture out there somewhere of some actor holding me while I scream bloody murder because I didn't know who Worf was and that he was no threat to me as long as I didn't…

Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★★ 1

You're proposing that we go backwards in time, find humpback whales, then bring them forward in time, drop 'em off, and hope to Hell they tell this probe what to do with itself?! -McCoy

With 24 seasons over 5 television series and 12 feature films, The Voyage Home has to have the most ridiculous plot in Star Trek 's over 45 year history and yet it ends up being one of it's greatest films. Not only does the film feature no real villain, but it's a lighthearted comedy featuring the Enterprise crew time traveling back to 1986 San Francisco to try and locate a couple of Humpback Whales to bring back to the 23rd century to save Earth. The concept is…

Review by Ian West ★★★★★ 3

My favorite ‘fish out of water’ comedy of the 80’s.

Love how this relies less on effects wizardry and evil villains and just goes for the comedy and cast chemistry—which is wonderful in every way. Ranks high on my list of most watched movies and  most beloved   movie posters, this is endlessly entertaining character driven swill that also works as the perfect pick me up after the two most emotionally draining (and monolithic to me) gut punch movies to ever exist.

“What does it mean, exact change?”

Sorry, but on a personal level this falls into my “I’ll never really trust anyone that doesn’t like this movie” list… we all have one of those and this one’s on mine.

Review by Matt Singer ★★★½

Watched with commentary by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, who for a guy who played the most famously stoic character of 20th century television sure had a great laugh. He was also a skilled director and this commentary is full of interesting insights and even the occasional self-critique. (However many years after they shot this movie when they recorded this commentary Nimoy was still annoyed that he missed an opportunity for a big laugh in a brief scene with DeForest Kelley.) Meanwhile, Shatner talks a lot about whales.

Review by fran hoepfner ★★★★ 1

the only Star Trek movie about whales has got to get two big thumbs up from me

Review by Ian West ★★★★★

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

Review by courtney b ★★★★

ohhhhh leonard OH leonard i love these two old queens flyin their spaceship n savin whales

Review by {Todd} ★★★★★ 1

"Whales?" -Captain James Tiberius Kirk, AND "Double dumbass on you!" - Captain James Tiberius Kirk, AND "Whoever said the human race was logical?" Dr. Gilliam Taylor, AND "They are not the hell your whales" -Mr. Spock, AND "I belong here... I am a whale biologist" - Dr. Gilliam Taylor

- Star Trek Ranked: boxd.it/1sQGa

A pure delight.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is one of my favorite films. It's such a wonderful little time travel adventure with interesting characters and an intriguing plot and story. It's about as wholesome as I get in my film taste and I love the environmental angle of the film.

It's adorable... watch it.

Review by 20oldboy03 ★★★★ 8

Vor nicht allzu langer Zeit, in einer Galaxy, näher als gedacht: Mein schwaches Herz wir von Unruhe erschüttert. Hervorgerufen durch meine Vorfreude meinen bisherigen Favoriten mit „Star Trek IV: Zurück in die Gegenwart“ endlich sehen zu können. In der Hoffnung, mein schwaches Herz mit dem überfälligen Rewatch zu besänftigen, sitze ich bereit für knappe einhundertzwanzig Minuten voller Spaß auf meinem Bett/Couch. Während Ich auf Play drücke, genieße ich mein Abendmahl mit einem kross gebratenem Grillschübling.

Verfolgt von tausenden anderen Filmen, begab ich mich auf die Aufgrabe, alle Filme zu sehen …

„Star Trek IV: Zurück in die Gegenwart“ wartete mit zwei völligen Gegensetzen auf: die eine wäre die von Humbug nur so strotzende Story um die Rückkehr zur Erde der…

Review by Deckk ★★★★ 8

100-word review: When a destructive alien probe threatens Earth, because the aliens haven't heard from their humpback whale buddies in three-hundred years after humans hunted them to extinction, the Enterprise crew travels back in time to the 80s to collect a pair of the giant sea mammals so they can tell the aliens to leave humanity alone. Star Trek not taking itself too seriously is peak Star Trek , as this series entry proves. Not the most original time-travel comedy, but has the advantage of starring such iconic characters. The comedy engine does run out of silliness steam towards the end.

Part of my September 2021 Live Long and Prosper challenge; 4th out of 13 films.

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Paramount heightens hilarious “Star Trek 4 is happening” joke by hiring another new screenwriter

Chris Pine and the unfortunate fans who would love to see him in a Star Trek movie again

Among Hollywood’s funniest running gags (just behind “ director hired for Star Wars film ” and Sony’s ongoing Spider-Man minus Spider-Man universe), Paramount is doubling down on its long-running Star Trek 4 bit. In the latest news from a movie we sincerely doubt will ever be made, Paramount has hired a screenwriter to write the fourth and final J.J. Abrams-produced Star Trek movie. Per Variety , Steve Yockey, who created Max’s The Flight Attendant , will join the ranks of unlucky writers paid to will into existence another Chris Pine-led Star Trek movie. Yockey also wrote for the Scream TV series, Supernatural, and Doom Patrol. Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know what his Trek script is about because, since 2016, which, to be clear, was nearly a decade ago, Paramount has hired the following writers to pen Star Trek 4:

1) J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay (Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power)

2) Noah Hawley (FX’s Fargo, Alien)

3) Kaline Vazquez (Prison Break)

4) Lindsey Beer (Pet Semetary: Bloodlines) and Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel)

Yockey now becomes the latest writer to tackle what is, essentially, a remake of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Of course, the lack of movement on a Star Trek movie hasn’t damaged Paramount’s warp drive. In the years since Star Trek Beyond left theaters, the studio launched Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds—and we didn’t even include Star Trek Shorts. There’s also a Star Trek prequel film from Andor’s Toby Haynes and a streaming movie, Star Trek: Section 31, supposedly on the way.

So will Paramount, after eight years of development, finally land on a script for a Star Trek adventure that gets the green light? That would certainly be a hell of a punchline.

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