STAR TREK IV, THE VOYAGE HOME
US, 1986, 119 minutes, Colour.
William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Jane Wyatt, Catherine Hicks, Mark Lenard, John Schuck, Brock Peters.
Directed by Leonard Nimoy.
After its initial success of for television in the 1960s and 1970s, the Star Trek Franchise moved into cinema films in 1979. There followed another five films in the series, featuring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the popular characters from the television series.
In retrospect, this particular contribution seems rather anomalous, most of the action taking place in San Francisco in the present. While the film opens with action in outer space and moves towards the finale in space and the future, the attention is given to disruption with some planets, questions of signals, indicating humpback whales although the screenplay posits that they have become extinct.
James T.Kirk, now addressed as Admiral, undertakes an expedition through time walk to come back to the 1980s to find two humpback whales and transport them to the future and to restore order in the galaxies. The film was directed by Leonard Nimoy who is prominent, as usual, as Spock, a meeting with his mother (veteran actress Jane Wyatt) and later with his Senator father. He is taunted, especially by Bones, about his being half human but his relying always on logic, but an appeal made to him about saving one while endangering the others.
Spock is able to provide all the technical details needed for this journey. There is quite some comedy in experts from the future trying to find their way in 1980s San Francisco, issues of money, directions, thinking that knowledge of the time was rather primitive, jokes about time travel, asking directions for Nuclear Weapons, stealing energy from the Navy, and Kirk and Spock not having enough exact change to take the bus! Also a comment on language of the times!
Catherine Hicks plays Alice, a whale biologist who is suspicious of the behaviour of Spock as he swims with the whales, discovering that one is pregnant. However, as might be expected, she is eventually won over with the threat of the whales been released in the oceans and becoming the prey of whalers. The film shows the technology of beaming up the whales from the sea into the space vehicle and then the aquarium in the future.
The film feels very much at the time, had several technical Oscar nominations, audiences liking the visit to the present and the touches of humour.
