star trek 3 whales

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There Be Whales Here: ‘The Voyage Home’ at 30

| November 25, 2016 | By: Steve Vivona 93 comments so far

On November 26, 1986 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home debuted on movie screens across the United States.  The film’s lighthearted tone and environmental message struck a chord with moviegoers, and became the first Star Trek film to have crossover appeal with mainstream audiences who normally wouldn’t be interested in the adventures of the Enterprise crew.  The movie often referred to as “the one with the whales” continues to charm audiences today, and we wanted to mark its 30th anniversary with a remembrance not only of the film, but of the time it was made in. We hope you enjoy it.

“It’s going to have whales.”

Sitting in a dimly lit Knights of Columbus hall in Mineola, N.Y., sometime in 1985 I heard those words from Adam Malin, the co-founder of Creation Entertainment, during a slide presentation about the following year’s highly anticipated Star Trek IV.

“Whales and Eddie Murphy.”

My Star Trek fever had reached its apex after devouring Star Trek II and III, as well as all 79 episodes of the Original Series in very rapid succession between 1983-85.   After years of denying how awesome Star Trek was, now  I couldn’t get enough.

But whales and Eddie Murphy? Are you guys high? Try to picture a time with no Internet, no YouTube, when fandom was held together by  conventions,  fanzines ,  and genre magazines like Starlog and Cinefantastique .  Creation Entertainment  were  the purveyors of said conventions since the early 70s, and as luck would have it ,  they decided to open a comic shop mere blocks from my home.

I had yet to attend one of their bigger shows in New York City, but they would host local “mini-cons,” that were bare bones affairs (no celebs, no dealers, etc.) but they were fun nonetheless, and there they would share morsels of information they had gleaned from their contacts in fandom and I imagine, at Paramount.

I was less concerned about the whale thing as I was the presence of Eddie Murphy. Don’t get me wrong: I loved him. Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours are still favorites of mine. But with his name attached, Star Trek IV became akin to Superman III , a disaster that shoehorned Richard Pryor  together with the Man of Steel. The wounds were still fresh.

In this information stone age that was as much as we got. We knew Leonard Nimoy would direct, having earned his stripes on Trek III. I remember seeing William Shatner on Merv Griffin  saying he wanted “a little” more money.  Salary negotiations and his T.J. Hooker schedule were holding up production.

Fast forward to fall of 1986. I was feeling better about Trek IV. Eddie Murphy dropped out, and made The Golden Child. His character morphed into Gillian Taylor, the cetacean biologist played with pluck and zest by Catherine Hicks.  Everything I saw and read made me confident this would be a winner.

More than anything, I was confident Leonard Nimoy would deliver. And deliver he did. 

Star Trek IV could’ve been an unmitigated disaster. In lesser hands, it would’ve been. 

Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett felt as though a lighter touch was in order. After all the death, destruction (and resurrection) of the prior two films, it was time to lighten the mood.  With a script assist from Trek II director Nicholas Meyer they balanced the lighter tone with a grand sense of adventure and excitement, with no moustache twirling villain in sight (if there was a villain it was the human race hunting a noble species to extinction).

The story, that of a n alien  probe reigning destruction upon earth in a vain attempt to contact humpback whales ,  was a cautionary tale about  our short sighted tendencies as a race,  one that  was never preachy or overbearing. The light moment s sprouted organically from  our intrepid 23 rd  century crew ’s desperate attempts to  fit into 1986 San Francisco while fighting a ticking clock in their attempt to bring two humpbacks forward in time to answer the probe.

Nimoy had proven his worth as a director with Trek III. As he often said, the training wheels came off with Trek IV. He was allowed to make his movie.  He delivered a film that pleased fans and the general public in equal measure, and the crossover appeal led to huge box office returns, making The Voyage Home easily the most successful of the TOS films to date.   My Mom saw it .

Leonard was particularly sensitive to the needs of his castmates, all of whom railed against the perfunctory dialogue they were often given ,  as well as their marginalized roles. Already well respected by his colleagues, Nimoy made sure each of them had their moment in the sun. Taking them out of their familiar roles on the bridge (or the engine room) ,  each had an integral part to pl ay in completing this most critical  mission, and it was wonderful to see t hem stretch acting muscles left to atrophy .  What a talented group of performers!

Nimoy elicited wonderful performances from his actors (and himself!) and got the best from his talented crew. Not enough can be said about the man’s  professionalism, ravenous intellectual curiosity , and  human  decency . In all my years as a fan, I have never heard anyone criticize him, and one need only seek out his son Adam’s recent documentary, “For the Love of Spock,” to understand the esteem with which he was held by all who knew him.  Seriously, seek it out!

As much as I loved James Horner’s previous scores for Trek II and III, Nimoy hired his friend Leonard Rosenman to write the music for The Voyage Home , and he delivered a buoyant, joyful  soundtrack that perfectly matched the film’s tonal shift from heavy and operatic to light and  fun.  It remains one of my favorite Trek scores.

The Voyage Home represents perhaps the apex of my Star Trek fandom. That isn’t to say  it ever waned or wavered, but we were  in the midst of  an era when we still had new TOS movies on the horizon, and as much as I loved certain further iterations, nothing has ever eclipsed my love for the original crew. I was immersing myself in fandom, and meeting people who shared my love for Trek.  I was devouring books and ancillary material like mad. 

It took almost a year for Trek IV to be released on VHS (let that sink in). Repeating their prior strategy with Trek III , Paramount shrewdly released Trek IV at the sell through price of $29.99 and it was well within my 17-year old grasp. I watched it twice the day I bought  it  and  daily  for weeks  afterward .  In the thirty subsequent years, I have upgraded to laserdisc, DVD, and blu ray, from standard to special editions, from pan and scan to widescreen. 

It’s a film that richl y rewards repeated viewings, and  hasn’t lost a  step.  It’s the film that made the mainstream sit up and take notice.  It  is proof positive you don’t need a scener y chewing villain for our intrepid crew  to oppose, merely a heroic quest for the good of all mankind. 

At the end of the day ,  it’s a love letter to the fans from Leonard Nimoy, executed with technical brilliance, but more importantly, with great reverence and intimate understanding of that which we all love so much.

Thanks, Leonard. We love you too.

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‘Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home’ Returns To Theaters In August For 2 Nights; Tickets Available Now

I watched the movie on DVD a few nights ago! It is still one of the best Star Trek movies ever made!

Wow, what a great tribute to this cozy, feels-like-home kind of movie. Mr. Vivona you have certainly succeeded in communicating your affection for this movie.

“… you don’t need a scenery chewing villain for our intrepid crew to oppose, merely a heroic quest for the good of all mankind.”

Boom! Exactly! This is precisely what we haven’t been getting in the last ST movies and what we need so much. Well said sir!

I agree 100% Stop the “villain” casting in the next ST movie. It’s all been just too repetitive. I understand the economics of Chris Pine stating you can’t make a cerebral ST movie in 2016 but the generalization he made too much. ST is not Marvel Comics! It never was. ST IV is a movie of heart, soul with comedy overtones and great intentions. Look at the success of “The Martian”. It’s got all that.

Right on. “The Martian” proved again you don’t always need a scowling, growling villain delivering speeches and megaweapons to make an entertaining movie. A survival tale and a race against time works too.

Arrival was a very good example too of sci-fi without a traditional villain. Great movie BTW.

Except Arrival had multiple villains that made the situation much more difficult.

We should really ask this: Either make a Star Trek movie, or make another movie! Call it Star Warfare or something!

Unfortunately, audiences want a Star Wars influenced Star Trek. Hopefully,the new show will be continue in the tradition of the good Trek shows.

http://trekcore.com/blog/2016/11/musical-surprises-fill-la-la-lands-trek-50th-soundtrack/

I fine Trek film and ending to the Genesis / Accidental Trilogy, shame about the music score tho. Finally watched Beyond a couple of times this week, that doesn’t get any better the more you watch it.

Respectfully disagree

Which, Beyond being average or the score to Voyage?

Nice article, but one nit-pick: “script assist” from Nicholas Meyer? How about “he wrote the dialogue for the entire body of the movie?”

He did acts two and three. From ‘judging by the pollution content in the atmosphere, we’ve arrived in the twentieth century’ before going out on the poem about the whales

Yes–what I”m loosely calling “the body/middle,” i.e. Acts 2 & 3. Harve wrote 1 & 4. In any case, writing half the movie and dubbing that an “assist” feels a bit understated here.

Let’s also give credit to Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes who wrote the original script that Harve and Nick Meyer added to.

I am tempted to say that this is the best Trek movie. The decisions to down play “Treknobabble”, traditional villains, and space travel were wise ones. My only complaint is the flaccid score. I know Horner would not have worked here but what about Alan Silvestri ? He would been terrific.

Great article about a wonderful film and probably my favourite of the original cast movies. I recall first seeing it on release in the UK in Spring 1987. Tears of joy for me at the end when NCC-1701-A leaves space dock accompanied by a majestic rendition of the Original Series Main Title/End Title credits music, before warping off-screen. Movie magic.

You just reminded me of another horrid thing. After we just sat through this terrible movie the neat and trite way they wrapped up the trial was nauseating. And then it seems they just happened to have a Constitution Class starship lying around they repainted and added an “A”. Pathetic. This was Trek at it’s absolute worst. It makes “The Final Frontier” look like Citizen Kane and “Encounter at Farpoint” a laugh a minute action packed adventure.

Dare I say sir, your opinion is in the minority.

Popularity does not = good.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments, Steve.

This film, above all the others, IMO, really captures the essence of “Star Trek” in all its wonder. The humor, humanity and love that the crew and actors feel for the material and for the whales is quite palpable.

If there will be another JJ Abrams universe Trek – I would advise him to watch this film….”Shore Leave” and “Mirror Mirror”. Those 3 elements would make for a great kind of big screen experience.

Its time for the JJ-verse to stop looking for its next “black hat”.

I wouldn’t hold my breath. The guy doesn’t care about Trek. He just wants a Star Wars clone. Hell, he can’t even direct a genuine Star Wars movie.

Maybe you would do well to watch The Doomsday Machine too

I was 31 when I saw Star Trek IV on opening night. After the wonderful drama of II and III, it was a HUGE disappointment. That’s when Star Trek “jumped the shark”for me and never fully recovered. What a piece of crap!

I’ve never heard anyone dump on Voyage Home before. You sir, are an idiot!

Well, I never ‘dumped’ on it per se, but I remember not being particularly impressed by it when I saw it in theaters. I thought it was just okay. It has grown on me since then, but it isn’t my favorite at all.

Harry… The movie was (and still is) garbage. Just because you disagree with opinions doesn’t make those people “idiots”.

Although I don’t think Trek jumped the shark then. It was in a pretty deep hole it didn’t crawl out of until “The Undiscovered Country”.

ML31 – It’s true, people who disagree with my opinion are idiots. I’ve gathered a large group of Scottish bagpipe singers and Vegas showgirls and spent a year researching my opinions and cross referenced them with the opinions of others and the data was clear – those who disagree with me are idiots and sometimes morons.

Voyage Home = Greatest Trek movie ever! Undiscovered Country was ok but come on, funny jokes and whales trump boring cold war references and bad cgi floating purple blood every time.

I was 31 when I saw STIV and loved it. So did my wife, mom and friends.

BTW: Great article and tribute to the film and Leonard Nimoy. Saw Nimoy at a speaking appearance at UNCC a few weeks before the film opened. He finished by saying he recently saw the final cut and said, “I think you will like it.”

Leonard Rosenman scored the COMBAT! TV series among his many noteworthy efforts. Vic Morrow, one of COMBAT!’s co-stars (along with Rick Jason) was a friend of Nimoy and may have helped Nimoy get cast for at least 3 episodes as a guest star. I wonder if this was how Nimoy met Rosenman.

Totally get the jumped the shark feeling. Having to go get whales IS a bit hokey. For me Trek 4 was always more a comfort food while TWOK was epic entertainment.

not hokey as the concept of the whales and probe are centre stage where as the genesis device a mere mgguffin to allow for a lot of space battles.

proper ‘trek’ concept used well.

There is definitely some suspension of disbelief in how easy it is to time travel. And ofcourse TVH makes the entire Orci-inspired Bad Robot crap fest moot as far as time travel.

But TVH was very enjoyable. They fought whatever urge might exist to make it completely stand alone and continued the story of II & III. Spock still learning to be himself led to some wonderful moments that sprung organically from the evolution of the character.

My favourite scene is still where Hicks asks them out for pizza and they do a yes, no, yes, no routine ending with Kirk saying “I love Pizza. And so do you”. Shatner got to be funny, showing off skills that would earn him awards years later. And he was good.

Little things like using the eye glasses Bones gave him Kirk in WoK…and ofcourse he got less money for them because he had carelessly broken the lenses.

And ofcourse, the chickens finally came home to roost as the crew faced judgement for their prior actions and it turned into a good news scenario.

@Harry Ballz

re: Star Trek “jumped the shark”for me and never fully recovered.

I agree completely, though there were some moments I enjoyed. The worst thing is the horrid music score, muddy/smoky/hazy cinematography, terrible optical shots (the bird of prey appearing/hovering over the whaling vessel for example), and of course the moronic floating CGI heads sequence. Oh, and uh…John Schuck. The worst of the original TOS-cast movies.

‘I love Italian. and so do you’ ‘yes’

shame paramount has not learned the lesson from this great film. not every ‘trek’ movie has to be a clone of ‘wrath/khan’.

Yes! That was the line (i wrote it as “pizza” above). Great scene. Great comedic timing by both Nimoy and Shatner.

Not funny. Lame. And out of character for both of them.

Hands down, Voyage Home is my favorite Trek movie. Yep it beats WOK, which is a close second.

I don’t think it’s right that Trek III was priced “sell through”. At least …not initially. It was the first movie I ever bought…and I KNOW I paid 80 dollars for it. That was a lot for me when I was 14 years old! I cherished it.

Trek 3 absolutely was priced sell through. I bought it the day it came out and was 14 also.

I was robbed!

Did you buy it on half-inch videotape or LaserDisc? In my area I found it strange that the LD was cheaper than the VHS or SuperBeta.

BTW the ad is from March, 1985.

http://www.terapeak.com/worth/store-display-shelf-talker-87-vtg-star-trek-iv-voyage-home-kirk-spock-vhs-8/311504398846/

Also, I remember Trek III coming out on video in early 1985, certainly not a year later (which would have been May-June.) I clearly remember walking in a K-Mart around late January and seeing Star Trek III running on all the TVs in the TV area.

Trek IV came out on home video in Sept. 1987 and had a preview for TNG. Trek III came out on home video in Feb. 1985.

I really enjoyed TVH because it was outside the box, not the usual round of space battles and bad guys. It was clever, with a great message. Only Star Trek could have pulled this one off. That was the greatness of Trek.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-trek-iv-voyage-home-writer-eddie-murphys-lost-role-950551

One really has to wonder how Eddie Murohy starring in a Trek film would have changed the franchise. This would have hands down been the highest grossing Trek film of all time, including the Abrams films …

This I have long argued is the thing that holds Trek back, the lack of star power. Abrams and Paramount gambled that their inexpensive up-and-coming cast would catapult them into super-stardom and thus Trek along with them, but sadly that gamble failed. None of them have really achieved that kind of status. It’s just so disappointing they don’t treat Trek like the Marvel and the DC universe franchises. Even Star Wars gets better treatment as they brought the original stars back, who if they didn’t achieve super stardom, they earned legendary status.

Had Eddie Murphy been in the film, it would have watered down the “Star Trek” part of the story. Did you notice that there was only like 1 or 1 1/2 scenes that tell Gillian’s (Catherine Hicks) backstory. With Eddie, he would have commanded a lot more screen time and rightfully so… The Star Trek cast was royalty and they didn’t need a heavyweight guest star that would take away from their screen time.

I would say Zoe Saldana is doing nicely

Eddie would have over-shadowed everyone and everything. It would certainly have tested Nimoy’s efforts. Shatner would have felt the need to out-shine Eddie and the race would have been on.

Regarding no big names in the JJ films, again, you wonder where all the money went. They paid for a big name producer and didnt get the results. Could have had big name guest stars and didnt. Although Peter Weller was great, but under-utilized by Orci’s self-serving script. And clearly, they didnt have any money for a big name actor. Then again, they did try to get Del Toro which would have helped…

Huh? Benedict Cumberbatch and Idris Elba? (To say nothing of Eric Bana and Peter Weller.) Those are certainly big names. Cumberbatch was miscast, IMO, but you can’t say they went small on the names.

I was there that first Friday night. It was and still is a great Star Trek film! I still have my Star Trek 4 poster magazine, movie magazine and a newspaper ad for the film!!!

It is the best of the Star Trek movies, but Star Trek Beyond is more than a competitive second place, even with the mustache twirling villain. I hope Simon Pegg gets to take a hand in another soon, he has it all down, a fun movie that rollicked from start to finish.

I hate when people say that the movie had no villain. It most certainly did! When I watched it growing up, that probe was a scary thing and very villainous. Hence the urgent need to stop it from… you know… destroying Earth.

it is man who is the real villain according to mr meyer.

short sightedness in the past led to this but can we say that the probe is attacking earth or its signal to the whales absent from the 23rd century merely causing unintended mayhem?

They never specify for sure that it is unintended though. Just random speculation.

i heard mr meyer say it in a featurette about the movie villains on the ‘trek’ TNG movie boxset

Aaron (Naysayers are gonna nay),

Re: that probe was a scary thing and very villainous

I hate when people watch STAR TREK and fail to pickup on its most basic precept: that because some other entity’s alienness and strangeness frightens you, it doesn’t automatically mean that it therefore has evil motives which are requisite to it actually being a villain.

If you go out for a morning jog listening to tunes and obliviously step on an anthill on your circuit, your oblivious action makes you a danger to the ant colony but not a villain.

I love The Voyage Home. It has all of the quirks necessary to make it fun all these years later. My Grandpa wasn’t a sci-fi guy – but he actually watched this one with me and enjoyed it. Good memories. Plus, my step-dad was on the Enterprise when they filmed this movie, so even more good memories.

Not to burst your bubble, but as I recall, the aircraft carrier posing as the Enterprise was actually the USS Ranger…

I have avoided the film for years. When the blu ray set came out the thing that gave me pause was the inclusion of this film in the set. I bought it anyway and gave the movie another chance since I hadn’t seen it in so very very long. Maybe seeing it decades later will give me a different perspective than the negative one I got when I watched it in the theater that one time. I have to say it. This film is STILL by far the worst Trek ever. I can appreciate the lighter tone but unlike “The Trouble with Tribbles” the jokes in this one NEVER worked and the characters were so far away from themselves they all were barely recognizable. The script was terrible and the story line was worse. The whale thing was so monumentally dumb words cannot accurately describe it. The message was so in your face it made “Let That be Your Last Battlefield” look nuanced by comparison. And then there was the time travel thing. A tool that had already become tired even then. Plus the way they did it made it seem like traveling through time was about as difficult as catching the 7:15 train to downtown.

There is so very much wrong with this movie from Nimoys sub par directing to the the awful Rosenman score to the afore mentioned plot. I found myself wishing they did a similar story but place it on Vulcan. Thought it would be a fun twist to see the humans need to blend in with the Vulcans instead of the other way around. Or they could have… Wait… There was far too much wrong with the film to list all the things they could have done to make it better.

And I thought I was the only one who doesn’t care for this film! After 3 films with amazing scores, I couldn’t stomach this one. And though I really appreciate the tone and lack of a villain, the film itself just comes off as schmaltzy to me. From the dialog, to the acting, to the half-assed composite shots… I would put this film at the bottom of trek films, only remarkable for it’s nostalgia and whatever merit you give for cross-over appeal.

The fact that this is the Trek film that actually has crossover appeal pretty much cements the concept that Trek will never be a popular movie series. The worst and most non-Trekish movie of all is the one that non Trek people flocked to.

And yes… You are not alone in your opinion of “The Voyage Home”.

How was time travel a tool that had become tired by then? It hadnt been used in the previous films and TNG hadnt even come out yet.

Characters were not far removed from themselves at all. They were ‘fish out of water’. I think its not that TVH was bad, its that it went over your head.

So you are saying that Scotty was too stupid to realize he was in the 1980’s. A time when one could not talk to a computer. And that it was quite normal for McCoy to run around a hospital screaming about what barbarians the doctors of 1986 are. Sorta like when he was when he was pumped full of cordrazine. This was hardly “fish out of water”. It was just full on stupidity on the part of our intrepid crew. It was quite embarrassing to see them act like children. Maybe if it were actually funny or clever. But it didn’t even have THAT going for it. It was just sad to see. As far as time travel is concerned, there were a number of time travel movies in the 80’s already. It was just a tired concept by then not just for Trek but in general.

Again, you’re so angry about making your point, you’re failing to use common sense. I dont recall if they knew they were in 1986. I do know they knew they were in “late 20th century”.

Bones wasnt running around screaming until he was actually exposed to the medical knowledge of the time. He didnt arrive with that knowledge. In fact he seemed quite surprised.

If Scotty had gone back to early 20th century, I could see your point. But your judging Scotty’s knowledge of events YOU know about a time YOU live in. If you were plopped in the “late 18th century”, you might not have intimately knowledge of the technology of the time. Especially of technology that was readily available within a few years.

Re: I dont recall if they knew they were in 1986

If their computer knew of humpback whales but not of this, “WWVB: A Half Century of Delivering Accurate Frequency and Time by Radio “:

https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/pml/div688/grp40/Bin-2702.pdf

and how to decode it to determine exactly that, I’d have been curious. Not to mention Uhura monitoring standard radio transmissions and not stumbling across it even if they didn’t know. The broadcast also has an audio component that identifies what it is etc. in plain English.

Re: A time when one could not talk to a computer.

I don’t think the fictional Scotty was the one being too stupid:

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/speechreco/

“By 1971, IBM had developed its next experimental application of speech recognition. The Automatic Call Identification system enabled engineers anywhere in the US to talk to and receive “spoken” answers from a computer in Raleigh, NC. It was IBM’s first speech recognition system to operate over telephone lines and respond to a range of different voices and accents.”

A great time travel plot, a smart take on the alien culture theme, superb performances all round and plenty of excitement. There’s literally nothing in that movie that doesn’t work. Well, apart from the score, obviously. And so many quotable lines! ‘Just one damn minute, Admiral.’ ‘Computer…hello computer!’ ‘Everyone remember where we parked.’ ‘How will playing cards help?’ ‘I think he took a little too much LDS.’… Oh and lest we forget, this is the first time in the franchise when we saw a female starship captain. And (quite wonderfully) African-American, no less. Take that modern Diversity Police!

Rosenman’s score did get nominated for an Oscar so it can’t be that bad. His music for all the space scenes is just fine in my opinion. Some of the music during the earth bound scenes are more average…but his best work is the music where our crew’s Klingon ship goes into time warp…and the post verdict music.

Thanks for reminding me…

“‘Computer…hello computer!’”

That was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back for me. After that weak joke (calling it weak is an insult to weak jokes everywhere) that made Scotty look like a blithering idiot I checked out of the movie. I finished it just because I already invested time so I might as well see where that tire fire would go. But that was point when all hope for an enjoyable or worthwhile time at the movies was gone.

In the hands of another actor that line may have seemed silly rather than funny, but I think Doohan’s delivery made it work. In any case, as a Trek joke i’ll take that over the ‘hilarity’ of Keenser sneezing on a doorknob any day of the week.

I’m sorry but it didn’t work because it made Scotty look like a moron. In fact, pretty much everyone forgot they were 300 years in the past. Except for Sulu who somehow knew how to operate a 300 year old flying machine. That’s quite a stretch. The jokes in “The Final Frontier” ALL worked better. For all the other problems with that movie at least the scenes with Kirk, Spock and McCoy around the campfire were excellent. “I’m sorry Doctor. Were we having a good time?”

Firstly, Scotty bumped his head in TFF and knocked himself out. That was stupid.

He didnt look like a moron in TVH. He looked like a genius working with technology that was very dated to him. Can we extrapolate that unlike most Star Trek character, Scotty was not an expert of late 20th century technology? Not sure where he was in the technology timeline…

He then began typing at lightening speed and within seconds had written the formula for transparent aluminum. Yup, moron.

Except… Bumping his head was actually funny because of the timing of it. “I know this ship like the back of me hand.” KLANG! Not a great joke but light years better than talking into a mouse like an ignorant fool. Twice. One does not need to be an expert in 300 year old tech to know that there were no automobiles around in 1500. What Scotty did was equivalent one of us knowingly being whisked back to 1517 and then waiting for a streetcar on a London corner. If he was THAT unfamiliar with I/O devices of early computers how is it he could whip up the complex formula on that ancient keyboard? I seriously doubt any newspaper printers could just whip up a page on a 1500’s printing press just like that. So yeah… Talking to an ancient computer… Moron. One of a number of instances that were completely out of character for our gang. Perhaps you loved it because it was geared for the lowest common denominator of non-Trek audiences. Aimed low enough for you?

You’re equating not knowing the computer couldnt respond to a microphone in the late 80’s to cars existing in the 1500’s? If you want your point to be taken seriously, compare apples and apples.

Scotty knowing he’s in the late 20th century, coming from 300 years in the future and he’s supposed to know? Come on…You act like computers couldnt handle voice commands for another 500 years. Which is clearly untrue. Use some common sense.

Re: not knowing the computer couldn’t respond to a microphone in the late 80’s

Actually, ML31’s making a fundamental mistake, and you are going right along with it, that because voice recognition didn’t exist in home computer models that it didn’t exist back then or that Mr. Scott would know that in an industrial setting the computer he was going to use was of such a home model with such a limited capability.

It’s the equivalent of assuming that because that Apple computer had no internet access that therefore the internet backbone didn’t exist and therefore it would be ridiculous if Scotty had instead used “the internet”, which I was using in 1980 to access a Cray supercomputer back then, in looking for answers to some problem back then as well.

Here’s that actual “history” that ML31 mucked up in ignorance:

“By 1971, IBM had developed its next experimental application of speech recognition. The Automatic Call Identification system enabled engineers anywhere in the US to talk to and receive “spoken” answers from a computer in Raleigh, NC. It was IBM’s first speech recognition system to operate over telephone lines and respond to a range of different voices and accents.”

‘how quaint’.

‘gentlemen, we’ve come home’

or “My friends (since Uhura was there), we’ve come home”.

…and because I thought the movie was so good…I felt like this was Shatner saying…the series had come full circle and we were back to the 2nd season where “Star Trek” was great.

damn it, knew I got it wrong.

I forgot. ‘Tell her…I feel FINE.’ Not a funny line, but still the best of the movie. The perfect end to the Spock arc begun in Khan. You know when I think back to the day I first saw that film, on a 20 inch tv on pan and scan vhs (sadly, the first Trek I ever saw in the theatre was The Final Frontier-yes, your sympathy is welcome) well, it’s just pure nostalgia. I almost wish I could go back to the eighties and live there. But at the same time, it makes me a little sad. If you’d have told my thirteen year old self, sitting there in blissful ignorance watching Spock swimming with whales and calculating impossible odds, that twenty years hence when I was all ‘grown up’, my favourite Vulcan would be beating the shit out of people and diddling Uhura-i’d never have believed you. Not in a million years. Say what you like about your perceptions of the film’s flaws. We didn’t know when we were lucky.

actually TMP gifted that spock character arc to the trilogy. melding with v’ger chilled him out about his heritage.

You are quite correct.

I’ve always wondered if Shatner’s involvement with Greenpeace in the ’70s had anything to do with the “save the whales” message of STIV. I saw him at a convention in ’78 and he spent most of his time talking about the importance of saving the whales, but then also talked about a movie idea with an environmental message: something about the ship being out of resources and finding a planet that could replenish their supplies — but doing so would wreak havoc on the environment of the planet. I’m not sure that’s the right plot, but I’ve always liked the idea of a movie where the crew is forced to make a really difficult decision.

Trek IV’s concept was all Nimoy. Bill was still busy with “TJ Hooker” at that time, but I do recall Shatner being interviewed on his horse ranch by Merv Griffin and Bill just being elated when he said how unique the storyline was for “Star Trek IV” which was already in production at the time of the interview.

I need guidance with something. After 4’s initial release on vhs..years Later a Director’s Edition was issued. I recall this vhs version had a making of featurette I believe never was ported over to the dvd/BD issues. It was a fair sized featurette on the fake whales/animatronics aspect. Am I correct and did this never again appear on future releases of this film?

I got the only copy I could find in mail yesterday. The cover was correct..however the vhs inside was NOT The Paramount Director’s Series release w/ Nimoy’s segment. Paramount only did 2 such releases…the other was “Fatal Attraction”. I have searched google, Amazon, ebay. Only a handful of the standard theatrical release version is out there. Help! This segment NEVER got ported over to dvd or Bluray! Need this!

but then the OS was known for silly humour.

“They are not the hell your whales.”

In 1986, Star Trek pushed a Greenpeace agenda as a blockbuster movie. It worked.

The legacy of 'Star Trek IV: The Voyage' is more than just a goofy movie time travel movie. Here's how it changed our world for the better.

After James T. Kirk stole Doc Brown’s ride, he decided to go back in time and save the whales.

You might think I’m describing some quirky fanfiction or a deleted scene from Ready Player One . But, the truth is, the Klingon ship Kirk and company commandeered in Star Trek IV to travel back in time to 1986, was owned by Klingon Commander Kruge, who, in 1984’s Star Trek III , was played by Christopher Lloyd (who went on to become much more famous as Doc Brown in 1985’s Back to the Future ).

By stealing that specific craft, the crew of the late Starship Enterprise was destined to go on a time-travel adventure. But unlike any other time-travel romp dating to the 1980s, this journey is a creative piece of commentary on a nascent environmentalism movement that put endangered species at its heart. In the fall of 1986, one year after Back to the Future , Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home not only became a transtemporal box-office hit, it also propelled climate change and concern for endangered species into the mainstream.

In short, Star Trek tried to literally save the whales in 1986, and it basically worked.

Welcome to FUTURE EARTH , where Inverse forecasts 100 years of possibilities, challenges, and who will lead the way.

Prior to J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot in 2009, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home held the record for the Star Trek feature film with the most successful box office, ever . The movie opened over Thanksgiving weekend in 1986 and went on to gross $109,713,132. To put this in perspective, Top Gun , which was the number one movie of 1986, made $176,781,728. Yes, Top Gun was the top gun, but The Voyage Home was right up there. Until J.J. Abrams, it was Star Trek’s most popular crossover film, which is saying something considering the film lacks both violence and sex. In 1986, the Trek franchise went toe-to-toe with the horror of Aliens and the sexy action of Top Gun and, while it didn’t quite win, it came out as a serious contender.

The mysterious probe in The Voyage Home . All it wants to do is to talk to some whales...

Co-written by Wrath of Khan maestro Nicholas Meyer , and directed by Leonard Nimoy, The Voyage Home was a political film imbued with environmental activism masquerading as a fish-out-of-water comedy. So, it turns out, humpback whales are just as intelligent as humans, and, at some point in the past, communicated only in whale song to this particular alien probe that looks like a smoother version of ʻOumuamua.

The movie sets out a humbling idea: If aliens were to make contact with Earth, they might not necessarily want to talk to humans. As Spock (Leonard Nimoy, directing himself) puts it “Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man.” When this alien probe rolls up on Earth, hoping to talk to some whales, the probe’s transmission sounds one way from the air, but totally different underwater. These signals are also destructive and require an answer that can’t be given because, in the Star Trek universe, humpback whales are extinct.

Once Spock and Uhura realize that the probe’s signals sound different underwater, there’s only one option; get some whales and hope those whales, as Bones says, “tell this probe what the hell to go do with itself.” Kirk decides time-travel to 1986 is the only possible solution. So, not only is their mission to find humpback whales in the past but also to bring them forward in time to the future. No one has ever called this movie Star Trek Some Whales Back to the Future , but that’s what happens.

The Voyage Home starts with this tough talk, and then, less than 15-minutes later, dumps the famous Starfleet crew into a comedy of errors on the streets of San Francisco in 1986. During the trip back in time, the stolen Klingon ship is broken (of course) and the crew has to figure out how to build a whale tank that can fit inside of their (broken) spaceship.

Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in a pawn shop, selling some antique glasses to have enough cash to get around in the 20th Century.

This means Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, and Chekov are super busy. Sulu flies a helicopter expertly but forgets how to use windshield wipers. Chekov gets mistaken for a quirky Russian spy. And, best of all, Spock tries out profanity for the first time, referring to swear words as “colorful metaphors.” There’s never been a science-fiction time-travel romp quite like The Voyage Home , probably best exemplified by the moment Spock uses a Vulcan nerve pinch to silence a rowdy punk’s boom box on a city bus.

But The Voyage Home’s overarching message comes to the fore in an over-the-top scene in which Spock literally connects his mind with that of a whale. The idea is elegant: If human beings possessed Spock’s telepathic powers, we too might connect with other creatures and, in turn, have a greater understanding and compassion for the other, defenseless denizens of our world. The heart of the movie is when Spock jumps into a giant whale tank and mind-melds with a humpback whale named Gracie. Later, when cetacean biologist Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) accuses Spock of “messing with my whales,” Spock fires back “They like you very much, but they are not the hell your whales.” The whales own themselves and Spock respects that.

The Star Trek characters come from a more enlightened future, and they’re ashamed of the actions of humankind in the “past” — the present for moviegoers of the ‘80s. In 1986, humpback whales really were on the endangered species list. In the movie’s final scenes, Kirk puts his stolen Klingon spaceship directly between a whaler’s harpoon and Spock’s new whale friends, saving them from humanity. For an audience unaware of environmental activism, it was a wake-up call.

“Greenpeace used to go out in rubber rafts in front of the Russian ships to try to prevent them from firing their harpoons, and that’s where that idea came from.”

“There’s a homage to Greenpeace in the movie because the idea of putting the spaceship between the whaling ship and the whales and being hit by the harpoon has Greenpeace roots,” Leonard Nimoy said in a 1986 interview. “Greenpeace used to go out in rubber rafts in front of the Russian ships to try to prevent them from firing their harpoons, and that’s where that idea came from.”

In 1986, Greenpeace representatives noted that while The Voyage Home played fast and loose with the truth, “the message is right on the money.″ After the movie’s release, there was an uptick in donations to Greenpeace, according to the organization. In fact, Greenpeace went so far as to say that the film “subtly reinforces why Greenpeace exists.”

Appropriately, Star Trek IV did not employ real whales in filming. Other than some stock footage toward the end of the film, the vast majority of the whales in the film were animatronic; a special effect so good that nobody noticed.

Star Trek IV’s influence on real conservation efforts in the 1980s is hard to quantify today. In 2016, the humpback whale was removed from a federal endangered species list, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration called the humpback whale comeback “an ecological success story.” When that happened, several publications pointed out a link between Star Trek IV and the resurgence of humpback whales. Quite literally, Star Trek’s cautionary tale seemed to usher in a better future in which whales didn’t go extinct in the 21st century.

It is impossible to prove a direct link between The Voyage Home and the de-escalation of whale hunting in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Correlation and causation are two different things, after all. In truth, years of dedicated environmental activism, political action, and education did the hard work. But it’s also true that Star Trek IV opened up a lot of people’s eyes to humanity’s cruelty toward whales and the perilous state of their survival.

At one point in the film, Bones quips that the 20th century is like “the Dark Ages” to his future, enlightened eyes. But, perhaps because of a quirky and bold Star Trek movie, some of us started to see the light.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is streaming for free on Pluto TV . It’s also streaming on Paramount+.

This article was originally published on April 20, 2021

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

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Star Trek IV's Greatest Feat Wasn’t Sci-Fi - It Was Saving the Whales

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home achieved a lot of amazing things. It made the most money of any of the Star Trek films at the box office at that point, made room for the series to start its sequel, The Next Generation, and gave fans a fun romp with the crew of the Enterprise finally getting home. But its greatest accomplishment may have been the reason Leonard Nimoy agreed to make the film in the first place: the chance to, as the characters do, save the endangered humpback whale species.

The Voyage Home follows the Enterprise crew attempting to return home after the events of Star Trek III with the newly restored but still slightly amnesiac Spock (Nimoy). But in order to save the galaxy, they must return to the late 1980s to locate humpback whales to communicate with an unknown alien entity. On a quest to steal some whales and potentially restore the species, Kirk (William Shatner) and the gang meet a marine biologist (Catherine Hicks) who assists them in their heist .

RELATED: Star Trek: Prodigy Bosses Tease a New Ship, More Familiar Faces in Season 2

How Star Trek IV Helped Save the Whales

The film's legacy is bigger than its simple, funny story of space friends out of time might indicate. At the time of the film's release, 1984, the humpback whale species in the real world really was in danger of being hunted to extinction. Given that Star Trek had been conceived in the idealistic 1960s under the idea of a utopian future, the fact that the real future was going to doom such an innocent species must have been rather poignant to the crew. Nimoy, agreeing to do the film in hopes of spreading the message about whales , must have hit on that feeling the 1980s had of nostalgia for the more visionary past, which allowed Trek to return in the first place.

And The Voyage Home achieved its goal. There was an uptick in donations to Greenpeace following the film's release, and by 2016, the humpback whale was removed from the endangered species list following a downtick in hunting in the '80s and '90s. While the outcome may not just be because of this one film, many still look to The Voyage Home as the model of how to integrate social issues with action. Indeed, beyond helping encourage activism in saving the whales, the film showed how environmental and socially conscious messages could be placed in a big-budget action sci-fi franchise movie and do well at the box office while inspiring viewers to try to better the world.

RELATED: Star Trek: Prodigy's Saviour is a Voyager Deep Cut

How Star Trek IV Changed Sci-Fi Movies

While real subtext certainly exists in action films before The Voyage Home, such as the appearance of the Empire in Star Wars , actual political discourse in this kind of film was generally unheard of. Nowadays, the idea of a big-budget action franchise having overtly environmental ( Avatar) , political ( Captain America: The Winter Soldier) or feminist ( Captain Marvel) messages is pretty standard. But in the '80s, action films generally did not touch social problems, at least not in blockbuster series . But Star Trek had always been a series willing to confront political issues, and it had to bring that to the movies eventually.

The Voyage Home opened the door for more action films to incorporate a socially conscious message into their stories. Environmental action films were popular in the 1990s -- Jurassic Park, for instance -- and The Way of Water and Avatar probably wouldn't exist without Star Trek to blaze the path. The uprise in environmental films has also helped to encourage real-world activism, at the very least spreading awareness of the issues and adding depth and power to the often dismissed action genre. Much like how bands in the '60s, like The Beatles, brought social messages to the music they knew the world would be listening to, Star Trek had the power for good and chose to use it.

• Movie Features

Different cetaceans

Cetaceans were aquatic mammals indigenous to the planet Earth and many other worlds with large oceans , such as Zadar IV . Some cetacean species were considered sentient beings . The Blue Whale was the largest known creature ever to inhabit the Earth.

In 2286 , an unidentified probe tried to make contact with the then-extinct humpback whale species, and in doing so wreaked havoc on Earth's ecosystem , before Admiral Kirk managed to transport two members of the species from the 20th century back to the 23rd . The probe, apparently satisfied, reversed its course. ( Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home )

Harry Bernard often watched a native species of dolphins on Zadar IV when his father was stationed as an oceanographer there. ( TNG : " When The Bough Breaks ")

In an alternate timeline created when the USS Enterprise -C disappeared from the Battle of Narendra III , Cetacean Ops was a department aboard the warship USS Enterprise -D . Shortly after the Enterprise -C emerged from the temporal rift , Joshua Kim was paged to Cetacean Ops. ( TNG : " Yesterday's Enterprise ")

Dolphins were present aboard the Enterprise -D in some capacity. In 2368 , Geordi La Forge took the Ferengi Par Lenor to see the dolphins in order to keep him from disturbing Kriosian Ambassador Briam . ( TNG : " The Perfect Mate ") The dolphins may have been in the aquatics lab . ( TNG : " Genesis ")

The USS Cerritos had a Cetacean Ops department, staffed by two Beluga whales , Matt and Kimolu . ( LD : " First First Contact ")

So far, it has not been established when Humanity first became aware that the cetaceans of their homeworld (at least some of them) are sentient. At the latest, it should have happened during the whale probe incident depicted in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , set in 2286 . However, the invention of the universal translator in the 22nd century could have already made Humans aware of the fact.

• 1.1 Related topics
• 2.1 Background information
• 2.2 Apocrypha
• 3 External links

Cetaceans [ ]

• Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)
• Pink dolphin
• Killer whale (Orcinus orca)
• Baird's beaked whale (Berardius bairdi)
• Beluga whale
• Blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus)
• Cuvier's beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris)
• Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae)
• Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)

Related topics [ ]

• Denebian whale

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual gives further information about the cetaceans aboard Galaxy -class starships, stating they (a mixed group of Bottlenose dolphins and Takaya's whales) are actually crewmembers and form a guidance and navigation consultation team. These cetaceans are elite specialists in navigation, and Starfleet consults them on suggested system upgrades. The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints also show several large cetacean tanks within the saucer section . Although the above reference to dolphins in "The Perfect Mate" was written at the request of the manual's co-author Rick Sternbach , it was never revealed in an episode whether or not the cetaceans are crewmembers as stated here.

Cetacean crew members were eventually shown aboard the USS Cerritos and USS Voyager -A .

Apocrypha [ ]

The early concept art for the computer game Star Trek Online includes a sketch for an aquatics lab aboard a Galaxy -class starship, which may or may not be the one mentioned in the TNG episode " Genesis ".

External links [ ]

• Cetacean at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Cetacea at Wikipedia
• 1 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)
• 3 Daniels (Crewman)

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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Watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home with a subscription on Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is perhaps the lightest and most purely enjoyable entry of the long-running series, emphasizing the eccentricities of the Enterprise's crew.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Leonard Nimoy

William Shatner

Captain Spock

Catherine Hicks

Dr. Gillian Taylor

DeForest Kelley

Commander Leonard H. McCoy, M.D.

James Doohan

Captain Montgomery Scott

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Published Jul 15, 2024

There Be Whales Here! A Brief History of Cetacean Ops

The best navigators in outer space come from underneath the waves.

This article contains references to certain aspects of Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, including minor spoilers about Episode 5, "Observer's Paradox."

StarTrek.com

Seeking out new life and new civilizations sometimes doesn't require anyone to actually leave Earth.

In the grand tapestry of Star Trek , one of the most compelling intelligent lifeforms are various mammals who just happen to need a massive tank of water rather than a dry starship corridor and artificial gravity. To put it another way, highly intelligent whales and dolphins not only exist in the Star Trek universe, but in several instances, these cetaceans are actually members of Starfleet.

The hub for whales and dolphins — who are boldly going where no sea-dwelling-creature-has-gone before — is a place on a starship called Cetacean Ops. Teased in the second season of Star Trek: Prodigy 's very first episode, the U.S.S. Voyager -A has a large Cetacean Ops center, which houses a massive tank that includes a humpback whale. While this might sound bonkers, the reality is, Star Trek has teased the existence of cetacean crew members as far back as The Next Generation .

Here's how the idea of whale and dolphin crew members began in Star Trek , and how Prodigy honors not only a very old Easter egg, but also one of the most popular, and beloved Trek feature films ever.

Bottlenose Dolphins on the Enterprise -D

"We'll Always Have Paris"

In Season 1 of The Next Generation , at the start of the 1988 episode " We'll Always Have Paris ," there was a very brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to a very special part of the Enterprise -D. Although the episode itself was a story about a scientist named Manheim, Jean-Luc's lost love Jenice, and a bunch of time loops, there's also a moment where, seemingly, Picard might have accidentally been sharing a turbolift with a few bottlenose dolphins.

As Picard heads to Holodeck 3 to unwind, he rides a turbolift, which has, written on its doors the words "Tursiops Crew Facility." Tursiops is the genus of bottlenose dolphins, which seems to mean that in 2364, on the Enterprise -D, there were some crew members who were bottlenose dolphins. At the time, this little label on the doors was likely intended as a small inside joke.

And yet, just two years prior, in the 1986 film The Voyage Home , Star Trek had established that various sea-dwelling creatures on Earth (notably humpback whales) were probably just as intelligent as humans, if not more so. If, in Kirk's time, the Federation got wise to the intelligence of cetaceans, why couldn't there be bottlenose dolphin crew members in the following century?

Cetacean Ops in an Alternate Timeline

"Yesterday's Enterprise"

In the classic 1990 Season 3 episode " Yesterday's Enterprise ," the idea that a place called Cetacean Ops existed on the Enterprise -D became a bit clearer. Although not part of the episode's plot at all, early in the episode, we hear "Dr. Joshua Kim, report to Cetacean Ops." Interestingly, this reference to Cetacean Ops happens on the warship version of the Enterprise -D, one that exists in a timeline in which the Federation is engaged in a bitter, decades-long war with the Klingons.

Even in this darker timeline, it seems that Starfleet thought it was still a good idea to bring on dolphins and maybe whales on a larger Galaxy -class ship, to help out with the navigation. In "Yesterday's Enterprise ," Guinan points out that the Enterprise -D is supposed to have families living on the ship, but it doesn't. And yet, even without schools and kids, this warship Enterprise still has sea creatures, tucked away, somewhere in a massive water tank.

In the Prodigy Season 2 episode "Cracked Mirror," this idea is briefly revisited, as Jankom points out that even in certain rough-and-tumble alternate universes, the Voyager -A still has whales on board.

The Cerritos Reveals Kimolu and Matt

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Cetacean Ops

Starting with the very first episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks , Mariner and Boimler make a reference to the fact their ship has a version of Cetacean Ops.

But, it wasn't until the Season 2 Lower Decks finale, " First First Contact ," that we finally got to see a version of Cetacean Ops in all of its watery glory. In this episode, not only was it revealed that the U.S.S. Cerritos had Cetacean crew members, but that these Beluga whales even had their own uniforms. Without the assistance of Lieutenants Matt and Kimolu, the Cerritos would have certainly been lost, and we may have never been given our first glimpse of a version of Cetacean Ops in the 24th Century. That is, until Prodigy Season 2.

Gillian, the Humpback Whale

"Observer's Paradox"

As with many aspects of Prodigy , the inclusion of Cetacean Ops brings together many aspects of the Star Trek franchise at the same time. When the gang gets assigned to the Voyager -A on a mission to help Janeway investigate a time-displacing wormhole, each former member of the Protostar crew gets their own assigned area. Rok-Tahk is thrilled to be assigned to Voyager 's version of Cetacean Ops, which houses some of the "finest navigators" in all of Starfleet.

By Episode 5, "Observer's Paradox," we learn that Voyager 's resident humpback, and Rok-Tahk's new bestie, is named Gillian. This references Dr. Gillian Taylor from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , a (human) Cetacean biologist from 20th Century Earth, who traveled into the 23rd Century along with Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov on a stolen Klingon Bird-of-Prey nicknamed the H.M.S. Bounty . At that point in Trek history, Spock had discovered that a mysterious alien probe was actually speaking in whalesong, which was why the Universal Translator was unable to decipher its language.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

The Voyage Home ended up with the crew being back in the year 2286, but, Prodigy Season 2 takes place nearly exactly a century later, in 2384 (and into 2385). By this time, it's clear that Starfleet has no problem communicating with humpback whales, making those stray background Easter eggs from The Next Generation into a functional fact of everyday life.

Fittingly, Gillian becomes the key to the gang understanding Murf's language, which, at this point, had been unintelligible. Turns out, as Rok says, "Some frequencies can't be heard, unless they're submerged — like the harmonics of a whale."

At the very start of Prodigy , the reason Dal, Gwyn, Rok, Zero, and Jankom were able to come together was because of the discovery of the Universal Translator; a Federation gizmo that helped them all bridge cultural divides and speak to each other. And now, the heroes of the Protostar are finally able to understand Murf, all thanks to a method that Spock figured out in The Voyage Home . In that film, humpback whales taught the crew of the late-starship Enterprise to think differently about the nature of communication and the definition of sentience. And now, over four decades later, Prodigy is doing the same thing — breaking down barriers and stereotypes, all with the help of a whale.

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Ryan Britt is the author of the nonfiction books Phasers on Stun! How the Making and Remaking of Star Trek Changed the World (2022), The Spice Must Flow: The Journey of Dune from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies (2023), and the essay collection Luke Skywalker Can’t Read (2015). He is a longtime contributor to Star Trek.com and his writing regularly appears with Inverse, Den of Geek!, Esquire and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Maine with his family.

Star Trek: Prodigy will stream on Netflix globally (excluding Canada, Nordics, CEE, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Mainland China) and Season 1 is currently available on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe with Season 2 coming soon. Season two has launched in France on France Televisions channels and Okoo.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel. The series will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Italy, France, the Caribbean, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and South Korea.

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Catherine hicks: leonard nimoy’s star trek movie whale biologist explained.

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Every Star Trek Movie’s New Female Character Ranked

Lord of the rings star ian mckellen was told the hunt for gollum will be 2 movies, one obi-wan kenobi line set up the rise of skywalker's palpatine twist 36 years earlier.

• Gillian Taylor is an essential character in Star Trek IV, helping Kirk and Spock navigate through the 1980s in a fish-out-of-water comedy.
• Catherine Hicks' portrayal of Dr. Gillian Taylor has a lasting legacy, influencing the creation of a descendant whale character in Star Trek: Prodigy.
• Dr. Gillian Taylor's expertise in humpback whales in Star Trek IV leads to the development of Starfleet's Cetacean Operations program in the future.

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , directed by Leonard Nimoy, Catherine Hicks plays Dr. Gillian Taylor, a 20th-century marine biologist with expertise in humpback whales. To save 23rd-century Earth from a probe demanding to speak with whales, Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and the crew of the USS Enterprise must take their stolen Klingon Bird-of-Prey (dubbed the HMS Bounty) back to 1986 , when humpback whales were not yet extinct. In 20th century San Francisco, Dr. Gillian Taylor, the assistant director of the Cetacean Institute, is instrumental in bringing humpback whales George and Gracie to the future.

Part audience surrogate, part potential love interest for Admiral Kirk, Catherine Hicks' Gillian Taylor is a grounding factor in Star Trek IV . Narratively, Gillian Taylor plays the straight man, so to speak, in the fish-out-of-water comedy that makes The Voyage Home one of the best Star Trek movies . Despite her initial disbelief at Kirk and Spock's story, Dr. Taylor becomes Kirk and Spock's guide to navigating the 1980s in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Gillian helps the time-displaced Enterprise crew with basics like money and getting through 20th-century San Francisco as they rush to save George and Gracie, who have been prematurely released into the wild.

The Star Trek franchise's 13 movies have introduced a series of important, intriguing, and intrepid new female characters.

Catherine Hicks Played Whale Biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Gillian taylor introduced kirk and spock to humpback whales.

Catherine Hicks plays whale biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . Dr. Taylor is a consummately professional woman of science who is highly knowledgeable and dedicated to the welfare of the humpback whales in her care. It's this dedication that first alerts Dr. Taylor to the mission of the original Starship Enterprise crew , when Spock enters the whales' tank in an effort to communicate with George and Gracie. The Institute is losing funding, so Gillian is quick to help Kirk and Spock bring George and Gracie to the future . Because the 23rd-century whales and their offspring need a caretaker to thrive, Dr. Taylor ultimately joins them.

Catherine Hicks may be best known to Star Trek fans for her role as Dr. Gillian Taylor in 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , though in that same year, Hicks was also in Peggy Sue Got Married . Prior to Star Trek IV , Catherine Hicks played other professional women on television. Hicks played Dr. Emily Rappant in the TV version of The Bad News Bears , and Dr. Faith Coleridge in the 1970s soap opera Ryan's Hope , which also featured Star Trek: Voyager 's own Kate Mulgrew. Later, Catherine Hicks starred as family matriarch Annie Camden in Aaron Spelling's family dramedy 7th Heaven , and frequently appeared in TV guest spots and made-for-TV movies.

Catherine Hicks’ Gillian Has A Surprising Star Trek Legacy

Dr. gillian taylor influenced star trek's cetacean legacy character.

Catherine Hicks' Dr. Gillian Taylor has a surprising Star Trek legacy. In Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, episode 5, "Observer's Paradox", Starfleet Academy hopeful Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui) is assigned to the Cetacean Operations division on the Lamarr-class USS Voyager-A. Rok-Tahk works directly with (and befriends) a humpback whale named Gillian , who communicates through Voyager's computer (Bonnie Gordon). Star Trek: Prodigy writer and co-executive producer Aaron Waltke confirmed that Prodigy 's whale Gillian is George and Gracie's descendant . Gillian the whale's name is a direct homage to Dr. Gillian Taylor, showing the importance of Dr. Taylor's work with George and Gracie in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home .

Before the debut of Gillian the whale in Star Trek: Prodigy, the first cetacean Starfleet officers seen on screen were beluga whales named Matt and Kimolu, in Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2, episode 10, "First First Contact".

The existence of the Cetacean Operations division in Star Trek: Prodigy also finally answers the question, albeit obliquely, of what happened to Catherine Hicks' Dr. Gillian Taylor after coming to the future with Kirk and Spock on the HMS Bounty. As the only marine biologist in the 23rd century with expertise in humpback whales, Gillian Taylor became a key figure in developing Starfleet's Cetacean Operations program , which trained whales and dolphins as navigators on Starfleet starships. Humpback whales George and Gracie likely became some of Starfleet's first cetacean navigators after Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , thanks to Catherine Hicks' Dr. Gillian Taylor.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

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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

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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