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The Voyage Home
Premiered: Nov 26, 1986
Director: Leonard Nimoy
Screenplay: Seve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Harve Bennett and
Nicholas Meyer
Story:Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett
Music: Leonard Rosenman
Stardate: 8390.0
The Cast:
James T. Kirk:
William Shatner
Spock: Leonard
Nimoy
Leonard "Bones" McCoy:
Deforest Kelley
Chekov: Walter
Koenig
Sulu: George Takei
Uhura: Nichelle
Nichols
Dr. Gillian Taylor:
Catherine Hicks
Klingon Ambassador:
John Shuck
Admiral Cartwright:
Brock Peters
Amanda (Spock's
Mother): Jane Wyatt
Majel Barret:
Christine Chapel
Widely considered the best movie in the "classic Trek" series of feature films. An enormous
alien probe on a heading for Earth encounters and completely cripples
the USS Saratoga, continuing unchecked toward Earth, where a
high-ranking Klingon Ambassador is trying to convince the Federation
Council that the Genesis device was, in fact, a weapon designed to
eradicate the Klingon species. The Ambassador promises that there will
be no peace between the Klingons and Federation while Kirk lives.
In the meantime, Kirk and
the rest of his crew, excluding Saavik, who stays behind, leave Vulcan
in their hijacked Bird of Prey, which McCoy has renamed the "Bounty".
While en route to Earth, they receive an emergency transmission
informing them that Earth's defenses have been neutralized by a huge
vessel of unknown origin, and that the alien ship is beginning to
destroy the atmosphere and oceans, all the time transmitting
indecipherable sounds. Analyzing a recording of the sounds transmitted
by the alien ship, Spock determines that the probe can not be
responded to because the sounds are apparently analogous to songs sung
by humpback whales - extinct in the 23rd century. Kirk decides to risk
a slingshot around the sun to send the Bounty into a time warp to
Earth of the past and bring back enough whales to repopulate the
species and, more importantly, respond to the probe.
The Bounty lands in San
Francisco, 1986, and the crew splits into three teams. Kirk and a
thinly disguised Spock set out to find the whales, which Kirk decides
to take from the Cetacean Institute, a museum devoted to whales.
There, Kirk meets Dr. Gillian Taylor as she leads a tour of the
Institute, during which she shows off the Institute's two whales,
George and Gracie. Gillian also reveals that the whales will have to
be released into the open sea due to the cost of keeping them in
captivity. Spock dives into the whale tank and mind-melds with one of
the whales, finding that Gracie is pregnant, but Gillian throws them
out of the Institute, only to find them walking back to Golden Gate
Park and picks them up again.
Chekov and Uhura find the
Navy's USS Enterprise and sneak in to collect photon spillage from the
ship's nuclear reactor in order to replenish the dilithium crystals on
the Bounty for the return trip to the 23rd century, while Scotty, Sulu
and McCoy seek out the materials necessary to build a tank for the
whales and their water in the Bounty. Scotty's team visits a Plexiglas
factory, where he trades the "recipe" for transparent
aluminium (common
in the 23rd century) in for the necessary materials and the loan of a
helicopter to return the tank walls to the Bounty. (Scotty insists no
damage is being done to history - perhaps the director of the factory
to whom Scotty revealed the "secret" is the inventor!)
Uhura and Chekov gather the
necessary energy to ready the Bounty for its next time warp, but they
are detected on the carrier. Chekov gives Uhura the collection device
and has her beamed back to the Bounty, while he is captured and
briefly interrogated. Chekov escapes again, but is seriously wounded
and taken to a hospital.
Kirk, having befriended
Gillian and learned how upset she is that "her" whales are about to be
turned loose, gets the frequency to radio tags that the whales will be
carrying so scientists can track them, but even Gillian doesn't know
the exact location to which the whales will be taken. Kirk receives
the news of Chekov's injury and, with McCoy, mounts a rescue operation
which will require the help of Gillian. They enter the hospital
disguised as surgeons, and McCoy performs a quick fix returning Chekov
to normal after expressing alarm that 20th century medicine would have
called for a hole to be drilled into Chekov's skull. They "kidnap"
Chekov from the hospital and take him back to the Bounty, where
Gillian stows away by jumping Kirk just as he is beamed aboard.
The Bounty lifts off and reaches the whales' coordinates in the Pacific,
only to find a whaling ship is in hot pursuit of George and Gracie.
Kirk orders the Bounty to de-cloak, which frightens the poachers away
while the two whales are beamed aboard. The Bounty makes it back to
the 23rd century and crash-lands in San Francisco Bay after being
disabled by the probe, and Kirk releases the whales into the ocean.
George and Gracie re-establish contact between Earth's whales and the
aliens - a dialogue which had been in progress before man even existed
- and Gillian begins her new life as a Federation cetacean biology
specialist. Kirk and the others are exonerated for all charges against
them concerning the theft and destruction of the Starship Enterprise,
except for Kirk, who is demoted to Captain and given command of a new,
more advanced vessel: the new Enterprise, NCC-1701-A. Star Trek IV was
a box-office smash, satisfying mainstream audiences and hardcore Trek fans alike.