Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)I wasn't sure what to expect from The Voyage Home. Like most people, I knew it as 'the one with the whales', and I had heard enough of the plot to decide that it sounded pretty awful. On the other hand, as one of the even numbered series entries (not that I have found the 'curse' to have any actual basis in reality so far), Voyage has a fairly decent reputation and, I gather, is generally well enough liked by the fans. What's more, until Star Trek 2009 came along, it was the highest grossing of the series and the only one to pass $100 million domestic.
But that plot! To summarise: Continuing directly from The Search for Spock, Kirk and the mutinous crew of the Enterprise set off from Vulcan, heading to Earth (without the Enterprise itself, of course, it having been spectacularly destroyed in a sequence that was a highlight of the last film). Meanwhile, a strange, rather non-descript entity appears in Earth orbit, sending the planet's weather and all electrical systems into meltdown. So far so good, as far as the story's concerned. There are echoes of The Motion Picture in the 'unknown object heads for Earth and brings potential cataclysmic event' plot, but the tone is much more light-hearted, and the direction that the story takes is altogether different.
This is where it gets a bit bonkers. Said spaceship-thing is emitting strange noises that nobody is able to decode. Spock, however, recognises them as the song of the humpback whale, so to stop Earth's destruction they need to get a whale to sing back. Problem is, in the 23rd century humpbacks have long been extinct. Solution: travel back through time to late-20th-century San Francisco and find some whales. Who makes this stuff up?!
Well, one of the creative team this time is Nicholas Meyer, who after masterminding Khan's wrath chose to sit out its immediate sequel. Meyer's return here is easy to take as one indication that the film will probably have something going for it. It's noticeable, for one thing, that the optimism that was present in Khan but less so in Spock returns here with a vengeance. This is a generally light-hearted, endearing film which seems so good-natured that it's hard not to like. Leonard Nimoy directs highly competently for the second time.
The middle hour or so of the film takes place on Earth circa 1986, and it's this chunk which is the hardest to buy. Fish-out-of-water comedy can be great - I wonder what impact the success of Back to the Future in 1985 had on the decision to include time travel here - but there's a very fine line to tread between comedy and forehead-slapping stupidity. Fortunately, for the most part the scenes manage to toe the line, and there are some absolutely hilarious moments, including Spock's attempt to grapple with swearing and Chekov's search for 'nuclear wessels'.
While amusing, though, I did find that sometimes it became a bit too cute and twee, and I never quite managed to swallow the whales (so to speak). Plenty of opportunities are grasped to have a dig at archaic 20th-century practices like atmospheric pollution and, naturally, whale hunting, which are justifiable if a bit unsubtle, but the film only really kicks into gear later on when the script starts to increase the dramatic stakes (Chekov gets critically injured trying to escape an aircraft carrier - the real USS Enterprise! - and the whales that Kirk has earmarked for transportation go missing). Even then, there's never any real suspense or jeopardy.
More could have been done with the actual time travelling process, I thought; if it's this easy to do it (Spock punches some numbers, then they sling the ship round the sun, et voila), why isn't it a routine procedure in the 23rd century? Additionally, the actual time warp sequence itself, featuring some early CGI, was certainly trippy but a bit too bizarre and random for my tastes. Once everything returned to a degree of normality with the crew back in the future, I found the finale to be pretty well done. In particular, the crew's introduction to the brand-spanking-new Enterprise was a great moment that really sent the film out on a high.
Certainly this was my least favourite Trek so far, but given the (unexpected) level of entertainment I've got from all three previous films that's hardly a damning indictment. Although complete fluff with a barmy premise, The Voyage Home worked pretty well on its own terms, and as a comedy it has some genuinely great laughs. Ultimately, however, with its distinctly '80s flavour, I found it to be a bit too rooted in the time of its production and therefore the most dated of the films so far, preventing total involvement on my part.
3 out of 5
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