Review of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) by Christopher A — 13 May 2013

Star Trek's fourth installment is the one that has reached out beyond the fanbase, becoming the highest grossing Star Trek film in its time. Though the premise deals with the Enterprise crew trying to acquire a few whales sounded ridiculous, it was actually really entertaining. This is one that both fans and those outside it can enjoy.

The Voyage Home takes place soon after Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was revived. With the Enterprise destroyed in the previous film, the crew is stranded on Vulcan. Spock spends his time recovering and regaining his knowledge in the ways of logic. Once he has recovered, the crew are told to come back to Earth to face charges for the regulations they broke in the previous film.

Before coming home, they find that an ominous probe comes close to Earth and causes damage to the planet's climate. It seems unstoppable. Seeing the transmissions match with an extinct species of hunchback whales, they go back to the 20th century to acquire one. The crew find themselves in San Francisco, and get involved in some misadventures along the way.

The Voyage Home is a more lighthearted adventure than Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock. In addition, it is also the most comedic of the Star Trek movies. The ways in which the crew act in the city of San Francisco can be funny most of the time. The most amusing is when Spock is having trouble using profanity. There isn't all that much action in this. But the comedy is amusing enough to get by that. The visual effects, while not quite used as often, are good. But this revolves more around the characters than the visuals, which is a good thing. The movie also has the theme of conservatism since the crew are trying to keep a whale species from dying out.

But the one thing that The Voyage Home is really lacking is a villain. While the probe is causing damage and there are whale hunters shown for a few minutes, a villain is mostly non-existent here.

As with the previous movies, the movie is competently acted. The crew do their usual stuff only that they get a lot more time on land than in space. The scenes with Shatner and Nimoy were the most entertaining as Kirk tries to teach Spock about how humans communicate on Earth. McCoy and the others also have their moments. In addition, Kirk gets a love interest from a marine biologist (Catherine Hicks). She was a decent character and I liked the scenes between them.

Unfortunately, for a movie that started to reach to a wider audience, the franchise went mostly downhill from here. With a couple of exceptions, the Star Trek films after this are rather stale when paired against the likes of this and Wrath of Khan. But while it lasted, The Voyage Home was a very fun Star Trek movie.