Review of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) by Michael P — 31 Jul 2017

The Voyage Home is the conclusion to a trilogy within the Star Trek film series, and it closes out the story well. The movie picks up almost exactly where The Search for Spock left off. They do have some loose story threads to address before they can get the main plot of this film going, but I think the script does a relatively good job of weaving those in as sub-plots within this film. Spock?s journey to rediscover himself worked well, and even added some big laughs. It?s also worth mentioning that The Voyage Home did the best job (out of any of the Star Trek films up to this point) of giving each one of the main characters something to do. They might not each have their own story, but they all take an active part in the mission.

This is, by far, the funniest movie in the franchise as well. A lot of that comes from the juxtaposition of these characters walking into the 1980s, which is so foreign to them. Seeing them try to figure out how to communicate with these people, even to the point of integrating swear words into their dialogue makes for a lot of laugh out loud moments. I?m not sure how well all of this translates to modern audiences because the world is clearly locked into that time. But it seems to be primarily 1980s in the style of the time and the clothes that people wear, there aren?t many references that will date the film. Leonard Nimoy in particular crushes these scenes, because he plays it so straight while doing and saying things that are hilarious.

The dilemma that leads the crew back in time is such an odd contrivance, and the solution is just as weird. It doesn?t make any sense if you spend too much time thinking about it, but somehow they make it seem logical through some simple conversations. In the same way they didn?t really make any effort to explain time travel. It was simply something they could do with some complex calculations and a good warp drive. They didn?t even waste time to talk about the rules of time travel, or anything like that. I liked the simplicity of it all, and that they were able to make a movie about an issue that they clearly thought was important, but hid it in a Star Trek movie with lots of lightness so the ?medicine? goes down without you even noticing. The Voyage Home isn?t the best Star Trek film in my opinion, but I can see why it?s in the ?best? conversation for some people.