Review of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) by Jared P — 25 Feb 2014

The crew of the Enterprise return to Earth to find it under siege from a mysterious probe trying to communicate with the now extinct humpback whale and so travel back in time to 1980s Los Angeles to find some whales and save Earth's atmosphere from destruction.

As you can tell from the extremely hokey premise, The Voyage Home is Star Trek with tongue placed firmly in cheek and is the closest the series skirted to outright comedy. There are plenty of laughs to be had in the culture clash between our old favourites from the crew and 80s L.

A. and each member of the team gets their moment in the sun with some affectionate fun-poking and knockabout farce with a heavy handed but sincere eco message attached. It works better as humour than drama as the plot has holes you could sail a nuclear wessel through and the story itself becomes overly drawn out and a little dull when the jokes are put on the back burner for the finale, but it's still an entertaining exercise in camp that fans of the original series cannot fail to enjoy.

Very silly but lots of fun.