Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Our Review

The one where they save the whales. The Voyage Home is the lightest, warmest, and funniest Star Trek film, a fish out of water comedy where the fish are a starship crew and the water is 1986 San Francisco. Nimoy directs with a sitcom touch, and the plot, an alien probe is vaporizing Earth because humpback whales are extinct in the future, so Kirk’s crew must time travel to collect a breeding pair, is played entirely straight, which is the joke and the point. The Federation’s sleek future fails because it forgot an ecosystem, and Trek’s own optimism gets a environmental gut check.

The comedy has aged beautifully. Chekov asking a cop where the nuclear wessels are, Scotty talking to a computer mouse, Spock nervously diagramming profanity, every gag flows from character rather than around it. Catherine Hicks as the whale biologist Gillian gives the film its heart, a present day skeptic who earns her place among the crew. There is no villain, no ship to ship combat, and no finale battle. The climax is a transparent aluminum tank and a helicopter, and it is gripping anyway.

It also completes the trilogy’s arc: Spock recovered and rehumanized, the crew’s exile forgiven, and the new Enterprise A christened with a wink. If the film has a flaw it is that stakes feel small next to Khan, a deliberate choice that leaves it lighter in the memory. As a piece of pure joy it is the most rewatchable entry in the canon. Eight out of ten, and the probe’s song will haunt you.