Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
There are a few things I must note before diving head first into the next movie here. First, it appears these movies are following a big long storyline, with the first part, Khan, being directly followed by Search for Spock, and now it would seem that Journey continues this narrative. Secondly, at least according to my brother, this is the best movie in the entire series, so it already had more hype than it can possibly live up to (by which I mean I don’t expect much from these movies anyway. It is, after all, only Star Trek).
As far as being a journey home, I can imagine that Kirk and crew really don’t want to head straight back to home base anyway, knowing what awaits them; a few knees to the groin, and then being tossed in a cage with a dozen mugatos (yes, I researched that, bitches! Don’t worry though, I erased it from my google search memory). So I wouldn’t be surprised if they took forever to return, but unfortunately, since, seeing as how the movie is only about one hour, nineteen minutes long, they’ll have to make the trip within that time frame. Sucks to be them. There was, however, another journey taking place: Spock returning to his old self. You’d think this wouldn’t be much of an issue in a time when devices like the tricorder exist, people can “beam” here or there, and faster-than-light travel is a breeze (unless you’re in a scrap pile like the Ford Enterprise), but you’d be wrong.
When retrieving the next movie from my brother I thought I’d confirm that this was his favourite movie in the series. While I’m sure he’d mentioned that somewhere, I was wrong; it was number two: Khan’s Revenge (I can’t remember the actual title off the top of my head). Oh well. Khan’s Revenge is also the favourite of another friend of mine. Given the fact that I never knew she had seen any Star Trek movies – let alone seen enough of them to have a favourite – it makes me think I’ll have to rethink our friendship, due to her being a fan. More to come on that…
When the movie began playing, the words ‘A Leonard NeMoy Film’ appeared. Not only that, but he directed it too. He’s the actor that plays Spock, which is one of the very few Star Trek facts I knew before I’d seen any of the movies. I don’t normally pay attention to the credits in movies, so I’m not sure if they were all apparently Leonard NeMoy films, but if not, it’s nice to see that he’s moving up in the world.
Kirk, as was expected, was in shit up to his ears, but not in the way I expected. Back on Earth, it seems the Klingons, damn their black, wretched hearts, are trying to charge the good captain with the deaths of Doc Brown and his crew. Not only that, but they hold him solely accountable for the Genesis project, and believe he created it for the purpose of wiping out their entire species. He demands retribution, and urges Starfleet to find Kirk and haul his ass back to Earth for a severe spanking. Spock’s father intervenes and sticks up for Kirk, but the council has already made up its mind: Kirk already has enough fines from breaking Starfleet regulations to last a few lifetimes, and no more charges need be placed on his head. But it wasn’t good enough for the mad Klingon – I think I’ll call him George – and he vowed revenge on Kirk.
Admiral Kirk still remains hiding on Vulcan with his skeleton crew while Spock slowly regains his memories after being brought back from the dead, which has been an ongoing process for the passed three months. So they were taking their sweet time getting home, but dammit, they can’t wait forever, and begin to prepare their Klingon ship for the voyage back to Earth. They’d used their time to better acquaint themselves with the Bird of Prey, which they’d renamed to something-Bounty, and made some modifications. The not-as-hot-as-she-used-to-be Saavik won’t be going with them, but Spock will.
Meanwhile, this large “probe” is heading towards Earth, sucking up all energy and power in its path and putting many ships out of commission (yet somehow allowing them to stop moving in space). Why does everything have to head straight for Earth? Seriously, are we in a bad neighbourhood or something? When it arrives, it causes chaos and sucks up lots of water – see, water is a valuable commodity on other planets. No wait…they’re gonna suck up…whales? Whales are also a commodity? Who knew?
Okay, hold on, I jumped to conclusions. It seems the probe just wants to talk to the whales. Ah, that makes MUCH more sense. They came millions of light years to talk to whales. Humpback whales to be specific. Okay… And in doing so they’re inadvertently destroying the Earth. But, seeing as how humpback whales are extinct, the Earth is doomed. Unless, that is, Kirk and crew can go back in time and pick some whales up at the local Wal-Mart. Okay…
Oh holy God! The whales! The rumours were true. What little respect I was gaining for Star Trek is diminishing.
The whole traveling back in time rouse notwithstanding – since I don’t believe it’s possible – it should be noted that the Klingon ship made the trip with minimal damage, aside from the journey draining the ship’s batteries. Maybe Starfleet was doing Kirk a favour by getting rid of the Ford Enterprise; they should adopt the Bird Of Prey instead; it has a cloaking device! Let it also be known that this was the first time time travel had ever been attempted in the history of the Star Trek universe; and to do so with minimal effort seems laudible. If it was that simple then why hasn’t it been figured out before?
So they land just outside of San Francisco, scaring the hell out of some garbage men, in the year 1986 – the year this movie was made. They wander into the city, where Kirk pawns his glasses (the ones Bones gave him for his birthday in Khan’s Revenge) because they needed some money, and they all split up into groups. Uhura and Chekov (Kahn’s lemming), look for a nuclear reactor so they can acquire photons to power the Bird Of Prey. Bones, Scotty, and Sulu try to build a giant aquarium. Kirk and Spock go hunting for whales.
Uhura and Chekov find what they’re looking for in a naval aircraft carrier, and they sneak aboard at night to collect photons. Uhura, who walks around most of this movie with her flap unbuttoned – the cadet equivalent of being naked – gets beamed out in time, but Chekov gets captured. He makes a run for it, but gets seriously hurt, and is hospitalized.
Scotty, Bones, and Sulu infiltrate a plexyglass company (where Scotty goes from retard to savant in twenty seconds trying to use a computer). They make a deal and get a giant water tank made and transported back to the Klingon ship. They obviously had the easiest task, and Sulu didn’t even help; he ran off to play with a helicopter instead.
Kirk and Spock hit up the local SeaWorld, where they meet a young lady – whom Kirk tries to wine and dine – and ask her to help them kidnap two of the whales, one of which is pregnant. Seriously though, if Kirk had hit on her any harder she would have had bruises. She finally, but only out of desperation, agrees to help, since the whales had been released back into the wild. She THEN finds out that they were telling the truth about being from the future. Spock meanwhile picks up swearing as a hobby.
Once everything is in order, Kirk, Bones, and the young lady, Gillian, break into the hospital, disguised as doctors, to find Chekov. They locate him and heal his wounds, which, thanks to their modern Starfleet technology, takes a mere half-minute. Then they all high-tail it back to the ship, where Gillian manages to secure a seat, and they go after the whales. They capture them in the nick of time, scaring the hell out of some fishermen, and then travel back to the future, albeit on a wing and a prayer.
As luck would have it, especially considering the unreliable nature of their jump, they managed to return at the exact moment they left. The energy-sucking probe, still looking for whales, drains the Bird Of Prey of all power, causing it to crash into the San Francisco Bay (that’s now two ships Kirk’s destroyed). They dump the whales and abandon ship.
The whales and the probe have a conversation about God knows what, and the probe takes off back to God knows where. Power is restored to everything, and because of that, Kirk and his crew of merry men (and one woman) can stand trial for their crimes of past films (although they must have been pardoned from a couple of them, since only six charges are brought forth, down from nine stated at the beginning of the movie). The council drops five more charges and demotes Kirk to captain and call it a day. George must be pissed.
Gilliam seems to settle into her new life in the twenty-third century and heads off to a sea-faring ship to study fun ocean stuff. Kirk returns to his space-faring ship, the rebuilt Enterprise, hopefully without the Ford parts. He finally got exactly what he wanted. The End.
This story was by far the most ludicrous of them all. Time Travel. Whales. Spock doesn’t even get his all his memories back by the end of the movie. On the other hand, traveling back a few centuries provided lots of humourous shenanigans. Excessive and misguided swearing. Whales. Scotty’s attempt to use an ancient computer. Spock, the closet anarchist, even got to use his nerve pinch knock out thingy. So it wasn’t not all that bad. They even replaced the ugly Saavik with a reasonably cute girl from the past. So despite it’s shortcomings in logic, they get bonus points for making me laugh.
But I laugh when I think of Star Trek anyway.
The Chris Effect 
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