Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Powerful

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A different way of telling a story

Star Trek : The Voyage HomeIt certainly isn't one's usual Star Trek tale, it pushes boundary and offers enough content to keep the audience engaged throughout the course of it. The sequence where the characters visit various places could have been the window for the makers to draw out most of the attention and visit places "where no member has had before". It is lot lighter considering the stakes that are projecting in the franchise usually ends up on the life and death query. It is short on technical aspects like visual effects, sound department and editing but the production design is plausible. Leonard Nimoy's execution has improved a lot but unfortunately that's not saying a lot as it fails to communicate on terms of story-line. The performance is appreciative as usual by the whole cast like William Shartner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly. The real gem moments in here are the conversations between Spock and Kirk that should have been explored more by the makers to unsolved the mysterious characteristics of the character. Star Trek : The Voyage Home is an unwelcoming and uncomfortable home on terms of the plot for the characters are the only familiar pieces that helps stabilize the board.

The stupid plot of the movie is summed up in one line by Doctor McCoy: "Who would send a probe hundreds of light years to talk to a whale?" Spock then obviously infers in an exchange of dialog that whales not only have a entire language, but if only humans were smart enough to understand it, the Earth wouldn't suffer from global warming. Only a Hollywood activist like Leonard Nimoy would write preachy crap like that. No one seems to care that there's no plausible explanation presented as to why an alien civilization hundreds of light-years away would send a probe to destroy the entire Earth because of a single species no longer making the noises that they've become accustomed to hearing, even through space from that distance. Not only that, but it would happen 200 years after the fact. If it took that long for the probe to reach the Earth, despite being sent by a much more advanced civilization, wouldn't it have been encountered in space several times during its journey, disabling ships in its wake? Based on the vast majority of reviews, the only reason people seem to like this movie is because it's a fish-out-of-water story when the 23rd century clashes with the 20th century, which no doubt creates for a lot of humorous scenes. It is for that reason alone that I can enjoy this movie much more than any of its successors in the franchise while looking past all the gaping plot holes and unanswered questions, but it's nowhere near as good as Star Trek II or even Star Trek III.

A probe of unknown origin is approaching Earth causing climatic destruction and issuing a message similar to the whales' song, but as they are extinct in the XXIII century, Kirk & Company travel back in time to 1986' Earth in order to capture a couple of humpback whales. There they get it and they go back to their time and everything goes well, with the probe stopping the transmission after hearing the whale song (or communicating, it is also an hypothesis however implausible it is) and turning route to any unknown destination. Thank goodness that whales are not vindictive towards humans, otherwise the end might well have been another, right?Honestly, this movie looks like a parody and destroys everything that Star Trek has to offer. It clearly is a film of the 80's Hollywood stupidity era. And I just do not give it 1/10 because that score I only reserve to movies that I really hate, but it's near, very near. 2/10

So the fourth film wraps up the narrative arc that begun with Wrath..... And this is widely regarded as one of the better Trek films because it's tone is considerably lighter, as the gang all travel back in time, and become metaphorical aliens.....A space probe appears over Earth, emanating strange sounds towards the planet, and apparently waiting for something. As time goes on, the probe starts to cause major storms on Earth and threaten its destruction. Admiral James T. Kirk and crew are called upon once again to save mankind. They discover the strange sounds are actually the songs of the humpback whale - which has been hunted to extinction. They have only one choice - to attempt to time travel back into the 20th century, locate two whales, and bring them back to 23rd century Earth to respond to the probe.....So it's the Eco-friendly one, the one where Kirk saves the whales, and sends everyone in audience a subliminal message telling us to 'look after our planet', but with a few laughs thrown in so it looks like Nimoy isn't preaching too much.And whilst the film is wonderfully entertaining when it's set in 1986, step back and look at the bigger picture, and you'll find that its nothing more than the film being about a big piece of liquorice who is lonely and can't speak any language apart from whale.The makers knew that the story wasn't the best, so they implemented the element of time travel to keep the series fresh and 'down with the kids'.Kelleys is easily the best thing here, his scenes in the hospital are hilarious, and some of his finest comedic scenes in the film series. In fact, everybody seems to be having such a good time, you can't help but go with the comedy.Back in space though, it's a pretty sombre affair. We start with the council watching the third act of Search For Spock, and we end with everybody slapping each other on the back.It's not deserved of its high regard in the Trek universe, but at least you see Kirk throw Spock playfully in the ocean.