Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm still writing about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. 

I keep thinking that I should apologise for writing so much about this film and dragging this on for so long. It wasn't the original plan, I'm not working towards a word count goal, it's just how it worked out. On the plus side you're basically getting a free book out of me here. A free book without an editor!

This is the third part of four, so if you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO click the text.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be spoiling everything that happens in the film and any Star Trek movie or episode that came before it is also fair game.

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Previously, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home:

The Earth is doomed unless Kirk's crew can bring back a pair of humpback whales called George and Gracie to the future. This means that Chekov and Uhura need to collect photons from a nuclear reactor, Scotty and McCoy need to get a whale tank built, and Kirk needs to keep Spock from being weird and alienating people who could help them. Like Dr Gillian Taylor, the assistant director of the Cetacean Institute that's currently housing the two whales. 

And now, the continuation:

Gillian kicked Kirk and Spock out of the Cetacean Institute for swimming with her whales and I guess there wasn't another bus for them to take as they're walking back. Though that's the Golden Gate Bridge behind them and their ship's at Golden Gate Park so it can't be that far to walk.

Okay I just checked and it's about 2.5 miles away. Sausalito's on the other side of the water so they've already walked for about an hour to get here. The movie's teaching me a lot about San Francisco's geography! For instance, they're currently walking down Marine Drive, right underneath where the tram station is at the start of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The Golden Gate Bridge has been Star Trek's most iconic Earth landmark since modern day Earth made its first appearance in The Motion Picture. Any time a movie or series visits Earth, chances are the bridge will make an appearance. Though it's rare to see the actors there in the shot as well. In fact I think this might still be the last time Star Trek ever filmed in San Francisco.

Yep, Gillian's definitely a proper character in this movie. Kirk and Spock are long gone but now we're back at the Institute watching her talk to her boss, Bob. She's a bit distraught that they have to let George and Gracie go soon, as by they'll be putting them at serious risk. We heard earlier how any whales out in the open sea are in danger of being hunted, in fact there's less than 10 thousand humpbacks left in the world, but they're too expensive to look after. They just can't afford to keep feeding them two tons of shrimp a day... which seems like a lot of shrimp! 

Bob's not all that bothered, saying that we don't even know if humpback whales are that smart, but Gillian replies that her compassion for someone is not limited by her estimation of their intelligence. Except for shrimp obviously, she don't give a crap about those dumb little things.

The very first episode of Star Trek to air, The Man Trap, mentioned a few times how the buffalo went extinct and I was happy to discover that in reality the population actually recovered. I've just done the research Google search on humpback whales and it turns out they're doing better as well. In fact there are now more like 135,000 of them around. It is actually possible for things to get better when enough people give a damn!

Meanwhile, at the naval base in Alameda (10 miles east of where Kirk and Spock are at right now), Uhura and Chekov have finally located a nuclear vessel. And it's the USS Enterprise! Well not really, in reality they're in San Diego and it's the USS Ranger they're looking at, but it's close enough. The two ships apparently look a little different, but they're close enough to fool me. The Ranger was also used for the interior shots of the Enterprise in Top Gun the same year, which couldn't have done the crew's self esteem any good. No one ever wants to have the Ranger in their movie, they just want the Enterprise.

I've mentioned this before but it's great to see every character getting something to do for a change. They're all out in separate teams doing important jobs that don't exclusively involve pressing giant coloured buttons. This particular job is going to involve waiting until night, beaming in past all the security, stealing a few photons that the crew weren't going to be using anyway, and then beaming out.

Fortunately it turns out that Gillian drives home by the same route that Kirk and Spock were walking, and when she spots them she offers them a lift. Kirk tries to explain Spock's behaviour as being due to him "doing a little too much LDS" at Berkeley, but even that doesn't put her off!

We learn a few things from this scene: Kirk's from Iowa, Spock did not go to Berkeley, and Gillian's got a photographic memory. She repeats Spock's line about them being "as guilty as those who caused their extinction" and points out that he used the past tense. So he tells her that Gracie is pregnant. Man it's a good job they explained that Spock is meant to be out of character in this film, because he's really out of character. Kirk does get him to tell a lie though! She asks them if they like Italian and they do an improvised comedy routine where they repeat "yes" and "no" in sync for a while until Spock concedes that he does.

Two other things I want to point out about this scene: it might be the first ever use of the word 'shit' in Star Trek, and I love the scenery. Definitely worth the extra effort they put in by filming on location.

Alright now it's Team Three's turn to do something, with McCoy and Scotty doing a bit to convince Doctor Nichols to welcome them into his workplace. Hey Uhura's actress is called Nichelle Nichols, I wonder if that's just a coincidence. It might seem like a stretch, but you'd certainly notice if they met with Dr Shatner.

Scott is playing the role of a professor, called Scott, who'd been promised a tour of this Plexicorp manufacturing plant (filmed in an actual plastics factory) and is very unhappy that no one's expecting him. The guy's clearly loving every moment of this though, especially getting to call McCoy his assistant. Man, this is making me realise that these two characters have had barely any interaction in Star Trek before now. The series really didn't use its cast to their full potential.

Meanwhile Sulu's gone and found himself a Huey helicopter parked outside, I guess, and is asking the pilot a few questions. There was going to be another scene of Sulu stealing it, but like the scene with little Hikaru it was never filmed. Honestly, probably not a huge loss.

They go inside Dr Nichol's office, which was a set they'd constructed inside the factory. You can still see the workers doing their job through the window. That "I Quit Smoking" badge is another nice touch. It helps Nichols come across like a person with his own life that doesn't typically involve dealing with a weird Scotsman from the future.

Scotty's actually managed to impress Nichols a fair bit, so the guy's not too dismayed when he starts talking to his computer. McCoy spots the computer mouse and hands to him, so they're almost there, but neither of them realise that it's not a microphone. Man, it's sad how many people born this millennium are lacking basic computer skills.

Scotty's clearly used a QWERTY keyboard however, as his typing speed is pretty impressive. Sure he only uses two fingers, but then so do I, so I'm not going to judge. He almost makes me believe that you can make all this stuff appear on screen if you just type fast enough. Though it's really just an animation that's playing, and none of it is real.

Nichols' computer looks like an Apple Macintosh Plus, but they apparently stuck an IBM PC monitor screen inside so they could sync it up with the camera's frame rate (or else it would've shown up as a flickering mess). I've heard a rumour that we could've gotten an Amiga 1000 in this iconic scene, but Commodore was too cheap to loan them one, they wanted them to buy it, so Apple got the product placement instead.

Their conversation might have confused me a little when I first watched this as Scotty offers to give the Nichols the secret of how to create transparent aluminum, a material that would be exactly what they need to make a whale tank out of. But nope they're offering him transparent aluminum in exchange for his plexiglass. They just need to get thicker sheets is all. Also Scotty keeps calling it aluminum instead of aluminium even though he's British, which I guess shows how language changes over time.

Just then someone enters the room.

"NOT NOW MADELINE!"

I love how they shot this weird random scene of someone coming in, being yelled at, and creeping back out again. There was absolute no need for them to go to the effort of hiring an actress bringing the movie's hair stylist over and setting up this shot just to add this throwaway moment, but it helps somehow. It shows that Dr Nichols is smart enough to see the potential in this material just from the molecular design on the screen and has dollar signs in his eyes. Even if it'll take years to actually figure out, thus keeping Star Trek's present day the same as our own.

Though McCoy picks this moment to pull Scotty aside and remind him that if they do this they'll be changing their past. Left it a bit late there McCoy! Scotty doesn't give a damn though, saying maybe he's the one who invents it. I guess when the stakes are 'all life on Earth', you start playing a little looser with the rules. An earlier version of the story used one of Spock's quiz questions at the start to reveal that Nichols was always the inventor and they're not changing anything. That'd be a paradox though, with the original formula being invented by absolutely no one.

By this point Gillian's arrived at Golden Gate Park to drop off Spock. In fact she drives right onto the grass, which seems like maybe something you should be allowed to do. Then again a garbage truck was parked there this morning. Gillian asks Spock if he's sure he won't change his mind about not eating with them and he replies "Is there something wrong with the one I have?" Honestly I think he needs to see Dr McCoy, as if he genuinely didn't understand that incredibly common phrase then there is definitely something wrong with the mind he has.

Kirk and Gillian drive off to have dinner, leaving Spock to get beamed up to the ship instead of using the ramp. Which is something he could have done at any time; there was absolutely no need to drive here. Plus he beams out right behind her car and it's a miracle she didn't notice. Still, this might be the first time in Star Trek that we see some being transported while walking.

It occurs to me that there probably aren't that many scenes of in Star Trek that take place in an actual restaurant, instead of a mess hall or a bar. They've gone all out filling the place with extras as well. I've read they even put the money down to buy the place a pizza oven... and then never got around to showing it. Too cheap to buy an Amiga though.

One thing Trek has had plenty of is scenes of Kirk trying to charm women, though it hasn't actually happened in the films until now. He finds out that the whales are going to be flown to Alaska on a special 747 jet. Wait, they're going to put the two of them in a giant water tank on a 747? Man they really have been spending a fortune looking after them. They'll be tagged with transmitters, so there'll be a frequency Kirk can use to track them in the wild.

Gillian's also here for information, probably because she's so worried about her whales that she's grasping at any straws, including the weird stranger who claims he can take them somewhere they'll never be hunted. Unfortunately his 'pager' goes off when Scotty breaks radio silence, leaving her even more suspicious. It gets to the point where Kirk half-jokingly admits that he really is from Iowa, but he works in outer space. He tells her that he's from the late 23rd century and he's here to take the whales, and she seems charmed enough play along at least, even though she's being very sarcastic about it. She reveals that the whales are being released tomorrow at noon, so they don't have time to stay and eat. Which sucks for Kirk as I don't think he's eaten all day. They do take the food to go at least.

It's late enough now for Chekov and Uhura to beam onto the Enterprise and get their photons. For a moment it seems like a dog's going to give them away, but it's dragged back on patrol before it can sniff them out. I guess because they didn't want it to get irradiated by this nuclear reactor.

This isn't actually a real nuclear reactor, as the Ranger didn't have one, and the real Enterprise's eight reactors were both classified and a little bit radioactive. Photographic film is radiosensitive so if they'd filmed on the real ship all their footage could've been fogged up and unusable.

There's not much going on here at the moment, Chekov's just holding a gadget while Uhura watches, but this is actually the plot that the movie's trailer focuses on. In fact the trailer practically gives away everything that happens on the boat while never once mentioning the whales.

It really must be winter, as it's pitch black by the time Gillian gets back to the park and they didn't even stay out long enough to eat anything. She makes it clear she still doesn't believe his story and she's not going to give him the transmitter frequency. It's classified, a secret... like his secret spaceship. He could just show her around the Bird-of-Prey and prove everything, and she even points this out, but I'm not sure he wants to prove it to her.

Kirk points out that he could just go to the open sea to get his whales and this is a bit of a weird thing for the movie to draw attention to because... he could. Her whales are the easiest to get (and Spock already asked their permission), but Uhura can detect whale song and once the dilithium's recrystalised and the tank's built they'll be able to beam up any whales they want.

Once again he beams out instead of using the ramp, and this time it's dark enough for her to notice something. But the important thing is that he took the pizza with him, to presumably share with his crew. Except Spock, he doesn't like Italian.

Kirk learns that the tank will be finished by morning, as Scotty and McCoy are apparently skipping sleep tonight. It's a good thing they all got that nap when they went back in time really.

Spock mentions that it's likely the mission will fail if they miss out on getting George and Gracie, though I think he's just trying to add some tension into the movie. Actually he's being very calm about everything and Kirk snaps at him for it!

Kirk's been very considerate of his friend's condition, but he's had a stressful day and he's a bit put off by how casual he's being about the potential destruction of humanity. See, this is why McCoy hasn't been making any jokes about being a doctor, not a whale tank constructor.

Man I love all these scenes filmed on the USS Ranger, they look about as authentic as you can get. This is the real life bridge of a real life aircraft carrier, and most (if not all) of the people here are real life sailors. Sorry, I mean CIC, not bridge. Real military ships like this have their command centre well inside the hull, with the bridge being a separate room up in the tower. It's not a practice that continued into starship design.

Anyway they're detecting a power drain, for some reason. All Chekov's supposed to be doing is grabbing a few photons, not draining their uranium! This is bad news for our two heroes, because it means all the patrols that have been walking right past them now have a reason to actually search their location. Unfortunately the Bounty can't get enough power from its deteriorating crystals to beam them both up at once. It's their own fault for repeatedly beaming people in from the park when they could've just used the ramp that's right next to them!

Chekov decides to be chivalrous and tells Uhura to take the collector and beam out first. Unfortunately she's the only one to beam out and he ends up at gunpoint. Don't worry this basically always happens. Like when Kirk got captured in Tomorrow is Yesterday and then again in Assignment: Earth.

Chekov is brought to a room full of dials to be interrogated, and decides to play dumb. At least I hope that's what he's doing, as his dialogue is on the level of Spock not getting what 'are you sure you won't change your mind?' means. I hope the radiation didn't melt his brain.

Either way it works, giving Chekov the chance to grab his weapon and hold them at gunpoint. I thought he was faking and waving a tricorder around, as what he's holding looks nothing like the pistols the Klingons had in the last movie, but nope. I guess the filmmakers just didn't want our heroes' guns to look like guns.

I've got an explanation for the change at least: the Klingon pistols in Search for Spock were disruptors and these are referred to as phasers, so they're two different things. These are tools you need for things like welding, or stunning interrogators. Unfortunately the device has been affected by the radiation and doesn't work, so Chekov grabs the rest of his future technology and... no actually what he does is throw the phaser to the interrogator and we never see it or the rest of his equipment again. Ironically Chekov's gun is the opposite of a Chekhov's Gun.

Fortunately Chekov's interrogator left the door open, so he's still making a run for it. He takes us on a tour of the USS Ranger as he races to find an exit, accompanied by some mildly comedic music (a track called Chekov's Run). Then we get a second look at the same corridors as actual armed marines race to catch him.

There's a scene here that we have never gotten with a Starfleet crew and probably never will, where the ship's crew are told to hit the deck and immediately lie down on the floor, leaving Chekov exposed. The advantage of working with real military personnel on a real ship is that they know how this actually works in real life. Chekov does make it outside, but then he slips and falls off the ship onto the concrete deck below.

Damn, why does this shot look so fake? I thought it was a photo of an action figure or something until people started running up, as his jacket looks plastic and his arms aren't resting on the ground. In fact it looks like one of the hands broke off.

I guess we're going to have to reset the 'Movies without Chekov getting a nasty injury' counter then. He was burned by a console in Star Trek 1, he got a bug put in his ear in Star Trek 2 and now this. He's like a redshirt that can't die. I mean, I don't think he's dead.

It cuts to Kirk on the Bounty and we get some nice Shatner acting as he takes a moment to figure out the correct switch on Sulu's console to send a message over to Scotty in engineering. Their plan to recrystalise the dilithium is working, so that's a revolutionary new process they've discovered, but no one's all that surprised. In fact Kirk's annoyed that it's going to take until halfway through tomorrow to finish!

By the way, Kirk doesn't assume for a moment that Scotty's exaggerating how long it'll take, which shows that Scotty's line in Star Trek 3 about multiplying his repair estimates by four really was just a joke.

Unfortunately it turns out that they have even less time than Kirk believes, as the whales have already been released!

The way the sky is flickering gives away that this a composite shot, though there's nothing fake about the pool being empty. This is basically what Monterey Bay Aquarium normally looks like. The reason the shot seems so weird is because the aquarium is located is about a hundred miles south of where it is in the movie, so they had to add in the San Francisco skyline as seen from Sausalito.

That spiky building sticking out above the others is that Transamerica Pyramid I mentioned earlier, so that's where they were at when Kirk nearly got hit by the car. In fact if you start at that screencap of the street, fly directly backwards down the road, and continue going for about five and a half miles, that's where the Cetacean Institute should be.

Gillian's so angry about Bob releasing the whales early without telling her that she gives him a slap, and it was apparently unscripted. The actor does a good job of acting surprised without blowing the scene I reckon. The poor guy is only in two scenes and it's kind of a thankless role!

It's even worse for the character though, as (spoilers) Gillian is never coming back to work. In fact no one is ever going to see her again, and they'll never know what happened to her. So he's going to think she did something drastic because he never let her say goodbye to her whales. And the whales' transmitters will stop broadcasting on the same day, so as far as he knows they both died too.

This is a comedy movie, but for Bob it's a tragedy. Anyway he's gone from the story now.

Oh cool, here's a close up so you can definitely see the spiky Transamerica building now.

They filmed this from Alcatraz, so Golden Gate Park is waaaaay over to the right from here. Which kind of raises the question why the helicopter carrying their plexiglass is flying left. You could also wonder how Sulu got hold of a helicopter. Personally I just assumed it was part of their deal with Dr Nichols.

This is a radio-controlled model helicopter by the way. They didn't have permission to fly a real helicopter over San Francisco so they went with the next best thing.

And this is a real helicopter... I think.

It's taken a while but we've finally gotten another invisibility gag as Sulu lowers their plexiglass into a hole in the Bird-of-Prey's roof, with Scotty plainly visible to anyone in the park. Which is mostly just Gillian at the moment, as she drove over to tell them about the whales.

I'm really feeling for poor Scotty right now, as he was working half the night on getting a whale tank built, the other half of the night on regenerating dilithium crystals, and now he'll be spending all morning working on the whale tank again. The only one of them who got any sleep last night is Chekov! 

Gillian runs over and smacks right into the side of the landing gear, falling back onto her ass.

I always like it when actors play the sci-fi weirdness absolutely straight and make it entirely believable, and Catherine Hicks is doing pretty well at being a mime as well right now. Plus the grass is even properly flattened this time as well! Though now I'm wondering how they did this effect of the crushed ground. Did they really dig a little hole in Will Rogers State Park?

Here's a shot from underneath where the helicopter is, just because it's so rare to see sunlight inside a spaceship.

Gillian's yelling her head off and it's pretty clear that the disappearing plexiglass and the invisible landing gear have given the game away, so he beams her up onto the ship. Again, the ramp is right there. Still, it's good to know that the crystals are definitely working again.

I've been impressed by how grounded Catherine Hicks' performance as Gillian has been, and here she's doing great job of selling that she just got unexpectedly teleported onto an alien vessel.

Well she definitely believes Kirk's story now, so they don't have to worry about that anymore. They do have to worry about George and Gracie being all the way over in Alaska by now though. Gillian can give them the radio frequency to allow them to find them by their tags, but they can't go anywhere while Chekov's missing.

Gillian finally gets to see Spock without his bandana on here and I bet a lot of things suddenly make more sense to her. She seems willing to accept anything at this point, which is good because Uhura just found out that Chekov's been taken to Mercy Hospital in the Mission District and they'll need her help to get in there, save his life, and get back out.

This means I have the final location needed to finish my horrifically low-resolution map of all the locations Star Trek 4 visits in San Francisco! Well, kind of. Mercy Hospital's hard to pin down as it doesn't seem to be a real place.

Even Spock is adamant that they need to rescue Chekov, as it's the human thing to do. He's getting his marbles back! Also this might be character growth, as he used to question putting the needs of the many over the needs of the few or the one. Now he wants to risk everything on saving one person, like they sacrificed everything to save him.

I like this, watching them go undercover with the help of a local. It reminds me of episodes like Patterns of Force. It's great just watching Gillian get to join in with a caper.

We don't need to know how Gillian found them the right costumes or who paid for them (it was her), what's important is that they have them and now they need to find the Chekov's room before McCoy cures everyone. He's got a bag full of 23rd century medical equipment and he can't resist giving a patient a pill to help heal her kidneys. He also can't resist grumbling about it being the Dark Ages, because that's what he does.

This hospital is definitely the grumpy McCoy zone. Scotty did his engineering, Sulu his flying, Kirk his charming, Spock his mind melding, Uhura... talked on the phone, Chekov got to be a smart ass and now it's McCoy's time to get some focus.

It's also the blue/green and beige/pink part of the movie, as all other colours have been temporarily rescinded. The film's been very careful with its palette, with everyone in a shot wearing similar colours. Either that or it's just what the 80s was like. This was actually filmed in a real hospital, on a floor that wasn't in use, and a lot of the extras were actual employees wearing their regular clothes.

Chekov was caught inside the reactor room of a nuclear aircraft carrier, so they're not just going to let anyone in the room with him. But the team is going full Mission: Impossible right now, faking a medical emergency to get the cops to let them through. The scene has some fun with its technobabble, with McCoy claiming that Gillian's suffering from immediate, post-prandial, upper abdominal distention. 'Prandial' means 'during or relating to the eating of food', and when they get inside McCoy explains he said she had cramps. He could've said something real, but he chose to troll them.

They still have to deal with the surgeons trying to save Chekov's life though, making them one of the closest things the movie has to antagonists! The film's just too nice to have actual bad guys in it. McCoy expresses his feelings about their plan to drill into Chekov's head to release the pressure, and then Kirk seals them in another room with his phaser.

That's a beautiful spark. I always love a practical phaser hit, as it really sells the whole effect. Despite the fact that the beam isn't reflected by the wooden door.

The gadget really doesn't look like a weapon, so it's fortunate that Kirk had more success than Chekov did at convincing people that its something to be scared of. Though I suppose it's just a chunkier version of the tiny Type-I phasers they sometimes carried in the series.

Hang on, I'll show you the one I mean:

Star Trek: The Original Series 2-26 - Assignment: Earth

That's a Type-I phaser. And that's how they look when they blast a door handle. This is pretty much the one thing that the episode Assignment: Earth does better than The Voyage Home.

Incidentally, this scene is the only time that a weapon is fired in the entire movie. Well, kind of.

McCoy gets to work using futuristic technology to repair Chekov's head. It's painted white, the colour of Federation tech, but it's literally the back end of a Klingon K't'inga-class battle cruiser model kit so who knows? The important thing is that McCoy had the sense to make sure their ship was stocked with someone's medical equipment before they headed off on a space voyage, and it got the job done.

These close-up shots of Chekov were apparently shot on their starship bridge set. After they were done filming starship scenes they pulled a bed over in front of the console and Walter Koenig changed into a hospital gown.

They can't just beam out with all these doctors spying on them through the window, so they wheel Chekov out right past the cops. Unfortunately they notice that they came in with a woman and came out with a man, so they're forced to make a run for it. They'll be fine though, there's full-on comedy music playing. The film's not going for tension here.

Uh, I mean come back next time to see if our heroes escape the hospital and save the Earth!

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART FOUR

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NEXT TIME

Next week on Sci-Fi Adventures, the final part of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home! I could've written about something else, given you a bit of variety, but who wants to wait a month to get to the end of a movie?

Lots of people have opinions about this film and if you're one of them you can share your thoughts in the box below!