My Review of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home"

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home came out back in 1986. It's a little bit of an oddball in the Star Trek franchise but I remember it being one of my favorites. The whole fish out of water tale of our favorite characters meeting the 19th century. There are still a few stand out moments in this movie that will live forever in my head.

This movie takes place right after the events of the previous movie. The Enterprise crew is in trouble for what they did in order to save Spock. They've been marooned out on the Vulcan planet after they gave Spock's consciousness back to him.

Unfortunately Kirk and the rest of the gang are supposed to go on trial for their crimes against the federation. They did after all steal the Enterprise to save Spock from Genesis. Things are a little more complicated as there is a Klingon that say that the punishment for the crimes are more severe because they had killed a Klingon crew.

All this interesting politics kind of goes by the wayside when a mysterious alien comes to visit Earth. Their vessel has some sort of system that shuts down electricity and causes chaos to Earth's atmosphere. They're looking for someone or something and no one can figure out what.

Well that's when the Enterprise crew discover that the aliens seem to be deciphering some sort of humpback whale language. Since those whales are now extinct, Spock has the clever idea to go back into time and bring some whales to the future to repopulate.

Already it seems really bizarre and the rest of the movie really is quite bizarre. Although it works for the most part in terms of entertainment. You'll see this futuristic ragtag gang trying to navigate San Francisco in the 1980s.

Some of the stand out situations was having Chekov and Uhura find some nuclear weapons aboard a Navy ship. The 1980s if you don't remember is a time when the cold war was still at hand. Having Chekov spying to retrieve the power source was pretty funny. They could have went way crazier but they kept it fun.

This also leads to one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie which was the rescue mission at the local hospital. Bones is played off so magically in this scene. He looks at the medical equipment as if we live in the dark ages and technically this is correct. The future will be much better in the future but he holds no punches with his opinions of what's going on. His dialogue throughout these scenes had me in hysterics.

The whole concept of the crew going to the past and trying to navigate themselves in the 1980s is ridiculous and fun. There are certain aspects that kind of caught me off guard. It's funny how they were talking about how in the future they don't use any money but yet the previous movie was triggered by money. In the last movie there are Starfleet traitors that sold the Genesis information to the Klingons for credits. I was like what the heck is that all about?

Overall, what you have here is a really entertaining movie. It is definitely the oddball out in the franchise but it was really fun watching it. It's probably also a polarized movie in the franchise as well. I've seen this movie many times before and some of it still gets to me like the hospital scenes. I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. Watching it now, I can see a lot of continuity issues for the franchise but it still entertained me as heck in the last few decades.