Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) on Netflix
PG19861h 59mAdventureComedySci-Fi
An alien probe disables Earth's power and vaporizes its oceans. Admiral James T. Kirk and his exiled crew travel to 1986 San Francisco to find humpback whales that can answer its call.
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- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 2286 a huge cylindrical probe crosses space, shutting down every ship's power as it passes, then orbits Earth and kills the global power grid, stirring storms whose clouds block the sun. Starfleet warns all vessels to keep away. On Vulcan, the exiled officers of the Enterprise, with Spock still recovering, fly the Klingon Bird of Prey they captured back toward Earth to face trial for disobeying orders. Spock works out that the alien signal is the song of humpback whales, extinct for two centuries, and that the probe will not stop disrupting the planet until something answers it. The crew swings around the Sun into 1986 with the ship's power drained and hides in San Francisco. Kirk and Spock go looking for humpback whales, while others seek materials for a tank and a nuclear reactor to recharge the ship.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The role of Taylor was originally written for Eddie Murphy, as an astrophysicist at Berkeley. Nicholas Meyer said the inspiration for the character came from a biologist featured in a National Geographic documentary about whales, and Nimoy chose Hicks after inviting her to lunch with Shatner.
- Nimoy and the other producers were unhappy with Mangini's attempts at the probe's droning operating noise, so after more than a dozen tries the sound designer asked Nimoy what he thought the probe should sound like. Mangini recorded Nimoy's guttural "wub-wub-wub" response and used it, distorted, as the final sound.
- Kirk Thatcher, an associate producer on the film, convinced Nimoy to let him play the punk on the bus; he shaved his hair into a mohawk, bought clothes for the part, and with sound designer Mark Mangini wrote and recorded "I Hate You", the song heard in the scene.
- The Voyage Home was the first Star Trek film shown in the Soviet Union, screened by the World Wildlife Fund on June 26, 1987 in Moscow to celebrate a ban on whaling.
- The extra who improvised the line "I don't know if I know the answer to that... I think it's across the bay, in Alameda" had had her car impounded after missing the warnings to move it for the filming, and approached the assistant director about appearing with the other extras, hoping to be paid enough to get the car out.
- The filmmakers knew from the start that the whales were their biggest effects concern and were prepared to switch to another animal if they proved too difficult. When Humphrey the Whale wandered into San Francisco Bay, Dow and his camera crew tried to gather usable footage of the humpback but failed.
- After Krikes and Meerson filed for arbitration with the Writers Guild of America they were awarded screenplay credit as well, a decision that embittered Meyer for years, since he felt that if anyone deserved co-credit with him it was Bennett alone.
