10 Other Times Star Trek Used The Vasquez Rocks

7. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

No really — you’ll blink and miss it!

In the years after The Original Series died and found resurrection through the rerun generation, fan savvy had time to grow and even in pre-Internet days, hungry Trekfolks had more and more making-of books and articles that brought the ins and outs of classic show details, like the Vasquez Rocks shoots.

Perhaps that’s why Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy, producer and director of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, who still had a little spare cash after two weeks on location in San Francisco, sent a small team out to Vasquez in April 1986. Their task was to film someone as Spock meditating atop the twin slant peaks, capture their obvious and iconic side, as a very organic representation of Vulcan for the movie’s pre-getaway opening scenes. Remember now?

Future Star Trek creatives would. Stick a pin in that.

Authored by Larry Nemecek

Contributor

Back when nerds and geeks were just called "hobbyists," Larry's ninth-grade science teacher ended a bewildering conversations with him about Halkans by finally saying, "Oh Larry — don't tell me you don't know Star Trek!"— along with a commandment to go home and begins watching the daily after-school rerun. The rest is history — well, future history, anyway. Larry had always been a NASA kid and a history fan (not so much sci-fi), so Star Trek fit right in: for the phenomenon that was worldbuilding before the term was invented, Larry felt passion-called to take up "backgrounding" and gap-filling before the term "retcon" was invented. Star Trek is fun and inspiring, but it doesn't pay the bills —at least in those days— but after college and work in theatre and print news, Larry somehow managed to combine both fields with his non-fiction Trek fandom and created the monster that today is Dr. Trek. His self-published, pre-Internet star charts and TNG Concordance were precursors to the official Stellar Cartography map set and the bestseller TNG Companion, after a move to Hollywood /SoCal in the 1990s boom years. Add in a stint as managing editor of official ST Communicator magazine, the first editor and later content producer of the original startrek.com, and the franchise consultant for everything from the Star Trek World Tour to the storied Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. When Star Trek went wandering in the wilderness for the first time in 18 years amid the "Paramount divorce" of 2005-06, so did Larry — until, finally, the entrepreneur web world eventually found a path and a way to stay afloat. Since then, Larry's "Trekland" has come to mean more media projects and podcast/streaming alongside the old standbys like convention guest speaking and even text writing. Sure, there's The Trek Files for Roddenberry, his own Trekland Tuesdays Live, and Dr. Trek;s Second Opinion reaction shows — but that passion for spotlighting and archiving the creatives of Trek across all arenas and eras still drives him to pioneer experiences like the monthly backstage Portal 47 features, and the Trekland Treks day tours of Trek location sights. And now ... in-depth Dr. Trek turns for TrekCulture, too!

Posted On: 25th Feb 2026

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