4. Ralph McQuarrie For The Whale Probe (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
''Who would send a Probe hundreds of light years to talk to a whale?'' asked Dr McCoy but that is exactly what happened in the fourth Star Trek movie. In The Voyage Home, a probe makes it way to Earth to find out why it's no longer receiving signals from humpback whales. As it enters Earth orbit, the probes signals cause massive atmospheric disturbances that cause the sun to be blocked out. And the reason the probe is not getting any answers from the whales? Because they have been foolishly hunted to extinction. And now, mans short sightedness might be the catalyst for its own extermination. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was a departure from the norm as it involved the Enterprise crew going back in time to 1986 to bring back two humpback whales. The producers took a risk and it paid off, The Voyage Home is still one of the highest grossing Star Trek movies. The probe that threatened Earth was nothing more than an instigator for the main storyline so it had less thought given to it than Vger did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Star Wars concept artist Ralph McQuarrie provided some initial designs for the probe and a cylindrical shape was settled on. Simple in design, the probe looked alien in origin and was enormous. However, performance wise it just floated gently and incapacitated any ship that got too close. Not evil in the traditional antagonistic sense, it made quite soothing sounds that turned out to be whale song. Like I said, the probes job was to mess with Earth and give Kirk and crew a reason to time travel back to 1986. It served that purpose well and disappeared once it got a reply from the whales Kirk brought back, other than that it did nothing. Unlike Vger where a collective of talents brought the satellite to life, this probe had a much lesser role in the scheme of the film.