The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek boldly went Greenpeace in this whale tale, but for all the fun there's a lot of dumb.
When Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett called in director/writer Nicholas Meyer to help them with the fourth Star Trek film he asked what they were doing, and they replied "Something nice."
And it paid off. For the longest time Star Trek IV was the most profitable and popular film of the franchise, known even to non-Trekkies as "the one with the whales." It was a hit because it didn't require you to know much about Star Trek in order to get it, and because it was a family friendly film released in time for the 1986 holiday season.
The Voyage Home is a bit of a romp, a fish out of water romp with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and plenty of comedic moments, so you can't take it too seriously, but at the same time it's not unreasonable to expect events in the film to make some sense, and for the characters to behave appropriately. In the case of this film, a number of silly things happen because they are expedient to the plot, not because they make a lick of of sense. So strap in as we slingshot around the sun to find 14 of the dumbest things that happen in The One With the Whales.
14. The Cameraman Can
So, just how exactly did the Federation and perhaps also the Klingons get their hands on the very dramatic, multiple viewpoint footage from inside the Enterprise bridge during its Star Trek III self destruct? And just who filmed the exterior of the ship going kaboom from several different angles, only one one of which could have been from the Klingon Bird of Prey?
This is, of course, an old movie and TV gimmick, and had happened in previous Star Trek movies, notably when the Enterprise receives an impossible closeup of the Klingon battlecruiser Amar being digitized, and then receiving video of the V’ger cloud after transmitting Epsilon Nine is annihilates.
The reality is: it’s a money saving gimmick. Why shoot another variation on a shot you already have? Would penny-pinching Paramount approve re-blowing up the Enterprise just to get the point of view from the Klingon ship?
It’s understandable, but in-story?
Dumb.