10 Most Meta Star Trek Moments
8. Save The Whales!
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the Trek film that contains the most direct message about environmentalism and conversation out of all of the movies in the franchise. Leonard Nimoy, Harve Bennet, and Nicholas Meyer conceived and created a story that would see the crew of the Enterprise forced to travel back in time because what they needed was extinct on 'present' day Earth.
Humpback Whales were selected to add a logistical problem for the crew and also to draw awareness to the extreme depletion of their numbers in the wild due to hunting. The first draft of the script featured Eddie Murphy, at the actor's own request, though he was unhappy with the role as written and left the project. The role, famously, was changed to become Dr. Gillian Taylor.
The film was a massive hit, helping to raise interest in whale preservation during the eighties. Meyer also used the script to include a scene featuring a punk rocker, which was something he had been trying to do in several of his movies!