Star Trek 4. The Voyage Home

This is the last movie of the story that began in Star Trek 2. After having found the reborn Spock on planet Genesis and giving him his Katra back on Vulcan we start off where Star Trek 3 ended and Kirk and crew including Spock go back to Earth to face trial. But in the meantime a mysterious probe has reached Earth that is ionising the atmosphere and disabling all electronic equipment. En route to Earth Spock realises that the probe is speaking whale language but because the whales are extinct in the 23rd century the probe isn’t getting an answer. The only ones still on a functional spaceship Kirk and crew decide to travel back to the 20th century to get a couple of whales and bring them back to communicate with the probe. Most of the story is situated in our time and in that respect resembles a little bit the Battlestar Galactica 1980 series. The movie is a bit atypical as it tries to take advantage of the crew being out of time to create funny situations. Bringing future space travellers to contemporary Earth is not the best recipe for a good series or movie in my opinion. It becomes uninteresting fast. It didn’t lead to a great Battlestar Galactica season and it also doesn’t work well in the Star Trek movie in my opinion. It does have its moments and the theme about how humanity is causing species to go extinct is as relevant today as when the movie came out in 1986. The movie starts with a dedication to the crew of Spaceshuttle Challenger that exploded during flight in January of 1986. Being reminded of that accident is the most tension causing moment in the whole movie. I don’t think it is a bad movie per se and it is still more enjoyable than the first Star Trek movie but it is not a movie I would spontaneously pick to watch again, even not if I was limited to Star Trek movies. It is part of the Star Trek universe and concludes the story that began with Star Trek 2 but other than that I don’t feel it has much else going for it.