Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the franchise's most purely enjoyable picture and its most accessible, a time travel comedy of such irresistible charm and such complete confidence in its own absurdity that it works for audiences with no prior knowledge of the series as well as it works for devoted fans. Leonard Nimoy's 1986 sequel is a deliberate change of register from the trilogy's more serious entries, a film that uses its science fiction framework not for philosophical meditation or operatic conflict but for fish-out-of-water comedy of the most enjoyable kind. It is not as great a picture as The Wrath of Khan. It does not attempt to be. What it is, is a film of extraordinary good humour and craft, a work that earns its lighter register through the quality of the character work that underpins it and that delivers its environmental message with enough wit and intelligence to prevent it from feeling preachy.
At a Glance
Director: Leonard Nimoy
Runtime: 119 minutes
Starring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Catherine Hicks, James Doohan
Release: 1986
Critics Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars, the franchise's most enjoyable entry)
Audience Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5 stars, universally beloved)
Review Breakdown
Plot
An alien probe is devastating Earth's oceans and atmosphere, apparently attempting to communicate with humpback whales, a species extinct in the twenty-third century. Kirk and the crew travel back to 1986 San Francisco to find two humpback whales and bring them to the future. The plot is the franchise's most deliberately absurd, a premise of such cheerful implausibility that the picture's success depends entirely on the charm and the confidence with which it is executed. Nimoy executes it with complete confidence and considerable charm.
Characters
The ensemble is given more equal screen time here than in any other franchise entry. Each character is assigned a specific task in 1986 San Francisco calibrated to generate comedy from their particular qualities: Spock's attempts to navigate human social interaction, McCoy's horror at twentieth-century medicine, Scotty's enthusiasm for sharing future technology. Shatner's Kirk is the most relaxed and most charming version of the character across the franchise. Nimoy's Spock is given the most consistently enjoyable comic material. Catherine Hicks's Gillian Taylor is the franchise's finest guest character in the original cast era, a woman of considerable intelligence and passion whose relationship with Kirk is handled with a lightness and a wit that makes her the most purely enjoyable new presence in the picture. The ensemble is the franchise's most collectively enjoyable, and the 1986 sequences give each character a specific comic register that suits them with complete precision.
Tone
Nimoy pitches the picture as a comedy of affection, and the approach is entirely successful. The Voyage Home has a lightness and a good humour that distinguishes it from every other entry in the franchise, a film content to be charming and entertaining rather than ambitious, and that achieves those more modest goals with a completeness and a craft that makes the experience thoroughly satisfying.
Meaning / Themes
The environmental message is the most direct thematic statement, a suggestion that humanity's treatment of other species has consequences extending far beyond the immediate. This is delivered with enough wit and intelligence to prevent it from feeling preachy, and the 1986 sequences give the argument a specificity and a humour that the franchise's more earnest treatments of comparable themes have not always achieved.
Direction
Nimoy's direction is more confident and assured here than in The Search for Spock, with a stronger command of comic timing and a clearer sense of how to generate comedy from the ensemble's specific qualities. Leonard Rosenman's score is the franchise's most playful, incorporating period music and comic orchestration with a skill and a wit that suits the lighter register.
Cultural Reception
The Voyage Home received outstanding reviews on its release and was the franchise's biggest commercial success to that point, grossing over $133 million worldwide. Critics praised the ensemble comedy, the environmental message, and the picture's accessibility to non-fans, and it is now regarded as the franchise's most universally beloved entry, a film whose good humour and charm have made it the most consistently enjoyable Star Trek picture across the widest range of audiences.
Who Should Watch
Everyone, without reservation or qualification. The Voyage Home is the franchise's most accessible entry and a picture that works for audiences of every age and background. It is, quite simply, the most fun the franchise has ever been.
Final Verdict: The franchise's most purely enjoyable picture and its most accessible. The ensemble is at its collective best, the 1986 sequences are the series' most consistently entertaining passages, and Nimoy's direction handles the comic register with a confidence and a craft that makes the more absurd elements feel entirely natural. Not as great a film as The Wrath of Khan. More fun, and sometimes that is exactly what is needed.
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