While its environmental impact is difficult to quantify, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home should be celebrated as the moment when environmental action, science fiction, and time travel were combined in the most unlikely of places.
Following the continuing story of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was never going to be easy; after all, Star Trek III ended with the destruction of the USS Enterprise, the death of Kirk’s son and the resurrection of his closest friend Spock, leaving our motley crew in a Klingon Bird of Prey for transport. In his second stint as director, Leonard Nimoy would embrace a new direction. Star Trek IV was, in many ways, the birth of a new era for the Enterprise crew, but it was also an environmental film hidden under the cloak of a time-travelling space adventure.
By the early 1980s, the international ‘Save The Whale‘ campaign, alongside Greenpeace activism, had begun to make its voice heard in calling for the abolition of whaling, with the International Whaling Commission bringing forward a moratorium on the commercial practice.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home would take these environmental discussions into space, in a time-travel adventure that broadened the franchise’s appeal and, in turn, gave it its most significant box-office success from 1986 to 1987.
The Enterprise crew would use a slingshot method of lightspeed travel, introduced in the TV series, to return to Earth and save the whales. A mix of light comedy and science fiction ensues, playing fast and loose with time-travel theory. But despite this, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home remains one of the most entertaining additions to the franchise, and all those who watched it in cinemas will remember the short film about saving the whales that preceded the main feature.
While its environmental impact is difficult to quantify, Star Trek IV should be celebrated as the moment when environmental action, science fiction, and time travel were combined in the most unlikely of places.
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