The SmarK DVD Rant for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
– Generally speaking, when thinking of Star Trek, the phrase “light comedy” usually doesn’t come up. The image is normally of James T. Kirk, swaggering tin-plated dictator with delusions of grandeur, traipsing through the universe in his starship and shooting at Klingons. However, with the fourth movie in the Star Trek series (and third part in The Trilogy), things take a drastic turn towards a more accessible Star Trek, as directed by Leonard Nimoy. And the result was the most successful movie of the entire series, clearing $100 million (the only one to do so, although First Contact came close) and setting everyone up for the biggest disappointment of the entire series with the fifth installment. Well, no one’s perfect, to quote McCoy.
Now, after hosing everyone with overpriced bare-bones editions the first time around, Paramount has done right by the series and turned them all into insanely-inexpensive special editions.
The Film:
Taking place right after Kirk blew up the Enterprise in order to kill off a group of invading Klingons, the plot sees a mysterious probe (never explained or rationalized, thankfully) cruising into our galaxy and sending cosmic modem noise, which in turn sucks all the energy out of anything in its path, up to and including the planet itself. The thing obviously wants SOMETHING, but what?
Driving their hijacked Klingon bird-of-prey back from Vulcan, the exiled Enterprise crew finds only a warning message guarding Earth, telling people to stay away at all costs. Well, always up for a challenge, Kirk and Spock figure out that the thing is trying to converse with humpback whales. One problem — they’ve been extinct for 300 years. Well, this being Star Trek, that minor inconvenience is worked around by slingshotting around the sun and shooting back in time to the 20th century, where they plan to grab a couple of whales and head on back.
However, complications arise, leaving everyone with the task of blending into 1986 San Francisco (which proves to be surprisingly easy, since no one gives a crap about how weird you choose to dress there) in order to find a series of plot devices and get the ship and the cargo home to the 23rd century again.
The mechanisms of the story are relatively unimportant — the real fun lies in Nimoy’s delight at tweaking sci-fi conventions and showing the fish-out-of-water (pun intended) story of the characters adjusting to life in a primitive, paranoid culture. Memorable moments (the punk on the bus) and lines (“Didn’t he give you those as a present?” “Yes, and he will again, that’s the beauty of it.”) abound, as screenwriters Harve Bennett and Nicolas Meyer play fast and loose with time travel and generally give it a sock on the nose. See Scotty & McCoy’s trip to the plastics factory for an example of that — when McCoy has doubts about showing a futuristic technology to the manager of the plant, Scotty simply counters by noting that there’s no proof that the guy DIDN’T invent the thing in the first place. Whereas most time-travel movies (and time-travel eps of Trek) are ridiculously anal about “restoring the timeline” in case sitting on a fish in the past triggers a rain of donuts in the future, this movie takes a much more laid-back approach to the whole thing. And frankly it’s much more refreshing to see things change in the past rather than go through complex deus ex machina twists in order to keep things exactly as they were before, as though the timeline was some sort of cosmic wildlife preserve.
The characters are written with such easy familiarity that their lines are almost like eavesdropping on a family reunion, rather than the stilted sci-fi language of space battles. Kirk and Spock discussing profanity on the bus and arguing about whether Spock likes Italian food, McCoy ranting about the primitive conditions of medicine, Scotty hamming it up as a visiting professor, etc. It all feels like putting on a comfortable pair of slippers, with people who know the roles so well that it’s like a second skin for them. And given a chance to improv like nuts, they do so constantly and without it feeling out of place for the story.
Finally, the best part of the story is that there’s no villain, no cheap conflict to rally around, no easy death to pop the audience. It’s a story about being given a puzzle to solve and figuring out how to go about solving it. Violence is never used nor needed to advance the plot, and the action is confined to fighting the clock or retreating from locals who are unsure of how to deal with an alien civilization. If in doubt, the crew runs rather than fights. That makes this one true family-friendly entertainment without resorting to cheap morality ploys and heavy-handed messages. While the “Kirk v. The World” mentality of the first three movies worked for what they were, this was a lighter diversion from the heaviness of the first three, and it’s a welcome one.
The Voyage Home is the favorite of many people — Trekkies and casual fans who have only seen “the one with the whales” alike — and for good reason. Filled with humor that’s accessible both to fans privy to the inside jokes and those looking for a universal laugh, Star Trek IV is not only one of the best of the Trek movies, it’s a great movie, period. Don’t be scared off by the title — if you’ve never seen it, it’s well worth a rental in place of pap like “Free Willy 17: Whales In Breaking Training” or other ham-handed animal rights movies.
The Video:
Unfortunately, Paramount once again gets lazy and reuses the transfer from the original DVD release. It’s anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen and generally looks good, although I found it a bit soft and muted at times. There were a couple of compression artifacts here and there, also. And the grey matte lines around the spaceships (you can clearly see grey boxes around the probe and the bird-of-prey) were INEXCUSABLY awful, making some of the space sequences look like something out of Plan Nine from Outer Space and thus ruining the dramatic effect. I know they didn’t have the money to go back and redo the effects as CGI ala Star Trek TMP, but I can’t believe whoever was supervising the transfer, knowing that DVD is such a high-quality media, would be able to sign off on that nonsense with a clear conscience, not once but TWICE. Since this is probably the last version we’re gonna get, though, we’ll just have to live with it.
The Audio:
Once again, same 5.1 and 2.0 mixes from the original DVD. This is largely a dialogue-based movie, so neither one provides much in the way of aggressive surrounds anyway. The time travel sequence sounds suitably neato, the probe is all over the speakers, and the rest is strictly center-channel material all the way. For the purpose it serves, it sounds just fine.
The Extras:
As usual with these reissues, it’s a BONANZA for Trek fans.
First of all, the biggest addition to the set is a commentary by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, and it’s a BLAST to listen to, as they razz each other and remember all the fun had making the movie in the first place. Nimoy is a particularly insightful director, and he pulls back the curtains on reasoning behind budget trims (like the invisible spaceship in the park and why they didn’t just shoot in Golden Gate Park) and his technical tricks with the camera. This is probably one of the most fun and informative commentaries I’ve heard yet, and it’s a must for film fans and Trek fans alike.
Next, the standard text commentary from Michael Okuda, which covers a lot of the same ground as Nimoy’s commentary and lists various goofs and background on the extras, along with triviata and various other items. These are great and should be on more DVDs.
Over to the second disc, which is also LOADED. It’s broken up into four sub-sections of featurettes:
The Star Trek Universe
– Here you get a featurette on time travel, as three ultra-egghead quantum physicists are interviewed and Einstein’s general theory of relativity is simplified into cartoon form. Really cool stuff, and when I’m rich I’m totally buying a giant centrifuge and spinning myself 1000 years into the future.
– Next, a featurette on whalesong, as a marine biologist is interviewed about what the heck they’re saying (the short version: We don’t know) and what meaning it could have. Really interesting stuff, too.
– A featurette on what it takes to be a Vulcan, hosted by a Trek author. This is pretty much an excuse to use a bunch of clips from the Trek library.
– Interviews with actresses who have played Kirk’s former loves (most of whom ended up dead by the end of the show) and what made Captain Kirk such a sexy beast. Fluffy but fun.
Production Featurettes
– A standard “look back” documentary, featuring interviews with the cast and crew reminiscing and telling stories about the filming process.
– An “on location” documentary, again cast and crew, showing the process of making the movie in San Francisco rather than the Paramount backlot.
– “Dailies Deconstruction”. This is a VERY cool feature that shows you the raw footage shot by Nimoy for the “Double dumbass on you!” scene, and allows you to see what editors have to splice together to get the cohesive whole.
– Sound design featurette, with an interview with (who else) the sound editor, which is actually REALLY cool and features a lot of neat stories about how anal Nimoy was about the whole thing and what a sound geek you have to be in order to get into the business.
Visual Effects Featurettes
– You get a featurette about making the animatronic whales and the probe, and it’s basically a lesson on how to make a movie for cheap that still looks like a summer blockbuster.
– Next, a featurette about designing the bird-of-prey itself.
In addition to those nearly 2 hours of documentary material, you also get a tribute to the late Mark Lenard (Sarek), interviews from 1985 with Shatner/Nimoy/Kelley, the trailer, and the usual storyboards and gallery that no one ever looks at. A truly packed special edition on par with the other three. I’m interested to see what they drag up for the wretched fifth movie, that’s for sure.
Ratings:
The Film: *****
The Video: ***
The Audio: ***
The Extras: *****
