this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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Sorry for my ignorance, but why is this attributed to Star Trek? Because the show had a cultural impact, which helped conservation efforts? Or is it something that happened in the show, relevant to whales? (Nothing against Star Trek, of course.)
The plot of the fourth movie, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, is a slightly off the wall plot.
A giant alien space probe arrives in orbit of Earth making weird noises, it sucks up all the power from ships in orbit and power grids on the surface and starts evaporating the oceans. Turns out it wants to talk to humpback whales, which in this timeline were hunted to extinction in the 20th century, so there are no humpback whales on earth for the probe to talk to, and it's literally tearing up the oceans to find them.
Meanwhile, Kirk and his crew of main characters are on Vulcan (Spock's home planet) in possession of a stolen Klingon warship which they've been preparing for the flight back to Earth to face court martial, because of the events of the previous movie. They learn of the problem before they reach Earth, they figure out that the probe wants to talk to whales. "can we pretend to be whales?" "we can make the sounds, but we don't speak the language." So they just casually decide to time travel by doing a high speed lap of the sun. No shit they just fly really fast around the sun and arrive in the 1980's, where it just so happens the Bay Aquarium has a breeding pair of captive humpback whales on display. Meanwhile, the trip through time ran them out of fuel. Cue a LucasArts style multi-problem plot where they have to figure out how to refuel their ship, modify it to carry humpback whales, find and acquire the whales, and then get back to the future.
Spoiler alert: They do. They crash their ship into 23rd century San Fransisco bay and release the whales, which do this whole new age thing with the probe, which then goes "Understandable, have a nice day" sucks in its volleyball and floats away. Then that court martial scene which is actually part of the previous movie not this one ensues, where Kirk is punished with a reward.
TL;DR the main plot of the fourth movie involves the Enterprise's crew, but not the Enterprise, going back in time to bring humpback whales back from extinction.
Oh, so this is what that futurama episode is parodying. The tones one.
Pretty sure they're parodying Close Encounters of the Third Kind there. The one where an alien ship is approaching blasting out these tones, and Fry thinks he remembers it, they build this huge elaborate keyboard setup and Fry plays two notes on it and it turns out it's Nibbler shenanigans? That's parodying Close Encounters.
I think I can almost recommend going and watching Star Trek IV on its own, the plot is mostly self-contained for being the third in a trilogy, but I think it does stand on its own. It also has a profoundly good soundtrack, like, even for Star Trek.
Guess I have at least 2 movies to add to my watch list. Maybe 5.
Also Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
In one of the movies there is an alien spaceship that wants to communicate with the whales except they're all extinct, for some reason the lack of the whales is causing all of the ships to shut, so the crew have to travel back in time to the 20th century to get a whale for the alien ship to communicate with.
Yeah that was the plot, the original Star Trek movies were kind of bad really.
Nah, it wasn't bad at all. The whale extinction plot was to raise awareness of the discovery of whale intelligence and to spark resistance against the immorality of whale hunting. Perhaps it was a little hamfisted, but Star Trek was always woke as hell.
Star Trek has never shied away from telepathy, so it wasn't much of a stretch to have the whales in contact with a powerful alien intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy. It wasn't the lack of whales that caused ships to shut down and Earth's weather to whip up hurricanes, but rather the overwhelming energy field of the probe the aliens sent to investigate the silence.
All that and it somehow managed to showcase an absolute banger punk song raging against nuclear holocaust.
And they made it a comedy.
I love Star Trek IV.
Scotty picking up the mouse thinking it was a microphone was hilarious. Silly of course, and the fact he could type, well....
But the whole movie was just fun.
‘Oh! How quaint!’
I just watched it the other day. It still holds up. The parts in San Francisco is particularly ironic since that is the base of Starfleet in the future. I as a child watching it when it was released was made aware of extinction because of this movie. Sure it's cheesy at times, that is not the goal. The goal was to make people aware while being entertained. It works.
It's the movie I showed my fiance to get them into Star Trek and it worked like a charm
That's just a normal Star Trek plot. Hell, that's toned down for normies compared to half the stuff they get up to in any given series. At least it's an alien looking probe and not a giant green hand or space Lincoln.
It was one of the Voyager probes, upgraded by aliens to continue its journey of discovery, returned to earth wasn't it?
No. That was in TMP. To be fair, that’s two TOS movies where mysterious probe threatens the Federation.
Yeah, it's one of those "it's weird that it happened twice" situations. Not to mention TMP was just a mash up of The Changeling and One of Our Planets is Missing. At a certain point it feels like the characters should be asking each other why they keep experiencing the same situations over and over....
Oh right. This was the one where Scotty tries talking into a Mac mouse. And then after opening and closing a lot of windows, transparent aluminium! *Edit : spelling
And the computer was like oh I totally know what this arbitrary molecular structure you just programmed in is, and totally know its name, so I'll just flash that up on the screen. Because that's definitely how material science works.
How dare you! Wrath of Kahn was/is really good. Or fun. Or both.
The first movie, oh god that was bad. But I would rather watch any of them (including the TNG ones which weren't great) over the new ones. Now those are bad.
Have you seen the director's cut of The Motion Picture? I think it's pretty good. They were clearly influenced by 2001 Space Odyssey.
I have not but now that you mention it, and I knew the first release was rushed, I am intrigued.
When I get a chance to watch a big screen TV I will give it a try!
Thanks for posting.
What made Khan so great was...KKKKKHHHHHHAAAAAANNNNNNNN!!!
Seriously, Khan was the perfect archenemy for Kirk. An over-acting bad guy vs. an over-acting good guy. Lots of hammy goodness.
I love that your esteem for the old movies has improved based on how bad the new ones are.
The plot was originally written as a plague that could only be cured with a plant that's extinct, but they went with the whale plot because it's more visual.
Buddy hasn't seen the one with the whales
Ey there are still reruns on tv that I've never seen before. The captain Picard ones are my favourite.
They discussed their plight a lot in Star Trek IV. Some relevant quotes and context here: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Whale