Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Saturday, March 27, 2004
'>STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME
essay by William S. Kowinski
"If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales." Goldsmith to Johnson, as quoted by Herman Melville in Moby Dick
"The high point of my experience with Star Trek was the making of '>Star Trek IV," Leonard Nimoy told me, in a telephone conversation last summer [2004]. " There was not a single shot fired that had any impact in the story. A girl slapped a guy---that was the violence in the film." He laughed. "There was a harpoon shot at a whale and it didn't hit its mark, it was blocked by a starship...It was an entirely different kind of sensibility. That to me was my Star Trek statement."
Leonard Nimoy was born on March 26, 1931, in Boston, just four days after William Shatner's birth in Montreal. Growing up during the Depression in a Jewish family living in a largely Italian neighborhood, he began acting in local theatres when he was eight years old, and committed himself to an acting career over the strenuous objections of his parents when he was 17. Both of his parents had employed subterfuge and risked their lives to escape from Russia (his father stole through the darkness across the Polish border, his mother hid in a hay wagon) but they didn't want their American son to rely on make-believe. They wanted him to become an educated professional with an assured future.
In fact, Leonard Nimoy didn't make a living entirely by acting until he was 35, and a regular on Star Trek. Though he'd gotten his first low-budget movie lead in 1951, his subsequent acting jobs never lasted more than two weeks. His name on his dressing room door would be written in chalk, he recalled. He often did other work to support his young family, including driving a cab in the Los Angeles neighborhood where he now lives. (This and other information comes from his "Mind Meld" DVD conversation with William Shatner, and Nimoy's books and various published interviews. I'll quote again later from our brief on-the-record conversation.)
The theatre had been a refuge in his youth. "I was screwed up," he told an interviewer, shortly before the release of Star Trek IV. "Lost. The only place, the only thing that seemed to be giving me any sense of satisfaction were these plays. I should have been living in the theatre. I felt so totally right there."
But the Star Trek series did not end the insecurity. His name was permanently affixed to his door, but the studio denied his simplest requests (for a telephone, a fan to cool the room) if they weren't explicitly designated in his contract. And the series itself almost didn't make it to a second year, then was set to be cancelled after the second season, and saved for one more year on a much reduced budget.
In his 1975 book,'> I Am Not Spock, he wrote about his anger and alienation, though much less so in his 1995 book, '>I Am Spock. In "Mind Meld," he seldom used the word "anger" until prompted by Shatner. But his conflicts with Paramount, with Star Trek and for awhile even with fans continued. Eventually he agreed to reprise Spock in the first Star Trek movie, and was initially even more reluctant to appear in the second.
But as subsequent events proved, his difficulties weren't with Star Trek itself or the Spock character. Though playing Spock caused some problems by requiring him to suppress emotion, it also helped him to come to terms with his alienation and anger. Developing Spock as not only rational and conscious, but the essence of a civilized gentleman---one of many elements he created for the character---helped transform his whole life.
Success also helped. Star Trek became a major cultural and financial force, and Nimoy was essential to it. When he directed Star Trek III, the studio and producer Harve Bennett kept a close eye on his work. But when that film was a great critical, fan and financial success, Nimoy was in position to come into his own, and he was ready.
"I moved into a new and rather grand suite of offices on the Paramount lot," he wrote. "I had good tables in the studio dining room, a terrific parking spot, and a spring in my step." He was told to make Star Trek IV his movie: his vision of Star Trek. But this was also a personal and artistic opportunity for completion. In his book he likened it to the Vulcan ordeal preceding Kolinar, the ultimate achievement. "When done, one is in unity, at home in oneself...An attempt at integration."
essay continues after photos. Thanks to Trek Connection and The Warp Core for photos.
essay by William S. Kowinski
"If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales." Goldsmith to Johnson, as quoted by Herman Melville in Moby Dick
"The high point of my experience with Star Trek was the making of '>Star Trek IV," Leonard Nimoy told me, in a telephone conversation last summer [2004]. " There was not a single shot fired that had any impact in the story. A girl slapped a guy---that was the violence in the film." He laughed. "There was a harpoon shot at a whale and it didn't hit its mark, it was blocked by a starship...It was an entirely different kind of sensibility. That to me was my Star Trek statement."
Leonard Nimoy was born on March 26, 1931, in Boston, just four days after William Shatner's birth in Montreal. Growing up during the Depression in a Jewish family living in a largely Italian neighborhood, he began acting in local theatres when he was eight years old, and committed himself to an acting career over the strenuous objections of his parents when he was 17. Both of his parents had employed subterfuge and risked their lives to escape from Russia (his father stole through the darkness across the Polish border, his mother hid in a hay wagon) but they didn't want their American son to rely on make-believe. They wanted him to become an educated professional with an assured future.
In fact, Leonard Nimoy didn't make a living entirely by acting until he was 35, and a regular on Star Trek. Though he'd gotten his first low-budget movie lead in 1951, his subsequent acting jobs never lasted more than two weeks. His name on his dressing room door would be written in chalk, he recalled. He often did other work to support his young family, including driving a cab in the Los Angeles neighborhood where he now lives. (This and other information comes from his "Mind Meld" DVD conversation with William Shatner, and Nimoy's books and various published interviews. I'll quote again later from our brief on-the-record conversation.)
The theatre had been a refuge in his youth. "I was screwed up," he told an interviewer, shortly before the release of Star Trek IV. "Lost. The only place, the only thing that seemed to be giving me any sense of satisfaction were these plays. I should have been living in the theatre. I felt so totally right there."
But the Star Trek series did not end the insecurity. His name was permanently affixed to his door, but the studio denied his simplest requests (for a telephone, a fan to cool the room) if they weren't explicitly designated in his contract. And the series itself almost didn't make it to a second year, then was set to be cancelled after the second season, and saved for one more year on a much reduced budget.
In his 1975 book,'> I Am Not Spock, he wrote about his anger and alienation, though much less so in his 1995 book, '>I Am Spock. In "Mind Meld," he seldom used the word "anger" until prompted by Shatner. But his conflicts with Paramount, with Star Trek and for awhile even with fans continued. Eventually he agreed to reprise Spock in the first Star Trek movie, and was initially even more reluctant to appear in the second.
But as subsequent events proved, his difficulties weren't with Star Trek itself or the Spock character. Though playing Spock caused some problems by requiring him to suppress emotion, it also helped him to come to terms with his alienation and anger. Developing Spock as not only rational and conscious, but the essence of a civilized gentleman---one of many elements he created for the character---helped transform his whole life.
Success also helped. Star Trek became a major cultural and financial force, and Nimoy was essential to it. When he directed Star Trek III, the studio and producer Harve Bennett kept a close eye on his work. But when that film was a great critical, fan and financial success, Nimoy was in position to come into his own, and he was ready.
"I moved into a new and rather grand suite of offices on the Paramount lot," he wrote. "I had good tables in the studio dining room, a terrific parking spot, and a spring in my step." He was told to make Star Trek IV his movie: his vision of Star Trek. But this was also a personal and artistic opportunity for completion. In his book he likened it to the Vulcan ordeal preceding Kolinar, the ultimate achievement. "When done, one is in unity, at home in oneself...An attempt at integration."
essay continues after photos. Thanks to Trek Connection and The Warp Core for photos.
Though in his "Movie Memories" book, Shatner reports some conflict between Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett over whose movie this was going to be, at the beginning of the process the two came to a series of conclusions in fairly short order. Nimoy wanted a lighter tone; after the death and destruction of the previous two movies, it was time for a grand adventure. He believed that many of the best Star Trek episodes did not involve the good guys confronting the bad guys, so they agreed on a film without villain or violence.
It doesn't appear they considered simply starting a new story at a time well after the events in III, so they made at least a de facto decision to complete the trilogy begun in Trek II, making the action continuous with the events in the previous two films. They also agreed on the basic device of time travel, and they soon became enamored with the idea of bringing the 23rd century crew back to earth in the 1980s.
The story question then became, why? The returning crew could be dispatched through time against their will, and then they either discover some problem to solve in that past, or simply struggle to return to the 23rd century without damaging the time line. Or they could go back intentionally---if they had a reason. What would that reason entail in a Star Trek story? In the DVD commentary, Nimoy puts it this way: "What would be lost in the 23rd century as a result of the unconsciousness of the 20th?"
This kind of reason alone reflected Nimoy's vision of Star Trek, which despite some personal and professional conflict, kept faith with Gene Roddenberry's basic vision.
The direction towards an answer came from "Biophilia," a book by biologist Edward O. Wilson that Nimoy was reading. "Biophilia" as Wilson defines it, means the innate "emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms." It is both a hypothesis about the natural disposition of humans to feel deeply and intrinsically a part of the natural world, even when alienated from it by the cement and smog of modern life, and an ethic, promoting the possibility of that relationship by giving priority to making sure than other species of living beings have what they need to live.
But as Wilson noted, human civilization is mindlessly obliterating other life on this planet, and forcing the greatest era of mass extinctions in 65 million years. Wilson goes beyond typical environmentalism to ask whether other life has an innate right to exist that is equal to the moral rights of humanity. Answering this question in the affirmative was an implied foundation of Star Trek's approach to life in the universe, which became more and more explicit in the 1980s, especially in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Still, the basic insight of ecology pertains here: humanity is embedded in the life of the planet, and cannot survive without it. By destroying other life now, humanity is destroying itself in the future.
It doesn't appear they considered simply starting a new story at a time well after the events in III, so they made at least a de facto decision to complete the trilogy begun in Trek II, making the action continuous with the events in the previous two films. They also agreed on the basic device of time travel, and they soon became enamored with the idea of bringing the 23rd century crew back to earth in the 1980s.
The story question then became, why? The returning crew could be dispatched through time against their will, and then they either discover some problem to solve in that past, or simply struggle to return to the 23rd century without damaging the time line. Or they could go back intentionally---if they had a reason. What would that reason entail in a Star Trek story? In the DVD commentary, Nimoy puts it this way: "What would be lost in the 23rd century as a result of the unconsciousness of the 20th?"
This kind of reason alone reflected Nimoy's vision of Star Trek, which despite some personal and professional conflict, kept faith with Gene Roddenberry's basic vision.
The direction towards an answer came from "Biophilia," a book by biologist Edward O. Wilson that Nimoy was reading. "Biophilia" as Wilson defines it, means the innate "emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms." It is both a hypothesis about the natural disposition of humans to feel deeply and intrinsically a part of the natural world, even when alienated from it by the cement and smog of modern life, and an ethic, promoting the possibility of that relationship by giving priority to making sure than other species of living beings have what they need to live.
But as Wilson noted, human civilization is mindlessly obliterating other life on this planet, and forcing the greatest era of mass extinctions in 65 million years. Wilson goes beyond typical environmentalism to ask whether other life has an innate right to exist that is equal to the moral rights of humanity. Answering this question in the affirmative was an implied foundation of Star Trek's approach to life in the universe, which became more and more explicit in the 1980s, especially in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Still, the basic insight of ecology pertains here: humanity is embedded in the life of the planet, and cannot survive without it. By destroying other life now, humanity is destroying itself in the future.
Now Nimoy had the general idea: some form of life that human unconsciousness causes to disappear in the 20th century is suddenly crucial to human life in the 23rd century. At first he considered plants. There are millions of species that humans haven't even catalogued, and many of these will be forced into extinction before we know they exist. Among them could very well be plants that can serve as sources for pharmaceuticals that treat or cure currently intractable diseases and conditions. What if 23rd century earth were stricken with a plague, and the only cure comes from a flower that no longer exists?
But traveling three centuries through time and overcoming other obstacles to rescue a medicinal plant would be hard to dramatize and visualize effectively---the proportions seemed skewed. Besides, the idea of thousands of people suffering and dying from a plague didn't suggest a light-hearted movie.
Then Nimoy's conversation with a friend about endangered whales inspired the basic solution. Whales had the dramatic proportions, and a long, complex relationship with the human species. Celebrated as "King of the boundless sea" (from one of some eighty quotations Herman Melville recorded at the beginning of Moby Dick), they were now becoming known as mammals with formidable intelligence who seemed to communicate.
The eerie songs of the Humpback whales caught the public imagination when they were first recorded in the 1960s, though experts could not agree on what the songs signified or even how they were sung (these whales have no vocal chords.) The songs were complex, and seemed to change over time and be communicated---even learned--- over distance, all of which deepened the mystery of these beings.
And though humans weren't fully conscious of the consequences of eradicating them, deliberate and aggressive action was responsible for taking them to the brink. Over more than a century, humans hunted whales to the extent that several species, including the humpbacks, were nearly extinct. (Even though killing them has now been illegal for decades, there are still only a few thousand blue whales and some 30,000 humpback whales in the world.)
In the early stages of its development William Shatner was not yet officially on board for Star Trek IV because he was negotiating with Paramount. But he was being consulted and kept informed. He wasn't in favor of the time travel device, but he loved the whales. Several years before, Shatner had toured a one-man show in which he used recorded whale song juxtaposed with his live reading of D. H. Lawrence's "Whales Weep Not" (which as Captain Kirk he would eventually quote in Star Trek IV.)
Shatner did this show in conjunction with Greenpeace, the activist organization based in Canada. Its name symbolizes its two principal activities: the "green" denotes its efforts on behalf of endangered species, particularly whales; the "peace" signaled the activism with which it started, opposing nuclear bomb testing, which also is an environmental issue.
The organization's first campaign was to stop an underground nuclear test on Amchitka island in Alaska in 1971. One test had been accomplished, even though it took some skullduggery by President Richard Nixon to keep the U.S. Supreme Court from preventing it. Greenpeace chartered a boat and headed for the site of the second test in its heavily publicized attempt to stop it. Though the boat was intercepted and prevented from returning, protests had erupted across Canada, and the U.S. postponed and eventually canceled this test.
With that one act, Greenpeace may have done more for the environment than it knew. The first Amchitka blast not only killed thousands of animals and birds, it ruptured the earth's crust, sending radioactive elements into the fresh water supply for Aleuts living nearby. Cancers there increased markedly, and even in 1996, radioactive tritium and cesium-137 were still leaking into the Bering Sea. A second bomb explosion in the same area might have been led to even greater catastrophe.
Greenpeace became so active in disrupting French nuclear tests that their boat was rammed, then boarded and the people aboard beaten, and finally a team of French operatives actually blew up their boat, killing a photographer. But the French tests eventually stopped.
In the early 70s, Greenpeace inaugurated the very visible "Save the Whales" campaign. Then they decided to put activism where their images were. In 1974 a Greenpeace boat confronted Soviet whalers off the California coast for the first time. On Zodiac inflatables, volunteers placed themselves between the whaling ship's harpoons and the target whales.
It was this act, repeated throughout the 1970s and into the 80s (targeting Icelandic and other whaling fleets as well) that Leonard Nimoy says was the specific inspiration for one of Star Trek IV's best remembered scenes: the whaling trawler's harpoon bouncing off the Klingon Bird of Prey, hovering above to protect the whales. It was also this activism that inspired William Shatner to engage his skills and celebrity for the Greenpeace efforts to save the whales.
But traveling three centuries through time and overcoming other obstacles to rescue a medicinal plant would be hard to dramatize and visualize effectively---the proportions seemed skewed. Besides, the idea of thousands of people suffering and dying from a plague didn't suggest a light-hearted movie.
Then Nimoy's conversation with a friend about endangered whales inspired the basic solution. Whales had the dramatic proportions, and a long, complex relationship with the human species. Celebrated as "King of the boundless sea" (from one of some eighty quotations Herman Melville recorded at the beginning of Moby Dick), they were now becoming known as mammals with formidable intelligence who seemed to communicate.
The eerie songs of the Humpback whales caught the public imagination when they were first recorded in the 1960s, though experts could not agree on what the songs signified or even how they were sung (these whales have no vocal chords.) The songs were complex, and seemed to change over time and be communicated---even learned--- over distance, all of which deepened the mystery of these beings.
And though humans weren't fully conscious of the consequences of eradicating them, deliberate and aggressive action was responsible for taking them to the brink. Over more than a century, humans hunted whales to the extent that several species, including the humpbacks, were nearly extinct. (Even though killing them has now been illegal for decades, there are still only a few thousand blue whales and some 30,000 humpback whales in the world.)
In the early stages of its development William Shatner was not yet officially on board for Star Trek IV because he was negotiating with Paramount. But he was being consulted and kept informed. He wasn't in favor of the time travel device, but he loved the whales. Several years before, Shatner had toured a one-man show in which he used recorded whale song juxtaposed with his live reading of D. H. Lawrence's "Whales Weep Not" (which as Captain Kirk he would eventually quote in Star Trek IV.)
Shatner did this show in conjunction with Greenpeace, the activist organization based in Canada. Its name symbolizes its two principal activities: the "green" denotes its efforts on behalf of endangered species, particularly whales; the "peace" signaled the activism with which it started, opposing nuclear bomb testing, which also is an environmental issue.
The organization's first campaign was to stop an underground nuclear test on Amchitka island in Alaska in 1971. One test had been accomplished, even though it took some skullduggery by President Richard Nixon to keep the U.S. Supreme Court from preventing it. Greenpeace chartered a boat and headed for the site of the second test in its heavily publicized attempt to stop it. Though the boat was intercepted and prevented from returning, protests had erupted across Canada, and the U.S. postponed and eventually canceled this test.
With that one act, Greenpeace may have done more for the environment than it knew. The first Amchitka blast not only killed thousands of animals and birds, it ruptured the earth's crust, sending radioactive elements into the fresh water supply for Aleuts living nearby. Cancers there increased markedly, and even in 1996, radioactive tritium and cesium-137 were still leaking into the Bering Sea. A second bomb explosion in the same area might have been led to even greater catastrophe.
Greenpeace became so active in disrupting French nuclear tests that their boat was rammed, then boarded and the people aboard beaten, and finally a team of French operatives actually blew up their boat, killing a photographer. But the French tests eventually stopped.
In the early 70s, Greenpeace inaugurated the very visible "Save the Whales" campaign. Then they decided to put activism where their images were. In 1974 a Greenpeace boat confronted Soviet whalers off the California coast for the first time. On Zodiac inflatables, volunteers placed themselves between the whaling ship's harpoons and the target whales.
It was this act, repeated throughout the 1970s and into the 80s (targeting Icelandic and other whaling fleets as well) that Leonard Nimoy says was the specific inspiration for one of Star Trek IV's best remembered scenes: the whaling trawler's harpoon bouncing off the Klingon Bird of Prey, hovering above to protect the whales. It was also this activism that inspired William Shatner to engage his skills and celebrity for the Greenpeace efforts to save the whales.
Now Nimoy and Bennett knew that their story would involve going back in time to retrieve humpback whales. But why? How would the whales be crucial to the future, at least in a metaphorical, science fiction way---that is, how would their absence create jeopardy?
The whale songs suggested that communication could be the key. Nimoy discussed extraterrestrial communication with scientists including physicist Philip Morrison and Frank Drake (whose Drake equation, suggesting the probability of intelligent life on other planets, was used in garbled form by Gene Roddenberry as evidence that the original Star Trek series wouldn't run out of new life and new civilizations to explore.) Morrison told him that space aliens would probably be so different that they couldn't physically speak our languages, and their modes of thought might be so different that there would be no common basis for communication.
Taken literally, that insight would end the Star Trek universe instantly. But the idea of radically different forms of communication suggested the possibility that extraterrestrials might find it easier to communicate with species on earth other than humans. Like whales, who had populated the oceans and presumably were singing their songs long before humanity existed, let alone learned to talk.
Then another element suddenly became central to Star Trek IV: Eddie Murphy, then Paramount's biggest box office star. He was a Star Trek fan and wanted to be in this movie. Using the basic elements of time travel and the whales, a script was written with Murphy as an oddball professor who helps bring Kirk's crew and the whales together, and winds up returning to the 23rd century with them, where he gets to don a Star Trek uniform. But Nimoy wasn't happy with the script, Murphy was interested in other projects, and Paramount may have thought twice about the idea as well. However it didn't happen, Eddie Murphy was gone from Star Trek IV, along with a lot of precious time.
Now the project was falling behind schedule. Nicholas Meyer, director of Star Trek II who had written the script for that film based on successful ideas in earlier rejects, and done it in record time, was asked to ride to the rescue as a writer. He agreed. Harve Bennett (who had written the script for III) would write the beginning and the end (the first and fourth acts), and Meyer would write the middle two acts, which took place in San Francisco. Nimoy also contributed dialogue.
Now the process of making the story real began: casting new roles, scouting and deciding on locations, designing and building sets, and designing and building...whales. Some existing footage shot by scientific expeditions of the normally camera-shy humpback whales was used, but all the rest of the whale footage was done with miniature models and larger replicas of the parts of the whale needed for shots in scenes with human actors. The models had to move naturally and a nearly life-sized piece of the whale had to mimic the motion of a whale's tail breaking the surface.
Industrial Light and Magic was assigned the task of creating the moving models, but got some unexpected assistance from...a humpback whale. The two whales in the story had wandered into San Francisco Bay and were being kept at the fictional Cetacean Institute in Sausalito. But as ILM began their task, a real humpback whale did wander into San Francisco Bay. He stayed around long enough for a camera crew to get some film footage. It wasn't good enough to include in the movie, but the ILM team was grateful nonetheless. There was so little reference footage of these whales in action that they studied it and found it useful for designing their models.
The miniatures and larger models, together with how they moved, and were painted, lit and filmed, were so convincing that after the movie came out, some environmentalists called Paramount to protest that the filmmakers must have harassed the whales to get that close. It was the rare situation of filmmakers ecstatic about getting complaints.
He'd done a lot of work already before filming started, but when it did, Leonard Nimoy knew he'd been successful so far: he had something. Paramount executive Ned Tanen met with him after reading the shooting script. "This script is wonderful," he told Nimoy. "It's so wonderful, even if this wasn't Star Trek, we would make this picture."
"I said 'thank you very much,' I tucked it under my arm," Nimoy recalled, "and went off to work to shoot it...Shooting it was a joy."
The whale songs suggested that communication could be the key. Nimoy discussed extraterrestrial communication with scientists including physicist Philip Morrison and Frank Drake (whose Drake equation, suggesting the probability of intelligent life on other planets, was used in garbled form by Gene Roddenberry as evidence that the original Star Trek series wouldn't run out of new life and new civilizations to explore.) Morrison told him that space aliens would probably be so different that they couldn't physically speak our languages, and their modes of thought might be so different that there would be no common basis for communication.
Taken literally, that insight would end the Star Trek universe instantly. But the idea of radically different forms of communication suggested the possibility that extraterrestrials might find it easier to communicate with species on earth other than humans. Like whales, who had populated the oceans and presumably were singing their songs long before humanity existed, let alone learned to talk.
Then another element suddenly became central to Star Trek IV: Eddie Murphy, then Paramount's biggest box office star. He was a Star Trek fan and wanted to be in this movie. Using the basic elements of time travel and the whales, a script was written with Murphy as an oddball professor who helps bring Kirk's crew and the whales together, and winds up returning to the 23rd century with them, where he gets to don a Star Trek uniform. But Nimoy wasn't happy with the script, Murphy was interested in other projects, and Paramount may have thought twice about the idea as well. However it didn't happen, Eddie Murphy was gone from Star Trek IV, along with a lot of precious time.
Now the project was falling behind schedule. Nicholas Meyer, director of Star Trek II who had written the script for that film based on successful ideas in earlier rejects, and done it in record time, was asked to ride to the rescue as a writer. He agreed. Harve Bennett (who had written the script for III) would write the beginning and the end (the first and fourth acts), and Meyer would write the middle two acts, which took place in San Francisco. Nimoy also contributed dialogue.
Now the process of making the story real began: casting new roles, scouting and deciding on locations, designing and building sets, and designing and building...whales. Some existing footage shot by scientific expeditions of the normally camera-shy humpback whales was used, but all the rest of the whale footage was done with miniature models and larger replicas of the parts of the whale needed for shots in scenes with human actors. The models had to move naturally and a nearly life-sized piece of the whale had to mimic the motion of a whale's tail breaking the surface.
Industrial Light and Magic was assigned the task of creating the moving models, but got some unexpected assistance from...a humpback whale. The two whales in the story had wandered into San Francisco Bay and were being kept at the fictional Cetacean Institute in Sausalito. But as ILM began their task, a real humpback whale did wander into San Francisco Bay. He stayed around long enough for a camera crew to get some film footage. It wasn't good enough to include in the movie, but the ILM team was grateful nonetheless. There was so little reference footage of these whales in action that they studied it and found it useful for designing their models.
The miniatures and larger models, together with how they moved, and were painted, lit and filmed, were so convincing that after the movie came out, some environmentalists called Paramount to protest that the filmmakers must have harassed the whales to get that close. It was the rare situation of filmmakers ecstatic about getting complaints.
He'd done a lot of work already before filming started, but when it did, Leonard Nimoy knew he'd been successful so far: he had something. Paramount executive Ned Tanen met with him after reading the shooting script. "This script is wonderful," he told Nimoy. "It's so wonderful, even if this wasn't Star Trek, we would make this picture."
"I said 'thank you very much,' I tucked it under my arm," Nimoy recalled, "and went off to work to shoot it...Shooting it was a joy."
The theme of this movie, Nimoy said, is communication. Various problems and barriers to communication are in every early scene. We see the Klingon ambassador making his case for Kirk's villainy before the Federation President and Council, reciting the basic facts---which constitute much of what occurred in Star Trek III--- with just enough distortion and skewed interpretation to change their meaning completely. It's an object lesson in point of view and ideological warp that's just as relevant in the Red States/Blue States USA of today as it was in the Cold War 80s.
On Vulcan, while Scotty and crew struggle to translate Klingon symbols and adapt the foreign language of an alien spacecraft's operation, the reborn Spock is testing his memory, which is as sharp as ever. It's his communication skills that are lagging. He can answer complex mathematical questions but not "How are you?" His mother suggests his human emotions aren't communicating with his Vulcan mind, but they will need to if he is to communicate with his human shipmates. In essence, she sends Spock on the journey he will take in this film: assimilating his humanity.
Though Leonard Nimoy says he had trouble acting and directing in the same movie and feels his Spock characterization suffers as a consequence, his performance perfectly serves a character arc. This Spock is emotionally innocent, free of the internal conflicts of his alienating personal history that he fought to control, suppress and eventually transmute before his "death." Now he is a reborn innocent, and Nimoy plays his personal journey with eloquent economy.
After the Enterpriseless crew heads back to earth in the captured Klingon Bird of Prey to stand trial for disobeying orders so they could save the Federation---an extreme difference in interpretation if not utter miscommunication---they confront the key problem in communication that will drive the subsequent action. The earth is about to be destroyed by a very powerful probe, that looks a little like the one that threatened earth in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (by the shape and color, like V'ger indeed), and also kind of like a whale (yes, very like a whale).
By listening to the sounds it emits, Spock is somehow able to ascertain that this probe represents an unknown form of energy of great power and intelligence that is attempting communicate. Though not hostile, it is somehow unaware of the havoc it is causing on the planet below. How does he know this? Simple logic. Or from reading the script. Spock knows these things, and his analysis often includes the word "unknown," which is one of those signals that this is Star Trek.
"Oh, really?" McCoy the skeptic says. "You think this is its way of saying 'hi, there' to the people of the earth?"
"There are other intelligent forms of life on earth, doctor," Spock replies with Vulcan acidity. "Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man."
Before Star Trek II, DeForest Kelley had to explain to Harve Bennett exactly how the Kirk-Spock-McCoy relationships work, and how central they are to Star Trek storytelling. By this time Bennett had learned the lesson well. At this point in the story, McCoy and Spock have already had a memorable and elegantly written exchange on the subject of death. McCoy expressed disbelief when Spock declined to discuss his experience of dying because McCoy hadn't died himself so they had no common frame of reference, but saw that he was serious. Their conversation was interrupted by messages Spock was monitoring. "Forgive me, Doctor, I'm receiving a number of distress calls," Spock said. "I don't doubt it," McCoy replied.
McCoy has been openly skeptical of Spock's fitness so soon after his ordeal. But what came off as scowling and rasping alarmism in the first film as in some TV episodes, is played here perfectly as waspish, sardonic critique. Earlier, Kelley delivered a line that harkened back to the old Saturday morning space operas while still being perfectly McCoy. Referring to Spock, McCoy stage-whispered to Kirk, "I don't know if you've got the whole picture or not but he's not exactly working on all thrusters."
But Spock has now quickly gotten to the heart of the dilemma. The humans below cannot respond to the message because they can't understand it, and they can't understand it because it's not meant for them. Spock notes that the alien transmission is aimed at the oceans. In one of those quasi-scientific sleights of hand that Star Trek at its best can do so well, Uhura fiddles with some dials and reproduces the alien's song as it would sound underwater. It sounds very like a whale.
But it's the 23rd century, and because of human unconsciousness---or stupidity allied with cupidity---in the 20th century, there are no humpback whales to answer. Since 20th or 21st century humans didn't manage to translate the whale's song, or didn't try to, before extinguishing it forever, they will have to find some actual whales, where and when they are. McCoy's delayed reaction when he realizes that Spock's suggested course of action implies time travel is another priceless comic moment. Lacking a better alternative, Kirk propels them forward, into the past.
On Vulcan, while Scotty and crew struggle to translate Klingon symbols and adapt the foreign language of an alien spacecraft's operation, the reborn Spock is testing his memory, which is as sharp as ever. It's his communication skills that are lagging. He can answer complex mathematical questions but not "How are you?" His mother suggests his human emotions aren't communicating with his Vulcan mind, but they will need to if he is to communicate with his human shipmates. In essence, she sends Spock on the journey he will take in this film: assimilating his humanity.
Though Leonard Nimoy says he had trouble acting and directing in the same movie and feels his Spock characterization suffers as a consequence, his performance perfectly serves a character arc. This Spock is emotionally innocent, free of the internal conflicts of his alienating personal history that he fought to control, suppress and eventually transmute before his "death." Now he is a reborn innocent, and Nimoy plays his personal journey with eloquent economy.
After the Enterpriseless crew heads back to earth in the captured Klingon Bird of Prey to stand trial for disobeying orders so they could save the Federation---an extreme difference in interpretation if not utter miscommunication---they confront the key problem in communication that will drive the subsequent action. The earth is about to be destroyed by a very powerful probe, that looks a little like the one that threatened earth in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (by the shape and color, like V'ger indeed), and also kind of like a whale (yes, very like a whale).
By listening to the sounds it emits, Spock is somehow able to ascertain that this probe represents an unknown form of energy of great power and intelligence that is attempting communicate. Though not hostile, it is somehow unaware of the havoc it is causing on the planet below. How does he know this? Simple logic. Or from reading the script. Spock knows these things, and his analysis often includes the word "unknown," which is one of those signals that this is Star Trek.
"Oh, really?" McCoy the skeptic says. "You think this is its way of saying 'hi, there' to the people of the earth?"
"There are other intelligent forms of life on earth, doctor," Spock replies with Vulcan acidity. "Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man."
Before Star Trek II, DeForest Kelley had to explain to Harve Bennett exactly how the Kirk-Spock-McCoy relationships work, and how central they are to Star Trek storytelling. By this time Bennett had learned the lesson well. At this point in the story, McCoy and Spock have already had a memorable and elegantly written exchange on the subject of death. McCoy expressed disbelief when Spock declined to discuss his experience of dying because McCoy hadn't died himself so they had no common frame of reference, but saw that he was serious. Their conversation was interrupted by messages Spock was monitoring. "Forgive me, Doctor, I'm receiving a number of distress calls," Spock said. "I don't doubt it," McCoy replied.
McCoy has been openly skeptical of Spock's fitness so soon after his ordeal. But what came off as scowling and rasping alarmism in the first film as in some TV episodes, is played here perfectly as waspish, sardonic critique. Earlier, Kelley delivered a line that harkened back to the old Saturday morning space operas while still being perfectly McCoy. Referring to Spock, McCoy stage-whispered to Kirk, "I don't know if you've got the whole picture or not but he's not exactly working on all thrusters."
But Spock has now quickly gotten to the heart of the dilemma. The humans below cannot respond to the message because they can't understand it, and they can't understand it because it's not meant for them. Spock notes that the alien transmission is aimed at the oceans. In one of those quasi-scientific sleights of hand that Star Trek at its best can do so well, Uhura fiddles with some dials and reproduces the alien's song as it would sound underwater. It sounds very like a whale.
But it's the 23rd century, and because of human unconsciousness---or stupidity allied with cupidity---in the 20th century, there are no humpback whales to answer. Since 20th or 21st century humans didn't manage to translate the whale's song, or didn't try to, before extinguishing it forever, they will have to find some actual whales, where and when they are. McCoy's delayed reaction when he realizes that Spock's suggested course of action implies time travel is another priceless comic moment. Lacking a better alternative, Kirk propels them forward, into the past.
Time travel was still a much bigger deal than it would become in the Next Generation era. Nimoy the director wanted to portray it, not as people moving through the externals of time (as was done, for example, in the original George Pal production of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and Nick Meyer's movie about H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper in late 1970s San Francisco, "Time After Time") but as an internal experience. On the DVD commentary he expresses disappointment with the result, while Shatner praises the creativity of the art department expressed in the sequence. They both might be right. The sequence has a nice eerie charm, and a certain amazement factor in this early suggestion of morphing, but it doesn't really signify much that seems specific to time travel.
When they come out of their trances, Kirk sees the earth: the question is when. "Judging from the pollution content of the atmosphere," Spock says, "I believe we have arrived at the latter half of the twentieth century." Harve Bennett has left the building, temporarily. Nick Meyer is in the house.
So far we have the makings of that grand but not grim adventure Nimoy wanted. On the DVD he describes it as following the Joseph Campbell monomyth pattern: the hero's journey common to many cultures. Their homeland is in peril (but only potentially; so far all we've seen are some lights going out, some bad weather and broken windows. Nothing like, say, people dying horribly of disease.) Our heroes have begun their journey into the unknown by going back in time, to save their earth "if we can," as Kirk says in his brief but stirring pep talk that launches them into the dangerous world of...1980s earth. He tells the crew they are in "terra incognita," a neat choice of words considering the circumstances.
The danger is signaled in Meyer's first laconic Spock line about pollution, and Kirk's warning in his pep talk that they are about to enter a "primitive, paranoid culture." Though Gene Roddenberry again had little to do with this film---Harve Bennett said he made some small changes based on Roddenberry's memos---this is consistent with his view of contemporary humanity, which he would soon make most explicit in the opening episode of Next Generation. But in this section of this film, the words and the point of view are Nick Meyer's, who ironically or not had some distasteful run-ins with Roddenberry during Star Trek II, which Meyer wrote and directed.
Of course, it was a point of view generally shared by the other principals on this film. Opportunity for another political comment came as the Enterpriseless crew ventured onto the streets of San Francisco. They gathered on a busy streetcorner, peering at the daily newspaper in its transparent box. Nimoy had to devise a headline that would be topical and yet perennial. He chose "Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled," which coincidentally referred to the other Greenpeace issue.
"It's a miracle these people ever got out of the twentieth century," Dr. McCoy observes.
We did, but as for getting out of the twenty-first century, that could be even tougher. Consider this: as I write this in 2005 (20 years later, and the Soviet Union long gone), nations of the world are about to send representatives to New York to discuss updates to the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty of 1970. Just days before its scheduled start, the participants cannot even agree on an agenda. An appropriate headline might very well be: Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled.
There is social and cultural comment as well. Kirk and Spock are discussing "colorful metaphors." Kirk says they appear in the literature of the day, such as "the collected works of Jacqueline Susann, the novels of Harold Robbins."
"Ah," Spock says, "the giants."
Take that, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's the literary equivalent of the future people in Woody Allen's "Sleepers" saying that they've discovered that smoking and eating fat is good for you.
By now, the high adventure with hints of humor ("Everybody remember where we parked") has become full-blown funny. At first it's situational: the "fish out of water" humor enabled by time travel. Star Trek made its mark with comment on current day issues displaced into the future. Now it was bringing the future home to create comment on today, and have some fun doing it.
When they come out of their trances, Kirk sees the earth: the question is when. "Judging from the pollution content of the atmosphere," Spock says, "I believe we have arrived at the latter half of the twentieth century." Harve Bennett has left the building, temporarily. Nick Meyer is in the house.
So far we have the makings of that grand but not grim adventure Nimoy wanted. On the DVD he describes it as following the Joseph Campbell monomyth pattern: the hero's journey common to many cultures. Their homeland is in peril (but only potentially; so far all we've seen are some lights going out, some bad weather and broken windows. Nothing like, say, people dying horribly of disease.) Our heroes have begun their journey into the unknown by going back in time, to save their earth "if we can," as Kirk says in his brief but stirring pep talk that launches them into the dangerous world of...1980s earth. He tells the crew they are in "terra incognita," a neat choice of words considering the circumstances.
The danger is signaled in Meyer's first laconic Spock line about pollution, and Kirk's warning in his pep talk that they are about to enter a "primitive, paranoid culture." Though Gene Roddenberry again had little to do with this film---Harve Bennett said he made some small changes based on Roddenberry's memos---this is consistent with his view of contemporary humanity, which he would soon make most explicit in the opening episode of Next Generation. But in this section of this film, the words and the point of view are Nick Meyer's, who ironically or not had some distasteful run-ins with Roddenberry during Star Trek II, which Meyer wrote and directed.
Of course, it was a point of view generally shared by the other principals on this film. Opportunity for another political comment came as the Enterpriseless crew ventured onto the streets of San Francisco. They gathered on a busy streetcorner, peering at the daily newspaper in its transparent box. Nimoy had to devise a headline that would be topical and yet perennial. He chose "Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled," which coincidentally referred to the other Greenpeace issue.
"It's a miracle these people ever got out of the twentieth century," Dr. McCoy observes.
We did, but as for getting out of the twenty-first century, that could be even tougher. Consider this: as I write this in 2005 (20 years later, and the Soviet Union long gone), nations of the world are about to send representatives to New York to discuss updates to the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty of 1970. Just days before its scheduled start, the participants cannot even agree on an agenda. An appropriate headline might very well be: Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled.
There is social and cultural comment as well. Kirk and Spock are discussing "colorful metaphors." Kirk says they appear in the literature of the day, such as "the collected works of Jacqueline Susann, the novels of Harold Robbins."
"Ah," Spock says, "the giants."
Take that, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's the literary equivalent of the future people in Woody Allen's "Sleepers" saying that they've discovered that smoking and eating fat is good for you.
By now, the high adventure with hints of humor ("Everybody remember where we parked") has become full-blown funny. At first it's situational: the "fish out of water" humor enabled by time travel. Star Trek made its mark with comment on current day issues displaced into the future. Now it was bringing the future home to create comment on today, and have some fun doing it.
There is the problem of money, leading to the first classic sight gag, Kirk and Spock getting on the bus, the bus door closing, a beat and a siren sounding, the bus door swishes open, Kirk and Spock get out, looking mildly shocked. "What does it mean," Spock says, who expects to not understand all human customs, "exact change?" But this is one Kirk can't fathom either. As he shrugs and pulls Spock along, the traffic gives them an "oooga" raspberries. This was an especially funny scene at the time, because the concept of buses, etc. demanding exact change was relatively new.
And of course, the problem of communication is inherent in their situation. Spock's problems with "colorful metaphors" suggests the gag of foreigners who mangle English, though this alien of space and time happens to speak perfect English, even if he's still a bit too literal. It's the natives who are mangling it.
Then there's Pavel Chekov, with the Cold War still in force, asking a police officer and random passersby where he can find "the nuclear wessels." (The scene is capped by a woman, responding to Chekov's question about the nuclear wessels in Alameda, who says, "Oh, I don't think I know the answer to that---I think it's across the bay, in Alameda." It's Walter Koenig's reaction that makes this work, but it's a funny line. Nimoy talks about this as a happy accident with an extra, but Nichelle Nichols tells a different story: of a crafty actress who spoke in several takes so she could get paid and in the union, which thanks to Nichelle's knowledge of SAG regulations, she did.)
Although the Star Trek stars had done some situational humor as well as humorous character byplay before, they had never done it so much or so well. Perhaps it was a product of being older, sure of themselves and relaxed as actors, especially with the relative luxury of time in a feature film, along with the script and Nimoy's direction. William Shatner was perhaps the key, and he may have found how to imbue the Kirk character with humor in his brief self-parody in "Airplane II," which he could then integrate in playing the "real" Kirk. In any event, he expressed how it worked for the Star Trek cast so well that it's worth quoting at length:
"We discovered something in Star Trek IV that we hadn't pinpointed in any of the other movies," Shatner said (as quoted in 'Great Birds of the Galaxy') "and it just shows how the obvious escapes you. There is a texture to the best Star Trek that verges on tongue-in-cheek, but isn't. There's a line that we all have to walk that is reality. It's as though the characters within the play have a great deal of joy about themselves, a joy of living. That energy, that 'joie de vivre' about the characters seems to be tongue-in-cheek but isn't, because you play it with the reality you would in a kitchen-sink drama written for today's life."
Precisely this approach would become central to this and the remaining two Star Trek films with this cast, and even in Shatner's performance in "Generations." In this film they discover that comedy works when it is a believable part of the relationships and even strengthens the bonds of affection we've come to expect, and that it doesn't interfere with the basic mission or situation of jeopardy. In other words, the characters can say funny things, they can mock the 20th century and even apply some irony to their own time, but they still have to get the whales, bring them back to the 23rd century, and save the earth from the alien probe's probing.
On the side of one of those buses, Kirk had seen a panel advertisement for the Cetacean Institute and their two humpback whales, George and Gracie. The crew splits into pairs to perform tasks crucial to their mission, in what Nicholas Meyer called a scavenger hunt. Oddly enough (since this is not a job skill that has been called upon since), Meyer had already explored some comedic "fish out of water" experiences of a time traveler in contemporary San Francisco in the classic"Time After Time"(1979) so he was able to use a few leftover ideas, especially one he'd tried to film but couldn't get quite right---a version of the punk with the boom box scene, which had been inspired by a personal experience.
Of course, many people had similar experiences in the boombox heyday (now, even in the Ipod era, we deal with entire cars that function as boom-boxes), and one of them was Leonard Nimoy, who once found himself wishing he actually could perform the Vulcan neck pinch. Meyer and Nimoy both claim credit for the classic scene in this film (though a key idea and the song that's blaring were contributed by Kirk Thatcher, an associate producer who has since written and directed but is still known for this scene) but it's Nimoy the actor who got the satisfaction of silencing the racket.
However, it's worth mentioning that punk music of the 1980s was a purposely abrasive response to the same critique of contemporary society as Star Trek makes in this film. Kirk Thatcher's lyric (which, he says, attempts to strip the already stripped-down punk ethos to its basics) suggests that things are so bad that it's time to push the nuclear button: "we'd be better off dead." The message to the older generations that screwed up the planet is simply: "I hate you. I berate you."
And of course, the problem of communication is inherent in their situation. Spock's problems with "colorful metaphors" suggests the gag of foreigners who mangle English, though this alien of space and time happens to speak perfect English, even if he's still a bit too literal. It's the natives who are mangling it.
Then there's Pavel Chekov, with the Cold War still in force, asking a police officer and random passersby where he can find "the nuclear wessels." (The scene is capped by a woman, responding to Chekov's question about the nuclear wessels in Alameda, who says, "Oh, I don't think I know the answer to that---I think it's across the bay, in Alameda." It's Walter Koenig's reaction that makes this work, but it's a funny line. Nimoy talks about this as a happy accident with an extra, but Nichelle Nichols tells a different story: of a crafty actress who spoke in several takes so she could get paid and in the union, which thanks to Nichelle's knowledge of SAG regulations, she did.)
Although the Star Trek stars had done some situational humor as well as humorous character byplay before, they had never done it so much or so well. Perhaps it was a product of being older, sure of themselves and relaxed as actors, especially with the relative luxury of time in a feature film, along with the script and Nimoy's direction. William Shatner was perhaps the key, and he may have found how to imbue the Kirk character with humor in his brief self-parody in "Airplane II," which he could then integrate in playing the "real" Kirk. In any event, he expressed how it worked for the Star Trek cast so well that it's worth quoting at length:
"We discovered something in Star Trek IV that we hadn't pinpointed in any of the other movies," Shatner said (as quoted in 'Great Birds of the Galaxy') "and it just shows how the obvious escapes you. There is a texture to the best Star Trek that verges on tongue-in-cheek, but isn't. There's a line that we all have to walk that is reality. It's as though the characters within the play have a great deal of joy about themselves, a joy of living. That energy, that 'joie de vivre' about the characters seems to be tongue-in-cheek but isn't, because you play it with the reality you would in a kitchen-sink drama written for today's life."
Precisely this approach would become central to this and the remaining two Star Trek films with this cast, and even in Shatner's performance in "Generations." In this film they discover that comedy works when it is a believable part of the relationships and even strengthens the bonds of affection we've come to expect, and that it doesn't interfere with the basic mission or situation of jeopardy. In other words, the characters can say funny things, they can mock the 20th century and even apply some irony to their own time, but they still have to get the whales, bring them back to the 23rd century, and save the earth from the alien probe's probing.
On the side of one of those buses, Kirk had seen a panel advertisement for the Cetacean Institute and their two humpback whales, George and Gracie. The crew splits into pairs to perform tasks crucial to their mission, in what Nicholas Meyer called a scavenger hunt. Oddly enough (since this is not a job skill that has been called upon since), Meyer had already explored some comedic "fish out of water" experiences of a time traveler in contemporary San Francisco in the classic"Time After Time"(1979) so he was able to use a few leftover ideas, especially one he'd tried to film but couldn't get quite right---a version of the punk with the boom box scene, which had been inspired by a personal experience.
Of course, many people had similar experiences in the boombox heyday (now, even in the Ipod era, we deal with entire cars that function as boom-boxes), and one of them was Leonard Nimoy, who once found himself wishing he actually could perform the Vulcan neck pinch. Meyer and Nimoy both claim credit for the classic scene in this film (though a key idea and the song that's blaring were contributed by Kirk Thatcher, an associate producer who has since written and directed but is still known for this scene) but it's Nimoy the actor who got the satisfaction of silencing the racket.
However, it's worth mentioning that punk music of the 1980s was a purposely abrasive response to the same critique of contemporary society as Star Trek makes in this film. Kirk Thatcher's lyric (which, he says, attempts to strip the already stripped-down punk ethos to its basics) suggests that things are so bad that it's time to push the nuclear button: "we'd be better off dead." The message to the older generations that screwed up the planet is simply: "I hate you. I berate you."
Kirk and Spock visit the Cetacean Institute and join a tour. A question from a teenager on the tour is the only "Moby Dick" reference in this movie, though that novel was thematically important to the first film of this trilogy, and would be again later in the Star Trek series. But as characters in this story, the whales are real, their natural behavior being the point (though perhaps stretched a bit in extraterrestrial communication.) No, the teenager is told, whales don't attack and eat people. It is rather the other way around.
The tour sees a film of proud whalers slaughtering whales (the look on the faces of the elderly ladies in the front row of the tour says everything that needs to be said about this) and when they move to a window with an underwater view of the two whales, Kirk is aghast to see that Spock is in the water, attempting a mind-meld with one of the whales in full view of the tour. His semi-mugging facial expressions, and particularly his hand on his face in frozen takes, always remind me of George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove.
Spock continues his deadpan cluelessness, complete with misapplied colorful metaphors, but has done something crucial---he's communicated with the whales, and they with him. He acknowledges that the whales are not their property and can't ethically be taken against their will, but has explained their mission and the whales have consented to go with them. The whales have also "told" him that they are unhappy with how humans have treated them, a sadly funny line because it is so obvious, and so desperately sad that we know we would react differently if we actually heard whales say this, when we should be able to figure it out for ourselves.
When the tour group hears the names of the whales---George and Gracie---they laugh, so presumably in the late 1980s they still know this classic comedy pairing of George Burns and Gracie Allen, who were among TV's first stars in the 1950s. (Coincidentally or not, Leonard Nimoy has said that for the Spock-McCoy verbal confrontations in the series, he patterned his performance after George Burns responding to Gracie Allen.)
This second mention of George and Gracie ushers in a series of comedy pairings: Kirk and Spock do an Abbott and Costello-type "Who's on first?" routine to the tune of "Do You Guys Like Italian?" (No, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, I love Italian, and so do you. Yes.)
Scotty and McCoy do a Laurel and Hardy turn, with the help of a straight man and a quaint computer that lacks voice recognition. Off to collect some fresh photons from the nuclear wessel they found ("And kepten, it is the Enterprise"), Uhura and Chekov do a kind of Martin and Lewis, with Uhura the romantic straight man (and singer), and Walter Koenig getting to do physical comedy, as well as some verbal miscommunication with a no-nonsense naval officer. This is his best scene in the movies and he makes the most of it. (He caps it with his post-operative answer to Kirk's name and rank request, with a seraphic "Admiral.")
There is even a romantic comedy pairing, a Tracy and Hepburn moment between Kirk and the young cetacean biologist, Gillian Taylor, played by Catherine Hicks.
Guest actors in Trek movies have had two basic functions: either they are the bad guys, or more rarely, they are like Gillian: characters that start out skeptically and end up collaborating with our heroes, all the while providing a sympathetic outsider point of view. The most conspicuous other example would be Alfre Woodard's character in First Contact, named Lily. Gillian and Lily are also the designated representatives of the audience, especially that portion not comprised of Star Trek fans. She is their point of reference, the person they can identify with: Alice in Wonderland. It probably isn't too much of a coincidence that Star Trek IV and First Contact were the two most popular Trek features.
Catherine Hicks played Bill Murray's initial love interest who becomes something of a villain in the vastly underrated "Razor's Edge" a few years before this movie. A few years later she was doing steamy love scenes in "Laguna Heat" and she had portrayed Marilyn Monroe in a TV biography. In this film, though she's given fairly clunky dialogue, Gillian is intelligent, professional, a little awkward, conflicted and vulnerable; she's pretty, with a healthy glow and energy, and a sense of humor and fun.
Her emotional idealism (she embodies biophilia) and only partially successful urban cynicism give her character enough colors to keep Kirk a little off balance, which keeps Shatner on his game. Their scene in the pizza restaurant is important to moving the story, but it's also a romantic comedy scene: her probing skepticism, flirtatious curiosity and hope, with flashes of her growing despair over the fate of the whales, run up against Shatner's Kirk, playing a charming game of poker, while also charming the lady. Meanwhile Shatner is layering quiet, believable bits of business---like reacting to the taste of beer---and sometimes taking the quieter reactive role in their bantering: "No, I'm from Iowa," he says patiently, adding softly, "I only work in outer space."
Shatner worked with Spencer Tracy once (and insulted him by trying to compliment him as a movie actor who was just as good as theatre actors) in a drama ("Judgment at Nuremberg.") But his performance in this scene is more like Tracy in those classic comedies, where he has to deal with the mercurial out-there energies of Katherine Hepburn.
All the comedy adds to the high-spirited adventure, but it all contributes to the step-by-step story: attempts to solve a problem, the solution, which leads to a new problem, etc. Kirk and Spock have located the whales, but they also learn that George and Gracie are going to be released and put into jeopardy from whalers---they just don't know when. Scotty and McCoy have found a manufacturer capable of making the transparent aluminum they need for the whale tank in the Bird of Prey; after they've transformed a stunned plant supervisor into a genius inventor (adding more smoke and mirrors to obscure time travel paradoxes, and of course weathering more communications problems), they have to get it transported. That's Sulu's job, so he commandeers a Huey helicopter, which he has to figure out how to fly (his comic solo). (Meanwhile Special Effects had to figure out how to portray it, and wound up filming a remote control toy helicopter from Japan against the San Francisco skyline on Alcatraz Island, a solution that would have worked fifty years before.)
Uhura and Chekov succeed in capturing the nuclear particles needed to restart the Klingon warp drive from the aircraft carrier nuclear engines, but Chekov is captured and seriously injured in his attempt to escape.
Meanwhile, Gillian has learned the whales were secretly sent to Alaska and released, and decides to let go of her skepticism and alert Kirk. She literally runs into the cloaked Bird of Prey in Golden Gate Park (which is actually Will Rogers Park in Los Angeles, where Rogers, famous as a lariat-twirling man of the people, played polo.) After she feels around the invisible ship, standard mime training paying off for once, Kirk beams her aboard, her first transporter experience. Nimoy shows her rematerializing in a long shot, with her girlish figure framed by the transporter pad walls as if she were about to step out of a book. Which she is, as Kirk notes: "Hello, Alice. Welcome to Wonderland." Now Alice is in the adventure.
The tour sees a film of proud whalers slaughtering whales (the look on the faces of the elderly ladies in the front row of the tour says everything that needs to be said about this) and when they move to a window with an underwater view of the two whales, Kirk is aghast to see that Spock is in the water, attempting a mind-meld with one of the whales in full view of the tour. His semi-mugging facial expressions, and particularly his hand on his face in frozen takes, always remind me of George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove.
Spock continues his deadpan cluelessness, complete with misapplied colorful metaphors, but has done something crucial---he's communicated with the whales, and they with him. He acknowledges that the whales are not their property and can't ethically be taken against their will, but has explained their mission and the whales have consented to go with them. The whales have also "told" him that they are unhappy with how humans have treated them, a sadly funny line because it is so obvious, and so desperately sad that we know we would react differently if we actually heard whales say this, when we should be able to figure it out for ourselves.
When the tour group hears the names of the whales---George and Gracie---they laugh, so presumably in the late 1980s they still know this classic comedy pairing of George Burns and Gracie Allen, who were among TV's first stars in the 1950s. (Coincidentally or not, Leonard Nimoy has said that for the Spock-McCoy verbal confrontations in the series, he patterned his performance after George Burns responding to Gracie Allen.)
This second mention of George and Gracie ushers in a series of comedy pairings: Kirk and Spock do an Abbott and Costello-type "Who's on first?" routine to the tune of "Do You Guys Like Italian?" (No, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, I love Italian, and so do you. Yes.)
Scotty and McCoy do a Laurel and Hardy turn, with the help of a straight man and a quaint computer that lacks voice recognition. Off to collect some fresh photons from the nuclear wessel they found ("And kepten, it is the Enterprise"), Uhura and Chekov do a kind of Martin and Lewis, with Uhura the romantic straight man (and singer), and Walter Koenig getting to do physical comedy, as well as some verbal miscommunication with a no-nonsense naval officer. This is his best scene in the movies and he makes the most of it. (He caps it with his post-operative answer to Kirk's name and rank request, with a seraphic "Admiral.")
There is even a romantic comedy pairing, a Tracy and Hepburn moment between Kirk and the young cetacean biologist, Gillian Taylor, played by Catherine Hicks.
Guest actors in Trek movies have had two basic functions: either they are the bad guys, or more rarely, they are like Gillian: characters that start out skeptically and end up collaborating with our heroes, all the while providing a sympathetic outsider point of view. The most conspicuous other example would be Alfre Woodard's character in First Contact, named Lily. Gillian and Lily are also the designated representatives of the audience, especially that portion not comprised of Star Trek fans. She is their point of reference, the person they can identify with: Alice in Wonderland. It probably isn't too much of a coincidence that Star Trek IV and First Contact were the two most popular Trek features.
Catherine Hicks played Bill Murray's initial love interest who becomes something of a villain in the vastly underrated "Razor's Edge" a few years before this movie. A few years later she was doing steamy love scenes in "Laguna Heat" and she had portrayed Marilyn Monroe in a TV biography. In this film, though she's given fairly clunky dialogue, Gillian is intelligent, professional, a little awkward, conflicted and vulnerable; she's pretty, with a healthy glow and energy, and a sense of humor and fun.
Her emotional idealism (she embodies biophilia) and only partially successful urban cynicism give her character enough colors to keep Kirk a little off balance, which keeps Shatner on his game. Their scene in the pizza restaurant is important to moving the story, but it's also a romantic comedy scene: her probing skepticism, flirtatious curiosity and hope, with flashes of her growing despair over the fate of the whales, run up against Shatner's Kirk, playing a charming game of poker, while also charming the lady. Meanwhile Shatner is layering quiet, believable bits of business---like reacting to the taste of beer---and sometimes taking the quieter reactive role in their bantering: "No, I'm from Iowa," he says patiently, adding softly, "I only work in outer space."
Shatner worked with Spencer Tracy once (and insulted him by trying to compliment him as a movie actor who was just as good as theatre actors) in a drama ("Judgment at Nuremberg.") But his performance in this scene is more like Tracy in those classic comedies, where he has to deal with the mercurial out-there energies of Katherine Hepburn.
All the comedy adds to the high-spirited adventure, but it all contributes to the step-by-step story: attempts to solve a problem, the solution, which leads to a new problem, etc. Kirk and Spock have located the whales, but they also learn that George and Gracie are going to be released and put into jeopardy from whalers---they just don't know when. Scotty and McCoy have found a manufacturer capable of making the transparent aluminum they need for the whale tank in the Bird of Prey; after they've transformed a stunned plant supervisor into a genius inventor (adding more smoke and mirrors to obscure time travel paradoxes, and of course weathering more communications problems), they have to get it transported. That's Sulu's job, so he commandeers a Huey helicopter, which he has to figure out how to fly (his comic solo). (Meanwhile Special Effects had to figure out how to portray it, and wound up filming a remote control toy helicopter from Japan against the San Francisco skyline on Alcatraz Island, a solution that would have worked fifty years before.)
Uhura and Chekov succeed in capturing the nuclear particles needed to restart the Klingon warp drive from the aircraft carrier nuclear engines, but Chekov is captured and seriously injured in his attempt to escape.
Meanwhile, Gillian has learned the whales were secretly sent to Alaska and released, and decides to let go of her skepticism and alert Kirk. She literally runs into the cloaked Bird of Prey in Golden Gate Park (which is actually Will Rogers Park in Los Angeles, where Rogers, famous as a lariat-twirling man of the people, played polo.) After she feels around the invisible ship, standard mime training paying off for once, Kirk beams her aboard, her first transporter experience. Nimoy shows her rematerializing in a long shot, with her girlish figure framed by the transporter pad walls as if she were about to step out of a book. Which she is, as Kirk notes: "Hello, Alice. Welcome to Wonderland." Now Alice is in the adventure.
The crew now learns that Chekov is injured and has been taken to a hospital for surgery, not expected to live. At this point there is a payoff to the paradox that has been spread out between two distant points during this film. Spock has twice noted that humans are not logical, first to his mother before he left Vulcan, who reminds him that his "flawed human friends" risked their lives and careers to rescue him, in spite of the axiom that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. The second time he addresses Gillian, just after she showed the whaling video to the tour group. "To hunt a species to extinction is not logical," Spock observes. "Whoever said the human race is logical," Gillian says.
This is the human paradox. Not being "logical" means noble sacrifice, but also destructive lack of forethought. The solution to the paradox is consciousness. You make the choice. Spock counsels that they must rescue Chekov. Is that logical? Kirk asks. No, Spock says, but it is the human thing to do.
But in this movie the actual rescue turns into a Marx Brothers scene in the hospital, with McCoy (playing Groucho this time) in his element again, aghast at what we flatter ourselves is Modern Medicine ("it's the goddamn Spanish inquisition"). He also has a nice face-off with an equally irascible 1980s surgeon, each of them convinced the other is a quack. A certain professional arrogance seems timeless. One of the best-remembered bit-part lines in this film was a last minute addition not in the script. The escaping heroes pass the elderly woman to whom McCoy has given a pill in lieu of dialysis. "Doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney!" she shouts exultantly, over and over. Talk about fast relief.
They all return to the Bird of Prey, and Kirk says goodbye to Gillian. In Nick Meyer's script, it really is goodbye: Gillian decides to stay, in order to work towards preventing the whales' extinction. It does make the point more strongly about, as Meyer said, "...the importance of people in the present taking responsibility for the ecology, and preventing problems of the future by doing something about them today..."
But the filmmakers chose the Eddie Murphy script path, as Gillian jumps into Kirk's arms (somehow figuring out that two could be transported safely as one, which probably would have given Geordi LaForge a fit) and goes along. Her reasoning is defensible: that the 23rd century would now need a biologist who knows something about whales. However, her sudden unexplained absence from the 1980s is fodder for a Trek novel (Do her coworkers reasonably assume she committed suicide in her despair over the whales? She becomes a environmental martyr, Greenpeace names their boat the Gillian Taylor and...what happened to those two whales anyway?) As for what it does to the timeline...let's not go there.
Kirk returns to the bridge, and in an exchange that happens so fast it’s easy to miss, we hear Spock for the first time swear appropriately. “Spock, where the hell’s that power you promised me?” Kirk demands. “One damn minute, Admiral,” Spock replies. Shatner does a brief take, as Scotty’s voice is heard, anxious to “go get George and Gracie.”
Now our intrepid crew must get to the whales before the whalers do. The Oscar-nominated score by Leonard Rosenman (the second for Trek, after Jerry Goldsmith's for Trek I) is particularly effective in several scenes, and the whale trawler sequence is one of them. The harpoon clunking off the side of the Klingon Bird of Prey menacing above the whaler is the ecologist's equivalent of Spock neck-pinching the boom box punk. It's satisfying wish fulfillment. Both scenes merit cheers, though this one is particularly deserving.
George and Gracie are saved, then beamed aboard, prompting one of James Doohan's most luminous movie moments: "Admiral!" Scotty cries, his voice echoing with the centuries. "There be whales here!"
It's worth pointing out, as the action accelerates, that not only is the storytelling tight in a way that it seems more recent movies often can't manage, but the pace is more measured, with slower moments preparing for the fast-paced action. This is also part of effective storytelling.
So here, between the big action moments of playing Greenpeace with a Bird of Prey to rescue the whales and beam them aboard, and before the attempt at reverse time travel, there are several slower scenes that develop character story and theme, as well as building towards the action payoff.
We see two moments of the other half of the McCoy-Spock relationship, the affection and admiration. McCoy senses that Spock is vulnerable and uncertain as the crew and the future depend on his calculations and other efforts to get them back to the correct moment in their 23rd century. He tells Spock that it's all right to "take his best shot" even if he isn't completely certain. Spock replies that guessing isn’t in his nature. “Nobody’s perfect,” McCoy replies, with a twinkle, and why not? He’s saying that the Vulcan isn’t perfect because he can’t guess---that is, he can’t accept the imperfection of uncertainty. Being imperfect is essential to being human, and the ability to guess is a strength, not a weakness.
Spock accepts this, and when Kirk asks him about certain variables (which actually he should know, but that's not the point) he admits that he is guessing. Even if we don't know that Spock's arch dismissal of guessing was a running gag in the series, Kirk's reaction of apparent pleasure works well---it is a moment of warmth. This Spock, however, is still more innocent than prickly. He thinks Kirk didn't understand. Once again, McCoy gives him reassurance rather than criticism: Kirk trusts his guesses more than he would trust other people's facts. Spock's head comes up, his chin off the floor now. Is this a compliment? McCoy affirms that it is. Now Spock is filled with the confidence of his captain, which gives him confidence without arrogance. He says with great dignity and humility, "Then I will try to make the best guess I can." What a lovely moment.
Then Kirk and Gillian have a moment watching the whales in their tank. Kirk recalls the D.H. Lawrence lines, which work quite well here, and he muses naturally on what amounts to the film's message: "It's ironic---when man was killing these creatures, he was destroying his own future."
Immediately an exchange between Kirk and Scotty in Gillian's presence alerts us to the jeopardy that still remains---the chances of getting back are slim. "A miracle?" Scotty says. "That's yet to come."
It's good storytelling and it's a provocative idea, for ordinary risk assessment would suggest that none of this should have been attempted if the chances of the last step, getting back, were so grim. But at this point everyone is happy, because they have done what they set out to do, and they are together. They will accept whatever comes next.
This is the human paradox. Not being "logical" means noble sacrifice, but also destructive lack of forethought. The solution to the paradox is consciousness. You make the choice. Spock counsels that they must rescue Chekov. Is that logical? Kirk asks. No, Spock says, but it is the human thing to do.
But in this movie the actual rescue turns into a Marx Brothers scene in the hospital, with McCoy (playing Groucho this time) in his element again, aghast at what we flatter ourselves is Modern Medicine ("it's the goddamn Spanish inquisition"). He also has a nice face-off with an equally irascible 1980s surgeon, each of them convinced the other is a quack. A certain professional arrogance seems timeless. One of the best-remembered bit-part lines in this film was a last minute addition not in the script. The escaping heroes pass the elderly woman to whom McCoy has given a pill in lieu of dialysis. "Doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney!" she shouts exultantly, over and over. Talk about fast relief.
They all return to the Bird of Prey, and Kirk says goodbye to Gillian. In Nick Meyer's script, it really is goodbye: Gillian decides to stay, in order to work towards preventing the whales' extinction. It does make the point more strongly about, as Meyer said, "...the importance of people in the present taking responsibility for the ecology, and preventing problems of the future by doing something about them today..."
But the filmmakers chose the Eddie Murphy script path, as Gillian jumps into Kirk's arms (somehow figuring out that two could be transported safely as one, which probably would have given Geordi LaForge a fit) and goes along. Her reasoning is defensible: that the 23rd century would now need a biologist who knows something about whales. However, her sudden unexplained absence from the 1980s is fodder for a Trek novel (Do her coworkers reasonably assume she committed suicide in her despair over the whales? She becomes a environmental martyr, Greenpeace names their boat the Gillian Taylor and...what happened to those two whales anyway?) As for what it does to the timeline...let's not go there.
Kirk returns to the bridge, and in an exchange that happens so fast it’s easy to miss, we hear Spock for the first time swear appropriately. “Spock, where the hell’s that power you promised me?” Kirk demands. “One damn minute, Admiral,” Spock replies. Shatner does a brief take, as Scotty’s voice is heard, anxious to “go get George and Gracie.”
Now our intrepid crew must get to the whales before the whalers do. The Oscar-nominated score by Leonard Rosenman (the second for Trek, after Jerry Goldsmith's for Trek I) is particularly effective in several scenes, and the whale trawler sequence is one of them. The harpoon clunking off the side of the Klingon Bird of Prey menacing above the whaler is the ecologist's equivalent of Spock neck-pinching the boom box punk. It's satisfying wish fulfillment. Both scenes merit cheers, though this one is particularly deserving.
George and Gracie are saved, then beamed aboard, prompting one of James Doohan's most luminous movie moments: "Admiral!" Scotty cries, his voice echoing with the centuries. "There be whales here!"
It's worth pointing out, as the action accelerates, that not only is the storytelling tight in a way that it seems more recent movies often can't manage, but the pace is more measured, with slower moments preparing for the fast-paced action. This is also part of effective storytelling.
So here, between the big action moments of playing Greenpeace with a Bird of Prey to rescue the whales and beam them aboard, and before the attempt at reverse time travel, there are several slower scenes that develop character story and theme, as well as building towards the action payoff.
We see two moments of the other half of the McCoy-Spock relationship, the affection and admiration. McCoy senses that Spock is vulnerable and uncertain as the crew and the future depend on his calculations and other efforts to get them back to the correct moment in their 23rd century. He tells Spock that it's all right to "take his best shot" even if he isn't completely certain. Spock replies that guessing isn’t in his nature. “Nobody’s perfect,” McCoy replies, with a twinkle, and why not? He’s saying that the Vulcan isn’t perfect because he can’t guess---that is, he can’t accept the imperfection of uncertainty. Being imperfect is essential to being human, and the ability to guess is a strength, not a weakness.
Spock accepts this, and when Kirk asks him about certain variables (which actually he should know, but that's not the point) he admits that he is guessing. Even if we don't know that Spock's arch dismissal of guessing was a running gag in the series, Kirk's reaction of apparent pleasure works well---it is a moment of warmth. This Spock, however, is still more innocent than prickly. He thinks Kirk didn't understand. Once again, McCoy gives him reassurance rather than criticism: Kirk trusts his guesses more than he would trust other people's facts. Spock's head comes up, his chin off the floor now. Is this a compliment? McCoy affirms that it is. Now Spock is filled with the confidence of his captain, which gives him confidence without arrogance. He says with great dignity and humility, "Then I will try to make the best guess I can." What a lovely moment.
Then Kirk and Gillian have a moment watching the whales in their tank. Kirk recalls the D.H. Lawrence lines, which work quite well here, and he muses naturally on what amounts to the film's message: "It's ironic---when man was killing these creatures, he was destroying his own future."
Immediately an exchange between Kirk and Scotty in Gillian's presence alerts us to the jeopardy that still remains---the chances of getting back are slim. "A miracle?" Scotty says. "That's yet to come."
It's good storytelling and it's a provocative idea, for ordinary risk assessment would suggest that none of this should have been attempted if the chances of the last step, getting back, were so grim. But at this point everyone is happy, because they have done what they set out to do, and they are together. They will accept whatever comes next.
The clunky Bird of Prey provides a little extra drama, as time travel is signaled this time by holding the shot on the vast roiling surface of the sun. But even though Spock has managed to get them back at precisely the right 23rd century moment, the drama and derring-do aren't over. They plummet out of control, barely getting under the Golden Gate Bridge and splash into the stormy froth of the Bay, the violence being caused by the probe. The crew heads for the escape hatch, but the big doors in engineering are jammed. If they aren't opened, the whales remain inside, and as if to emphasize their nature as mammals, they will drown.
Kirk must swim underwater to unjam the lock, a scene that Shatner did largely himself. The following scenes are the payoff, with musical accompaniment: the crew clinging to the side of the Bird of Prey as the whales are revealed, communication achieved (one whale becomes vertical in the water, as the probe does in space---a parallel that Nimoy saw as a "magical" moment indicating the meeting of non-human minds, inspired by humpbacks' movements in an Imax film he saw) and the clouds part, the sun comes out (the sympathetic fallacy being no fallacy this time), and our heroes engage in some happy splashing. Their work ends in play.
But in addition to step by step storytelling and dramatic pace, Star Trek films often have certain coda moments that are as important, and often as memorable, as anything else in the movie. Here we see the crew finally facing what they thought they were fatally going to earth to do: their trial. They are penalized, but also recognized, and the slyest penalty is to bump Admiral Kirk back down to Captain, which means among other things that he will be back commanding a ship. But what ship?
Before that is revealed, Kirk gets a nice kiss-off from Gillian (though the tremor in her voice suggests there are some passionate moments in his future), and his bemused surprise fades quickly as he spots something more important to him: Spock is approaching his father, Ambassador Sarek. This is Mark Lenard's last appearance in a Star Trek film, and though they will both appear in the same episode of The Next Generation several years hence, his last scene with Leonard Nimoy. Elegantly framed facing each other, their few lines of dialogue brings to a new culmination the relationship of Spock to his parents that has developed throughout the series and films.
Sarek finally approves of Spock's choice of Starfleet, which he had previously opposed. "Your associates are people of good character," he allows. "They are my friends," says the new Spock, with a confidence and yet an innocence that marks his rite of passage in this movie (and a Spock we'll never see quite this way again.) His message to his mother is, "I feel fine." Another resolution.
As Nimoy notes on the DVD, the writing of this scene is excellent. Assuming that this is Harve Bennett again, it seems that together with the pre-20th century scenes, Bennett has written some of the best dialogue in all of Star Trek.
However, by the time the movie was finished, Bennett and Nimoy were seriously at odds. Paramount executives were worried about the first moments in the film, the appearance of the probe and its sing-song sound. They wanted subtitles to explain what the probe was saying, so the audience wouldn't be confused. This is one of those apparently small matters that go to the heart of a concept, at least in the mind and heart of the conceiver. Nimoy felt that subtitles were not only unnecessary, but would destroy the film. If the idea was the legitimacy of non-human communication, principally the whale's song, then some phony translation into human language would defeat the entire idea.
Nimoy felt the mystery of it was essential. Nick Meyer agreed. In the DVD featurette he suggests that it is one of those items that is more fascinating to wonder about than to know, the kind of thing that might come back to you much later, when you're "opening the refrigerator door" and it hits you, what were they saying to each other? It's a great image.
But apparently feeling the executive heat, Harve Bennett sided with those who wanted subtitles. Nimoy felt publicly betrayed, and expressed his anger publicly to Bennett. Although years later both talked happily for the DVD about the movie and don't have a bad word to say about the other, one at least partial outcome of this falling out back then was that when Paramount again called on Nimoy to take charge of Star Trek VI, Nick Meyer worked with him and Harve Bennett did not.
After Spock and his father part, all that is left is for the Enterpriseless crew to shuttle off to their new ship. (McCoy gets in one more zinger---"The bureaucratic mentality is the one constant in the universe"-and given the dispute mentioned above, I'd love to know who wrote it.)
They are glum, resigned (except for Sulu who hopes they get the Excelsior. They don't, but in a couple of movies, he will.) Then as they look forward, there's a small physical moment: Uhura puts her hand on Scotty's shoulder as they all see what's coming up...
They are Enterpriseless no longer. A tantalizing moment on the new bridge, and Captain Kirk wants to see what she's got. They warp off to the joyful movie theme. It's almost impossible not to cheer, or at least feel good, every time you see this ending.
The Enterprise crew has completed their hero's journey. They did the deeds, returned with a benefit for their society, were reintegrated with applause. But finally getting to their earth in their time was not the complete closure. Only when they were all back on the Enterprise was the voyage home complete. Kirk says as much when they first view the new ship: “My friends, we’ve come home.” And that home means the voyages never end.
Kirk must swim underwater to unjam the lock, a scene that Shatner did largely himself. The following scenes are the payoff, with musical accompaniment: the crew clinging to the side of the Bird of Prey as the whales are revealed, communication achieved (one whale becomes vertical in the water, as the probe does in space---a parallel that Nimoy saw as a "magical" moment indicating the meeting of non-human minds, inspired by humpbacks' movements in an Imax film he saw) and the clouds part, the sun comes out (the sympathetic fallacy being no fallacy this time), and our heroes engage in some happy splashing. Their work ends in play.
But in addition to step by step storytelling and dramatic pace, Star Trek films often have certain coda moments that are as important, and often as memorable, as anything else in the movie. Here we see the crew finally facing what they thought they were fatally going to earth to do: their trial. They are penalized, but also recognized, and the slyest penalty is to bump Admiral Kirk back down to Captain, which means among other things that he will be back commanding a ship. But what ship?
Before that is revealed, Kirk gets a nice kiss-off from Gillian (though the tremor in her voice suggests there are some passionate moments in his future), and his bemused surprise fades quickly as he spots something more important to him: Spock is approaching his father, Ambassador Sarek. This is Mark Lenard's last appearance in a Star Trek film, and though they will both appear in the same episode of The Next Generation several years hence, his last scene with Leonard Nimoy. Elegantly framed facing each other, their few lines of dialogue brings to a new culmination the relationship of Spock to his parents that has developed throughout the series and films.
Sarek finally approves of Spock's choice of Starfleet, which he had previously opposed. "Your associates are people of good character," he allows. "They are my friends," says the new Spock, with a confidence and yet an innocence that marks his rite of passage in this movie (and a Spock we'll never see quite this way again.) His message to his mother is, "I feel fine." Another resolution.
As Nimoy notes on the DVD, the writing of this scene is excellent. Assuming that this is Harve Bennett again, it seems that together with the pre-20th century scenes, Bennett has written some of the best dialogue in all of Star Trek.
However, by the time the movie was finished, Bennett and Nimoy were seriously at odds. Paramount executives were worried about the first moments in the film, the appearance of the probe and its sing-song sound. They wanted subtitles to explain what the probe was saying, so the audience wouldn't be confused. This is one of those apparently small matters that go to the heart of a concept, at least in the mind and heart of the conceiver. Nimoy felt that subtitles were not only unnecessary, but would destroy the film. If the idea was the legitimacy of non-human communication, principally the whale's song, then some phony translation into human language would defeat the entire idea.
Nimoy felt the mystery of it was essential. Nick Meyer agreed. In the DVD featurette he suggests that it is one of those items that is more fascinating to wonder about than to know, the kind of thing that might come back to you much later, when you're "opening the refrigerator door" and it hits you, what were they saying to each other? It's a great image.
But apparently feeling the executive heat, Harve Bennett sided with those who wanted subtitles. Nimoy felt publicly betrayed, and expressed his anger publicly to Bennett. Although years later both talked happily for the DVD about the movie and don't have a bad word to say about the other, one at least partial outcome of this falling out back then was that when Paramount again called on Nimoy to take charge of Star Trek VI, Nick Meyer worked with him and Harve Bennett did not.
After Spock and his father part, all that is left is for the Enterpriseless crew to shuttle off to their new ship. (McCoy gets in one more zinger---"The bureaucratic mentality is the one constant in the universe"-and given the dispute mentioned above, I'd love to know who wrote it.)
They are glum, resigned (except for Sulu who hopes they get the Excelsior. They don't, but in a couple of movies, he will.) Then as they look forward, there's a small physical moment: Uhura puts her hand on Scotty's shoulder as they all see what's coming up...
They are Enterpriseless no longer. A tantalizing moment on the new bridge, and Captain Kirk wants to see what she's got. They warp off to the joyful movie theme. It's almost impossible not to cheer, or at least feel good, every time you see this ending.
The Enterprise crew has completed their hero's journey. They did the deeds, returned with a benefit for their society, were reintegrated with applause. But finally getting to their earth in their time was not the complete closure. Only when they were all back on the Enterprise was the voyage home complete. Kirk says as much when they first view the new ship: “My friends, we’ve come home.” And that home means the voyages never end.
The Special Collector's Edition DVD features audio commentary by Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, which is the best commentary in the series so far. Even after you've absorbed the information, it's fun to have it on; it's like watching the movie with two great companions. Shatner, who is often in his "bad boy" mode in the interview segments on these DVDs, is as sweet and generous as can be for this commentary, partly no doubt because of the true friendship between these two, and the poignancy he feels in seeing the late DeForest Kelly on the screen. (If you've ever seen Shatner and Nimoy do their convention act, you'll know that Nimoy knows exactly how to handle Shatner's moods.)
Even the goofy parts are endearing, as when Shatner gets the names and titles of things wrong, and Nimoy goes on about a joke he should have added, first appending it to the wrong McCoy-Spock conversation, then not realizing that his joke would have voided the point of the scene that follows the conversation in question: 1985 director Nimoy would have axed 2001 Nimoy's suggestion in a minute.
But what's most affecting is towards the end when they muse on how great it would have been to have done more Trek movies with this crew. Seeing this film seemed to make them long to be in the Trek universe again. Every fan can identify, and be glad that the people who played their heroes, and in large part created them, feel the same way.
This DVD also has the most interesting text commentary so far, by Michael and Denise Okuda. The bonus disk has an excellent tribute to the late Mark Lenard, featuring his daughters; an okay interview with Eugene Roddenberry, Jr. about his father, a solid overview and good production featurettes, sporadically interesting snippets on time travel with physicists, some amusing recollections by some of Kirk's females-of-the-week on the series, and a decent if limited segment on whales. A profile of Greenpeace, a bit of Shatner's one-man show or the readings that both he and Nimoy did of the D.H. Lawrence poem, all would have been substantial additions.
One bit of Hollywood history that Nimoy mentions in his commentary is worth passing on. Jane Wyatt, who played Spock's mother in the series and in one scene in this film, appeared as a young actress in Frank Capra's classic film about Shangri-la, Lost Horizon. Nearly fifty years later, calling action for her Star Trek scene here was the second assistant director, Frank Capra III, the grandson of her director in 1939. (Lost Horizon was about a place of peace and learning meant to survive civilization's self-destruction, and begin a new world. The Shangri-La palace even had some Star Trek-like doors.)
The novelization by Vondra McIntyre is uneven. She adds a little to Gillian's characterization and the background of whale study in the 1980s (the lack of funding for it is a plot point in the movie). But the backstory she adds from other movies and episodes concerning the Trek characters often seems like forced filler to me. It would be interesting to know what script she worked from, and whether the dialogue was improved during shooting, or she un-improved it for the novel. Where it's different, it's usually better in the film.
There was a scene that didn't get filmed in which Sulu meets a young boy in San Francisco who he realizes is his great-great-great grandfather. The young actor froze, and the scene had to be scrapped. George Takei tells the elaborate tale of that in his book, in Shatner's book and on the convention circuit. But the novel gives us an idea of what the scene might have been like.
Even the goofy parts are endearing, as when Shatner gets the names and titles of things wrong, and Nimoy goes on about a joke he should have added, first appending it to the wrong McCoy-Spock conversation, then not realizing that his joke would have voided the point of the scene that follows the conversation in question: 1985 director Nimoy would have axed 2001 Nimoy's suggestion in a minute.
But what's most affecting is towards the end when they muse on how great it would have been to have done more Trek movies with this crew. Seeing this film seemed to make them long to be in the Trek universe again. Every fan can identify, and be glad that the people who played their heroes, and in large part created them, feel the same way.
This DVD also has the most interesting text commentary so far, by Michael and Denise Okuda. The bonus disk has an excellent tribute to the late Mark Lenard, featuring his daughters; an okay interview with Eugene Roddenberry, Jr. about his father, a solid overview and good production featurettes, sporadically interesting snippets on time travel with physicists, some amusing recollections by some of Kirk's females-of-the-week on the series, and a decent if limited segment on whales. A profile of Greenpeace, a bit of Shatner's one-man show or the readings that both he and Nimoy did of the D.H. Lawrence poem, all would have been substantial additions.
One bit of Hollywood history that Nimoy mentions in his commentary is worth passing on. Jane Wyatt, who played Spock's mother in the series and in one scene in this film, appeared as a young actress in Frank Capra's classic film about Shangri-la, Lost Horizon. Nearly fifty years later, calling action for her Star Trek scene here was the second assistant director, Frank Capra III, the grandson of her director in 1939. (Lost Horizon was about a place of peace and learning meant to survive civilization's self-destruction, and begin a new world. The Shangri-La palace even had some Star Trek-like doors.)
The novelization by Vondra McIntyre is uneven. She adds a little to Gillian's characterization and the background of whale study in the 1980s (the lack of funding for it is a plot point in the movie). But the backstory she adds from other movies and episodes concerning the Trek characters often seems like forced filler to me. It would be interesting to know what script she worked from, and whether the dialogue was improved during shooting, or she un-improved it for the novel. Where it's different, it's usually better in the film.
There was a scene that didn't get filmed in which Sulu meets a young boy in San Francisco who he realizes is his great-great-great grandfather. The young actor froze, and the scene had to be scrapped. George Takei tells the elaborate tale of that in his book, in Shatner's book and on the convention circuit. But the novel gives us an idea of what the scene might have been like.
The Star Trek story without violence or villain, yet with everything at stake, an adventure, and a problem relevant to us today as well as the future... Along with solid dramatic construction, a classic visual style, and storytelling that gives plenty of opportunity for group of relaxed actors who rise to the occasion as individuals, and have a chemistry with each other that leaps off the screen: this is Leonard Nimoy's Star Trek statement.
I asked Leonard Nimoy this question: What makes Star Trek Star Trek? "It's all about story," he said. "It's all about ideas."
We talked about why in 2004 Star Trek seemed, in his words, "like a beached whale." Some of it, he felt, had to do with storytelling. "A lot of the stuff we've seen in the last ten years has been driven by the enormously successful development of special effects, and the ability to show these incredible-and in many cases disastrous---images. Destroying the White House, for example. [in Independence Day.] So people say, 'what can we show next that's more dramatic than what's already been on the screen?
" We were an entirely different ilk, we didn't have that. Even in the last film we never relied on that kind of thing. The dependence was on the story, story, story. Not image, image, image. And to the degree that Star Trek movies slipped into image, image, image, I think they lost their way."
"When we were doing the original Star Trek series, things were not so terrific," he told me. "There was the Vietnam war, there were crises and racial tensions in the United States-there was a lot of negative stuff happening. Against that background, there was this very positive idea, to boldly go and solve problems. A group of people solving problems on a large, almost operatic scale. Which was very desirable for an audience, and I think we may see that again. There may come a time when films that are positive are again welcomed."
I asked Leonard Nimoy this question: What makes Star Trek Star Trek? "It's all about story," he said. "It's all about ideas."
We talked about why in 2004 Star Trek seemed, in his words, "like a beached whale." Some of it, he felt, had to do with storytelling. "A lot of the stuff we've seen in the last ten years has been driven by the enormously successful development of special effects, and the ability to show these incredible-and in many cases disastrous---images. Destroying the White House, for example. [in Independence Day.] So people say, 'what can we show next that's more dramatic than what's already been on the screen?
" We were an entirely different ilk, we didn't have that. Even in the last film we never relied on that kind of thing. The dependence was on the story, story, story. Not image, image, image. And to the degree that Star Trek movies slipped into image, image, image, I think they lost their way."
"When we were doing the original Star Trek series, things were not so terrific," he told me. "There was the Vietnam war, there were crises and racial tensions in the United States-there was a lot of negative stuff happening. Against that background, there was this very positive idea, to boldly go and solve problems. A group of people solving problems on a large, almost operatic scale. Which was very desirable for an audience, and I think we may see that again. There may come a time when films that are positive are again welcomed."
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