Film / Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

aka: Star Trek IV

Stardate: 1986. How on Earth can they save the future?

Gillian Taylor: Don't tell me — you're from outer space.
James T. Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

The One With… The Whales. And the nuclear "wessels".

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the fourth movie in the Star Trek film series, released in 1986. It is directed by Leonard Nimoy, with the screenplay by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennett and the story by Bennett and Nimoy.

James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is prepared to face the consequences of his actions in the previous movie, but a powerful alien probe is making its way to Earth (yes, another one. Again. ), wreaking havoc with the environment and shutting down anything with power. Deducing that the probe is searching for humpback whales, which are extinct in the twenty-third century, Kirk and crew use a Klingon Bird-Of-Prey they stole in the last film to Time Travel to San Francisco in The '80s, where they hope to retrieve some and save Earth. Hilarity Ensues. Instead of the traditional Space Opera, this movie is an outright comedy. It even lacks a villain, outside of the whale probe and a whaler boat. Star Trek IV also concludes a loose trilogy arc that began with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The film also stars Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy, James Doohan as Montgomery Scott, George Takei as Hikaru Sulu, Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura and Catherine Hicks as Gillian Taylor.

The wild success of this movie (it was the most financially successful Trek film until the 2009 reboot) proved to Paramount that Star Trek could survive as an expanded franchise. Not only did it greenlight another film, but it gave Gene Roddenberry the opportunity to create a brand new TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and kickstarted 18 straight years of Star Trek productions.

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The Voyage Home provides examples of:

Tropes A-L

• Abandon Ship: Kirk orders this when the ship crashes in San Francisco Bay and starts to sink.
• Acronym Confusion:
  Kirk: Oh, him [Spock]? He's harmless. Back in the sixties, he was part of the free speech movement at Berkeley. I think he did a little too much LDS.^note This acronym refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons. He meant to say LSD, more commonly referred to as acid.
  Gillian: L D S?
• Acting Unnatural: Kirk tells his bridge officers, standing around in the streets of 1980s San Francisco, to "break up, you look like a cadet review." Cue entirely unconvincing attempt by the Starfleet officers to look inconspicuous and casual.
  • Except Scotty, who immediately laughs and in the process effectively disappears
• Adam and Eve Plot: With the whales George and Gracie that are brought from the 20th century to the future.
• Alice Allusion: Kirk's greeting to Gillian as she's beamed aboard the Klingon ship. "Hello Alice, welcome to Wonderland".
• All There in the Manual:
  • The Blu-Ray releases include the Library Computer, an interactive database that will appear on screen as the movie plays offering entries on characters, ships, places, etc. with additional information on them.
  • The novelization states the Federation planned to clone one or more infant humpback whales from previously collected humpback cell samples that George and Gracie could raise to adulthood in order to provide a basis to repopulate the species. It also explains that the reason this was never done before was because the cloned infants would need adults to teach them how to survive in the wild.
• And Starring: The opening cast roll ends with "and Catherine Hicks as Gillian".
• And the Adventure Continues: The film ends with the crew embarking on the Enterprise-A.
  Kirk: Let's see what she's got.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • Chekov apologizes to his interrogators before he tries to stun them, however his phaser doesn't work ("Must be the radiation").
  • During their escape from the hospital, the crew barges into and knocks over a patient on a crutch. McCoy apologizes as he helps the patient up again in passing.
• Arc Words: "How do you feel?" Later, "I feel fine."
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • By Sarek, in response to the Klingon ambassador's overblown accusations against Kirk.
    Ambassador: We have the right to preserve our race!
    Sarek: You have the right to commit murder?
  • During Spock's memory test, the computer asks him, "How do you feel?" Spock is legitimately baffled by the question.
  • As things are going wrong, Kirk laments that they have two perfectly good whales and could very well lose them.
    Spock: In likelihood, our mission would fail.
    Kirk: Our mission? Spock, you're talking about the end of every life on Earth. You're half-human. Haven't you got any goddamn feelings about that?!
• Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving: Stealing Starships, Disobeying Orders, And Saving The World.
• Artistic License – Geography: When Gillian meets Kirk and Spock again, Kirk says they're going "back to San Francisco." However, they are already in San Francisco. The scene was shot in the Marina District, which is on the north coast of the city. The Cetacean Institute is in Sausalito, which is on the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge directly behind them.
  • The scene where Kirk and Spock are walking and talking with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background was shot at Marine Drive, specifically the brief stretch of road that connects to Fort Point. That area is pretty far out of the way, especially if they're coming from Golden Gate Park; it's about four miles away on foot. However, it's conveniently close to where they shot the Marina district scene mentioned above, and the bridge makes for an awesome background.
  • Take a closer look at the movie poster. It's a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the tourist viewpoint in Marin, but the city in the background has been flipped; the Transamerica Pyramid should be on the left side. Also, the bridge runs directly north and south, which means that the sun doesn't rise or set in that direction.
• Artistic License – Medicine: When McCoy is arguing with the 20th-century doctor about the merits of a fundoscopic examination on Chekov while he is in a coma. The argument implies it will involve the use of a medical drill. In reality a fundoscopic examination is a routine part of a medical checkup where the doctor shines a light in the patient's eye and examines it with an ophthalmoscope.
  • Ironically, and this may be played with, just to show how unadvanced 20th-century medicine is, that the doctor is a lot closer to playing this straight, than McCoy is. Neither the doctor or McCoy really say anything incorrect, but a couple of the doctor's lines seem to be odd responses. Most notably responding to McCoy's diagnosis of a torn middle meningeal artery, is countered by asking him if his degree is in dentistry - despite it being the correct diagnosis (completely averting this trope). And when McCoy counters with asking him what he makes of it, the doctor initially responds with "fundoscopic examination". However, even then, McCoy's response shows he's familiar with such an examination, by stating that such a thing would be "unrevealing". McCoy doesn't chide the doctor about drilling holes in Chekov's skull, until after the doctor offers "A simple evacuation of the expanding epidural hematoma will relieve the pressure!" Which indicates Chekov suffered a skull fracture, which cut an artery, that led to blood pooling between the brain and the skull, putting pressure on the brain. In the 20th (and even 21st) century, drilling a hole/holes in the skull to relieve said pressure, is a valid strategy. Since, y'know, we don't have the technology yet to knit bone, repair arteries, and remove blood by waving a tricorder over the patient's head.
• Artistic License – Physics: Even for Star Trek, there are many glaring examples.
  • Although averted in the park scenes, played straight when rescuing the whales. Cloaking may indeed make the ship invisible, but that whaling ship would likely have capsized well before they could have fired the harpoon. Between the air turbulence brought on by such a massive, generally non-aerodynamic ship as the Bird of Prey — especially at high speeds, and the thrusters required to keep the ship hovering, to say the waters would have been dangerously choppy, would be a great understatement. Of course, that would have deprived them of the memorable shot of the harpoon colliding with seemingly nothing, or the Bird of Prey decloaking and giving the whalers a massive Oh, Crap! moment.
  • Spock must make a guess about the mass of the whales and the water on the return trip to the future, saying they have no information on that mass. But earlier, Scotty gives such a guess when he says "I've never transported 400 tons before." Which also begs the question, surely there's a way to ask the transporter system what the mass of its last transport was?
    • What he actually said was that acceleration was no longer a constant. That could be referring to the extra weight (particularly if it exceeded the ship's designed load, as the creaking during transport suggested), the state of the dilithium crystals (in the process of being reconstituted through 20th century nuclear energy), or both.
  • An example with in-universe physics. In the previous film, the cloaking device caused a visual distortion field, "one big enough to hide a ship." No such distortion field is seen for the cloaked Bird of Prey. Then again, preventing the Bird of Prey from landing invalidates the entire plot.
  • The Power of the Sun:
    • The Probe creates clouds which block the sun's rays. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, since the Federation is a civilization that has harnessed Antimatter, but the probe's carrier wave is also so powerful that it blankets all electrical systems like a continuous long-range EMP, shutting everything down.
    • The sun is apparently NOT a good source for collecting "photons" to recharge the dilithium crystals, and a 20th century nuclear reactor will do. It's Justified by Spock when he says they need high-energy photons, which means gamma and x-rays given off by fission reactions, while most of the sun's energy hitting earth is lower on the spectrum, in ultraviolet and visible light. Then again, that entire subplot was just an excuse to set up the "FBI interrogates the Russian Chekov" scene and "nuclear wessels". Totally worth it.
  • The shuttles inside Spacedock drift to a stop when their engines fail due to the probe signal. Simple inertia should have resulted in some nasty crashes.
  • And there's the question of how an audio signal travels through the vacuum of space, or alternately how a radio or similar signal resolves into whale song when it hits the water. Even more to the point, how did the probe (or its creators) ever get a response from the whales?
• "Ass" in Ambassador: The Klingon ambassador, to be specific.
  President Hiram Roth: Admiral Kirk has been charged with nine violations of Starfleet regulations.
  Ambassador Kamarag: "STARFLEET REGULATIONS"? THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS! Remember this well: there shall be no peace as long as Kirk lives!
  Crowd Member: YOU POMPOUS ASS!
• Awesome, but Impractical: After setting the (cloaked) warbird down in a public park, Kirk makes a note of the inevitable drawbacks of hiding your invisible starship:

  Kirk: Everybody, remember where we parked.

• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • Sarek showing up to the hearing with the Klingons at the beginning of the film to speak on behalf of his son and his crewmates
  • Spock and Sarek have a moment. After a brief icy exchange where Spock says (somewhat backhandedly) that he appreciated his father making the effort to attend the trial, Sarek countered softly with "it was no effort, you are my son". Probably as close to a gooey moment as you would get between a Vulcan father and son.
• Bait-and-Switch: As Kirk and the rest of the crew are being delivered to their new starship post, the Excelsior appears on the horizon and Sulu excitedly wonders if that's their new ship. The crew (and the audience) seem consigned to continuing their adventures on the "great experiment"... until the camera pans over the Excelsior's saucer to show a newly-built Enterprise-A behind it.
• Band of Brothers: At the end Starfleet has a tribunal to sentence Kirk, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and McCoy for their actions in the previous film, and when they are called down Spock joins them. The President tells Spock that he was not part of this conspiracy, and Spock responds concisely that he stands with his crew members.
• Bavarian Fire Drill:
  • Scotty and McCoy pretend to be a professor and his assistant from the University of Edinburgh, visiting Plexicorp to observe their manufacturing methods.
  • Later, Kirk, McCoy, and Gillian get into the hospital to rescue Chekov by posing as doctors and a patient. See Expospeak Gag below.
• Big Damn Heroes: Kirk and the crew seem too late to stop the whalers, only to have the launched harpoon suddenly hit something invisible. Then Kirk's ship decloaks and reveals it had gotten in place to block the shot in time.
• Big Dumb Object: The "whale probe". Presumably to make a point about it being as thoughtlessly destructive to humanity as humanity supposedly is to whales.
• Black Boss Lady: Audiences applauded when Madge Sinclair appeared as the (unnamed) Captain of the USS Saratoga at the beginning of the film.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The probe, which is completely inscrutable.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Justified, as Spock has an incomplete grasp on life after being brought Back from the Dead.
  Kirk: If we play our cards right, we may be able to find out when those whales are being released.
  Spock: How will playing cards help?
  
  Dr. Taylor: Are you sure you won't change your mind?
  Spock: Is there something wrong with the one I have?
• Book Ends:
  • Kirk refers to the others as 'My friends' when they commit themselves to help Spock in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ("My friends, Dr McCoy and I have to do this, the rest of you don't") and again after the resulting trial in this film's ending ("My friends, we've come home").
  • Early in this movie, Spock is confused when the testing computer asks him "How do you feel?" and his mother tries to help him get in touch with his emotions. At the end, Sarek asks him if he has a message for her.
    Spock: Tell her... I feel fine.
• Brake Angrily: Gillian slams the brakes on her truck after Spock declares that Gracie is pregnant.
• Breather Episode: According to Word of God, this was the intention. It's essentially a comedy and it comes immediately after two solid movies of action and drama where significant characters die and the Enterprise gets destroyed.
• Brick Joke: Kirk sells the reading glasses that Dr. McCoy gave him as a birthday present in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan so that they'll have money to live on while they're in 1980s San Francisco.
• Call-Back:
  • Chekov is caught sneaking around a US Military installation and is mistakenly assumed to be a spy. Kirk had the same thing happen to him in the TOS episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday".
  • In II, McCoy notes that the antique glasses were rare because "you don't find many with the lenses still intact." They get damaged at the end of II, and when Kirk sells them, the antiques dealer sighs they would be more valuable if the lenses were still intact. Presumably, the lenses in the Stable Time Loop are 100 years younger than the frames, but still "antique".
  • In "The City On The Edge Of Forever", Kirk tried to explain away Spock's pointed ears to a 1930s police officer by claiming his ears got caught in "a mechanical rice-picker". This time, Spock simply covers his ears with an improvised headband.
• Calling Out for Not Calling: An alien species that used to chat with humpback whales before their extinction sends a probe to determine why they haven't called for the last 300 years. The probe removes water from the oceans to find them.
• Came Back Wrong: It's implied that maybe we didn't quite get all of Spock back at the end of the previous movie, that there's a certain... something missing. He gets better by the end though. Death apparently isn't something you can just get over straight away.
• The Cameo:
  • Both Majel Barrett and Grace Lee Whitney make appearances in the film. Barrett reprises her role as Christine Chapel, now a Commander at Starfleet Medical.^note This is Majel Barrett's final appearance as Dr. Chapel, though she'd be far from done with Trek. Whitney also appears at Starfleet Command, and is credited as Janice Rand, also a Commander.
  • Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go's appears briefly as one of the Starfleet officers sending a distress call to Starfleet HQ (per the script, her name is Trillya).
• Captain Obvious: Admiral Cartwright mentions during the probe's attack that the Earth can't survive without exposure to the Sun. The Federation President treats this statement as something everybody would know.
• Cassandra Truth: After failing to come up with a cover story she'll accept, Kirk flat-out tells Gillian exactly who he is and where he comes from over dinner. She naturally thinks he's full of shit.
• Cat Folk: The Caitian admiral at Starfleet headquarters.
• Celebrity Paradox: Given that there are references to various aspects of late-20th-century pop culture (punk rock, Jacqueline Susann, etc.), there's an underlying implication that the Star Trek series must not exist in Star Trek's universe. (The implication is even stronger in the novelization. Kirk actually introduces himself to Dr. Gillian Taylor by saying "I'm Kirk, and this is Spock," and she doesn't react as if that's significant of anything—this within a larger sequence in which she marvels at their lack of familiarity with everything from Waylon Jennings to pizza.)
• Changed My Jumper: The short notice for this particular mission results in the crew arriving in San Francisco in their 23rd-century Space Clothes. As it's San Francisco, they don't look that out of place. Truth in Television — they had unknown crew walk around San Francisco in the outfits for a week before shooting started, and got no comments whatsoever.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The Klingon Bird-of-Prey, which was just the enemy ship and later a means of escaping from the exploding Genesis Planet in the previous film, ends up being a vital part of this film's storyline thanks to its ability to cloak and land.
  • Kirk's glasses are an unusual case of this; from the perspective of the audience and Kirk himself, this is the last time the glasses are seen. However, 298 years down the line, they're going to be very important once again.
• Chekov's Gun: Doesn’t work due to radiation.
• *Click* Hello: Chekov is greeted by a Marine this way when he is found on board the nuclear carrier USS Enterprise.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Spock, but in all fairness he is still recovering from being dead.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Sort of. Spock initially feels that his shipmates, being the illogical humans they are, made a huge mistake in saving him because his one life would not seem to be worth the costs they incurred along the way (at least one other life — that of David Marcus (though he likely would have died anyway) — plus the destruction of the Enterprise and putting all their careers in jeopardy). To be fair, he's running almost entirely on logic at this point because his more abstract memories are returning more slowly — and from a pure logic point of view, he's not entirely wrong. It takes the crisis facing Earth and the time travel adventure to save it capped with a reconciliation with his father for Spock to accept that his crewmates made the right decision to save him and in the process save McCoy as well.
• Continuity Nod: Kirk mentions that they've done slingshot maneuvers around the sun before, which they first did in the episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday."
• Crapsack Only by Comparison: How the crew of the Enterprise see The '80s, largely Played for Laughs. Kirk warns the crew that they're dealing with a "primitive and paranoid culture", Spock confirms they're in the late 20th century by the pollution content in the atmosphere, McCoy remarks (on a newspaper headling concerning nuclear arms talks stalling) that "it's a wonder these people ever got out of the 20th century" and then shows characteristic disdain for 20th-century medical practices when Chekov has an accident and ends up critically injured in hospital.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Even though it's the crew of the mighty Enterprise we're talking about, the whole "get some whales from back in time" thing did sound pretty ridiculous. McCoy lampshades this, to which Kirk simply responds that if McCoy has a better plan, he should speak up. The film is also nice enough to explain why several saner-sounding plans wouldn't work—getting in weapons range would result in being crippled, and attempting to transmit whalesong themselves would just be shouting gibberish into space.
• Creator Cameo: The punk on the bus is played by associate producer Kirk Thatcher. He also co-wrote and recorded the song playing on the boombox ("I Hate You").
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Well, there's no actual battle, but the Probe gives V'ger a run for its money to completely decimate the entire Federation and Earth ships and defenses. It does this as a mere side effect of transmitting its signal and is otherwise completely oblivious to the damage it causes.
• Damage Control: Kirk asks when they can get their captured Bird-of-Prey under way, Scotty quips, "Damage control is easy; reading Klingon, that's hard."
• Death Amnesia: Played with. Spock never says he can't remember what dying and coming back was like. He states that he can't explain it without the other person having a common frame of reference, meaning:
  Bones: You mean I have to die to discuss your insights on death?!
  • (Bones actually died in an episode of the The Original Series ((as did Scotty)) and its odd none of them remember it.)
• Dedication: To the crew of the Challenger at the beginning of the film.
• The Defroster: Spock has been coldly logical since he came back, and when Kirk finally gets upset with him (before having done his usual of pretending everything is fine, much to McCoy's wariness), he starts acting more like his developed self.
• Demoted to Extra: Saavik, who was a major character in The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, made a brief appearance in one early scene on Vulcan in this movie, and then was never seen again^note She was supposed to be in the 6th film, but it was decided to create a new character, Valeris; the events of that film come across somewhat differently with that in mind.
• Doctor Jerk: The surgeon who was about to operate on Chekov was justifiably upset about McCoy and Kirk intruding into the operating room, but there was no need for him to insult Dr. McCoy's credentials.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": Due to Spock's mental retraining, he insists on calling Kirk "Admiral". Kirk is nonplussed and keeps insisting that Spock used to call him "Jim".
• Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: McCoy helping the woman on dialysis during their rescue of Chekov. Admittedly, the "stop" didn't take more time than it took to give her a couple of pills, but it still (A) potentially draws attention to what's supposed to be a covert mission and (B) has the possibility of changing history.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: The very first shot of the Federation headquarters includes the Golden Gate Bridge to establish it is in San Francisco.
• The '80s: The crew travels back to the year of the movie's release: '86. Also, one of the test questions Spock gets are events of historical significance from 1987.
• Emergency Refuelling: After the crew use the Klingon Bird of Prey to travel back in time, the dilithium crystals in the Bird of Prey start disintegrating due to the amount of effort required to travel back in time. This leads to a subplot where Uhura and Chekov have to find a nuclear vessel, collect high energy photons from a nuclear fission reaction and use those to recrystalise the dilithium crystals.
• Everybody Lives: The only Trek film that can boast this.
• Everything Is an iPod in the Future: In the brief shot of the Enterprise-A's bridge at the end of the movie, the entire bridge is painted white with black touchscreen control panels.
• Exact Words: Spock's plan.
  Spock: We could try to find some humpback whales.
  McCoy: But you said there aren't any, except on Earth of the past.
  Spock: Yes, Doctor, that's exactly what I said.
• Explosive Instrumentation: During the time trip, Uhura's panel explodes almost in her face, along with various wall panels and pipes bursting.
• Expospeak Gag: With Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, for cramps after eating:
  McCoy: This woman has acute post-prandial upper-abdominal distension!
  Kirk: What did you say she's got?
  McCoy: Cramps.^note In the novelization, Gillian is momentarily angry at this, apparently mistaking McCoy for saying she had menstrual cramps. The actual translation, however, is closer to "food baby."
• Extinct in the Future: While Star Trek's Earth is generally positive, whales went extinct sometime in the 21st century. Which becomes a problem for Earth when an alien probe arrives wanting to talk to them.
• Exty Years from Publication: From 2286 to 1986, the crew travel back exactly 300 years in to the past.
• Every Helicopter Is a Huey: Sulu tells a helicopter pilot that he trained on Hueys at the Academy, as a hobby (though the pilot probably didn't know he meant Starfleet Academy). The Novelization expands on it.
• Face Palm: Kirk's reaction to Spock diving into the whale tank without warning him, following a Jaw Drop.
• Failed Future Forecast: The probe is causing bad weather in 23rd-century Leningrad (the name of Saint Petersburg between 1924 and 1991), although the oblast (province/state) still retains that name.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: The whole premise of the film, figuratively and almost literally, thanks to the cetaceans out of temporal water.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Klingon ambassador mentions attempts to negotiate a peace treaty, and that there would be no peace while Kirk lived. This may or may not have been intentional, but it's picked up as the central theme of the plot in the sixth movie—where, interestingly enough, the same character (and actor) is one of the first to applaud Kirk and the Enterprise crew when they prevent the sabotage of the eventual Federation/Klingon treaty.
  • As the crew travels back in time, the audience can hear various lines of dialogue that will later be said throughout the course of the movie. Furthermore, the sequence starts with a brief shot of Kirk sitting in a white room. While it's still the Klingon ship's bridge, the white background is very evocative of the bridge of the Enterprise-A.
• Funny Background Event: While fleeing the aircraft carrier, Chekov happens to run past a sign painted on the bulkhead which reads "Escape Route."
• Gaia's Lament:
  • Whales are extinct in the 23rd century. The probe tries to communicate until something responds... if nothing responds, it never stops trying. (It just so happens that its communication drains Starfleet power supplies and screws up's Earth's surface weather...) The designers of the probe were callous and uncaring what side effects this would have, just as the 20th-century humans were callous and uncaring regarding the plight of the whales — at least that's the idea.
  • The novelisation expands on this. The probe travelled to Earth to find out why its creators had lost contact with whales (implying whalesong can travel interstellar distances) in a cetacean version of a cut-off distress call. By the time the probe has reached Earth orbit, it has concluded that there will most likely be no response (humanity trying to talk to it does not count any more than fish trying to talk to us) and starts pumping energy into the oceans to create cloud cover and thus freeze the planet in order to start over, but continues to send a signal on the off chance there will be a response. When Kirk and co bring the whales back and they start to sing, the probe immediately pauses (noticable in the movie) and tries to think what to do about a completely unprecedented event. After a brief discussion with George and Gracie, it basically says "good luck with rebuilding" and heads off for parts unknown.
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Starfleet can't really punish Kirk and crew too much just after they saved the world, can they?
• Going Down with the Ship: Kirk is the last one to leave the sinking Bird-of-Prey, after opening the cargo bay to release the whales.
• Good Old Ways: A perfect example of the ways in which Bones subverts this trope. See We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future.
• Gracefully Demoted: Kirk has no problem being demoted from Admiral to Captain, as it takes him from his boring desk job and puts him back in the big chair.
• Green Aesop: "To hunt a species to extinction is not logical."
  Gillian: Whoever said the human race was logical?
• Hand Signals: After Chekov falls off the carrier Enterprise, one of the Marines signals "hold" before calling for a corpsman.
• Happy Ending Override: Downplayed. The multiple criminal acts that Kirk and his officers committed in the last movie can't just be Easily Forgiven too quickly — the only reason they don't all get cashiered (and likely imprisoned) is because they save Earth from the alien probe. Even so, Kirk still gets demoted from Admiral to Captain, which everybody knows is an act of Unishment.
• "I Hate" Song: "I Hate You" by Edge of Etiquette, the song played by the punk in the bus scene, is about how rotten humanity is and how we'd be better off nuking ourselves into oblivion.
• Immediate Sequel: Picks up shortly after Star Trek III, with Kirk's Captain's Log specifying it has been three months since the events of that film.
• Insane Troll Logic: The Klingon ambassador's case for how Kirk was supposedly a terrorist trying to use Genesis as a weapon/secret base to destroy the Klingon Empire would appear to be this, depending on whether or not you consider it outright propaganda or at least extreme wishful thinking on the part of the Klingons in order to save face.
  • Fridge Brilliance: This is the exact same rationale Kruge gave for breaking protocol, crossing the Neutral Zone, and firing upon a Federation vessel in the first place. He did so completely on his own initiative (even telling Torg "share this with no one"), but it becomes brilliance when you consider that the Klingons figured out in hindsight WHY Kruge would have gone to Genesis, and latched on to that as the only defensible explanation. Not having all the facts hurt them (the Ambassador specifically says the Genesis device was test-detonated by Kirk himself, which is a double falsehood), but with Genesis' existence already causing galactic controversy, protecting their interests makes sense for them.
  • The Klingon ambassador's attempts at rebutting Sarek fall into this: Yes, we killed Dr. David Marcus in cold blood. Yes, we blew up a Federation science vessel and killed 80 Starfleet officers. Yes, we committed espionage and stole classified materiel. But it's ok since we are trying to preserve our culture which prizes honor and courage above all else. Sarek calls him out on this with a glorious Armor-Piercing Question in front of the entire Federation Council.
• Just Ignore It: Kirk’s usual trait rears its ugly head for a while, as he wants to assume that everything is fine with Spock when it’s clearly not. Bones stops just short of a What the Hell, Hero?.
• Large Ham: John Schuck as the Klingon Hambassador makes William Shatner look positively subdued.
  "Behold, the quintessential devil in these matters: James T. Kirk, renegade and terrorist!"
  "Starfleet regulations, that's outRAGEOUS!!!"
• Kicked Upstairs: Inverted: Kirk has violated orders to save the world. They "punish" him by taking away his cushy desk job and demoting him to a "mere" starship captain. So Starfleet gets what it wants (a public punishment to demonstrate they don't tolerate such behavior, not to mention their best captain back in the field) and Kirk gets what he wants (the Enterprise).
• Language Barrier: Spock gently shoots down Kirk's idea to 'simulate' a whale song in response to the probe. Just because humans can mimic the whale sound doesn't mean they know how to speak Humpback Whale.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Kirk and Company survived to save the world because they were off-planet rescuing Spock when the probe arrived.
• Lighter and Softer: This is pretty much the most lighthearted Trek film there is. Not so much for the novelisation, which while still light in places, goes into detail over Kirk’s PTSD over losing Edith Keeler, the Enterprise, his son, Gary Mitchell, and his brother and sister in law, while Uhura and Chekov have to be more careful with regards to racism, and Bones is still struggling with the dregs of Spock in his head.
• List of Transgressions: After saving the world, Kirk and his crew appear before the Federation Council, with the president reading the list of offenses they committed over the last two movies. Kirk pleads guilty to all of them, and then the president dismisses all but one, using that to demote Kirk to "Captain"—which made him very happy.
• Literal-Minded: Chekov during the interrogation, much to the frustration of his interrogator. A possible case of Obfuscating Stupidity.

Tropes M-Z

• Magical Security Cam: When the Klingon Ambassador shows the Council footage of the Enterprise blowing up with Kruge's crew aboard, it's the exact footage from the previous film. The bit with Kruge's crew on the bridge has an overlay added to suggest that it was somehow recorded and transmitted by one of the crew before they died; no effort is made to explain who recorded the external shots of the ship going down in flames.
• Meaningful Rename: McCoy dubbed their stolen Klingon ship the HMS Bounty, with Kirk noting the irony in his log.
• Mistaken for Spies: Chekov. An interesting example as Chekov's behavior eventually leads one of his interrogators to suspect he's more probably an escaped mental patient than a Soviet spy.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence: An interesting version, seeing as it was applied to what was then the real-life present day, in which the Enterprise crew crosses a street in 1986 San Francisco and Kirk is called a "dumbass" by an angry taxi driver. The background music seems to be a standard '80s rock tune. It was a jazz/fusion tune that was created for the movie by the group Yellowjackets which was accurate of music adults listened to in the '80's. Also, an unlucky hoodlum is shown jamming on a boombox with music that fit the style of 80's era punk. The song was written specifically for that scene, and performed by the actor that played the punk.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • When Gillian starts showing videos of actual whale disassembling. In theaters, the audiences often got very quiet at this point. Sorta-mimicked in the Novelization, in a way: most of the tour group watch the videos without much trouble, but Kirk and Spock are disturbed to say the least, because to them such violence was uncommon in their century.
  • A Downplayed example in the pizza restaurant. Gillian starts tearing up at the thought of saying goodbye to the whales while worrying about their survival in the open sea—and then Kirk gets a call on his "pocket pager." His pathetic attempt to be discreet about it, as well as the dialogue between him and Scotty (including Scotty calling him "Admiral", just like Spock), produce a "You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!" look on Gillian's face as she clearly wonders just what the hell she's gotten herself involved in.
  • A captured Chekov plays the fool for his captors, escapes despite his phaser malfunctioning (complete with wacky noises), leads the crew of an aircraft carrier on a merry chase to upbeat music — then runs out of carrier and falls onto concrete hard enough to be fatally injured — at least, by 20th-century medical standards...
• Mundanization: They've triumphed many times in space, but how well do they do on present-day Earth? (er, again... for the third time).
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Bridge Computer Sound Effects from The Original Series can clearly be heard in the background as Kirk says "Let's see what she's got".
  • An In-Universe example. "Sir! Ve have found the nuclear wessels! And Admiral....it is the Enterprise!"
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Everyone's reaction to the Humans of the past for hunting the Humpback to extinction.
• No Antagonist: Even the probe is just trying to find out what happened to their friends on Earth.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The probe doesn't even seem to understand that its signal is causing massive weather and geological disruptions to Earth. It's simply broadcasting the same message it always has, believing that being closer to the whales will solve the lack-of-response.
• No One Gets Left Behind: When Chekov is at the mercy of 20th-century medicine, Bones insists on going to save him. Spock backs him up. When asked if it's the logical thing to do, he admits that it is not that; however, it is the human thing to do.
• Not This One, That One: A notable inversion/subversion at the end: The crew arrives at Space Dock to take charge of their new ship. The crew argues about which ship they will get. Dr. McCoy trusts the bureaucrats to give them a freighter, while Mr. Sulu opines he would like the Excelsior. Scotty, of course scoffs at Mr. Sulu, asking why he would want that "bucket of bolts". Their shuttle starts its approach on the shiny new Excelsior ... then flies over it to reveal the smaller ship hiding behind it: the Enterprise-A.
  Kirk: My friends... we've come home.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: How Chekov deals with his (brief) interrogation by the FBI could be interpreted to be this instead of simple Fish out of Temporal Water naivety. You decide.
• Oddball in the Series: Whereas every other TOS movie is set in the 23rd century and features Captain Kirk & company flying around the galaxy on the USS Enterprise, this movie takes place almost entirely in the mid 1980's, on Earth, with the crew being Fish out of Water, trying to literally "Save The Whales" (and hence becoming the Trope Namer for Space Whale Aesop). The crew is also not flying on the Enterprise as it was destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and they are instead using a hijacked Klingon Bird of Prey; the Enterprise only appears at the very end when a new one is built and assigned to the crew as a reward for saving Earth. And it's the only Star Trek movie where Everybody Lives; the only times we see weapons used are Chekov trying and failing to stun his FBI interrogators, and Kirk welding a door shut.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The whaler's crew upon seeing the Bird-of-Prey decloak. Not only could the entire whaler fit in the Bird-of-Prey's torpedo launcher, but these are late-20th-century humans. They have never seen an alien (or even human) starship of any kind before. Naturally, they bend the speediest retreat they can.
  • Kirk when Gillian tells him the whales are being released tomorrow.
• Once More, with Clarity: During the time travel sequence, the lines spoken by the crew during the sequence are spoken later on.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Kirk is amazed when The Spock of all people has to make a guess.
  Kirk: Mr. Spock, did you account for the variable mass of whales and water in your time re-entry program?
  Spock: Mr. Scott cannot give me exact figures, Admiral, so...I will make a guess.
  Kirk: A guess? You, Spock? That's extraordinary. [leaves with Gillian]
  Spock: I don't think he understands.
  McCoy: No, Spock. He means that he feels safer about your guesses than most other people's facts.
  Spock: Oh. So you're saying it is a compliment?
  McCoy: It is.
  Spock: Hmm. Then I will try to make the best guess I can.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Gillian's co-worker Bob, who spends his few scenes alternately hitting on her and patronizing her, all while doing this constantly; she's never amused, to say the least.
• Out-of-Character Moment: At the end when the crew are in the water outside the sinking ship, just after the whales have successfully communicated with the probe, Spock appears to be laughing.
• Photographic Memory: Gillian Taylor mentions that she has one — "I see words!" — but it comes into play only once, during Spock's Time-Travel Tense Trouble.
• Precision F-Strike: Kirk advises Spock to blend in by "swearing every other word". While he has difficulty at first he finally grasps it, and, in perhaps a running gag, Spock has at least one in parts 5 and 6 as well.
  Spock: Are you sure it isn't time for a colorful metaphor?
• Product Placement: Used to hilarious effect in the scene where Sulu, Scotty, and Bones were discussing where they can find a a large quantity of plastic to make a whale tank. And they manage to walk exactly by a giant ad for Pacific Bell's Yellow Pages.
• Promotion, Not Punishment: At the end, Kirk actually experiences a subversion. After stealing the Enterprise and subsequently blowing it up in the process of stopping the Earth from being destroyed and saving the humpbacked whales from extinction, he and his bunch manage to almost completely duck the surefire court-martialing and dismissal from Starfleet. Instead, Kirk is demoted from Admiral back down to Captain, a role both he and his superiors prefer him in.
• The Quincy Punk: Kirk and Spock encounter such a punk on a bus in 1980s San Francisco. When he refuses to turn down the loud punk rock music he is playing, Spock nerve pinches him into silence, and everyone else on the bus applauds.
• Rapid-Fire Typing: Scotty goes from not even understanding the concept of a computer without voice commands to apparently being able to type three million words per minute. Also combines with Hollywood Hacking — the action on the computer's screen doesn't even remotely synch with his keystrokes.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: There was actually a scene in the script for Sulu to steal the helicopter by at first taking the pilot away from the helicopter and then take a running leap into the helicopter while he was away. However, George Takei had participated in a marathon and was too sore to do the scene, and with only a few days to complete the film, the scene was scrapped.
  • There was another scene written where Sulu, Bones, and Scotty meet a young boy who mistakenly thinks Sulu is his uncle; it turns out the child is Sulu's great great grandfather. The young boy chosen to play the part was overcome with stage fright (not helped by his showbiz mom) and the scene also had to be scrapped. It appears in the novelization.
• Refuge in Audacity: Chekov, in an obviously Russian accent, going around the streets asking about "nuclear wessels" and getting away with it. Doesn't help him when he is found on board one, however.
• Replacement Goldfish: The Enterprise NCC-1701-A for the Enterprise NCC-1701, beginning a Star Trek tradition.
• Retcon:
  • The Bird of Prey's bridge set is completely different from its appearance in the previous movie: its layout is much more similar to the Enterprise's bridge, and the captain's chair is no longer on a raised dais.
  • All of the Enterprise crew are wearing the same clothes they wore when they stole the Enterprise, except for Chekov who has replaced his awful pink jumpsuit with a cool leather jacket.
• Rogue Agent: The Klingon Ambassador tries painting Captain Kirk as this, in an attempt to get him extradited.
• Scary Science Words: McCoy bluffs getting Gillian past a police officer guarding the hospital room Chekov is in by claiming she's suffering from "acute post-prandial upper-abdominal distension". Afterwards, when asked about by Kirk, he reveals it to mean "cramps."
• Screw the Rules, It's the Apocalypse!: In that the crew are not averse to breaking the law in the 20th century in order to save the Earth in the 23rd, to wit:
  • Scotty and McCoy obtaining a supply of Plexiglass (to house the whales) by trading the formula for transparent aluminum to a Plexiglass engineer;
  • Chekov and Uhura illegally boarding a US Navy vessel and stealing power (for the purposes of recrystallizing the dilithium matrix in the warp drive, allowing them to get home);
  • Then Kirk and company removing a criminal suspect under arrest (Chekov, who gets captured in the process) from police custody.
  • They also flatten a garbage can and damage the lawn of Golden Gate Park when they land the ship.
• Sequel Hook: The crew is absolved of all criminal charges and are given a new ship, a virtually identical Constitution-class USS Enterprise: NCC-1701-A. The adventures of this ship are continued in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but it also paved the way for the introduction of the Galaxy Class USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D.
  • Relations between the Federation and the Klingons are left in bad shape because of the Genesis Incident. The Klingons vow there will be no peace as long as Kirk lives, setting up Klaa's pursuit of Kirk in the next film (and the eventual resolution of the antagonism with the Khitomer Confrence in VI).
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Combined with Expospeak Gag, for saying "cramps after eating":
  McCoy: This woman has acute post-prandial upper-abdominal distension!
  Kirk: What did you say she had?
  McCoy: Cramps.
• Sherlock Can Read: Spock suggests a complicated strategy for finding the whales, but Kirk immediately points out that there are 2 of them at the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito. Spock asks how he knows this, and he replies "simple logic", pointing to an advertisement for the whale exhibit on a bus that just pulled up.
• Shout-Out:
  • According to Word of God, the probe is modeled after Rama.
  • The Whales are named after George Burns and Gracie Allen.
  • Gillian refers to Kirk and Spock as Robin Hood and Friar Tuck.
  • Sulu still pines for Excelsior, but Scotty refers to her as a "bucket of bolts."
• Simple Solution Won't Work: When Spock deduces that the probe is seeking humpback whales to communicate with, Kirk suggests trying to answer it with simulated whalesong based on recordings, which would certainly be much easier than traveling back through time to try and find living instances of a long-extinct species. Spock points out that since they have no idea about the language of whalesong, they'd effectively be speaking gibberish^note Also, even if they played back recordings for the probe, they still wouldn't know what the whalesong was actually saying. Even if not gibberish, if the response doesn't match the question ("How are you doing on your planet?" "This is nice weather." "Hello? Can you hear me?" "I will go look for food now."), the probe could become, for lack of a better term, angry about the attempted deception and make things even worse.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot:
  • Kirk tries to be this, with middling success. "Double dumbass on you!"
  • Spock tries even harder, with less success.
• Snap Back: After all the trial and tribulation the crew goes through in the last three films, they all end up back where they started: on the bridge of the Enterprise ready for a new adventure.
• Sophisticated as Hell: A major source of humor from Spock.
  • A line from the Bus Punk's song:
  I eschew you,
  And I say SCREW YOU!
• So Proud of You: Sarek to Spock at end of the film, with his customary Vulcan reserve.
• Space Friction: As with the Excelsior in the previous film, when the shuttles in Spacedock lose power they come to a stop, rather than drifting forward until they hit something.
• Spaceship Slingshot Stunt: The crew slingshots around the sun at a high enough warp speed to create a time-space warp that carries them back to the 1980s. While it's explained that the star's massive gravity field is used to bend space-time, the logistics of how they choose exactly where and when they end up is explained away as Spock just being that good.
• Space Whale Aesop: Trope Namer. Don't hunt whales to extinction or an alien probe will come to destroy us all!
  • Only an example, though, for the most Literal-Minded interpretation. The intended Aesop is more along the lines of "you don't know what you've got till it's gone", specifically the permanence of extinction.
  • Also, don't play your music too loud on the bus or you will be nerve-pinched.
  • Just because somebody claims to have come from the future to save the Earth doesn't mean they're crazy or trying to scam you. They're only almost certainly crazy or trying to scam you.
• Spotting the Thread:
  Security Guard: How's the patient, Doctor?
  Kirk: He's going to make it.
  Guard: He? They went in with a she!
  Kirk: One little mistake... [runs]
• Stable Time Loop: All over the damn place.
  • Scotty and transparent aluminum. In the novelization, the engineer he sells the formula to is the one who introduce[d/s] it to the world, and Scotty discusses the trope specifically when McCoy calls him on it.
    Scotty: How do we know he didn't invent the thing?
    • In the Novelization, Scotty practically fanboys over the engineer, Marcus Nichols, when they are introduced, because Scotty recognizes Nichols' name as that of the inventor of transparent aluminum; Scotty hints that he and Bones might be required to tell him about it.
    • Nichols says himself it will take years to figure out the matrix, so they aren't even giving him the formula — just enough hints.
  • When Kirk sells his glasses at a pawn shop.
    Spock: Admiral, weren't those a gift from Dr. McCoy?
    Kirk: And they will be again. That's the beauty of it.
• Stay with the Aliens: Downplayed, with Gillian deciding to leave her life and come along with Kirk's group into the future aboard a modified Klingon spaceship that is manned by the half-alien Spock.
• Stopped Dead in Their Tracks: After Spock foolishly jumps into the whale tank and performs a mind-meld on Gracie, Gillian gives the two a ride back to San Francisco Proper in her pickup truck. As she drives on, Spock unexpressively blurts out a line that shocks Gillian and makes her slam on the brakes.
  Spock: Gracie is pregnant.
• Stunned Silence: The reaction of Kirk and his crew when they learn that Earth is in danger.
• Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard: During the FBI's interrogation of Chekov:
  Agent #1: What do you think?
  Agent #2: He's a Russkie.
  Agent #1: That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Of course he's a Russkie, but he's a retard or something.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Admiral Cartwright for Admiral Morrow, who appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The novelization implies Morrow got replaced due to a scandal that erupted from Kirk's actions.
• Theme Music Abandonment: James Horner's themes from The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, as well as Jerry Goldsmith's themes from the first film, were not used in Leonard Rosenman's score for The Voyage Home. Though they still keep the "Enterprise fanfare" at the beginning, which goes all the way back to the original series.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Actually averted in the restaurant; for once, a movie remembers that that there's an interval of time between ordering and receiving food that they can put dialogue into. And when Kirk bolts just as the pizza arrives, Gillian has the waiter box it to go. Kirk actually brings his pizza back to share with the crew.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Kirk does this just before they go back in time:
  "May fortune favor the foolish."
• Time-Travelers Are Spies: Chekov and Uhura, big time. Though it might have gone better if one of them wasn't Russian. In the Novelization, the fact Uhura is African doesn't help matters.^note Ethiopia's relationship with the USSR, for one.
• Time-Travel Romance: Kirk finds a Love Interest wherever and whenever he goes, doesn't he? Though it's very low-key (especially for Kirk) and doesn't really become much more than some flirting and a hug. Which makes sense considering the character becoming a female scientist was actually a fairly late revision to the script... in prior drafts, the character was a conspiracy theorist played by Eddie Murphyinvoked.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Spock of all people screws up here. Leonard Nimoy stresses the tense loud and clear, so it wouldn't take eidetic memory to remember it, too.
• Time Traveler's Dinosaur: The humpback whales George and Gracie are this due to being Extinct in the Future.
• Too Dumb to Live: Oh, Chekov. Be grateful you're in the franchise's most upbeat entry when you go right up to the nearest cop, in '80s San Francisco, and start asking him about "nuklear wessels" in a Russian accent.^Explanation That was a real cop, by the way, who didn't know he was in a movie. His reaction to a Russian man in strange clothing asking him about "nuklear wessels" is his totally genuine reaction.
• Totally Radical: Kirk doesn't quite have a grasp on 1986 idioms. Nor does Spock.
  Kirk: Well, double dumbass on you!
• Tranquil Fury: Sarek is incensed with the Klingon Ambassador's attempted justifications for Commander Kruge's actions in the previous movie. Of course, being a typical Vulcan, Sarek is still reserved about it but his tone and words make it clear what he thinks.
  Sarek: Your vessel did destroy U.S.S. Grissom. Your men did kill Kirk's son. Do you deny these events?
  Klingon Ambassador: We deny nothing! We have the right to preserve our race!
  Sarek: You have the right to commit murder?
• Troll: Scotty referring to Bones as "his assistant". Scotty's look after implies that he said it just to mess with him. Also, one wonders if Spock's misuse of swears didn't become purposeful over time, especially after Kirk criticized him for it.
  Kirk: Spock, where the hell is the power you promised?
  Spock: One damn minute, Admiral.
• Trouble from the Past: The humans of the past hunted whales to extinction, and that turned out to be a bad idea.
• Unishment: When Kirk is demoted back to the Captaincy of a starship... which is what he wanted all along anyway.
• Universal Driver's License: Sulu manages to learn how to fly a helicopter in just one day. Granted, he did quickly learn to pilot a Klingon starship in the previous movie, but learning to fly a helicopter as opposed to a starship that quickly is a bit of a stretch.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Chekov gives Kirk a simple explanation for how he and Uhura plan to collect high-energy photons from the aircraft carrier Enterprise. It works perfectly — until the transporter fizzles out and Chekov is captured. And critically injured trying to escape. Although it didn't help that he tempted fate by saying "No one will ever know we were there."
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Most people are willing to accept the slightly out-of-touch Spock as a harmless stoner, even as he does weird things like jump into the whale tank...until he says things about the whales that he shouldn't be able to know. Truth in Television as anyone who lives in San Francisco could tell you.
• Villain of Another Story: Admiral Lance Cartwright, who makes his debut here, but does not become one of the primary villains until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which is a interesting aspect as this installment had No Antagonist unlike the other films and Cartwright doesn't show any signs of villainy at all, unless he is good at concealing it to get on Kirk's good side.
• Visible Boom Mic: A variation: in the scene of the crew on San Francisco streets, the film crew wearing Star Trek IV badges can be seen inside a building through a large plate glass window.
• Weapons Understudies: The nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is here played by the non-nuclear USS Ranger. The Enterprise's reactor area was highly classified and radioactive to the point the film would have been unusable, and even if filming was feasible, she was at sea at the time. If you look closely, you can see several sailors wearing Ranger insignia.
• Weather-Control Machine: The Probe creates devastating storms in Earth's atmosphere as a side effect of its transmission.
• Weld the Lock: Kirk uses a phaser to melt the lock on a door he locked some 20th-century medstaff in. This, incidentally, is the only time a phaser is fired throughout the entire movie (successfully—Chekov's attempt fizzles due to a malfunction), showing just how Lighter and Softer IV is compared to pretty much all the other films.^note No phasers, handheld or otherwise, were fired in The Motion Picture either, though that film did feature several torpedoes from Klingons, Enterprise, and V'Ger.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Spock and Sarek, by human standards anyway. To a Vulcan, the two were all but weeping Manly Tears and bear hugging each other.
• We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Demonstrated when McCoy, visiting a twentieth-century hospital, is horrified that a woman is undergoing kidney dialysis. "Dialysis? What is this, the Dark Ages?" He gives her a pill, and minutes later, doctors are dumbfounded by her miraculous recovery as she grows a new kidney.
• Wham Line:
  • "Gracie is pregnant."
  • Kirk, when he realizes the only way to save Earth:
    Kirk: Begin computations for time warp.
• Wham Shot: The Enterprise-A is revealed behind the Excelsior at the end of the movie.
• What a Piece of Junk: For all the crap the crew give the Bird-of-Prey compared to the Enterprise, it holds up remarkably well through all the insane things they put it through.
• What We Now Know to Be True: See We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future.
• What Year Is This?:
  • Subverted. All official material indicates they travel back to 1986 (the year the film was released), but Spock determines from the pollution in the atmosphere as being "the latter half of the twentieth century" and Kirk doesn't ask to get more specific than that as it doesn't matter.
  • Later, Kirk is seen looking at a newspaper machine, but only to confirm that the time period still has a currency-based economy and they will need to acquire some money in order to complete the mission.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Gillian tells Kirk that the whales will be shipped out at noon on the following day, forcing him to go into a panic. Subverted, as the whales end up getting shipped in the middle of the night to avoid a media circus.
• Wiper Start: Sulu with the helicopter, though it's while he's already in flight.
• Yes-Man: The Klingon ambassador regards the Vulcans as being this to the Federation as a whole. Or as he puts it, they are the "intellectual puppets" of the Federation.
• You Can See That, Right?: The two sanitation workers who witness the landing of the cloaked Bird of Prey in Golden Gate Park.
  "Did you see that?"
  "No, and neither did you, so shut up."
• Your Size May Vary: The Bird of Prey rechristened "HMS Bounty" will change size and shape depending on what shot is taken, especially when compared to the previous movie. It varies from about 100 meters wide with maybe three levels to about 50 meters with only space for one level. The famous image of the Bird of Prey decloaking over a whaling ship is considerably upscaled to about 150 meters. Given they were able to fit two humpback whales in the cargo space, the largest size makes more sense. Given the popularity and proclivity of this ship design used across the franchise and the wildly different scale used, the actual canon implies that Klingons made this exact design in about four different sizes.

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My friends... we've come home.