39 Years Ago Today, Star Trek Released Its Most Surprising Sequel (With a Moment Unlike Anything Else in the Franchise)

39 years ago, Star Trek released the sequel nobody ever thought we’d see. Time travel has always been a sci-fi staple, and Star Trek: The Original Series used the idea pretty effectively. The first season is noted for “The City on the Edge of Forever,” an epic story that used time travel for character purposes, with Kirk forced to sacrifice the woman he loved to preserve the timeline. By the time of Deep Space Nine, the franchise had its own Department of Temporal Investigations, who rightly considered Captain Kirk a menace.

Still, Kirk’s most celebrated time travel adventures wasn’t one that happened in the original series at all. After the success of Star Wars, Star Trek headed to the big screen, with a series of successful blockbuster movies. The crew of the Enterprise proved as big a draw on the big screen as they had been on the small (perhaps more), and the movies rolled out in succession; The Wrath of Khan dared to kill off Spock, but Leonard Nimoy’s character returned in The Search for Spock. Nobody expected what came next, though.

The Voyage Home Was Star Trek’s Biggest Time Travel Story

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home released 39 years ago today. The title seemed to suggest this film was about the USS Enterprise’s return to Earth after the events of The Search for Spock, but it concealed a tremendous secret; Earth was threatened in the Enterprise’s time, and the only way to save the planet was to travel back to 1986. Soon, Captain Kirk and his crew were interacting with the present day, allowing for a tremendous sci-fi commentary on technology, popular culture, and science in the 1980s. It was unlike any Star Trek story ever told to date.

Gene Roddenberry had always envisioned Star Trek as a commentary on the real world. The Voyage Home made the subtext obvious, with the Enterprise crew starring in a “fish out of water” plot that was both humorous and wonderfully wholesome. Thematically, “home” lay near the center of the story, with most of the main crew-members coming to understand that the Enterprise was their home, but only so long as they were with one another. The comedic tone was the perfect antidote to what had been a gloomy year, given global events such as the Challenger disaster and a failed US-USSR summit.

There are powerful messages in The Voyage Home, but they’re handled with a slick and disarming style that makes the movie a joy to watch. The science and social commentary is dated now, of course, but that’s fine; this is a time travel story exploring the 1980s, after all. Besides, ’80s nostalgia has been a big thing now ever since Stranger Things Season 1, so everything old is new again.

The Voyage Home Ended in the Most Unexpected Way

In the end, The Voyage Home is most notable for a pleasantly surprising environmental message. The Enterprise crew swiftly learn that there’s only one way to save the world in their own time; by saving the whales. Star Trek had tied in to a contemporary issue, because many large whale species were in danger of extinction in the 1980s, ultimately leading to a hunting ban. In The Voyage Home, those efforts were doomed to fail, but Earth would be saved when the Enterprise crew took two humpback whales back to their own time to replenish the species.

Over on StarTrek.com, Lauren Thoman penned an excellent editorial that pointed to a deeper subplot than just “save the whales.” The remarkable thing about this bonkers time travel plot is that Kirk and Spock consider it easier to travel back in time and kidnap whales, than to simulate whalesong to the alien probe threatening the Earth. As Thoman points out, this prefigures modern-day discussions about being a good ally, about not assuming you can speak on behalf of others, and instead recognizing that people can only speak for themselves. The Voyage Home‘s whale plot is as timely as it is dated.

There had never been a moment in Star Trek quite like the end of The Voyage Home. There have been many time travel stories since then, often sending heroes back in time to the present day to repeat that formula; but lightning never strikes twice. The Voyage Home is the perfect blend of humor and thematic complexity, a wonderful addition to the franchise that still deserves to be celebrated today.

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