"Ok. Where did we leave off? The Enterprise is destroyed and our heroes are stranded on Vulcan. Probably on the run or at least wanted by Starfleet. So, we have them go back to Earth to face justice but on the way…
…Earth is accosted by a giant probe! Its looking for something! What is it looking for? WHALES. Which means its almost certainly piloted by whales. WHALES are coming to Earth to find out why the whales on Earth stopped communicating! But all the whales on Earth are gone! So what do we do?? Do we communicate with the space whales? Does Kirk give an impassioned speech to save humanity? Does he defeat the space whales computer with logic? Does he sleep with a space whale??
NO! We go back in time and snatch some whales!! And those whales will communicate with the probe and say ‘Hey! We were unhappy in this zoo and these guys kidnapped us and brought us forward in time to tell you to knock it off!’
And everyone swims and has a good ol time!
Oh yeah…we make Kirk a Captain again and kick the bridge crew off of some other Constellation class ship, rename it Enterprise and give it to Kirk and his crew the end."
PS: “When the crew is just about to go back in time?? Thats when you want the acid to really hit,”
The movie is a silly premise but, it seems no one on earth speaks whale so we can’t talk to them. He can’t get at the whale computer because anything that gets remotely near the probe shuts down. Since he never gets to board the whale ship he can’t sleep with any of them.
Only choice is to go find some whales which only exist in the past (although, if there is a whale probe checking on the whales one would assume there are whales in other parts of the galaxy).
Also, those whales having been whale-napped in the past seem a-ok with telling the whale probe all is cool and they can go to their next destination.
The crew of Enterprise had no Enterprise, but did have a Klingon bird of prey with cloaking device. That’s crazy. Plus, as you note, they (the crew of Enterprise) were on the outs with Star Fleet, so they (the producers) obviously had to do something big to wrap things up and put a bow on it.
Did it have to be time travel and whales? No. But it had to be big, and whales are pretty damn big, so it makes about as much sense as any other adventure with a pay off big enough to reset the series close enough to the starting point: the voyages of the starship Enterprise (and its crew) such that further profits could be had.
I just mean it sounds crazy as a pitch after all the pew pew and zoom zoom and boom boom. I quite like the movie myself. And come on…that claymation during the time travel is bonkers. I love the bold choice but its a weird sell.
I honestly don’t recall the claymation. I guess I’ll have to be on the lookout whenever I next decide to watch it.
ETA: Consider also, the crew (or elements of the crew) of Enterprise had travelled back in time at least twice before that I can recall. Once through that magic gateway, another time during that Gary Seven travesty. So… time travel for (insert reason) is old hat. But a Klingon Bird of Prey? You must really be smoking something to imagine the crew of Enterprise on that. Really, it was STIII:TS4S that was crazy.
The idea that the aliens onboard that gigantic probe might have been whales (or perhaps related to whales?) never occurred to me. Although reading the Wikipedia article to review, I did learn something else; the original idea was to feature Eddie Murphy as a Berkeley astrophysicist rather than the 20th Century marine biologist played by Catherine Hicks.
Never occurred to me, either. I always assumed that, at some point prior to the 21st century, the aliens had come to Earth, and made peaceful contact with humpback whales (possibly even before humans had emerged as the dominant species on Earth). When they returned, and sought to re-contact the whales, and got no reply, they started messing up the Earth – though it wasn’t clear if it was intentional or not.
Look, they wanted to make a comic movie about the Enterprise crew bumbling through modern-day America, and they happened to make it in 1986, when saving the whales was a big issue of the day. It’s really not that complicated.
(Also, Kirk being a philanderer is pretty much a myth. Women are always throwing themselves at him, true, and he’ll flirt a bit if it helps his mission, but I don’t think he gets laid once in TOS. Scotty gets more action than he does).
This Stack Exchange article goes through a fairly exhaustive list of canon Kirk appearances (the original series and the movies, not including the JJ Abrams movies). They come up with several different numbers, though it appears that he had sex three or four times, plus had 4 or 5 additional past dalliances that are mentioned, and/or have his former flame show up.
They had to find a way to bring Spock back after killing him off and restoring his brain a second time. They also needed a way for Kirk and crew to reingratiate themselves with Starfleet after hijacking and losing the Enterprise.
Point of order…it was not the Enterprise. It was a Klingon Bird of Prey (don’t ask…or, see the previous movie). IIRC the human crew named it the HMS Bounty. Not sure what the Klingons called it.
Honestly, there are a lot of works of fiction that seem like it must have been pitched by a crazy person . It’s amazing to me how anyone can take a crazy idea and turn it into something good. My mother isn’t a big Trek fan, but she was nice enough to take her ten year old son to see Star Trek IV in the theater and even she enjoyed it.
