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Dom Robinson reviews
Paramount
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8023
- Running time: 117 minutes
- Year: 1986
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 18 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Surround
- Languages: English, German
- Subtitles: 15 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Theatrical Trailer, Directors’ Series Featurette
Director:
- Leonard Nimoy
(Funny About Love, Holy Matrimony, Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock, Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home, Three Men and a Baby, TV: Deadly Games, Mission: Impossible, TJ Hooker)
Producer:
- Harve Bennett
Screenplay:
- Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer
Music:
- Leonard Rosenman
Cast:
- Captain James T. Kirk: William Shatner
Spock: Leonard Nimoy
Bones: DeForest Kelley
Scotty: James Doohan
Chekov: Walter Koenig
Uhura: Nichelle Nichols
Sulu: George Takei
Dr. Gillian Taylor: Catherine Hicks
Ambassador Sarek: Mark Lenard
Amanda Grayson: Jane Wyatt
Dr. Christine Chapel: Majel Barrett
Federation Council President: Robert Ellenstein
Klingon Ambassador: John Schuck
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home,must go down in history as having one of the poorest storylines ever in aTrek film – well, behind No.5‘s meeting withGod – and I’m surprised why this is reveered so much just because it hasa higher comedy element than the rest.
For reasons best known to the scriptwriters (what on earth were they smokingwhen they put pen to paper?) a force has come about in the 23rd Century whichis threatening to kill off the Earth, despite the fact that it looks like afootball adjacent to the bat from the old arcade game Arkanoid, aBreakout-clone.
How to get rid of this evil? Oh, just travel back in time to San Francisco,1986, collect a couple of humpback whales and let them sing to it. Then peaceand harmony will be restored. And to make it just that bit harder, since theydestroyed the Enterprise in film no.3, they’ll have to take the mammals backin the Klingon ship they nicked last time.
As for the comedy element, this is the standard “fish out of water” farewhich begins with Kirk and Spock attempting to board a bus – and gettingchucked off because they don’t understand the meaning of the words “exactchange please”. If that’s humour, then you should enjoy every single ITV andBBC sitcom ever produced(!)
Oh, and don’t forget the love interest for Kirk in the form of whale expertDr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks), but it’s a love that can neverbe because of their different timezones.
The Star Trek crew were terrible at playing ‘Hide and Seek’
On the plus side, the picture is presented in the correct 2.35:1 widescreenratio and is anamorphic. As far as I know, this is the first time it’sactually been presented correctly since any video versions (and I presume thePAL laserdisc too, given that it was a few years ago since that was released)were cropped to 2.00:1 for absolutely no good reason. Expect the usual printflecks from time to time though.The average bitrate is 6.62Mb/s, often peaking over 9Mb/s.
The soundtrack has been remastered to Dolby Digital 5.1, but doesn’t oftenget much chance to shine, mostly being used to play the sound of whales doingwhat they do. DD5.1 is available in English only as the Germans get DolbySurround.
The only extras are a Theatrical Trailer (2½mins) in anamorphic2.35:1 widescreen and a 15-minute Directors’ Series Featurette fromLeonard Nimoy, director of both this film and No.3. It’s quite an interestingwalkthrough discussion as he talks about how the film was made and goes backto those locations in some cases, culminating in an explanation of whywidescreen is good for you. Just a shame that someone chose to use 4:3-croppedscenes during this featurette apart from the two minutes when he gives thisexplanation.
There’s are just 18 chapters to the film, with subtitles in 15 languages:English (and hard of hearing), Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic,Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish and Turkish. The menus are static and silent and aside from that,
How long until we get some proper Special Edition DVDs, similar to MGM’s James Bond series?
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.