Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, or “the one with the whales,” as it’s sometimes called, is one of the more popular films in the original series cinematic universe. Fans enjoy its message of ecological conservation, its lighthearted moments, and who doesn’t get emotional about that ending?
While The Voyage Home is a fan favorite, it was nearly a very different film. Cast changes, character arcs, and filming woes radically changed during pre-production and filming, so let’s take a look at how the original vision and the version released in cinemas on November 6th, 1986.
The doctor who almost wasn’t
One of the main storylines of The Voyage Home is the plight of Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) and her efforts to save two humpback whales that live in captivity at the cetacean institute where she works. Intelligent, driven, and with an affection for a certain Starfleet admiral of our acquaintance, she makes a fine addition to the cast—but she nearly didn’t exist!
Instead of Dr. Taylor, early versions of the film’s script featured a college professor with a UFO obsession, a sort of a wacky “nutty professor” character (which is rather ironic, since the actor who nearly got this role played the title role of a movie with that name 10 years later,) instead of Dr. Taylor. That’s right, the protagonist and ally to the Enterprise crew was nearly played by Eddie Murphy! Murphy wanted the role because of his love for Star Trek but eventually opted to make The Golden Child instead. Writers retooled the script and created the role of Dr. Gillian Taylor instead, and Hicks won the role shortly after.
Sulu was supposed to meet an ancestor in San Francisco
In one scene that never came to be, Sulu (George Takei) was supposed to meet a direct ancestor on the streets of San Francisco, remnants of which made it to the film’s final cut, where an Asian man and woman argue at the back door of a shop and he and Scotty discover the Yellow Pages ad.
In the script, a little boy runs up to Sulu and speaks to him in Japanese, believing him to be a relative. Eventually, Sulu realizes the boy is his three-times grandfather, a clever way to highlight the possible results of time travel. Unfortunately, the child became extremely nervous and couldn’t speak his lines. The scene was pulled, much to Takei’s dismay, as it had been his idea.
A Vulcan love child?
Early in the film, as the crew leaves for Earth to face Starfleet and probable punishment for the events in The Search for Spock, Amanda (Jane Wyman) and Saavik (Robin Curtis) watch as the ship departs Vulcan. While we don’t see Saavik again, early versions of the script had her remaining on Vulcan for a rather shocking reason (at least by 1986 standards).
During Spock’s rapid aging on the Genesis Planet, Saavik assists him when Ponn Farr, the maturing of male Vulcans, comes over him. Writers of The Voyage Home originally had her pregnant with Spock’s child, but this storyline was eventually dropped either due to runtime constraints or because the pregnancy was simply too risqué for a film with a PG rating.
So there you have it! Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home may have gone through plenty of changes during its production, but the final product remains a highly enjoyable franchise favorite all these years later.