10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek IV The Voyage Home

For the longest time, Star Trek IV was the most profitable and popular film of the franchise

known even to non-Trekkies as The One with the Whales. It was a hit because it didn't require you to know much about Star Trek in order to get it

and because it was a family-friendly film released in time for the 1986 holiday season

The Voyage Home is a bit of a romp, a fish-out-of-water romp with tongue-planted firmly in cheek

and plenty of comedic moments, so you can't take it too seriously. But at the same time, it's not unreasonable to expect events in a film to make some sense

and for the characters to behave appropriately. In the case of this film, a number of silly things happen because they're expedient to the plot

not because they make a lot of sense. So, get ready to strap in with me, Bree, as we slingshot around the sun

to find the 10 dumbest things that happen in The One with the Whales. Number 10. The Space Tugs Stop When They Lose Power

Even as the Excelsior and the other starships and space docks sit on their figurative hands and are disabled

we see the engines go dead on a pair of tugboat shuttles, and they come to a halt

I'm sorry, but, huh? These are not motorboats on a lake whose engines die and their momentum bleeds off pushing against the water

These are spaceships in a near vacuum. Even if the preposterous airship hangar was pressurized, which there's no evidence of

Their momentum should have carried them in straight lines until they smashed into a space dock wall or one of those disabled starships

Which makes you wonder, if the probe disrupts all the power sources employed by Starfleet and on Earth

what exactly happened to everything else when it pulled into orbit? It clearly didn't kill all the power, because at Starfleet Command we see dimmed lights and scrambled, but operating, screens

So, what level of power was affected? As the bird of prey gets knocked out immediately upon popping back into the 23rd century

we have to assume that every powered vehicle and delivery drone in the air above Earth plummeted and crashed

One hopes Earth's government grounded everything before this could happen, but given Starfleet's wait till after the last minute incompetence, this is unlikely

Which means Starfleet is dumb. Number 9. If you're going to San Francisco

Kirk. There she is. From the Institute. If we play our cards right, we may be able to find out when those whales are leaving

Spock, how will playing cards help? Jillian, well, if it isn't Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, where are you fellas' head

Kirk, back to San Francisco. Sure, Kirk is a fish out of water in 1986, but he seems a little lost here

Perhaps he needs to turn around and take notice that the Golden Gate Bridge is behind Spock and himself

and that they're walking away from it. they're already in San Francisco when Jillian picks them up

In fact, they're on the Marina Green. And no, they're not on the Sausalito side, where Cetacean Institute is purportedly located

The view we have of the bridge is impossible to get from the other side

Kirk may be from the 23rd century, but by all indications in this and previous films

the Golden Gate Bridge is still in the same place. Kirk must know where he is So to paraphrase Jillian Why the Koi geography Number eight The Father of Transparent Aluminum With no transparent aluminum to be found in Ronald Reagan America

Scotty and Bones have to seek out the clunkier 20th century equivalent big slabs of plexiglass

There's no such thing as a free lunch, so they have to barter to get what they need

and the only thing of value to PlexiCorp planet manager Dr. Nichols

is Scotty's 23rd century knowledge of materials not yet invented. The movie has some fun with this by hanging a lantern on it

McCoy. Well, a moment alone, please. You do realize, of course, if we give him the formula, we're altering the future

Scotty. Why? How do we know he didn't invent the thing? How indeed

But even if Dr. Nichols was indeed the inventor, when something was invented could affect history just as much as who

And wait a second, why does it need to be transparent or even plastic

Clear plastics are not as durable as opaque ones, and plastics in general are less durable and more prone to leaking than stainless steel, so why

Oh, wait, yeah, it's a movie, and we want to see the whales, not slabs of steel

Number 7. He's a Ruski, but they're idiots. FBI agent. Commander Chekhov. Starfleet. United Federation of Planets

Right. Commander, is there anything you want to tell us? Chekhov. Like what? FBI agent

Like who you really are and what you're doing here and what these things are

Chekhov. I am Pavlov Chekhov, Commander in Starfleet, United Federation of Planets

Service Number 6565827D. Kirk told everyone to remove insignias before they left the ship

So why did Chekhov bring his ID with him? And why does he bother telling his interrogators his serial number

Sure, they're meaningless in 1986, but anything he tells them is going to be meaningless

He might as well claim that he's Antov Chekhov, the playwright. Speaking of dumb, the agents here are beyond stupid

They have no idea what the devices Chekhov carries are, and they just keep them on the table where he can reach them

Also, why is Chekhov being interrogated by a civilian when they're on board a ship

They're at the Alameda Naval Base. surely they'd take him to a base facility

Number six, the whale horizon. Zooming in on something hundreds or thousands of kilometers away in space is easy

because there's effectively nothing between you and almost anything you wanna look at

Down on the Earth's atmosphere, that's something else. Uhura, affirmative, contact with the whales

Kirk, bearing. Uhura, bearing 237, range 600 nautical. Kirk, put them on screen

Jillian, how can you do that? How indeed, Jillian? Unlike in space, the trouble with looking at things far away on Earth

is that Earth itself tends to get in the way. The further away something is, the higher above the surface you have to go

to get a line of sight on it over the horizon. 600 nautical miles is 1,111 kilometers

and to even see the whales just on the horizon at such a distance

the bird of prey would have to have been at a minimum altitude of 96 meters or 315 feet

But moments earlier, before Uhura reports the distance, we get a POV zipping through clouds

under bright blue skies. Down where the clouds are anything over 200 to 280 kilometers away

would be invisible over the horizon. And the lower you are in the atmosphere, the denser it is

and the harder it is to see through atmospheric haze. This is definitely an example of a science

dumb. Number five, let's do the time warp again and again. Time travel as routinely depicted on

screen is pretty silly and almost never holds up to the barest of scrutinies because it usually

ignores or at least hand waves away one basic fact. Nothing in the universe is truly stationary

The Earth spins on its axis as it moves on its orbit around the Sun

which itself orbits the Milky Way's galaxy's center of mass, and the galaxy is in turn moving through space

which itself is expanding at an accelerating rate. Hop forward in time just one hour

and the Earth would have moved eight times its diameter out from under you. As someone said, it's very cold in space

The slingshot around the Sun thing at least avoids most of this, but in 300 years, the sun will have moved along its orbit just over 2 trillion kilometers

or about a third of a light year. So, every time the bird of prey does its spin around the sun to go backwards or forwards 300 years

it ought to have to boogie a couple of trillion clicks to find the Earth

Time travel in movies? Kind of dumb. Number 4. One little mistake

Star Trek IV is a charming movie, but action-packed it is not

So the chase through the hospital is a welcome bit of up-tempo fun at just the right point in the story

But what the characters are doing, that's pretty foolish. Why the heck do Kirk, Bones, and Jillian hang around in the surgical suite to save Chekov

and then try to roll him out from under the noses of the police

instead of just beaming back to the bird of prey? Oh sure, they don't want the surgeons and nurses to see the transporter whisk them away

but that's an easy fix. just use a blanket or a surgical gown to cover the window in the door to the room where Kirk traps

them. And sure, sure, there'd be impossible to answer questions about how the patients and three

intruders escaped a guarded room with only one exit, but it would have been a lot less risky

Fun scene though, even if they're behaving like the Keystone Cops. Number three, Ahead Whale Factor One. It's fairly preposterous that the Scandinavian

whale catcher just happens to locate George and Gracie mere hours after they've been released into

the ocean. Not only because what are the odds, but because presumably said whales were liberated from

a port, as Jillian explains. Jillian. They'll be flown in a special 747 to Alaska and released there

Territorial waters only extend 22.24 kilometers or 12 nautical miles from the baseline of a country's

coasts, and humpback whales normally swim between 4.8 to 14 kilometers or 3 to 9 miles per hour

which means they could be out into international waters in a few hours But even if the whales are outside the U territorial water that doesn make them fair game for foreign nations

The 1982 U.S. Exclusion Economic Zone around Alaska extends 321 kilometers or 200 miles

It would have taken George and Gracie at least a day and a half to be fair game

even if they'd made a beeline perpendicular to the coast. Of course, one could pretend the

whalers were violating US waters, they're clearly bad bad men, but who knew they were that bad

Number two, he's dead Jim? One of the big crowd-pleasing moments in the film was when Spock

executes his famous Spock neck pinch on the rude punk blasting his boombox, a gag paid homage to in

Picard season two. But put yourself in place of the other passengers on the bus. They see this

punk being rude and then this weird looking character in a robe does something and the

Punk falls face first onto his boombox, shutting it off. From their point of view, what happened

Do you know anyone who can put someone to sleep like that? For all they know, Spock killed a guy right in front of them

Maybe they hate punk rock music that much? In any case, Kirk and Spock were lucky the cops weren't waiting for them at the Cetacean Institute

Funny, but dumb. Number 1. Starfleet's Sitting Ducks Starfleet Command Space dock, this is Starfleet Command. Launch all vessels. Launch all vessels

Controller 2. Sir, space dock doors are inoperative. All emergency systems are non-functional

Controller 1. Engage reserve power. Controller 2. Aye, sir. Controller 1. Starfleet Command

this is space dock on emergency channels. We've lost all internal power. What's wrong with this

picture? Starfleet knows this giant probe is making a beeline for Earth and that it's knocked

out at least five ships en route. Cartwright, Mr. President, the probe is headed directly for us

The signal is damaging everything in its path. The Klingons have lost two vessels. Two starships

and three smaller vessels have been neutralized. So with this seemingly unstoppable unknown bearing

down on them, does Starfleet set up a picket line of starships? Launch ships to approach this unknown

from various trajectories in order to figure out the radius of its power neutralizing force

or study it from afar. None of those. No, no, Starfleet does none of that. Starfleet keeps its

great experiment, the Excelsior, and other ships parked in space dock with the doors closed until

the probe is literally on top of them, with the result that none of them can make an attempt to

contact or escape the probe. Starfleet saw this one coming. That's not just dumb, it's criminally

negligent and dereliction of duty. And those were 10 of the dumbest things in Star Trek

the one with the whales. If you enjoyed this video and or this ongoing series

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Don't forget to check us out on whatculture.com too, because this is also an adaptation of an

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Until next time, I've been Bri with Trek Culture, and don't forget to live long and prosper