this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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The plot of the fourth movie, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, is a slightly off the wall plot.
A giant alien space probe arrives in orbit of Earth making weird noises, it sucks up all the power from ships in orbit and power grids on the surface and starts evaporating the oceans. Turns out it wants to talk to humpback whales, which in this timeline were hunted to extinction in the 20th century, so there are no humpback whales on earth for the probe to talk to, and it's literally tearing up the oceans to find them.
Meanwhile, Kirk and his crew of main characters are on Vulcan (Spock's home planet) in possession of a stolen Klingon warship which they've been preparing for the flight back to Earth to face court martial, because of the events of the previous movie. They learn of the problem before they reach Earth, they figure out that the probe wants to talk to whales. "can we pretend to be whales?" "we can make the sounds, but we don't speak the language." So they just casually decide to time travel by doing a high speed lap of the sun. No shit they just fly really fast around the sun and arrive in the 1980's, where it just so happens the Bay Aquarium has a breeding pair of captive humpback whales on display. Meanwhile, the trip through time ran them out of fuel. Cue a LucasArts style multi-problem plot where they have to figure out how to refuel their ship, modify it to carry humpback whales, find and acquire the whales, and then get back to the future.
Spoiler alert: They do. They crash their ship into 23rd century San Fransisco bay and release the whales, which do this whole new age thing with the probe, which then goes "Understandable, have a nice day" sucks in its volleyball and floats away. Then that court martial scene which is actually part of the previous movie not this one ensues, where Kirk is punished with a reward.
TL;DR the main plot of the fourth movie involves the Enterprise's crew, but not the Enterprise, going back in time to bring humpback whales back from extinction.
Oh, so this is what that futurama episode is parodying. The tones one.
Pretty sure they're parodying Close Encounters of the Third Kind there. The one where an alien ship is approaching blasting out these tones, and Fry thinks he remembers it, they build this huge elaborate keyboard setup and Fry plays two notes on it and it turns out it's Nibbler shenanigans? That's parodying Close Encounters.
I think I can almost recommend going and watching Star Trek IV on its own, the plot is mostly self-contained for being the third in a trilogy, but I think it does stand on its own. It also has a profoundly good soundtrack, like, even for Star Trek.
Guess I have at least 2 movies to add to my watch list. Maybe 5.
Also Close Encounters of the Third Kind.