Reviw by C.J. Bunce
There be whales here! Yes, but how did they get there? That question and many more are answered in John and Maria Tenuto’s new book, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home The Making of the Classic Film, available for pre-order now here at Amazon, first previewed at borg earlier this year. The most popular production of any TV series or film in 60 years of Star Trek, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home remains one of the most beloved science fiction films of all time, and one of the most fun. Ask anyone with the barest understanding of science fiction or Star Trek specifically and they are likely to remember “the one where Spock swims with the whales.” From the inception of the line: I’m from Iowa–I only work in outer space, to not-quite shooting on location in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, to designing all-new costumes and creatures for background scenes, get ready to take a new look at what Roger Ebert called the best of the Star Trek movies.
The authors break down the film into 17 extensive chapters, beginning with director/actor Leonard Nimoy and executive producer Harve Bennett taking on the project, to contracting with Eddie Murphy as the guest star, to writing, and re-writing the script including the return of Star Trek II writer-director Nicholas Meyer to pen the 1980s San Francisco humor. That’s only the beginning. One of the problems of creating a book about a movie made 40 years ago is the loss of so many actors and production staff. The authors lean hard into one crewmember in particular, who may seem surprising at first. That’s associate producer Kirk Thatcher, hired as Nimoy’s assistant, who wrote the foreword to the book and serves as a guiding voice throughout the book. As it turns out Thatcher did much more–drafting script lines, coordinating scenes, portraying the punk on the San Francisco bus that is subjected to Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch, and recording the punk song played on the “ghetto blaster” that gets shut down.
Thatcher, along with Meyer, George Takei, Robin Curtis, Michael Okuda, Ralph Winter, Ken Ralston, and others provide new insight into the making of the movie, and the authors use contemporary interviews, papers, movie stills, and promotional materials to flesh out the story. Readers will find concept art from the design team and legendary artist Ralph McQuarrie, storyboard thumbnails, and many photographs not published before, including images John Tenuto had from his parents’ video camera–they happened to videotape the filming of the aquarium scenes while on vacation when he was a kid.
High points of the book include insight into Robert Fletcher’s re-used and new costumes, learning why Eddie Murphy left the project, digging into the trials and failures in filming actual whales, building whale models and using a tank and matte paintings to get the final shots, chronicling the “nuclear wessels” scenes on the streets of San Francisco and onboard a U.S. Navy supercarrier, Nimoy participating in the selection of musical cues, and looking through behind the scenes images of the set design and makeups for Harve Bennett’s “bookend” scenes that introduce the story and reveal Kirk & Co.’s fate at film’s end.
The best story recounts the staff taking their first films of the whale models in action as the real thing to Nimoy, Bennett, and whale experts. Each marveled at this surprise actual whale footage, with experts from Hawaii claiming to know where the footage had been filmed–only to learn that none of it was real. It was all done through the moviemaking magic of the crew and Industrial Light & Magic.
The environmental message of the movie resonates to this day, reminding everyone of the importance of what we have and what could be lost forever. For Star Trek fans and fans of 1980s movies, it will always stand out as the most beloved of the movies and the most fun look at the original Enterprise crew.
Here for the movie’s 40th anniversary, Titan Books is publishing this long overdue look inside the making of the movie with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home The Making of the Classic Film, available for pre-order now here at Amazon. It’s in bookshops September 1, 2026.
