STAR TREK IV TRIVIA
Some of my favorite, occasionally weird facts about this movie (mostly via Memory Alpha; photo via TrekCore):
- The film is dedicated “to the men and women of the spaceship Challenger,” a reference to the NASA shuttle which broke apart shortly after liftoff on January 28, 1986, ten months before the film’s release.
- This was the highest-grossing film in the Star Trek franchise until the 2009 “reboot.” Due to its box office success, Paramount greenlit a second TV series; Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered the following year.
- Dr. Gillian Taylor was originally a male character, written for Eddie Murphy, who was a fan of Star Trek and had approached Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett about having a role in the film. His character was to be a “UFO nut” and a “wacky” (dare I even say … nutty?) college professor.
- Early drafts of the script had Saavik remaining on Vulcan due to her being pregnant, following young Spock’s pon farr in the previous movie. (Other, extracanonical material has Saavik as sort of surrogate/foster child of Spock’s, so: ew?)
- Most of the shots of the humpback whales were taken using four-foot animatronics models, which were so realistic that U.S. fishing authorities publicly criticized the filmmakers for getting too close to whales in the wild. A large animatronic tail was also created, for the scene on the sinking Bird of Prey, filmed on the Paramount car park, which was flooded for the shoot.
- The “punk on the bus” who Spock KOs with a nerve pinch is played by Kirk Thatcher, an associate producer on the film. He wrote the song (“I Hate You”) and his IMDB quote is “I could win the Nobel Peace Prize and my grave would still say ‘Punk On Bus - Star Trek IV’.”
- The computer used by Scotty (”Hello, Computer”) is a Mac; Apple receives a credit at the end of the film.
- Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) and Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett) both appear in this film in non-speaking roles. This would be Barrett’s last appearance as Chapel (although she’ll be back in later films, and in TNG, in other roles).
- The whales are named “George” and “Gracie” for husband-wife comedy duo George Burns and Gracie Allen.
