OK, here's a nit for ya...
McCoy questioned Spock about "life, death, life; things of that nature." Spock replys that they can't discuss the subject w/o a common frame of reference. So McCoy concludes "you mean I have to die to discuss your feelings on death?" Nice scene.
The problem is McCoy had died before in the episode "Shore Leave." McCoy did have a common frame of reference & shouldn't have even had to ask Spock about death in the first place.

By Ted Prohowich on Friday, November 27, 1998 - 02:42 pm:

I thought I would repost this message here.
It is in the Kitchen Sink:981125-An Eye for News.
----------
In "ST4:TVH" there is a brief scene where you see a newspaper (San Francisco Register), with the headline "Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled."
I can't see the date on the newspaper using VCR.

1) Is the San Francisco Register a real newspaper?
I couldn't find info about it on the WWW.

2) Can you read the date of the newspaper on a laser disc, DVD, or the original film?

3) Is the date on the newspaper, concidered canon as the day they arrived in 1986 San Francisco?

Answer to #3 by
Phil: If the date is legible, I'd say it's also canonical but I don't had a DVD! Anybody?

By Aaron Dotter on Friday, November 27, 1998 - 07:45 pm:

This is a great movie, but there was one thing I found weird. At the end, when the Federation President reads the sentence to Kirk & Crew, the Federation Council members on the sides seem surprised by the decision. Why? Aren't they the ones that made it?

By Hans Thielman on Saturday, November 28, 1998 - 01:17 pm:

Why would the Federation President be involved anyway in judging Kirk and his crew? It's kind of like the President of the United States in the 1920's trying General Billy Mitchell.

Kirk & company simply should have been court-martialed. Upon conviction, the Fed President could then have granted clemency to Kirk & company.

By Ted Prohowich on Saturday, November 28, 1998 - 05:09 pm:

It's all galactic politics. The Fed President was up for re-election and wasn't that popular on Earth. He lost the election anyway. (See ST6:TUC)
This is similar to when a politician visits a district (read as needed votes) for a ribbon cutting and photo shoot.

By Charles Cabe (Ccabe) on Saturday, November 28, 1998 - 07:03 pm:

Perhaps the President lost because he demoted Kirk. (I know Kirk was happy about that, but most citizens, especially the Vulcans, wouldn't know/understand that Kirk was happy about the decision.)

By Cableface on Saturday, December 05, 1998 - 03:40 pm:

How come the Bird-Of-Prey's internal design is totally different in this film?Yes, it looks a lot better (grungier, dirtier, more klingon)but why would the crew do this?

We see H.M.S. Bounty written on the side of the ship at the beggining, but in a close fly-by at the end of the film , the letters are missing.

By Ted Prohowich on Saturday, December 05, 1998 - 07:13 pm:

The letters were painted on, so they probably came off when the ship got a little too close to the sun.

By Gary Holmes on Monday, December 07, 1998 - 09:12 pm:

At the end when the judgement is read, why does Scotty have a commander's rank insignia? Wasn't he promoted to captain in STIII? In next Gen he is referred to as "Captain Scott"

By Mf on Tuesday, December 08, 1998 - 02:46 pm:

I talked to Jimmy Doohan shortly after this film came out. He insisted that when Scotty was made "Captain of Engineering" of the Excelsior in STIII, that constituted a promotion to the RANK of Captain. I'm sure he maintained the same opinion when cast in TNG, and prevailed upon the writers to write it in.

By D.K. Henderson on Tuesday, December 08, 1998 - 05:23 pm:

Breathes there a being with soul so dead, who has never dreamed of just reaching out and zonking some totally obnoxious character? Way to go, Spock!

By Jenny Veitch on Wednesday, December 09, 1998 - 04:27 pm:

Why does Scott think that computer keyboards are old fashioned? He uses a console every day.

By Hans Thielman on Wednesday, December 09, 1998 - 04:43 pm:

I do not understand how Sulu managed to obtain the helicopter.

By Mike Konczewski on Wednesday, December 09, 1998 - 04:49 pm:

That was one of the scenes deleted for time. Somehow he smooth talked his way into it, the same way Kirk, Scotty and McCoy did.

By Merat on Saturday, December 12, 1998 - 01:17 am:

Man! What is with the Vulcans in this movie?
At the end, when the crew is being congratulated by the counel (I know my spelling is a bit wobbly, but it is late) a Vulcan is shaking one of the crew's hand and beaming like a human. :)

And those hats!?!? They look like Vulcan Elves. I can hear them singing now. "Hi ho, hi ho, its off to work we go. We've got to fix this Klingon ship! Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho!"

Also, after the Probe leaves (btw, read "Probe." It has a lot of background information on the Probe.), Spock is very obviously laughing.

By NSetzer on Saturday, December 12, 1998 - 08:54 am:

Spock laughing at the end isn't a nit. Remember in the beginning when the computer asked him how he felt? Well the whole reason he went with Captain Kirk and the others was to experience emotion.

By Mf on Saturday, December 12, 1998 - 02:52 pm:

Well . . . I think they were just having some fun in the water - the actors, I mean. I'm sure it wasn't in the script for Kirk to grab Spock and drag him into the water, either.
Anyone notice the header Jimmy Doohan took coming out of the ship? They put it in under the credits.

By Merat on Saturday, December 12, 1998 - 11:45 pm:

Yeah! I laughed out loud at that. Caroline Hicks looked genuinely concerned about him when he fell head first. :)

By ScottN on Monday, December 14, 1998 - 11:39 am:

Well, lets see... Earth has been wrecked by this alien probe, we're somewhere in the pacific ocean (it looked like they were going *OUT* of SF bay when they went under the Golden Gate Bridge), and we're on a disabled, sinking Klingon ship... I know! Let's laugh and play and wave at the whales!

Somehow, I don't think so...

By Charles Cabe (Ccabe) on Monday, December 14, 1998 - 12:25 pm:

I think they were celebrating saving the Earth. In the "splash" sceene, it is sunny which is a sign that the probe has left or tutned itself off.

By Neil on Sunday, February 28, 1999 - 02:35 am:

Don't the Whales swim towards the Bridge, if this is true then they are either going to swim into the bay and beach themselves or the Bird of Prey crashed in the bay and the whales are swimming out of the bay.

By D.K. Henderson on Thursday, March 04, 1999 - 08:51 am:

Scotty seemed to find the keyboard "quaint", yet his fingers whipped into action as if he'd been doing it for a lifetime, and knew exactly what all the keys were used for.

By Mf on Thursday, March 04, 1999 - 11:48 am:

Yeah, well, back then they didn't make you Chief Engineer just for your ability to run diagnostics . . .

By Spockania on Friday, January 15, 1999 - 02:28 am:

"Quaint" doesn't mean he won't know how to use it. I use a computer for word processing, but I could figure out quickly how to use a typewriter. If it's an old model, I might find it quaint.

By Rodnberry on Tuesday, January 19, 1999 - 06:48 am:

Has anyone ever visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where this was filmed at? It doubled for the Cetacean Institute. I went there in 1992, 6 years after the film came out and it was great! It cost too much to get in or eat there but I enjoyed it all the same. When you first enter the building and look up you can see the same killer whales hanging fromt the ceiling, as shown in the film.

Here's one thing I noticed about the Institute, and I've got a big nit about it. Look carefully at the film. When you see the pool it's full of water and the whales are swimming around in it, and you can see a retaining wall to hold the water in. To me it looks like it's supposed to be a permanent part of the pool, but then after the whales are released there's no wall at all and no indication there ever was! What's up with that? I'll tell you. The real aquarium has no wall there cuz it's open to let seals, sea otters and other marine life come into the tidepools down below. The retaining wall was just a CGI trick. The restaurant Kirk and Dr. Taylor eat at is the cafeteria right above the tidepools and when I ate there it had no waiters at all, let alone pizza. It just had a small selfserve area where you paid for your food and then sat yourself down to eat. No do I remember them having beer but they might've.

Still, if anyone wants to visit an actual location where a Trek film was made then I highly recommend it. You'll see the stairs Gillian leads the tour group up and the pool that Spock swims in and mindmelds with the whale, at the bottom of those stairs, which also take you out above the tidepools.

By Hans Thielman on Tuesday, January 19, 1999 - 03:35 pm:

Was the restaurant scene between Kirk and Dr. Taylor filmed at a real restaurant? I thought it was just another set on the Paramount lot that was built for the film.

By Rodnberry on Wednesday, January 20, 1999 - 03:43 am:

Yes, it was filmed inside the cafeteria there. The waiter who served them is a comedian, too, but I've not seen him in anything lately. His name is Bob something, and he's really tall and has a big chin like Jay Leno.

By MikeC on Wednesday, February 10, 1999 - 07:01 pm:

I thought this movie was entertaining, with a fine message. It's just that late in the film (when Kirk meets up with Dr. Gillian Taylor) it starts to sag from lack of--something. After the date scene, attempts at suspense are negated, and the film starts to become slow.

However, the ending with Sarek and Spock, and the new Enterprise is rather neat, and memorable. A good movie, one of the best. My favorite is still Star Trek VI, though.

By BrianB on Thursday, April 08, 1999 - 05:02 am:

I agree with Phil about Scotty beaming Kirk, McCoy, Taylor and Chekov outside the ship. Why not inside so Sulu wouldn't have to escort the traumatized Chekov up the ramp? Why did Kirk remain outside later to have Scotty beam him up--allowing Taylor to jump him? Like the Chief said, "Hopelessly staged."

By Keith Alan Morgan on Saturday, April 17, 1999 - 01:14 pm:

The Klingon Ambassador says, "There shall be no peace while Kirk lives." I guess that is why the Klingons attacked Deep Space Nine in its 4th season opener. They found out that Kirk saved the day in Star Trek Generations. (And, apparently, Kirk's funeral is a fake so Kirk can have a peaceful retirement.)

Some of the aliens from the trial room looked like they could have come from the Mos Eisley cantina. (But then Ralph McQuarrie worked on both this film and Star Wars.)

Admiral Cartwright looks amazingly like Captain Sisko's dad.

Admiral Cartwright says that the probe is heading straight for Earth, but the graphic shows a curved course. (It reminded me of the line from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, "Space isn't just curved, it's totally bent.")

Spock uses the computer to identify the sound, which it does. However, this is a Klingon ship, why would it have a database of the sounds of living and extinct Earth creatures? Research for a new Klingon opera? Even if it wasn't a Klingon program, why would Kirk and company think to include that particular program?

My VCR's pause button doesn't work that well, but some of the creatures that flashed by were quite interesting. The computer did not restrict its search to sea animals. A bat, lion, dragonfly and chameleon were some of the creatures it examined. The computer also checked it against the sound of a frog. Also some of the sea creatures it examined appeared soft bodied and incapable of making audible noise. Was that a Sea Cucumber that it flashed very early on? Did the computer really think that a crab could produce that sound? (Well, maybe the probe came from the Crab Nebula?) If your VCR has frame by frame capability, check the scientific names of the animals, as well. It looked like both the bat and the lion were identified as Pystis volans. (I think some of the animals flashed by more than once.)

The desk that Starfleet personnel were working on looked suspiciously like the white Engineering workstation that was used in early episodes of The Next Generation.

They turn on the Cloaking Device because the ship would be visible to Earth's primitive tracking devices, but the Cloaking Device only makes it invisible, Radar should still be able to pick it up.

Scotty says that the Dilithium crystals are failing and that they might not get back to the future and Kirk worries that they may not be able to save the Earth because of this. Did Kirk forget that all they have to do is keep Humpback whales from going extinct in the 21st century? Join Greenpeace, arm them with phasers...

I understand why the garbage cans blow around, but why does the one roll under the landing strut?

I loved the scene with Chekov, with his Russian accent, asking, "Where are the Nuclear Wessels?" He sounded like a really inept KGB spy.

Gee, that punk rocker on the bus looked remarkably like one of the Associate Producers. (The credits also reveal he wrote the song he was listening to.)

The scene with Spock swimming with the whales was cute, but didn't Spock see the windows with people looking through them on that side of the whale?

My dad laughs at this next joke for a much different reason than anyone else I know. Kirk tells Gillian that at Berkeley Spock did too much LDS, most people laugh because, they assume, Kirk meant LSD. My dad likes to tell people that Kirk meant the Mormons, the church of Latter Day Saints.

Gillian knows something strange is going on and she repeats to Kirk what Spock said about the whales being extinct, specifically his use of the past tense word "caused". I should hope she noticed that, Leonard Nimoy certainly stressed the word hard enough when he said it after swimming with the whales.

When Chekov is trying to escape from the Enterprise he runs through the hall past all these sailors who are just ignoring him, despite the fact that the speakers are declaring a Security Breach. Is this standard Navy procedure?

The harpoon bounces off what seems to be a flat surface, but then the Bird of Prey decloaks and it reveals that the harpoon hit the underside of the Bird of Prey's sloping 'nose.' However, if it hit the curved underside, shouldn't it have continued its forward momentum, perhaps hitting the water just shy of the whales?

Of course, either that 'nose' is just a decoration and not where the Bridge is located or the scale was way off. That harpoon just looked too big.

Also, in the wide shots the Bird of Prey, seems to be hovering higher than the harpoon was aimed.

Did Scotty leave enough air in the top of the cargo bay for the whales to breath?

Watching the credits I noticed that one of the make up people was named McCoy. You don't think...

By Charles Cabe (Ccabe) on Saturday, April 17, 1999 - 02:59 pm:

>They turn on the Cloaking Device because the ship would be visible to Earth's primitive tracking devices, but the Cloaking Device only makes it invisible, Radar should still be able to pick it up.>

The cloaking device must work for more wave lengths than visible light. Wouldn't is be really useless if 20th century sensors could see it. If it worked like you say it should, the Enterprise could easily detect a cloked ship.

By cableface on Sunday, April 18, 1999 - 04:41 pm:

They had used the computer to interface with Federation data banks.That's how they could find a directory of earth creatures.