A Brief Guide to Star Trek

of $87 million worldwide.
    The third
Star Trek
movie was not as widely acclaimed as
The Wrath of Khan
, with critics praising its sense of grand space opera, while commenting on the movie’s lower productionvalues. Roger Ebert, in the
Chicago Sun-Times
, called the movie ‘Good, but not great’, while
USA Today
praised the film as the best of the three and the closest in spirit to the original TV series. Nimoy’s direction was approved of by the majority of critics, with
Newsweek
acclaiming
The Search for Spock
as the best-paced of the three movies to date. However, the shock dramatic developments of David’s death and the destruction of the
Enterprise
were criticised by some as obvious and manipulative moves. Fans broadly welcomed the further adventures of the
Enterprise
crew, but for most the third film did not trump
The Wrath of Khan
as the best
Star Trek
movie.

    Many of the ideas developed for the first
Star Trek
movie had involved time travel. One of the best episodes of the TV series – Harlan Ellison’s ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ – had seen Kirk, Spock and McCoy travel to Earth’s past for an adventure. For the fourth
Star Trek
movie, which would conclude the trilogy begun with
The Wrath of Khan
, Bennett resolved to send the
Enterprise
crew back to contemporary Earth. This gambit would not only give the often otherworldly
Star Trek
series a direct connection to its contemporary audience, but it would also help with the budget if scenes could be shot in an environment requiring no ‘futuristic’ set dressing.
    Working on the story together, Leonard Nimoy (who would again direct following the success of
The Search for Spock
) and Harve Bennett set out to develop a film with an environmental theme: not only were environmental problems gaining mainstream attention in the mid-1980s, but the idea seemed to fit with one of
Star Trek
’s original successful ploys. The new film would tackle a contemporary subject in the futuristic dressing of
Star Trek
, just as many episodes of the original series had taken on 1960s social and political concerns wrapped up in a space opera setting.
    Another thing both storytellers agreed on was that
Star Trek IV
needed a more light-hearted tone than the high drama of the previous two movies. While the stakes would be high and there’dbe plenty of incident, it was felt that the
Star Trek
characters had been put through the emotional wringer in
The Wrath of Khan
and
The Search for Spock
, so the fourth movie would go lighter on them. All the pair had to do was settle on what the story would actually entail – they only knew that some element from their past (the audiences’ present) would need to be retrieved by the
Enterprise
crew to save their future.
    Before much further progress was made on these ideas, however, the project was dealt a body blow. William Shatner was no longer interested in playing Kirk. ‘I was being “difficult”, at least according to the studio’, wrote Shatner in
Star Trek Movie Memories
. ‘I steadfastly refused to sign on the dotted line for our new film, holding out partially in an effort to make up for two decades’ worth of nonexistent residuals [payments for repeat screenings of TV episodes] and merchandising revenues. [I cited] the fact that our previous three films had earned the studio well over a quarter of a billion dollars.’
    Initially it looked like Shatner’s gambit would not pay off. A change at the top of Paramount meant that new executives were in charge of the
Star Trek
movies. Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had both left to run Disney, and Barry Diller had gone to Fox, finally achieving the dream of Paramount’s fourth TV network elsewhere. The new head of the studio was distribution man Frank Mancuso, with Ned Tanen supervising motion pictures and Dawn Steele appointed head of production. While all were committed to continuing the
Star Trek
motion picture franchise, none of them was wedded to the successes and failures of the past movies, so they were open to new directions.
    Faced with a missing-in-action Admiral Kirk, Nimoy and Bennett had to come up with an alternative plan. Bennett’s first suggestion was one that would resurface many times over the next two decades in connection with a variety of
Star Trek
projects. He suggested a prequel movie chronicling Kirk and company’s time at Starfleet Academy, their pre-
Enterprise
adventures. This would require the characters to be younger, thus