Treknobabble is a continuing series of columns written by uber-Trekkie Reed Farrington in anticipation of the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.

When last we left our crew, they were on the planet Vulcan. Spock’s mind had just been re-integrated with his body, but he wasn’t totally himself. He had problems recalling stuff he had learned before, and his relationships with people had to be re-established. Imagine if using the transporter was like this!

Our intrepid crew is going home to Earth in a Klingon Bird of Prey to face the consequences of disobeying Starfleet Command and stealing a Federation Starship to boot. Not to mention that they destroyed the starship. Imagine taking off from work to take a vacation without permission, taking a company vehicle, and then blowing up the vehicle to smithereens. Not a scratch or a dent, mind you, but total obliteration of the vehicle! Not even a steering wheel left!

Continuing our flashback to the future:

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Star Trek: The Voyage Home has the humpback whales. This literal fish-out-of-water story is the movie with the most humour. I especially like the repartee between Kirk and Spock when they answer the “Do you like Italian?” question. The line about remembering where the vehicle is parked is genius. The director of the Wrath of Khan is also a writer, and he wrote the early draft of the section of the movie back on Earth. Harve Bennett, the guy behind The Mod Squad and Six Million Dollar Man, wrote the beginning and end parts of the movie. This movie basically finishes a trilogy started with Wrath of Khan.

Annie Camden from 7th Heaven played a marine biologist. (Hmm… I see a pattern here. I wonder if Abrams considered casting Barry Watson or Jessica Biel?) The marine biologist role was originally written for Eddie Murphy, but Murphy opted out to make The Golden Child. Supposedly, Paramount also thought that combining the two franchises of Star Trek and Eddie Murphy would make less money than having two separate films.

The only phaser or gun fired in the movie is at a door knob. Oh, wait. A harpoon gun is fired at a whale. Don’t worry. The harpoon only hits a Klingon Bird of Prey. There is no villain in this movie. (Oh, maybe except for the punk rocker whom Spock easily dispatches with a nerve pinch.) The enemy is man’s short-sightedness in allowing the humpback whale to become extinct in the future.

Most people don’t realize that most of the humpback whale scenes use remote-controlled, mechanical humpback whales.

Many non-Trekkies contributed to this movie’s high box-office. This is the only Star Trek movie that I have payed for more than once to see in a theatre.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Star Trek: The Final Frontier is the Shatner directed movie that everyone hates because Shatner did a Star Trek meets God story, and the answer turns out to be that God is in the human heart. There’s a lame rock-climbing intro during the credits. John Woo and Tom Cruise did a way better rock-climbing intro for Mission Impossible II. Shatner shot some rock-climbing footage that turned out to be unusable.

This is the movie for which Sean Connery declined the role of Spock’s brother, and instead decided to play Indy’s dad in some other movie. To spite Sean Connery, the producers bastardized Sean Connery’s name by naming the God planet, Sha-Ka-Ree.

David Warner plays a diplomat, and returns in the next movie as a Klingon.

There’s a cat woman with three breasts.

There’s a pool table with a layer of water on it. I don’t think the pool table has pockets.

Shatner and Nimoy along with Kelley (that’s DeForest, not Gene Kelly) sing in this movie. But they don’t dance.

Uhura does an embarrassing fan dance.

Fans are outraged that Scotty accidentally knocks himself out by hitting his head on an Enterprise corridor overhead (actually, not enough overhead) pipe. Because the humour of the last movie was seen as beneficial to the last movie’s success at the box-office, the producers added some forced humour into this movie.

Kirk embraces Spock when Spock saves him. And during this embrace, Spock enigmatically says to Kirk, “Not in front of the Klingons.”

In order to save money, ILM was not hired to do the visual effects. ILM was brought back for the next film. Enough said.

This is my favourite Star Trek movie. And yes, it’s my favourite in order to spite you all. (Not really. I mean it’s my favourite, but not out of spite.)

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country has Samantha Jones from Sex and the City playing a Vulcan. This Vulcan character was originally supposed to be Saavik, but Gene Roddenberry didn’t want a good Starfleet Officer to be portrayed as bad, so the writers gave the character a different name. Also this gave the producers a reasonable excuse to cast another actress.

Sulu gets to command his own starship. There was an interesting episode of Star Trek: Voyager called Flashback in which the entire scene on the bridge with the shock wave was recreated with the same actors.

Some fans complained about the pots and pans in the kitchen. They thought that all the food was replicated on the Enterprise.

We get to see Klingon blood which looks like Pepto-Bismol, but probably doesn’t taste like it. I think the producers thought this was a bad choice of colour, because Klingon blood appears red in everything produced after this movie. Or maybe red blood just looks pink in a weightless environment.

I love the scene in the prison camp where McCoy gives a reaction to Kirk’s kiss with a female prisoner.

This film was directed by Nicholas Meyer, who directed everyone’s favourite Star Trek movie, Wrath of Khan. Everyone was getting tired of people making jokes about how the actors were too old to be making movies, so this movie was made with the intent of this being the final Star Trek film with the Original Series actors. George Takei, Sulu, has always said that the box-office was the bottom-line; so if the audience made the film into a block-buster, the producers would naturally rehire the actors. This movie was not a block-buster.

This is Jay’s favourite Star Trek film.

Please join us next time for the final article about the remaining Star Trek movies in which we explore the Nexus, battle the Borg, appreciate life with the Baku, and meet Picard’s evil clone!