"Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", Quiz II of II

Answer: Danielle Steel

Kirk: "Jacqueline Susann. Harold Robbins." Spock: "Ah. The giants." A bit of an in-joke, since Susann and Robbins are well-known for writing trashy, sensationalistic material. Could their works somehow become "classics" in the 23rd century...?

Answer: Burns and Allen

The whales are named George and Gracie. George Burns and Gracie Allen were a highly popular comedy team in the days of vaudeville, radio, and even early television.

Answer: Eddie Murphy

Murphy, a huge "Trek" fan, came THIS close to playing the role...but according to Leonard Nimoy's DVD commentary, Paramount balked at the last minute, deciding that it was too big a gamble to combine their two most successful franchises ("Trek" and "Beverly Hills Cop") in a single film.

Answer: She has a photographic memory.

Gillian states this fact, and proves it, when she "replays" aloud a sentence that Spock had earlier spoken to Kirk...word for word. "I have a photographic memory," she says. "I SEE words." She does seem to have an affinity for "her" whales, but there's no evidence that she actually understands the sounds they make.

Answer: Italian

Gillian: "You guys like Italian?" Nimoy states that the hilarious response(s) that Kirk and Spock provide grew out of an improvisation session. I found it to be one of the funniest moments in the film!

Answer: Michelob

She orders a Michelob with her pizza, and Kirk, apparently unfamiliar with 20th-century cuisine, simply asks for the same thing Gillian is having. The look on his face when he first tastes the beer is quite amusing.

Answer: transparent

Scotty quells McCoy's concerns about altering the timeline by asking, "How do we know he didn't invent the thing?" Circular logic, perhaps...but time travel is tricky stuff. =)

Answer: Chekov

Chekov is captured during his foray into the belly of an aircraft carrier (the USS ENTERPRISE, in fact!). When he attempts to flee his captors, he falls a significant distance, suffers serious internal damage, and is held in a hospital where he is not expected to survive. Kirk refuses to leave without his crewmember and engineers a rescue.

Answer: her kidney

The woman is scheduled for a dialysis treatment. McCoy, disgusted with the "barbaric" medical practices of the 20th century, gives her a pill. A few scenes later, the woman is ecstatic, cheering about the doctor who gave her a magic pill that let her grow a new kidney!

Answer: cramps

Ah, gastrointestinal humor. Always an easy laugh... with certain audiences.

Answer: a doorknob

Kirk fires a Klingon phaser at a doorknob in the hospital, melting it to slag and trapping several doctors and nurses in a small room in order to facilitate the rescue of Chekov. Yes, Chekov earlier TRIED to fire a phaser at an FBI agent, but the phaser didn't work. (Note the word "successfully" in the question.) Not a lot of violence in this film...in fact, according to Nimoy, this is the only "Trek" film in history in which no one dies!

Answer: 401 MHz

Gillian is at first reluctant to give Kirk this information, but she eventually trusts him enough to let him try to save her precious whales.

Answer: False

Close, but no cigar. Just before the BOUNTY takes off from its hiding place in Golden Gate Park, Kirk says, "Scotty, beam me up" into his communicator. Despite the fact that "Beam me up, Scotty" is generally known as a "famous" line from "Star Trek," no one has ever spoken that line, on television or in the films!

Answer: 400 tons

Scotty warns Kirk that he's never beamed up 400 tons (whales plus water) before. I found it odd that Scotty measured the extra load in weight instead of mass...but hey, what do I know?

Answer: D. H. Lawrence

When Kirk recites a line from Lawrence's poem "Whales Weep Not!", Gillian recognizes it immediately.

Answer: It's never revealed.

We can speculate and theorize all we want, but we have absolutely no idea what the probe and whales are actually saying to each other. Nimoy's commentary notes that certain executives at Paramount demanded that subtitles be put into the film, translating the conversation. Nimoy outright refused, saying that the audience didn't need to know exactly what was being communicated. I tend to agree.

Answer: False

There are several shots near the end of the film that are taken from actual humpback whale footage. In fact, if you look very closely as one of the whales "dances" after the probe has left and clear skies return to Earth, you can see a massive island in the far left background. That's Hawaii's Big Island, even though the scene is supposed to be taking place in San Francisco Bay!

Answer: all but one

The Council President states early in the film that Kirk and his crew have been charged with nine violations of Federation law. Oddly, only six are mentioned at the actual court-martial...and the President decides to dismiss all of the charges except for one. Kirk is charged with disobeying a direct order from a superior officer. For this, he is reduced to the rank of Captain.

This is, of course, not much of a punishment, since commanding a starship is, as Spock once said, Kirk's "first, best destiny."

Answer: She is assigned to a science vessel in the 23rd century.

One would think that -- as Gillian herself suggested after deciding to come to the future with Kirk -- her expertise with whales would make her invaluable to 23rd-century marine biologists now saddled with two humpback whales...but, no. She tells Kirk that she has been assigned to a "science vessel," and has 300 years of scientific achievements to catch up on. Weird.

Answer: got

The last line of the film -- spoken by Kirk, of course, from the captain's chair of the brand-new ENTERPRISE -- is, "Let's see what she's got."