We Could Use a Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Videogame

Let’s be blunt: I am a massive Star Trek fan, yet I’ve not experienced much of Star Trek: The Original Series or its films. I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan a while ago with my dad, who is actually a massive TOS fan, but I hardly remember it. For me, Star Trek has been Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and many of the recent series and films — most notably Star Trek: Lower Decks, which eventually became my favourite part of the franchise. I’ve heard that loads of the episodes and films from Kirk’s original crew are classic, and the few that I’ve happened across have been pretty okay, but I’ve yet to fall in love with them the way I have with the rest of Star Trek.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home could change that. I have heard that it is an exceptionally funny film all about going back in time to save whales from extinction, which sounds awesome. Not only is that an amazing premise, but it's a perfect situation to represent what Star Trek is all about too: finding the best solution to do right in the world and solve your problems without sacrificing your values… unless, of course, your values aren’t as good as they should be. Yet, as should be clear, that whole “The Voyage Home-watching” experience hasn’t happened, at least by the time I wrote this. Part of that is just because I have a very large backlog of movies to watch, among other responsibilities, yes, but I can’t deny that another part of that is because I haven’t been fully sold on that concept yet. Yes, it’s a fun premise and I’d love to see some whales get saved, but not to the point where I want to drop everything and watch it now. That means the film can just sit and wait while I take years and years to get to it, perhaps never even finding the time to enjoy it.

However, at the end of the day, The Voyage Home is a widely beloved film with a dedicated fanbase — there is no real risk of it disappearing, even if many other films may with time. The whales the film reminds us to protect and save, on the other hand, could very much disappear.

Humankind once hunted them nearly to extinction; even though we thankfully try to keep that from happening now and the whales have grown back to a small portion of their former population, these amazing creatures are still afflicted with debris and noise pollution. Humpback whales — the ones who went extinct in Star Trek’s future, according to the film — can “sing” in a sense, for communication and mating purposes, and they are delightful to listen to, though they often can’t be heard because we still produce too much sound in the water, which causes them to reduce how often they “sing”. Beyond removing a pleasant noise, this can reduce how often they mate, not to mention how many of them mate.

Thankfully, the humpback whale is not currently considered “Threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (or IUCN), marked instead as being of “Least Concern”. Others, like the Rice’s whale that makes its home in the Gulf of Mexico, are not so lucky, being marked as “Critically Endangered”. Their greatest threat is oil spills, usually from offshore drilling.

However, I don’t want to depress you. It can be hard to avoid that sometimes when it comes to animals in danger, of course, but I just wanted to take the time to remind you why stories that help remind people to do what they can to help animals in need, especially ones that can do so while maintaining a lively and entertaining pace, like The Voyage Home seems to do, can be so important. That way, you can receive that important message without feeling like you’re being preached to and enjoy yourself all the while.

There's even a direct sequel to 2009's Star Trek reboot film, in game form!

That’s why I think we could use another Voyage Home. Not a film remake necessarily, but perhaps a game adaptation! Or at least a similar story in game form. The Star Trek franchise has held a long history of making videogames, oftentimes featuring the casts of its various TV shows. Not every game has been a commercial hit, of course, but several of them have indeed been well-received. Furthermore, we’ve never had anything based around The Voyage Home, though we have gotten two Star Trek: Generations games, one Star Trek V: The Final Frontier title, and even a Vectrex arcade game based on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I believe that drawing on this classic film and making its whale-and-world-saving mission more interactive could do a fine job as both an entertaining game and a great way to help get more people invested in the safety of whales in the modern day.