Captain Kirk Saved the Whales and Exposed Our Climate Hubris | The Voyage Home Pt. 1

Following the events of The Search for Spock, Admiral Kirk and his crew are still on Vulcan, preparing to return to Earth aboard their captured Klingon bird of prey, which Bones has nicknamed the HMS Bounty.

They know they'll probably face court martial for stealing and destroying the Enterprise, but they've unanimously decided to face the music together.

Meanwhile, Spock is recovering from his resurrection, relearning his mental faculties and struggling to reconnect with his human emotions.

He decides to accompany his friends back to Earth.

Ultimately, Earth has a much bigger problem.

A gigantic alien probe is approaching the planet, broadcasting a mysterious signal that disables starships and drains their power.

When it reaches Earth, the probe begins wreaking havoc with the atmosphere and the oceans, triggering catastrophic weather conditions.

starfleet is helpless and the federation president broadcasts a desperate warning for all ships to stay away kirk intercepts the warning and spock makes a startling discovery the probe isn't trying to communicate with humans it's attempting to contact humpback whales which have been extinct since the 21st century without any whales to answer the probe though earth faces destruction Naturally, Kirk comes up with a completely insane plan.

Our heroes will travel back in time, collect a pair of humpback whales, and then bring them back to the future to communicate with the probe.

Using the HMS Bounty, they perform a dangerous slingshot maneuver around the sun and successfully arrive in San Francisco in 1986. but there's another problem the time travel maneuver has damaged the ship's dilithium crystals leaving them with only about 24 hours of power kirk divides the crew into teams scotty bones and sulu will find materials to build a giant whale tank uhura and chekhov will locate a nuclear vessel to help restore the ship's power and kirk and spock will find the whales themselves Needless to say, their first encounters with the double dumbasses of the 1980s are hilarious.

Kirk struggles with money and traffic.

Chekhov wanders around asking strangers about nuclear vessels and Spock nerve pinches an obnoxious punk rocker on a city bus.

Eventually, Kirk and Spock arrive at the Cetacean Institute, where they discover two captive humpback whales named George and Gracie.

Spock promptly jumps into the tank and performs a mind meld with Gracie, infuriating the whale's caretaker, Dr. Jillian Taylor, who throws both men the hell out.

But Jillian becomes intrigued when Spock reveals that Gracie is pregnant, something very few people know.

Meanwhile, Uhura and Chekov locate the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise Wessel, while Scotty and Bones scam a plexiglass fabricator into producing transparent aluminum for the whale tank.

With time running out, Kirk spills the beans to Jillian about his time travel and the whales over beer and pizza, hoping to convince her that they really are trying to save the whales.

And that's where we're going to leave things for now.

With the crew stranded in 1986, their ship slowly dying, and the entire future of Earth depending on two humpback whales, Mary.

So in other words, not a lot at stake.

Bob, we've got whales.

We've got time travel and we've got a lot of swearing.

This is going to be fun.

Incoming transmission.