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Was this made into a time travel comedy to cash in on the success of Back to the Future?

posted 6 years ago by TMC-4 (19411)
11 replies | jump to latest

Besides coming out roughly a year and half later, it's awfully coincidental that Christopher Lloyd was not only in Back to the Future, but in the previous Star Trek movie.

I've always heard that Leonard Nimoy was pretty much given creative carte blanche on The Voyage Home after The Search for Spock had to tie-in more closely to the events in The Wrath of Khan. I wonder if there was any other way to tell an environmental message outside of the context of time traveling back circa 1986 San Francisco?

[–] Quint (935) 6 years ago

Nope, the major point of that movie was the environment movement of the 1980s. The time traveling was just necesarry to make that statement clear.

[–] fleischwolf (294) 6 years ago

Mostly to save money on sets and FX.

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Whatever works, it's an absolutely charming movie, in spite of being a heavy-handed message film.

Here's an anecdote I heard about making the film: There are several shots of Kirk and Spock walking down the street in San Francisco, getting WTF looks from passers-by. The original plan was to hide the camera and put Shatner and Nimoy among real people who were just going about their business and see how they reacted, but the real people of San Francisco just ignored them because they were used to seeing far weirder people on the streets. So they had to scrap that plan and bring in background actors to look askance at Kirk and Spock.

[–] Gd5150 (11015) 6 years ago

Ha if they shot that in SF today they’d get beat up by a thought police mob for not being part of the group think and then pooped on by homeless people.

In playing with the comedic theme of the movie, Spok and Kirk could come to, scraping off the fresh human feces and Spok could say “Jim, this place is a dump”.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/15/san-francisco-defecation-map/

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Spoken like someone who's never been to San Francisco!

[–] Gd5150 (11015) 6 years ago

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/SF-tourist-industry-struggles-to-explain-street-12534954.php

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

So you admit I'm right, then?

[–] Gd5150 (11015) 6 years ago

Waiting for some substance? Oh that’s right you don’t have any. I lived in or near the BA my entire life. So I have had the privelage of watching the idiots who run and live in SF pass policies that have turned it into the typical leftwing run shithole. Even google money can’t save it.

Come up with a substantive response before you embarrass yourself again.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

Nah. It was an environmental message with comedic overtones. Nimoy felt the previous two films were too dark, and he wanted to have fun with it.

[–] TexasJack (12515) 6 years ago

It worked! Definitely the most fun ST film.

[–] Cognoscente (2463) 3 years ago

I thought that The Voyage Home was funnier than BTTF.