Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Leonard Nimoy's second turn as director might actually be my favorite of the original Star Trek movies that I've seen. The second one had some good stuff in it, but The Voyage Home is just consistently entertaining throughout. It starts as a relatively serious, normal Trek story. Kirk and the crew are returning to Earth to face trial for their insubordination in traveling to retrieve Spock, and there's a mysterious alien probe headed on the same course. It's all pretty normal, but once the words "humpback whale" are uttered, it basically turns into a comedy. They do their absurd slingshot-around-the-sun thing to go back in time, and embark on an unusual mission to save the Earth's future, and some animals as well. These guys have gone back in time before, but it's never been this consistently funny. Things like Spock's experimentation with profanity, Bones' distaste for modern medical practices, and Chekov asking people if they know where to find nuclear wessels are great, and it's funny how cavalier they are about changing the past and causing potential paradoxes. This year's Trek film was pretty humorous as well, and that's probably the best tone for the series, at least from what I've seen. It's a series about the fun and wonder of having adventures through space and time, not gritty galactic conflict. The film's not without flaws, but it's enjoyable throughout.