Star Trek IV: Voyage Home, The (1986)

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General		Extras
Category	Star Trek	Theatrical Trailer-2.35:1 16x9 DD 2.0 surround Featurette-Director's Series Featurette With Leonard Nimoy (15:14)
Rating
Year Of Production	1986
Running Time	117:18 (Case: 119)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (78:03)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Leonard Nimoy
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	William Shatner Leonard Nimoy DeForest Kelley James Doohan George Takei Walter Koenig Nichelle Nichols Catherine Hicks
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$39.95	Music	Leonard Rosenman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Greek English Spanish French Hebrew Croatian Italian Portuguese Slovenian	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, but not really annoying, more so amusing
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, action underneath a fair proportion of the credits

    Earth has been approached by a mysterious deep space probe, emitting a signal of enormous power. Unfortunately, this signal, whilst seemingly non-hostile, disables all electronic systems that it comes into close proximity with. Various starships, Earth's space dock, and eventually Earth itself is under threat of destruction, unless a way can be found to answer the probe.

    The Enterprise crew, returning to Earth from Vulcan in a Klingon Bird of Prey, manage to determine the intended audience of the message, and determine that they need to travel back to 1986 in order to acquire the means to respond to the probe, saving humanity. Attempting to fit inconspicuously in with the 20th Century whilst trying to acquire their quarry is what leads to much of the charm of this movie, but to say any more would be to significantly spoil many of the surprises and laughs in store for you if you haven't yet seen the movie, so I'll leave it there.

Video

    This transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. Yep, you read right - unlike Star Trek V and Star Trek VI, this transfer is 16x9 enhanced. The first 5 minutes of the transfer, a recap of Star Trek III, is presented quite oddly. Nominally 2.35:1 and 16x9 enhanced, the image actually looks quite horizontally stretched, as if they took a 2.00:1 transfer and simply stretched it out to 2.35:1 to match the rest of the transfer. It is quite disconcerting to see the first Paramount logo appear as an oval arch of stars instead of a circle.

    Sharpness is quite variable, and I suspect is related to the way in which the movie was originally shot. Brightly-lit exterior scenes were crisp and sharp. Brightly-lit interior scenes, such as many set on various space stations, spaceships and Earth, were crisp and sharp. Dimly-lit scenes, wherever they were located, were not sharp and often quite diffuse. A good example of this is any shot on board the Klingon Bird of Prey, which had quite a significantly diffuse quality about it. Nonetheless, the transfer remained eminently watchable at all times, other than the fairly ropey first 5 minutes.

    Shadow detail is variable. Once again, I would put this down to limitations of the source material - the crisp and sharp shots showed plenty of subtle details. The more blurry shots did not. Regardless, I would recommend watching this transfer with strictly controlled ambient lighting - there are a lot of darker scenes in this movie.

    There was no level noise nor any significant grain detected at any point.

    Colours are a tad variable depending on the type of shot. Once again, the shots that were crisp and sharp had excellent colour rendition whereas the more blurry shots did not fare as well. There was some occasional slight oversaturation, with skin tones tending towards the over-red.

    There were no MPEG artefacts detected, but there was a modicum of aliasing in some very sharp shots, such as the view of San Francisco between 38:00 and 38:04 and the Venetian blinds between 61:00 and 61:05. The aforementioned Venetian blinds also exhibited some moire artefacting. Film artefacts were pleasingly rare except for the first 5 minutes, where they were copious.

    This disc is RSDL-formatted, with the layer change placed relatively non-disruptively on a scene cut at 78:03.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are four audio tracks on this DVD; English Dolby Digital 5.1, and French, Italian and Spanish soundtracks in Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded. I listened only to the default English soundtrack.

    Dialogue is generally clear, easy to understand and well-integrated spatially with the rest of the soundtrack. The one exception to this is the first five minutes of voice-over, which sounds quite disconnected with the rest of the soundtrack. Some subtle hints at audio sync problems were noted on occasion, but nothing that I could definitely pin down.

    The music was scored by Leonard Rosenman. Despite my preference for Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek scoring, I must admit that this is a fantastic musical score. The opening theme in particular is one of my favourite Star Trek opening themes. The music ranges from typical Trek to almost comical in nature, all effortlessly married to the on-screen action.

    The surround presence is generally subtle but pleasing. For the great majority of the time, this soundtrack demonstrates its stereo heritage, with a wide front soundstage and only limited, but effective, surround use for ambience. This limited ambient effect, however, is enough to keep you immersed nicely in the movie. More aggressive use of the surrounds occurs at moments of high action, with the most aggressive use during the surreal time travel sequence. Fortunately, because of the constant subtle surround use in between times, these aggressive uses do not seem out of place at all.

    The subwoofer generally integrated nicely into the soundtrack, with none of the "over-the-top" characteristics of some other movie soundtracks. The probe was accompanied by very aggressive subwoofer use which was never out-of-place.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Featurette-Director's Series with Leonard Nimoy

    It also features one of the most compelling arguments against Panning & Scanning that I have ever seen - a split screen comparison between the Pan & Scan and Widescreen versions of Star Trek IV with Leonard Nimoy commenting on the differences. If this can't convert anyone to widescreen, nothing can.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall