Sea Shepherd From Outer Space

By RICHARD CORLISS

Trekkies are the Moonies of pop culture. Since the tatty sci-fi series Star Trek went off the air in 1969, they have devoted themselves with canonical fervor to annotating and explicating the 79 episodes. To Trekkies it matters not that the show was bad science and worse fiction, or that its actors, outfitted in futuristic Dr. Dentons, read their portentous lines with nitwit solemnity. The show's only soaring spin-off was Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), in which the cast took a back seat to a splendid special-effects light show that made an eloquent case for the fusion of art and technology, man and machine. Trekkies, of course, consider it anathema -- too much hardware, not enough kitsch.

Still, the movie was popular enough to tag the property as a solid box- office attraction. And gradually, the films' creators managed to beam the series up to competence, even to emotional resonance. In 1982 The Wrath of Khan brought Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) back from the executive junk heap to conquer both an old nemesis and a mid-life crisis. In 1984 The Search for Spock resurrected Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) for a reunion with Kirk that was tender enough to make a Vulcan almost cry. Now comes The Voyage Home -- and a radical, canny shift of moods. This time, if you laugh at Star Trek, you are in good company. The whole starship Enterprise crew is giggling up its polyester sleeves.

The plot could be torn from yesterday's headlines: SEA SHEPHERD FROM OUTER SPACE. Imagine that the environmental activists who recently sank two Icelandic whaling vessels were the rulers of a 23rd century planet, and that they had sent to earth a probe with signals that could be answered only by humpback whales -- a species that had been hunted to extinction by blubber- lusting 20th century man. If the whales don't talk back, the earth blows up. So the Star Trek crew must become time travelers. They must boomerang their stolen Klingon warship around the sun, land in San Francisco in 1986, steal a whale or two and transport their precious cargo . . . back to the future!

Take one more ride in Hollywood's favorite pop-satirical time machine, while the Enterprisers try to pass themselves off as primitive earthlings. With the help of Co-Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer (who, in Time After Time, propelled H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper into San Francisco in 1979), they do just fine. Dr. "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) brazens his way through a little miracle surgery; Chekov (Walter Koenig), the Russian, has to explain his way out of an American nuclear submarine; Scotty (James Doohan) brings postmodern plastics to Marin County. And Spock, wandering around Golden Gate Park in a Vulcan bathrobe and proving his ineptness with the local slang, must be passed off as a casualty of the '60s free-speech movement. "He did a little too much LDS," Kirk explains helpfully.

It is familiar stuff, and even a die-hard Star Trasher may regret that these stolid figures of fun have decided to have a few laughs at their own expense, as if they were doing a turn for some intergalactic David Letterman. Still, the film should have appeal -- skin-deep but worldwide -- for novices and exegetes alike. Watch it make a bundle.