The Guardian reviews the 40th-anniversary rerelease of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy, calling it the silliest yet most enjoyably absurd instalment of the franchise. The Enterprise crew, in disgrace after events of the previous film, must travel back in time to 1986 San Francisco to retrieve humpback whales in order to answer an alien probe threatening 23rd-century Earth, a premise the reviewer finds gleefully ridiculous rather than convincing science fiction.

The film opens with a dedication to the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded that year, and glosses over the death of Kirk's son from the prior instalment with striking casualness. Highlights singled out include the crew's fish-out-of-water antics on the streets of San Francisco, a comic exchange between Kirk and Spock about 20th-century vulgarity, and a scene of Spock swimming ecstatically with the whales. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home returns to UK and Irish cinemas from 4 September.