Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home's Whales Left Fans Furious - But Shouldn't Have

In the movie "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," the now-former crew of the Starship Enterprise travels back in time to 1986 — the year of the film's release — in hopes of capturing a humpback whale and transporting it to their present. According to Spock (Leonard Nimoy), a probe causing havoc on Earth is doing so via a signal that resembles a humpback whale's cry. Since the species is extinct as of the film's present day, they require the use of time travel to obtain a whale that can counteract the signal.

Meanwhile, in the past, Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew helps defend some of the humpback whales they encounter from whalers. As detailed in a retrospective about "Star Trek IV" on the official "Star Trek website" based on primary documents archived by its writer Nicholas Meyer, several of the film's viewers sent in angry letters protesting its whale scenes. These people, it turns out, thought that the production must have disrupted its whale subjects' natural habitats, contrary to its pro-environmental message.

Those whales, however, were not real. They were models designed and supervised by Michael Lanteri, who won an Oscar for "Jurassic Park" and even helped create the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride at Disneyland. While the film does feature some limited footage of real-life whales, those shots are all from afar. The close-ups that inspired angry letters, notably, are all artificial.

After the official "Star Trek" website published this account of the letters that falsely alleged mistreatment of whales, the info served as the subject of a popular thread on the Today I Learned subreddit. Its top comment, by u/KeithCarter4897, reads, "They were fake? TIL..." Based on upvotes from more than 1,000 users, it seems apparent that plenty of others familiar with the film were also surprised by the fact that its whales were fabricated.

Meanwhile, in response to a comment linking to a now-deleted clip of some of the film's fake whale footage, u/illBro wrote, "Those are some good looking animatronics." This received 200 upvotes, indicating that many additional users appreciated the quality of the special effects. The contingent of the film's original viewership unintentionally deceived by the whale models, then, is at least backed by plenty of present-day viewers who have found the artificial whales to hold up even to today's higher VFX standards.