In my version of the [Star Trek IV] script, originally, when they all leave to go back, [Gillian Taylor] didn’t leave. She said if anybody’s going to make sure this kind of disaster doesn’t happen again, somebody’s going to have to stay behind, which I still think is the ‘righter’ ending. The end in the movie detracts from the importance of people in the present taking responsibility for the ecology and preventing problems of the future by doing something about them today, rather than catering to the fantasy desires of being able to be transported ahead in time to the near-utopian future society of the Star Trek era.
Nicholas Meyer, director of The Wrath of Khan and one of four screenplay writers on The Voyage Home, quoted in Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, 1995.
What do you think? Would it have been “righter” to have Gillian Taylor stay behind at the end of Star Trek IV rather than coming forward in time to take care of the whales?
