A mysterious alien probe is threatening the entire planet by evaporating the oceans and destroying the atmosphere, all the time broadcasting an immensely powerful message no one can decode. All, that is, except for Mr. Spock who determines that it is in fact the song of a Humpback whale. Humpback whales have been extinct for hundreds of years. This movie is a pleasurable, lighthearted caper, especially when compared to the preceding three films that aired a strictly serious attitude. Sharpness is good with no noticeable aliasing or artifacting, although focus is intentionally soft in some scenes including the spaceship interior.
Saturation initially appears weak, but colors are completely accurate.
A fair amount of film grain is also present, however considering the age of the original footage everything in this regard seems in good shape. The only distracting qualities are a moderate amount of white and black dirt specs, plus unusually perceptible screen flickering on many brighter scenes. The dual-layered disc contains a total of 17 chapters with 7.6 gigabytes of data. The layer change was completely unnoticeable. The soundtrack has also been revamped with an impressive 5.1 channel mix.