This Star Trek IV Scene From The Eddie Murphy Script Sounds Painfully Unfunny

Paramount

When "Beverly Hills Cop" became the top grossing film of 1984, every studio in town wanted a piece of Eddie Murphy. Paramount Pictures, however, had him locked into a near-exclusive contract, and having also scored big with "48 Hrs." and "Trading Places," they weren't about ready to let their comedy cash cow work elsewhere.

Fortunately for them, Murphy was not only happy to make movies at Paramount (though this would change), he was also keen to lend his star power to one of their most popular franchises. Murphy, it turned out, was a huge "Star Trek" fan. He fell in love with the series as a kid, and wanted to have an adventure with Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Bones, Uhura, and the rest of the Enterprise gang. Paramount exec Jeffrey Katzenberg thought it was "either the best or worst idea in the world," but he went ahead and hired Steve Meerson and Peter Kirkes to write a script for "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" featuring Murphy as a wacky college professor who's obsessed with aliens and whales. When his character encounters the time-traveling crew on present day Earth (they beam into his classroom to investigate the whale sounds he listens to), he scrambles to prove to others that these people from space exist. Hilarity ensues, right?

Not exactly. While it's hard to judge a screenplay based on a solitary, out-of-context scene, one bit that involved a phaser and a cat sounds pretty dreadful.

Paramount

According to a Woman's World article, Murphy's character attempts to convince Catherine Hicks' character (a newswoman in this draft) that he's run across actual aliens. At one point, he manages to steal a phaser from Kirk, which he takes to Hicks. He believes this is irrefutable proof, but Hicks isn't impressed. She basically shrugs, and throws the phaser aside. That's when, according to Meerson, the alleged fun begins. Per the screenwriter:

"The phaser lands on the floor and her cat jumps off the couch. We follow her to her bedroom and she goes to sleep. The cat keeps phasing things out of the apartment by hitting the phaser, and when she wakes up, she sees that all the furniture is gone."

Unsurprisingly, when Murphy read the finished draft, he decided this voyage of the Starship Enterprise was not for him, and wound up starring in the sporadically funny "The Golden Child." Meanwhile, Hicks' character was written to be a marine biologist, which streamlined the narrative and helped turn "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" into the second highest grossing film featuring the original cast.

Sadly, Murphy has never found his way onto the bridge of the Enterprise in a "Star Trek" show or movie, though he did make it to space in the flop "The Adventures of Pluto Nash"). Further, in the 1992 rom-com "Boomerang" Murphy informed us that Spock's full name is actually Spock Jenkins. "One of them Jenkins boys from Vulcan." Maybe he can play one of Spock's brothers in a future film.