See Voyage Home’s HMS Bounty Return To Star Trek And Save The Day
Not only is the HMS Bounty back, but it saved Picard and his entire crew in the most recent episode of Star Trek: Picard.
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, having blown up the Enterprise in the previous movie, end up spending the bulk of the film in a captured Klingon Bird of Prey. Dr. McCoy, always ready with his own wry sense of humor, renamed the ship the HMS Bounty before they took off on their Star Trek IV adventure. And now it’s back.
Not only is the HMS Bounty back, but it saved Picard and his entire crew in the most recent episode of Star Trek: Picard.
Here’s how the HMS Bounty looked in the season 3 episode titled “The Bounty”…
For comparison, here’s how she looked in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home…
Doctor McCoy named the ship the HMS Bounty after the iconic sailing vessel from the classic 1930s book turned classic 1935 movie Mutiny on the Bounty. In that story, based on a real historical event from 1789, a crew decides to mutiny against their captain, steal his ship (the Bounty) and take to the high seas to become pirates. Using that name is McCoy’s way of referencing the Enterprise crew’s adventures in Star Trek III when they steal the USS Enterprise and thumb their noses at Starfleet.
At the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the HMS Bounty is sinking in the San Francisco Bay on Earth. In Star Trek: Picard season 3 episode 6, Picard and the crew of the USS Titan visit the Starfleet Fleet Museum where the most iconic starships of all time are put on display after they’ve been retired.
We learn that the HMS Bounty, having been instrumental in saving all of humanity by transporting two humpback whales through time, was pulled off the bottom of the ocean floor and put in a museum. It’s there at the fleet museum and it has exactly what Picard and his crew need: a cloaking device.
For those unfamiliar with how this works, due to a treaty, Starfleet ships aren’t allowed to use cloaking devices. But Klingon ships are and as a Klingon Bird of Prey the HMS Bounty has one. Picard and LaForge’s kids steal the one out of the Bounty and put it in the Titan, allowing the Titan to cloak itself and save the day.
Star Trek: Picard takes place around a hundred years after the events of Star Trek IV. That means in-canon the Bounty is more than 100 years old. During that time she’s just been sitting in a museum doing nothing, so it makes sense that after being cleaned up and brought up from the ocean floor she’d have remained in pristine condition all that time.
The Klingon Bird of Prey in general is one of the best starship designs in all of science fiction, and the HMS Bounty is the best of that design. It’s good to see her back, if only for a moment or two. There’s more to come from Star Trek: Picard, maybe we’ll see even more of her in future episodes.
