CREDITS STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME, 1986 dir: Leonard Nimoy William Shatner Leonard Nimoy DeForest Kelley James Doohan George Takei Walter Koenig Nichelle Nichols

“Everybody remember where we parked. ”

After a couple of totally studio-bound sequels, the Star Trek big-screen series begins to use real locations with this eco-conscious adventure. The crew of the Enterprise zooms back to 1986 San Francisco in time to save the whale.

Arriving in San Fran, the crew splits up at the junction of Columbus, Kearny and Pacific Avenues. The crew’s purloined Klingon ship flies under the Golden Gate Bridge.

‘Golden Gate Park’, though, where the crew parks the ‘Bird of Prey’, is actually Will Rogers State Park, 14253 Sunset Boulevard, Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles.

The Vulcan planet scenes were filmed at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park, 10700 West Escondido Canyon Road, near Agua Dulce Springs. Named after 19th century outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez, who hid out here, the spectacular location – an outburst of the San Andreas fault where spurs of rock have been thrust out of the earth – has been used in hundreds of Westerns and sci-fi movies, pop videos and photoshoots, dating back (at least) to Werewolf of London in 1935. Episodes of the Star Trek TV series had been filmed here.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: the ‘Vulcan’ planet: Vasquez Rocks

The park is in the high desert north of LA, between Newhall and Acton, off Route 14.

The ‘Sausalito Cetacean Institute’, where the Enterprise crew finds the two humpback whales, was supposedly over the Bay, just north of San Francisco. You can actually find it on the coast south of the city. It's the Monterey Bay Aquarium, 886 Cannery Row, Monterey. The aquarium, by the way, does not contain any whales, but does have loads of other fascinating stuff.

HARD COPY: For the details of the filming locations of 1,600 of your favourite movies, check out The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations. 464 pages of fascinating facts, illustrated with over 1,000 original photographs.