In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, who played marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor?

Catherine Hicks played marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Gillian Taylor is a 20th-century scientist working with humpback whales at San Francisco’s Sausalito Cetacean Institute. She becomes central to the crew’s mission after a probe’s signals devastate Earth’s oceans and threaten humanity’s survival. Because humpback whales are extinct in the film’s 23rd-century setting, Admiral James T. Kirk and his crew travel back to 1986 to retrieve two whales and bring them to the future.

Hicks was cast opposite William Shatner’s Kirk and developed a memorable comic and romantic dynamic with him. The film was released in 1986 and directed by Leonard Nimoy, who also played Spock. A common mix-up is confusing Gillian Taylor with Dr. Carol Marcus, another prominent scientist connected to the original-cast films; Carol Marcus appears in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, while Taylor is introduced in The Voyage Home.

The role also gave Hicks a major part in one of the franchise’s most environmentally themed stories.