 Nimoy and Bennett worked with effects company Industrial Light & Magic ( ILM ) to produce special effects , models , and live @-@ action scenes . ILM received a two @-@ page story treatment in November 1982 , titled " Return to Genesis " . Production supervisor Warren Franklin said that the script they received in early 1983 was " one of the best scripts we read " out of the submissions that arrived weekly . Although ILM had provided the effects work for The Wrath of Khan , they had only been approached after effects storyboards had been completed . For The Search for Spock , ILM were brought in much earlier , meaning that visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston and his team were involved from the planning stages . Nimoy credited this early involvement with increasing the amount of creative input into the film 's design and execution . 
