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Saavik
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Lieutenant Saavik is a fictional character in the Star Trek universe. She appeared first in , in which she was played by Kirstie Alley. She was also a supporting character in , and appeared briefly in ; in these movies she was played by Robin Curtis. Of the various characters created specifically for the 10 Trek films, she is the only one to appear in three of the movies.
Unrealized concepts Also planned, but not featured in the final versions of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock was a romantic relationship between Saavik and David Marcus. However, in the closing bridge scene of The Wrath of Khan, as the crew faces the camera looking back at the Genesis planet, the two stand very closely together. David's left and Saavik's right arms overlap in a way that imply that they are holding hands. The novelizations of both films do expand upon the planned romantic subplot and establish that, by the time of David and Saavik's posting aboard the Grissom, they were already lovers. (David, in both the novel and final film versions of The Search for Spock, would subsequently be killed by Klingons; in the novelization, Saavik's reaction to this is to attack one of the Klingons bare-handed, forcing the enemy to stun her into unconsciousness, but she remains calm in the film, simply telling Kirk his son has been killed.) The notion of a young Vulcan female becoming involved with a young human male would be revisited in the TV series .
A significant character in was a young female Vulcan protege of Spock, who turned out to be working with the villains. In an early draft of the script, this was Saavik, in the hopes that Alley would return for the large role, using characters that had appeared in prior films (even in small parts) turning out to be significant players this time. Alley turned down the role and they instead created the character of Valeris, played by Kim Cattrall. Some sources, however, suggest the reason for the change was that Gene Roddenberry objected to the popular character becoming a villain and vetoed it. The studio also was reportedly not keen on having three different actresses playing the same role. The novelization of this film actually includes a sequence in which Valeris, newly appointed to the Enterprise, meets Saavik, but its not known if such a scene was ever planned for the movie.
The character was at one point to appear in the episode, "Cause and Effect" in a scene in which the Enterprise-D encounters a starship that had been trapped in a time anomaly for some 80 years. The idea was dropped when Kirstie Alley insisted on being paid more for a nonspeaking cameo part than the episode budget could supply. (Saavik was to have been shown standing alongside a character played by Alley's Cheers co-star, Kelsey Grammer).
Book and Next Generation continuity In the novel Vulcan's Heart and the Vulcan's Soul trilogy, which takes place some years after Undiscovered Country, an older Saavik marries Spock. And in the "Mirror Universe Saga" trilogy written by William Shatner, it is revealed that the mirror Spock had a daughter named T'Val with mirror Saavik. Saavik appears again in the Vulcan's Soul trilogy of novels published in 2005. In this continuity, the character has risen to the rank of Captain. In the Titan novel, Taking Wing, it is clearly stated that Spock and Saavik are married, as she sends greetings through Tuvok.
Kirstie Alley did play Saavik one other time, in a play set between ST II and ST III. "The Machiavellian Principle" written by Walter Koenig for the ambitious "Ultimate Fantasy" convention. It also starred DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei, with a walk-on role by William Shatner as "the Admiral". The script, as published by Creation Conventions in a 1987 booklet called "Through the Looking Glass", misspells the name as "Savik". Star Trek books are not considered part of the established canon.
Early reference When Gene Roddenberry was planning his new series in the 1970s, and after it was learned that Leonard Nimoy would not return as Spock, Roddenberry created a new male Vulcan character to take Spock's place. The character was to have been named Xon, and actor David Gautreaux was cast. When Phase II became , Nimoy returned as Spock, and Gautreaux was recast as Commander Branch (to save the Xon character for possible future use). Samuel A. Peeples' unused script, Worlds That Never Were, for the second Star Trek film, had a male character called "Doctor Savik", who eventually was morphed into the female Lieutenant Saavik.
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