Rewriting Saavik: Imagining What Could Have Been

Let’s look at a compelling arc that could have been for this classic character

We recently took an in-depth look at Saavik through the years of the succession of the original series movies.

We examined the many possibilities and potential the character began with when we first met her in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when she was portrayed by Kirstie Alley as she was just starting her Hollywood career.

And we also looked at how all that went wrong in subsequent sequels after Alley moved on from the role.

The reasons for the ultimate failure of the Saavik character, we found, lie not with the actors who filled the role, but rather a surprising number of really short-sighted decisions by directors and producers behind the scenes — including Leonard Nimoy.

Since we published that analysis many of our readers and I have been giving thought about a narrative that would have done justice to the character.

The answer is a cohesive and compelling storyline that would carry Saavik from her introduction in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan all the way through to a satisfying conclusion in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Although the character would have been better served if just one actor like Kirstie Alley had been able to maintain the role from start to finish, a cohesive storyline like this would have at least offered fans some consistency even if the part had to have been recast, as it was with Robin Curtis.

The arc I’m proposing for Saavik would both lean into the character’s Romulan background, as well as an antipathy for Klingons she developed as a result of the murder of David Marcus (Merritt Butrick), and the ultimate result of that hatred coming out as her conspiracy to sabotage the Khitomer peace agreement with the Klingon Empire.

And for the most part, maintaining a persistent narrative for Saavik could have been accomplished with mostly smaller changes to the existing scripts, rather than any kind of major surgery.

For instance, all we would have needed in Wrath of Khan would have been on-screen acknowledgement of her hybrid Romulan heritage and a relatively brief scene with Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in which Saavik acknowledges the struggle to maintain her Vulcan discipline in the face of that Romulan background. The scene, of course, could have been extremely poignant with Spock offering some honest and heartfelt advice given his own epic struggle with his human side.

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Star Trek III: The Search for Spock would have been much as it was originally, except for two brief scenes. One would hint at a growing closeness between Saavik and David before his death, and one later in which we begin to see the beginnings of that hatred for his murder after.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home also would have looked nearly the same. The only addition would be a scene depicting Saavik left by her crewmates on Vulcan, meditating over David’s death with some words from Lady Amanda (Jane Wyatt) meant to comfort Saavik but only serves to further spur her growing animosity against the Klingons.

(Nimoy’s reported decision to nix the “pregnant Saavik” narrative from the film would make even more sense since carrying Spock’s baby would be an entirely new storyline that could only distract from the arc we’ve created.)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is really its own standalone movie, and there would be no way to shoehorn either Saavik or any trace, really, of our narrative for the character into that film that wouldn’t be awkward. So this movie would exist just as it does in reality.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, of course, would be the big finish.

Valeris (Kim Cattrall), of course, would never exist because Saavik would never have vanished. Instead, Saavik would essentially be what Valeris was, and it would be Saavik who would have been one of the co-conspirators in order for her to exact her revenge on the Klingons.

Substituting Saavik for Valeris would substantially increase the dramatic power of this film, because we would actually know the character who betrays our crew rather than some stranger who is described as just another Vulcan prodigy Spock’s taken under his wing.

And, while it would be no less disturbing in the sense of violation, Spock’s forced mind-meld would be even more powerful as well.

In the film as it stands, the meld serves only to secure information.

But in our Saavik narrative, Spock not only would extract what was needed to save the peace conference, but he would also sense why Saavik did what she did.

He would see her pain, her grief and anger at David’s murder and the anguish she felt at having to try to control all of that — and ultimately fail.

Imagine a particularly well-crafted scene towards the end in which Spock were to visit Saavik in the brig, and express his own mix of sadness, compassion — and even empathy — for what she felt and did.

Stitching this story arc together across these movies could have created one of Star Trek’s most epic character sketches and a profound look at the human condition.

In the right creative hands, it would have taken some of the best movies of the franchise to an even higher level.

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