Lieutenant junior grade Saavik was a Starfleet cadet in early 2285, and served aboard the USS Enterprise as navigator under Admiral Kirk during the Genesis crisis. Apparently of either full or partial Vulcan heritage, she had been mentored by Spock at Starfleet Academy. At this stage in her career, she often quoted Starfleet regulations, and was surprised by the way Kirk occasionally bent those rules. Despite her Vulcan stoicism, Saavik was seen crying at Spock's funeral. (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
Later that year, Saavik was transferred to the USS Grissom, where she further studied the Genesis Planet along with Kirk's son David Marcus. There, they found the body of Captain Spock, who was believed lost. When Saavik and David found him, Spock's regenerated body was physiologically that of a child, but he aged rapidly. Saavik helped Spock through the agonies of the pon farr. She returned to Vulcan with the Enterprise crew, to reintegrate Spock's katra into his body in 2285. (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
In 2286, she remained on Vulcan when the Enterprise crew, together with Captain Spock, returned home for Earth. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
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Appendices
Appearances
Background information
Saavik was played by Kirstie Alley in Star Trek II, and by Robin Curtis in Star Trek III and Star Trek IV. Alley's eyebrows were not characteristically slanted like other Vulcans seen to that point. The makeup design was changed when Curtis assumed the role.
The script for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan noted that:
- LT. SAAVIK is young and beautiful. She is half Vulcan and half Romulan. In appearance she is Vulcan with pointed ears, but her skin is fair and she has none of the expressionless facial immobility of a Vulcan.
Kirstie Alley portrayed her with these notes in mind, and a scene making note of her heritage was cut from the final film. When Robin Curtis took over the role for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the script simply noted that she was "half-Vulcan".
Early drafts of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country featured Saavik in the role eventually filled by Valeris. In the novelization of Star Trek VI, however, Valeris and Saavik were two separate characters. Saavik is serving on Vulcan as a Starfleet recruiter, and Valeris approaches her to enlist. She passes on advice about how to reconcile her dual heritage (in Valeris' case, she was half-Klingon) (citation needed • edit).
The female bridge officer standing next to Captain Morgan Bateson on the USS Bozeman in TNG: "Cause and Effect" was originally intended to be Saavik. (If kept, this would have caused a severe continuity error given the date of 2278 for the disappearance of the Bozeman, considering that ST II takes place in 2285.) Bateson was played by Kirstie Alley's Cheers co-star Kelsey Grammer.
Alley was offered the chance to reprise Saavik twice. She turned down the character in Star Trek VI because, at the height of her TV stardom, producers found her salary demands to be too high, while Gene Roddenberry did not approve of her character betraying the Federation. The character was later rewritten as Valeris. Additionally, she was recommended by Kelsey Grammer to play his first officer in the TNG Episode "Cause and Effect." Paramount nixed the idea because of Alley's salary demands.
The Star Trek Chronology theorizes that Saavik entered the Academy in 2281, believing the Kobayashi Maru test to be something taken by upperclassmen, though neither has been confirmed.
One of Robin Curtis' costumes was sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay. [1]
Apocrypha
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 (aka "Ultimate Fiasco", aka "The Con of Wrath"). 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".
Saavik had many non-canon adventures in various licensed comics, novels, and games. Saavik first appeared in novels in The Wrath of Khan novelization. She was picked up as an ongoing character for the DC Comics series, volume 1 from issue #1 ("The Wormhole Connection") until #36 ("The Apocalypse Scenario!"), which was a tie-in to The Voyage Home comic special, where Saavik remained behind after Kirk's departure from Vulcan. Saavik also appeared in The Search for Spock comic adaptation, an entry in Who's Who in Star Trek issue #2, and two of the annuals: #1, "All Those Years Ago..", and #3, "Retrospect".
In the second volume DC series, Saavik made a guest appearance in #25 ("Class Reunion") and then joined the cast, as an USS Enterprise-A bridge officer, starting with #35 ("Divide... and Conquer"), for the remainder of the series, including the associated Annuals after that point, as well as Star Trek Specials, including one story where Saavik is at odds with Valeris over the former training the latter to take a bridge position. In Tales of the Dominion War, Saavik and Spock have married and are still together after Spock has left on his covert mission to Romulus. In The Lives of Dax, she assists Tobin Dax in a transwarp experiment, and recommends safety procedures that would have averted his shuttle accident.
Saavik's history before Star Trek II was mentioned in two issue of DC's first comic series, #7 ("Pon Farr") and #8 ("Blood Fever"), and was expanded upon in Marvel Comics's Star Trek: Untold Voyages series, as well as the Pocket Books novel The Pandora Principle. Details like ages, dates and costumes differ between the three companies' versions of her story. In the Star Trek: Titan novel Taking Wing, Tuvok, under the guise of a Romulan, greets Spock and gives him greetings from "his wife" Captain Saavik, indicating her return to Starfleet after her stay on Vulcan as well as their marriage in the Josepha Sherman/Susan Shwartz novel Vulcan's Heart.
According to the novelization The Search for Spock by Vonda N. McIntyre, Saavik is supposed to have had a short relationship with Kirk's son David Marcus. McIntyre also wrote further subtext into Saavik's motivations for staying on Vulcan in The Voyage Home novelization.
The events following her exile on Vulcan in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home are explained in the novel Unspoken Truth by Margaret Wander Bonanno.