There's also a follow-up novel, Cast No Shadow by James Swallow, that gets into Valeris's issues with Klingons. Without giving too much away, there was a traumatic incident in her childhood . . . .
^She was just getting started. That was step one of teaching him "The Spocker". It starts with the Vulcan salute...
The problem with it is that, yes, we know they're "supposed" to be aliens, but they are not "alien" enough to come across as anything but Human Beings doing this Finger Chain ... thing. If Vulcans were latex aliens maybe it would fly. And because we, the audience, linger in this scene, we see the conotations ... implications ... and some of them are damn funny!!! Unfortunately, Nimoy, as the co-inventor of Vulcans, could not take that point of view. To him, they were aliens and alien enough where this Fingering Scene would be nothing but fascinating to any audience.
I don't know if I found it fascinating, but I don't have a problem with it either. I knew enough even when I saw it the first time as a kid to get that this was Vulcan forplay.
IIRC the 'finger foreplay' thing was established in TOS. "The Enterprise Incident" sees Spock and the Romulan Commander getting all touchy-feely with their fingers during a midnight interlude in her quarters, and before that we saw Sarek and Amanda doing it in front of everyone in "Journey To Babel"!
Never saw it as "foreplay". Yeah okay, kissing is foreplay as well. Just the Vulcan way of showing affection, and possibly more than that, but it doesn't have to end in sex. Remember, the mind meld works using hands. I really disliked it that they didn't do it in Abramstrek between Uhura and Spock. But apparently, audiences would have been too stupid to understand it. Because audiences in the 60s and 80s were smarter. Yeah right.
People understood intimacy better in the 60s and 80s. All the audiences of today understand is 'sex', and nothing else.
It is very suspect of Hollywood. They tend to lead the charge on pop-culture, but they don't understand the basics of human behaviour. Something like Love Story could never be made by today's Hollywood. The onset of romantic comedy has meant that true, human romantic interaction in the movies has just become broad strokes. Today it's all about home base rather than first, second and third. Hollywood of years past still knew how to write this stuff properly.
Ok, to clarify, I think the figure touching is something along the lines of kissing. It can end in sex and be part of that, but it doesn't have to go all the way. It seems like a really intimate thing you wouldn't just do with anybody. I doubt Sarek was touching fingers with anybody but Amanda in the TOS and movie era.
My DVD of ST III has an interview with the guy who played Spock at 17 (Stephen Manley), and he says that his character and Saavik had sex. He seems pretty enthusiastic about it, actually, for a guy who only got to rub fingers with his costar. :-)
Nimoy spoke at my college shortly before the movie came out. During the Q&A session, somebody in the audience pointed that there really hadn't been any sexy bits in the first two movies, unlike the original TV show. Nimoy was coy, but teased the audience by hinting that there might be a bit of sex in the new movie . . . . I assume that Savvik and Young Spock was what he was alluding to.
The one thing I did notice - and really appreciated, honestly - about the Finger Thing between Spock & Saavik was the direction with regards to Spock looking up at her, as if to make sure it really was alright, with her. That this is what she meant, that he could use her in this manner. I was totally sold on that moment, on the innocense of Spock. That whole business with gliding the hands around and climaxing with the touching of the fingertips went on far too long. Just ... it really needed judicious editing. But Nimoy didn't just abandon ManChild Spock and treat him as a blank spot where the "real" Spock should be. He gave the Pon Farr sequence the right tonality that I think any other director would've missed. And even the little boy Spock, when Saavik and David are talking, he's shaking his head like he knows they're communicating, but he can't decipher it. Nimoy is a great director with actors. I think his technical direction leaves something to be desired, though ...