Best Saavik in acting: Kirstie Alley, not even close. Stupendously better than Curtis. Best Saavik in looks and makeup: Robin Curtis.
Yep. Saavik continued to be drawn to resemble Alley in the first run comics as drawn by Tom Sutton and Ricardo Villagran, even in the Star Trek III adaptation. Well, Alley with Curtis curly hairdo. Afterwards, the 'do was dropped and drawn exactly as Alley had mostly worn it in TWOK. Curtis' likeness was used in the second-run comics during the late 80s to mid 90s.
I disagree that the ST III adaptation used Kirstie Alley's face. It was definitely Robin Curtis, and by her contract it had to be hers. What did change, though, were Kirstie's eyebrows. In the two-parter "Origin of Saavik" issues, which led into the ST III adaptation, Saavik underwent pon farr - and the penciler and inker took the opportunity to make subtle changes to the angle of the brows (into traditional Vulcan slants) through her appearances in those issues, and they stayed that way after ST III. The image of Curtis (and her hairstyle) was again used in the ST IV adaptation. When Saavik was reintroduced as a regular in the Series II DC Comics issues, DC was mandated to use Curtis's image.
I hate it when something like this sneaks through.... a distortion of Trek's manta of monolithic alien looks and cultures. I hate when an alien species is shown to actually have subtle naunces and differences - you know, like Humans. It would have been so much better if Leonard Nimoy had just played every Vulcan character, male and female. Michael Dorn should have played every Klingon. Nana Visitor should have played every Bajoran.
Robin Curtis by several million miles. She pulls off being a Vulcan perfectly whereas Alley never got that right, and for my money, looks a hell of a lot nicer. Only tangentially related I guess, but I never got what anyone saw in Kirstie Alley that could make her seem attractive.
She does exactly what the script (and director) told her to do. Hide an emotional Romulan temperament beneath a stoic Vulcan exterior.
Tom Sutton was not a likeness artist. None of the characters in DC's Star Trek comics during Sutton's run as penciler looked like the actor. Oh, you could tell who was supposed to be who; each character was distinct, but Kirk didn't look a lot like Shatner, Spock didn't look a lot like Nimoy. Except with Saavik. In the first few issues, Sutton nails Kirstie Alley's likeness. It's actually unsettling to read issue #2 and see a dead-on Alley next to a McCoy that looks very unlike Deforest Kelley. Saavik did change in appearance after Star Trek III; I'll grant that Ian is correct in that. Saavik becomes a distinctly different looking character. However, I don't find Sutton's likeness of Saavik to be particular close to Robin Curtis.
Kirstie had that she smokes, she does coke, she's a party girl vibe that never sat well with me for the character of Saavik. Robin was a female I could logically get into. Take that as you will.
TOS managed to show plenty of Vulcans who all portrayed the same genotype. TOS was the transposition of Horatio Hornblower into space. The reason you usually found only one civilization, one people on another planet is because they were supposed to stand for A foreign race encountered during such travels. Later Trek took this space stuff far too literally. Then they got just plain stupid and decided there should be African-American Vulcans (I shit you not, I've seen Tuvok described that way.) It got even worse with the pudgy, emotional vulcans of Enterprise. Of course, modern Trek lost all concept of what "alien" meant, anyway, save for the excellent "Darmok" and a few other standouts. Alien came to mean only "just plain folks, just like us, but with extra nostrils." Without Dorothy Fontana's anthropological sensibility, Trek aliens became just absurd.
I suspect the people who prefer Curtis first saw Alley in Cheers rather than in TWOK, so they're prejudiced by their preconceptions. Curtis really was awful.
ENNNH, wrong answer, Hans! ST2 was my first exposure to her, and Curtis was the best Saavik. Wanna go to double jeopardy where the stakes can really increase? McClaneisall
So they should have continued to show that only Humans are capable of having a genome with subtle differences? It makes no sense to have ALL Vulcans, or any alien race, look the same. If we want to talk about Curtis' hairstyle - is there some law on Vulcan that mandates that Vulcans aren't allowed to dress their hair in a variety of fashions?