Yes. Carol was the lead scientist involved in the development of Genesis. It was her project. For her to completely vanish and have no further involvement once the Genesis planet was created makes absolutely no sense.
Why did the TOS films never bring back Carol Marcus?
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Also, being the Vulcan ambassador to Earth, his presence makes perfect sense. If they used some unknown ambassador, fans to this day would be saying they should have brought back Sarek.
She should have been mentioned, even if they didn't want to use Bibi Besch. David being on site and Carol doing lab work. And yeah, I know they didn't want to load up the funny movie with anything heavy, but Carol and Kirk should have had an on screen conversation in The Voyage Home.
With just a few lines of dialog, without delaying all of the yukity yuks, they could have put some actual buttons on some of it. Without even hiring Bibi Besch - just mention her.
"Jim, how did Carol take the news...?
"How would you take it, Bones?"
"Maybe she'll..."
"Not for a long time."
Boom, Carol situation resolved.
Saavik would have been better served by putting her in the courtroom scenes. Either way, she was insultingly ushered off the franchise before the fun started. She finally - after three months - thinks Kirk "should know" that David "died most bravely." Where's she been for all this time? Did she immediately leave for Earth to report? She wasn't in trouble. Did Kirk refuse to talk about it? No mention about that from him (in fact David is off his mind until TUC).
It's like these were characters they regretted introducing movies earlier because they wanted to get back to the original TOS formula. Which, great, it's an awesome formula, but I was enjoying the evolution.
^Ironically I think the introduction of dialog like that regarding Carol would have the same problem that you pointed out with the Saavik cameo, in that that's a conversation Kirk should have tried to have with Carol as soon as he had a calm moment to do so, but that dialog would imply it had happened fairly recently (or, at least, why hadn't Bones asked him about it sooner?).
I can kind of handwave the Saavik conversation as her reiterating something that she already told Kirk on the premise that she doesn't know if or when she'll see him again and wants to try to give him some peace of mind.
That said, yes, it is a bit sad that that's the last time we canonically see Saavik and that we have no idea what becomes of someone who'd showed such promise as a character.
I love the TWOK-TVH trilogy, and I wish TNG had attempted something on that scale with their own films (not that TPTB exactly intended the first trilogy to even be a thing that happened), but it is a point of frustration that it introduces so many interesting secondary characters only to take all of them off the playing field by the end. If nothing else, the novelization of TUC's invoking Carol being critically wounded in an attack by the Klingons as a way of explaining Kirk's increased hostility toward them at the beginning of that film could have been a nice callback.
I can kind of handwave the Saavik conversation as her reiterating something that she already told Kirk on the premise that she doesn't know if or when she'll see him again and wants to try to give him some peace of mind.
That said, yes, it is a bit sad that that's the last time we canonically see Saavik and that we have no idea what becomes of someone who'd showed such promise as a character.
I love the TWOK-TVH trilogy, and I wish TNG had attempted something on that scale with their own films (not that TPTB exactly intended the first trilogy to even be a thing that happened), but it is a point of frustration that it introduces so many interesting secondary characters only to take all of them off the playing field by the end. If nothing else, the novelization of TUC's invoking Carol being critically wounded in an attack by the Klingons as a way of explaining Kirk's increased hostility toward them at the beginning of that film could have been a nice callback.
Well, I tossed out the dialog off the cuff for free
. The first line could easily be "were you able to finally get in touch with Carol" or something. Super easy to fix. The point is, a quick conversation that lasts like 30 seconds would solve the Carol Problem.Saavik's dialog is plainly the first time she's spoken to Kirk about it: "I haven't had the opportunity to talk to you about your son." So, she was waiting 3 months for unknown reasons. It was a line of exposition for the audience masquerading as a moment for Saavik which sadly doesn't really work without knowing why it took so long for her to get to.
I'm doing a rewatch of the films and find myself wishing Shatner included her in TFF, but they would have had to sideline her like they did the Gang of Four otherwise muddy the waters for Spock even more. She was dropped and forgotten after the BoP took off from Vulcan.
I know this is all 20/20 hindsight, but I also wish just a little more thought went into the side characters introduced in TWOK. But film by film, they seemed intent on phasing them all out to restore the status quo. Something I always regretted. But also something I can see the original cast wanting to happen to keep them semi-regularly employed.
Also TFF would have benefitted if Klaa's motivation was tied to "there will be no peace as long as Kirk lives" instead of just being a bored warrior looking for a glory.
After ST IV, I'm guessing any use of Carol Marcus would have required a royalty to be paid to the guy that created her. Don't have to do that with a new character. That's my guess.
Well, I tossed out the dialog off the cuff for free
That it would take Kirk three months to get in touch with Carol, or at least three months for McCoy to finally ask, still stretches credulity though. Her son died. You don't wait three months, or three weeks, or even three days to communicate that to a parent unless you have absolutely no choice.
By the same token as your proposed Carol conversation, though, the dialog could easily be tweaked to remove any suggestion that Saavik hadn't brought this up before.
I don't really know what place there was for Saavik in TFF, and I'd have it if they brought her back just for a cameo...perhaps just for a cameo in this particular film...
The obvious place for her to return was and will forever be TUC, but...man oh man, that's a can of trilithium...I wonder how I'd feel about Saavik now if they really had gone through with that...
I'd like to know, rather than speculating as to, what the motives were that led to the secondary characters no longer appearing. Since the films weren't envisioned as a trilogy, I assume that was a part of it.
I'm not sure Klaa's motives matter much at all to me unless you make changes to the part he plays within the film as well. In the end, he's mostly just there as an almost superfluous antagonist. Strip him away and the movie barely changes.
I don't know, so I'm going to go ahead and speculate.
I suspect it had something to do with Nimoy and Shatner gaining control over the movies. Notice that TMP and TWOK, in which they just acted but had no role as producer, writer, director, etc., gave quite a bit of screen time to new secondary characters. Then when Nimoy took over in TSFS, that started to decline and by TVH and TFF, secondary characters were all but gone. Once they stepped back, and Meyer took over to direct TUC, lo and behold we have Valeris.
I suspect Nimoy and Shatner were far more interested in preserving the roles of the existing cast members and didn't particularly want other characters grabbing screen time. Just IMHO, of course.
Interestingly, Nimoy *did* spearhead what was the only Trek movie to truly be an ensemble piece, but that was limited to the core 7 of the main cast.
I hate to speculate about this particular point, but I do feel as though Nimoy may have directed Curtis in a manner that ultimately made her version of Saavik less interesting than she was as portrayed by Alley under Meyer's direction, and he may have done that because he was worried about Saavik's potential as a character and wanted to stunt that. It sounds so beneath him, but...I can't shake it. :|
We were never supposed to have Valeris, IIRC, but Kirstie Alley would have been too expensive by that point and Meyer didn't want Curtis...perhaps because he was unimpressed by the performance she gave under Nimoy's direction.
We were never supposed to have Valeris, IIRC, but Kirstie Alley would have been too expensive by that point and Meyer didn't want Curtis...perhaps because he was unimpressed by the performance she gave under Nimoy's direction.
You're assuming Kirk waited. It could have taken those three months for them to connect. Maybe she wasn't taking his calls because she didn't want to speak to him after getting the news (in the DC comics at the time she got a recorded message from Kirk so they also felt that she was avoiding him). And McCoy isn't waiting to ask Kirk, he's checking in after knowing Kirk's been trying. Anything can be dropped into the dialog to make it work.
Hell, why did they sit on Vulcan for 3 months to begin with? Why didn't they take a ship back to Earth? Sarek would have given them a ride. Why wasn't Starfleet coming to get them? Vulcan wasn't neutral territory, it was a major member of the Federation. It's not like Kirk to hide from his responsibilities. It's not in character for any of them to hang out and delay facing the music. The assumption is they are taking 3 months to make repairs, but why is it necessary considering the earlier points? Kirk doesn't need to personally deliver the BoP to Earth. And where is Maltz for that matter? Was he picked up by the Federation but not Kirk?
There's a lot left out in the opening scenes, Carol is actually the least of it.
Well hunting Kirk because he was wanted by the Klingon empire is a lot more sensible to me than just some young buck wanting to knock off the Fastest Gun in the West. All they hadda do was change a subtitle during the dialog to do it too. It may not have made much difference, but it would have made it fit the established hostilities between the races in the films a little better.
Meyer preferred Alley and didn't want to recast it a third time but never mentioned her performance, and I don't want to assume for someone else. As for Nimoy directing Curtis, since the finished films had her be a full Vulcan, that's how he envisioned her. Sadly, he directed her badly. Curtis is actually a skilled performer, but her delivery - especially in her opening lines - is really flat. The first impression is not great but she does get better as the film goes on.
Not for anything, Kirstie Alley had a few flat line readings herself but her charisma was strong.
I'm sure Saavik was phased out for the same reason David Gautreaux didn't want to play Xon after Nimoy signed on: there's no real place for a second Vulcan and the character would be pushed into the background. And the cast was large enough. I'm sure the OG actors were happy to not have younger people coming in and taking their screen time. They were pissed enough when TNG was announced.
Was there a money reason, for example like involving royalties, that would have meant money had to be paid to use the character in subsequent films?
Yes, there's a WGA mandated character residual. I don't know who the WGA considered Carol Marcus' creator, but that person (or estate) would have received a small residual. The thing is, it would have been a rounding error in the film's budget.
I recall an interview with Harve Bennett claiming the reason Carol was never brought back was because he felt she was "extraneous" and cut the character which helped to save money too obviously. Supposedly Nimoy agreed with this decision and she was cut all together.
I think it might've been in one of those Edward Gross books.
I think it might've been in one of those Edward Gross books.
Since the WGA-arbitrated credits list Jack B. Sowards as the writer of the screenplay and co-creator of the story, I would presume it would be him. Even though the writing credits on TWOK are pretty much fiction. But I agree with you it wouldn't have been enough of a royalty payment to have mattered.
If someone had to be cut to save money, I would have much rather seen Carol brought back than David. Just my own personal opinion.
Oh yeah I disagree with the decision, and Bibi was hurt by this decision. She always wanted to see some kind of closure between Kirk and David.
Bennett also said he couldn't get over how David could possibly have cheated with the Genesis Matrix when the two were working on project together---but it's obvious he did so when she wasn't around "that day" LOL.
In the prologue for the Star Trek VI novelization---Jim is at Carol's bedside after she's seriously injured during a Klingon attack on a colony she was working it. I think it is in there to add dimension to Kirk's headspace in the movie...not just anger over the loss of David, but Carol is laying near dead and he's called to deal with this because--- Spock volunteered.
The novelization is fantastic (all of them are) really.
At the very least, I wish Nimoy and Bennett had reused the Genesis briefing from Star Trek II with Besch in the scene where the Klingons watch it rather than have Shatner redo it. It really does not make sense that Kirk would simply parrot Carol's briefing/proposal. And, frankly, I can see the Klingons finding it easier to get their hands on a civilian briefing than a Starfleet briefing.
Again, like the WGA residual, the fee to Besch for reusing the footage from the previous film would have amounted to a rounding error in the budget.
Again, like the WGA residual, the fee to Besch for reusing the footage from the previous film would have amounted to a rounding error in the budget.
Obviously, or there'd be a lot fewer Star Trek fans.
In addition to the fee being paid, the actor also has to consent to their footage being reused. I don't know if they ever wanted to use it, or asked Besch, but I wonder if she would have given permission given that she was not included in TSFS. That, for example, is the reason there are no flashbacks of Jadzia in the DS9 finale -- Terry Farrell would not give permission.
My recollection is that Farrell (or perhaps more likely her agent) wasn't pleased about her voice having been used earlier in the arc without her permission, and this was a bit of reciprocity.
