Generations had a bigger budget than ST6, so why...

[DonIago]

It was really a bit of a revelation when I was listening to one of the commentary tracks for TSFS and Curtis talked about how Nimoy had directed her and I was just cringing because of how I felt it was sabotaging the character's potential, especially relative to Alley's portrayal.

I still don't want to believe it was intentional sabotage on his part, but...it's possible.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I definitely heard the story that Kirstie Alley wanted to be in Star Trek III, but she or her agent asked for too much money and blew the negotiation. There was a Starlog interview where she said (approximately) "She's not Saavik, I'm Saavik!" in the headline. Alley didn't reject the role, she missed out on it— that's what I understood it to be.

To clarify, I was only talking about why Alley didn't return as Saavik for Star Trek VI, not III. That's a whole different thing.

I remember a Starlog article promoting STIII that said although Alley's agents asked for a salary increase for the sequel, they apparently asked for too high a price and it was actually more than what DeForest Kelley was making for III (although they had no way of knowing that, of course). Alley ended up doing a stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof instead. You'd think she'd want to be in the film, considering that she was already a Star Trek fan and TWOK was a hit. And outside of some reported clashes with Mr. Shatner, I don't think she had a bad experience doing the film or anything.

Honestly, it's so strange that Paramount never had the foresight to lock the cast down for sequels with standardized contracts, forcing the studio to renegotiate with them each time. But I guess they were always assuming that each new Star Trek film would be the last one.

So making Curtis's Saavik seem above it all, unengaging and dull, not only hurt the character, it contradicted what had come before. An "unexplainable" mistake like that can often be explained if there is a hidden motive. Nimoy may have thought Spock came across as the "second most interesting Vulcan" in Star Trek II, that he was upstaged by Alley's fresh, vivid, realistic character, and he didn't want that to happen again. So yeah, I can see the possible motive.

It was really a bit of a revelation when I was listening to one of the commentary tracks for TSFS and Curtis talked about how Nimoy had directed her and I was just cringing because of how I felt it was sabotaging the character's potential, especially relative to Alley's portrayal.

I still don't want to believe it was intentional sabotage on his part, but...it's possible.

Yeah, I don't want to believe that Nimoy was that petty, either, but it's certainly possible. But who knows? Maybe he just had an entirely different interpretation of Saavik than Meyer and Alley did. But since, from what I understand, Saavik was a pretty popular addition in TWOK, that's a strange choice. Why mess with success?

But intentionally or not, I think it's pretty fair to say that Nimoy's direction killed off most of Saavik's potential. I remember Harve Bennett saying that they wrote her out of STIV so quickly because Saavik in the 20th Century would've just been "another pair of pointed ears to hide." Quite a comedown from the character's debut just two films before.

 

[DonIago]

It's hard for me to think of what Saavik would have had to do in TVH besides being another set of hands involved in the various subplots, barring a significant rewrite...I miss her because of how summarily she disappears never to be heard from again, but the story as presented doesn't seem as though it would have benefitted from her presence.

It's an interesting thought experiment though as to how TVH might have changed if Saavik had accompanied Our Heroes:
-Kirk and Spock don't seem to need her help working with Gillian, and she might have just increased the awkwardness of the whole subplot.
-McCoy, Scotty and Sulu seem to do just fine on their own.
-Uhura and Chekov don't exactly do just fine on their own, but would having Saavik along have improved matters at all?

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

IDK that there's anything that she could have done to give her a decent amount of screentime, but there would be a certain logic to having someone remain "at the conn" on the Bounty while the rest were roaming the city with intent.

 

[DonIago]

IDK that there's anything that she could have done to give her a decent amount of screentime, but there would be a certain logic to having someone remain "at the conn" on the Bounty while the rest were roaming the city with intent.

Logically you're not wrong, but I think one of the reasons why TVH works as well as it does is because everyone gets something to do, so to 'bench' someone would have been disappointing.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Plus the Sulu as a Captain thing is just unsustainable if they were ever going to do future movies. You can't keep bringing Sulu and the Excelsior into every single story, because by the definition the story has to revolve around the crew of the Enterprise. The Captain Sulu thing only works as part of the very last story of the TOS crew.

Takei did not care; during the early 1980s, he spent quite an amount of time in interviews campaigning for the "Captain Sulu" idea to become reality, which he--being (what anyone would guess) of sound mind, understood would pull him away from the TOS characters, thus the "Captain Sulu" movies would be launched. Or perhaps he deluded himself into thinking Sulu would benefit from being part of the TOS characters / films, but in some convoluted manner, Sulu B-stories would conveniently fit into the various movies' plots.

I think the main reasons Takei likes the Captain Sulu thing so much are because it appeals to his ego ("Captain Kirk & the others are retiring, but Hikaru Sulu is still going strong!") and because he didn't have to work with Shatner very much.

Without question about the first part, and possibly about the second, as conceived by a mind that tried to ignore how much "that man" (Shatner) played a key, gargantuan role in making a series so popular / a fixture in global popular culture, that it would eventually head to the big screen, giving Takei the opportunity to carry on with the Sulu character.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

As I recall, Takei had a (supposedly) grass-roots campaign going to get himself a Captain Sulu TV series. This was years ago. I'm sure he astroturfed it, like Roddenberry and the letter-writing campaigns of yore.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I remember a Starlog article promoting STIII that said although Alley's agents asked for a salary increase for the sequel, they apparently asked for too high a price and it was actually more than what DeForest Kelley was making for III (although they had no way of knowing that, of course).

AIUI, Alley and her agent believed that Paramount would negotiate on her fee, that they were just setting out a marker and were flexible, and were shocked when the response they got was, essentially, "Thanks, we're going in a different direction." I personally think Nimoy felt Alley's Saavik was misconceived and wanted to remake the character the way he thought she should be, and that would be easier accomplished with a new actress than with Alley, who had already established a take on the character.

 

[Praetor]

I often think about what may have happened if both David and Saavik had stuck around, and other young characters had been introduced (such as, say, Demora Sulu) if we'd have still gotten TNG films after VI or instead TOS II type films. Some characters (like Captain Sulu) might have still appeared while others like the Big Trio would have fallen by the wayside.

There are plenty of reasons why it probably would never have happened, but still an interesting thought.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I often think about what may have happened if both David and Saavik had stuck around, and other young characters had been introduced (such as, say, Demora Sulu) if we'd have still gotten TNG films after VI or instead TOS II type films. Some characters (like Captain Sulu) might have still appeared while others like the Big Trio would have fallen by the wayside.

Pre-TNG, in the mid-80s, there was speculation in Irwin and Love's Best of Trek books that Star Trek could become like M*A*S*H, which established characters moving on and new characters taking their place. At the time, at the age of 10 or 11, I thought that would be a great idea. I regret that it wasn't tried. In retrospect, the only way it could have worked, absent a television series, would have been in the films came out at a faster pace, maybe as two or three television movies a year instead of one theatrical feature every two-three years. But it also would have needed a producer who would have been willing to say, when an actor (eg., Takei on Star Trek II) balked at returning, "Thanks, I wish you well, we're moving on," and Harve Bennett wasn't willing to do that, and the blowback he got from both Roddenberry over the years (that Bennett's films weren't "real" Star Trek) and the supporting cast (that the "Starfleet Academy" film wouldn't be "real" Star Trek because they weren't going to be in it) explains his caution to cut cast loose.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

AIUI, Alley and her agent believed that Paramount would negotiate on her fee, that they were just setting out a marker and were flexible, and were shocked when the response they got was, essentially, "Thanks, we're going in a different direction." I personally think Nimoy felt Alley's Saavik was misconceived and wanted to remake the character the way he thought she should be, and that would be easier accomplished with a new actress than with Alley, who had already established a take on the character.

This sounds very familiar, so I think I read it somewhere before. Thank you for refreshing my memory!

I often think about what may have happened if both David and Saavik had stuck around, and other young characters had been introduced (such as, say, Demora Sulu) if we'd have still gotten TNG films after VI or instead TOS II type films. Some characters (like Captain Sulu) might have still appeared while others like the Big Trio would have fallen by the wayside.

Yeah, TWOK pretty clearly seems to be setting up for something like, with the start of a younger and less expensive cast if Shatner and Nimoy moved on. Whenever I rewatch TWOK, at some point I can't help but think how full of untapped potential both characters were, and how even though I love the unofficial trilogy of II-IV, it's a shame that both of them were gone by the end of STIV.

And yes, it's certainly interesting to ponder what other new characters could've been introduced if they'd decided to consciously develop a "next generation" to take over for the original crew. Could McCoy have mentored a new young doctor in sickbay?* Might they have eventually taken another shot at introducing a Saavik/David romance? Did Scotty have any other young nieces or nephews in Starfleet?

*A number of years back when I was playing a Star Trek role playing game with my friends, my character was a young doctor who was the nephew of Yeoman Tonia Barrows from "Shore Leave" who was a protégé of Dr. McCoy's. (Our adventures were set in the late movie era, so Dr. Barrows was in his mid to late 20s and not long out of the Academy, much like Dr. Bashir at the beginning of DS9.)

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Meyer wanted someone the audience knew and liked to be one of the conspirators, but he probably knew he couldn't get away with it being one of the seven regulars.

But if he HAD taken that mind-blowing route, which of the seven would you choose to taken Valeris's side?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

But if he HAD taken that mind-blowing route, which of the seven would you choose to taken Valeris's side?

Chekov. Basically combine the Valeris and Chekov roles in the middle act.

Now, would Koenig have accepted that? Probably not. But Chekov is the character that I can see there.

Sulu is off on the Excelsior, so he's out. The Big Three are automatically out. Scotty only cares for his engines. So that leaves Uhura and Chekov. And of the two, Chekov's the one I can see breaking bad.

 

[DonIago]

But if he HAD taken that mind-blowing route, which of the seven would you choose to taken Valeris's side?

For shock value? McCoy.

 

[Dukhat]

And of the two, Chekov's the one I can see breaking bad.

Especially since the Klingons killed his imaginary brother.

 

[Praetor]

I agree, Chekov makes the most sense.

Something about him being Russian and it being a parallel to the end of the Cold War feels right.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Scotty had serious doubts about Klingon honor, of course.......and Kirk's doubts were even MORE serious.

 

[Praetor]

Scotty was mostly sore over their insults to the Enterprise back on K-7. The man clearly holds a grudge.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Chekov. Basically combine the Valeris and Chekov roles in the middle act.

Now, would Koenig have accepted that? Probably not. But Chekov is the character that I can see there.

Actually, I could see Koenig possibly going for it. Pretty much everyone knew going into it that STVI was going to be the last film with the original crew, and Koenig actually volunteered to have Chekov killed off in the STVI treatment he wrote for the studio. I could see him jumping at the chance to play something different that would send his character out with a bang. And heck, we know from Babylon 5 he could play a great villain.

Sulu is off on the Excelsior, so he's out. The Big Three are automatically out. Scotty only cares for his engines. So that leaves Uhura and Chekov. And of the two, Chekov's the one I can see breaking bad.

Yeah, I can't really argue with your logic. And I doubt they'd make Uhura the conspirator, since have the only female and African-American cast member become a traitor in the last film would be a bad look. They'd definitely pick one of the white guys doing phony accents, and Scotty had largely evolved into the loveable comic relief by that point.

 

[Praetor]

I've never read about Koenig's treatment for STVI. I'm happy with what we got, but that was fascinating.