Some points about Star Trek VI:The Undiscovered Country
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What revisionist history? I've seen that film dozens of times since childhood, and don't remember that part at all.
Why would you think transwarp was forgotten? It was sabotaged; It didn't fail. It was probably standardized within a few decades if not shorter.
How do we know what is out of character for Spock at this point? This is the first time we see him in a few years since his resurrection. During TVH, he is still retraining his mind and reintegrating himself in some fashion. TFF isn't much later, and makes him re-evaluate family, his childhood, friendship, his human half, his relationship with Sarek, all of it. If we are using death and resurrection as the line, we know almost nothing of Spock post rebirth.
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Absolutely. Hell you could still have had Cattrall play her at this point for all I care, maybe change the hairstyle and her performance a little maybe - she was probably the right age still, and there's already been two actresses play the character, plus it could be explained away easily with the decade or so that had passed at this point in the story.
It would have given so much more dramatic weight to the movie.
One could argue this would be a case of a recurring character stealing the thunder of the regulars in their farewell movie. Then again, one of the main antagonists, Admiral Cartwright, was also a recurring character from the movie series, to no ill effect.
Using Saavik here would not be particularly atrocious "small universe" - if anything, inventing a new character and yet making her a Saavik copy is. Sure, Spock is entitled to having proteges, but how about not making that protege another Saavik? Say, we could have a young halfbreed male who's not even partially Vulcan yet strikes a chord with Spock for obvious reasons.
It still wouldn't help with the main issue, which is that the new character obviously dunnit. Using Saavik would solve that fairly elegantly. So yes, this is the one gripe I have with the execution of this movie.
The obvious aside, letting Saavik "complete her story arc" would carry a connotation. Here the heroes try and train successors to themselves, and end up with a total failure. So there is no soft transition - an era will die with them. Sad for the heroes, nice for the greater Trek story where Starfleet moves on and looks back at Kirk with ambiguity and anxiety.
Timo Saloniemi
Using Saavik here would not be particularly atrocious "small universe" - if anything, inventing a new character and yet making her a Saavik copy is. Sure, Spock is entitled to having proteges, but how about not making that protege another Saavik? Say, we could have a young halfbreed male who's not even partially Vulcan yet strikes a chord with Spock for obvious reasons.
It still wouldn't help with the main issue, which is that the new character obviously dunnit. Using Saavik would solve that fairly elegantly. So yes, this is the one gripe I have with the execution of this movie.
The obvious aside, letting Saavik "complete her story arc" would carry a connotation. Here the heroes try and train successors to themselves, and end up with a total failure. So there is no soft transition - an era will die with them. Sad for the heroes, nice for the greater Trek story where Starfleet moves on and looks back at Kirk with ambiguity and anxiety.
Timo Saloniemi
That one really doesn't make sense though, I think in either the delivery of the lines or the idea and lines themselves.
Given that Saavik had such a minimal role in IV and acted real differently between II and III, having her back in a prominent role in VI and acting more like she did in II than III would be pretty awkward. I believe Meyer wanted returned Saavik to be not at all like or influenced by the intermediate Curtis version and Cattrall didn't want to be the third actress to play a character, both are fine reasons to just have a new character.
And also it is pretty drastic, arguably too drastic and shock value-y, for a beloved-by-some character, who the film would expect us to feel nostalgic about her return, to resort to multiple murders or massacre and trying to have a militant conquest just out of fear of rather than hope for the future (or bitterness, just like Kirk, about David being killed).
Agreed.
Doubly so.
It could also be argued that what many here have argued was a much needed next draft of the script could have put the whole situation with Valeris in a far better light. Instead of a mystery for the audience, show Valeris setting up her part in the conspiracy, while desperately trying to keep it a secret. Make it plain she's there to sabotage the peace process, for whatever personal reason. When she finally gets caught, her arrogant refusal to cooperate marks her as someone ill-suited for service in Starfleet, and good riddance to her. Saavik, even without appearing, is recalled as someone far better suited to carry on the legacy of our heroes.
I love Saavik and would hate for her to have become an evil character.
I think this sentiment sums up why the idea was nixed.
Even if Saavik was the traitor, I doubt having her in the movie would make her less obvious. The way the movie played out it could only lead to her. Watching the movie I knew the traitor wouldn't have been one of the TOS cast.
The position of the 'bad' guys in TUC is not necessarily an 'evil' one - from their point of view they are protecting their respective empires, they are morally ambiguous at best, some of their actions you could describe as evil but their motivations certainly aren't.
I'm not saying for a second you wouldn't have guessed it was her, merely it would be an interesting and dramatic plot twist for the character to take, much like Admiral Cartwright.
Admiral Cartwright going bad doesn't sour previous films in the series. Saavik going bad, on the other hand, would sour TWOK.
Cartwright's a throwaway character; Saavik not so much.
Cartwright's a throwaway character; Saavik not so much.
It's still assassinating both your leadership and theirs by, ironically, cooperating with the ExtremistsTM of the other.
Funnily, I actually did trust Valeris because I assumed she was the Saavik recasting and wasn't quite as genre savvy as I later became.
TBH, the notion that Genesis was a weapon intended for use on the Klingons... comes from the Klingons. They don't know the device was intended for peaceful reasons, because it's a cold war so they naturally assume the worst intent from their mortal enemies. Indeed, Klingon Commander Kurge seems inclined to think he's being heroic -- repeatedly referring to Genesis as being the Federation's attempt to create a superweapon, threatening not just the Klingon Empire, but potentially the entire galaxy. The Klingon Ambassador in IV and VI uses similar logic. The Klingons don't see themselves as the bad guys, which ties in neatly with themes raised in The Undiscovered Country.
And to be wholly fair to Kurge, in the wrong hands, Genesis is a weapon of considerable and potentially genocidal risk. "Life from lifelessness" is all well and good when the Genesis device is being used on unoccupied planets, but unleash that thing on a planet where even the only life-forms are microbes, let alone somewhere colonised by Klingons, Romulans or any other space-faring race, and the 'terraforming' could take on considerably more fatal consequences that Carol or David, myopically working on their little terraforming project, may not have foreseen because they're all like, well of course no-one would think of other uses for it...
And to be wholly fair to Kurge, in the wrong hands, Genesis is a weapon of considerable and potentially genocidal risk. "Life from lifelessness" is all well and good when the Genesis device is being used on unoccupied planets, but unleash that thing on a planet where even the only life-forms are microbes, let alone somewhere colonised by Klingons, Romulans or any other space-faring race, and the 'terraforming' could take on considerably more fatal consequences that Carol or David, myopically working on their little terraforming project, may not have foreseen because they're all like, well of course no-one would think of other uses for it...
Hate to do this to you, but
Kruge
Kruge
I agree that it would've been a cool and unexpected ending for Saavik, and it certainly would have made TUC's ending more surprising. But considering that Cattrall would have been the third actress to play Saavik over the course of just five movies, I can certainly see why they decided to go in a new direction.
And honestly, I don't know how much Cattrall's Saavik would've felt like the "same" character anyway. She doesn't look anything like either Alley or Curtis facially, and the character functioned very differently in the plot than she did in the other Trek movies. Really, the only things that point to Valeris originally being the same character as Saavik were the fact that she was a young Vulcan protege of Spock's and the "...A lie?" refrain that called back to STII.
I think that any romantic subtext between them was likely either a red herring to keep us from suspecting Valeris, a reflection of the recasting, or both. If you have a new actress playing what's now a new character, why not play the scenes differently than you would have with the previous actress?
<Shrug> They couldn't get Kirstie Alley back and Nicholas Meyer wasn't interested in having Robin Curtis play the part. And Kim Cattrall wasn't interested in just being "The Third Saavik" when she could create a new character instead. What else could they do?
Considering how different TMP was from TOS and how different TWOK was from TMP after that, I don't see why. If we fans could roll with and accept all of those radical changes in looks and characterizations, Saavik going back to how she was in TWOK wouldn't have been that big of a deal.
Which is why I would have wanted Saavik to be in the movie, and a suspect, until it turns out Chekov dunnit.
I mean, he is the one who'd try and please the boss, doing things he thought the boss wanted done. He has sprouted anti-Klingon propaganda many times before. He may have lost a brother to Klingons, feeling kinship to Kirk. And while he, too, is a Spock protege, he's also looking up to Kirk in a way no other TOS sidekick is - and Kirk, not Spock, is the hero character who on the surface appears to be advocating a wiping out of the Klingons.
That is, Valeris appears to have dunnit for Spock. Chekov would have dunnit for Kirk. Although the ST2 Saavik probably would have dunnit for Kirk, too...
Timo Saloniemi
I certainly got the impression that Valeris dunnit not for Spock, but because she felt he was weak, and wouldn't do it himself.
Plus it behooves him to be a student of human nature, for tactical reasons.
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