Why did the TOS films never bring back Carol Marcus?

[David cgc]

Maybe what Picard experience was Kirk in a fake reality, too. Reasoning: Kirk is still wearing a Starfleet-like under-uniform outfit, suggesting he never really left it and its always in hte back of his mind, and that his mind knew things were not right so he created a fake reality for him to always keep him off kilter and hopefully one day wake up to where he was.

As with Picard and Guinan, those are the clothes he was wearing when he went in. Yes, the implication is that he wears the vest under the jacket, each with its own badge (you can see the outer jacket, still with its delta shield, draped over a nearby tree trunk while Kirk is chopping wood). They did the same thing with Sisko in DS9.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Which he could have changed. It's not like you wear the same thing forever when you go can anywhere and do anthing in the Nexus, except change cloths. Heck, Kirk could have been naked. I don't think audiences were ready for the Naked Shat, though. The full Shat monty.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Obviously, or there'd be a lot fewer Star Trek fans.

That was implied but I'm glad someone else took it there

 

[JonnyQuest037]

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.

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.

Personally, I hated that. Largely because I don't think Kirk needed a reason for "increased hostility" towards the Klingons in STVI. He'd been enemies with them for 30-40 years and they were responsible for the death of his son and the destruction of his ship. That's plenty.

Hell, "Errand of Mercy" already gives plenty of reason for Kirk to hate the Klingons:

KIRK: Gentlemen, I have seen what the Klingons do to planets like yours. They are organized into vast slave labor camps. No freedoms whatsoever. Your goods will be confiscated. Hostages taken and killed, your leaders confined. You'd be far better off on a penal planet. Infinitely better off.

I was extremely disappointed by what J. M. Dillard did with the STVI novelization. It was pretty obvious she didn't like the screenplay much and spent half of the book trying to plug what she saw as its flaws, but IMO, she just took the teeth out of the whole thing. (Oh, don't worry! Kirk isn't really as prejudiced as this movie makes it seem! Oh, don't worry! Spock actually asked Valeris for permission during that forcible mind meld! Hey, here's a less funny tag on McCoy's "Bet you wish you'd stood in bed" line! ) Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn actually took some chances with the TOS characters and had them do some surprising unexpected things in their last movie. Dillard seemed more preoccupied with sanding off all the edges than actually adapting the movie's story.

 

[DonIago]

TBF, many people on this board have criticized Kirk's antagonism toward the Klingons and the mind meld that occur during TUC, so I can't really blame Dillard for trying to take steps to ameliorate that.

Personally, I kind of lean toward agreeing with you, though I would have liked to see Carol in the book if she'd been a character rather than a McGuffin.

 

[Therin of Andor]

There was a "Starlog" interview with Harve Bennett, where Carol's non-participation in ST III was discussed. Paraphrasing: The script was all about balance. Spock was dead. A big deal. For Kirk to get Spock back, nature's balance meant that he had to lose his own son, and also the Enterprise.

David Marcus was shown to have secretly added the protomatter to the equation for the Genesis Effect to make it work. As project leader, Carol had to have known he did it. David's punishment for cheating meant that, he had to die. If Carol was in ST III, then she would be fated to die, too. Bibi Besch had contacted Harve Bennett to ask why she wasn't in ST III and this was what he told her.

She did get to voice a Star Trek audiobook: "Faces of Fire".

If David was always meant to be killed, then his presence in TSFS explains itself.

Saavik was the "next generation" of Starfleet, as clearly sold in TWOK, and being under the direct guidance of Spock made her a key figure, so her being on the Grissom and building a relationship with David was a natural course for the character.

When they didn't know if Nimoy was returning or not, the plan was to groom Saavik and David to be the young leads of a series of telemovies, with as many of the remaining TOS cast who wanted to keep working as possible. A small exploratory vessel, with a reversal of TOS's two leads: Kirk's son, the science officer, and Spock's daughter analog, the one in command.

As soon as Nimoy asked to direct ST III, all other plans were abandoned. ST III was to be a movie, and Spock would be back, somehow.

 

[DonIago]

I get the poetry of it, but allowing that to interfere with realism, while it works sometimes, doesn't work for me in this case. For one thing, I don't think Carol needs to have known (though I grant it might make her look bad if she didn't know). For another thing, it's silly to say that if Carol appears in the film and does know, then she must die. One would think losing her son would be more than sufficient "punishment".