January Meme: Thoughts about Saavik
Jan. 6th, 2021 11:02 amRequested by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thalia_seawood. I am just the right age to have watched both Star Trek: Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: The Search for Spock in the cinema, to have read the respective tie-in novels (in those days before the internet, younglings, when fanzines were hard to come by). All of of which helped making me love Saavik, who was the first new, movies only character to have that effect on me. (By contrast, Captain Decker in Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture and Ilya had felt dull, though I appreciated Decker go to be actually correct in his initial argument with Kirk.) Here was Saavik, a female Vulcan (Vulcan-Romulan, if you took the tie-ins into account, to which I'll get in a moment) not in love with either Kirk or Spock, but who was Spock's protegé instead and set on a Starfleet career. She got to be sceptical about Kirk without being punished for it (though some of her assumptions turned out to be wrong, but not in a way that made her look stupid). She wasn't condemned, like Uhura, to "hailing frequencies open, Captain" in the movies. (The tv show had given Uhura somewhat more, though still not as much as the male characters did, but the first and second movies? Not so much.) This all might sound as not so impressive when compared to later tv and films, but back then, it had not been precedented in Star Trek.
( Spoilers for decades old movies and novels ensue )
The other days
thalia_seawood. I am just the right age to have watched both Star Trek: Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: The Search for Spock in the cinema, to have read the respective tie-in novels (in those days before the internet, younglings, when fanzines were hard to come by). All of of which helped making me love Saavik, who was the first new, movies only character to have that effect on me. (By contrast, Captain Decker in Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture and Ilya had felt dull, though I appreciated Decker go to be actually correct in his initial argument with Kirk.) Here was Saavik, a female Vulcan (Vulcan-Romulan, if you took the tie-ins into account, to which I'll get in a moment) not in love with either Kirk or Spock, but who was Spock's protegé instead and set on a Starfleet career. She got to be sceptical about Kirk without being punished for it (though some of her assumptions turned out to be wrong, but not in a way that made her look stupid). She wasn't condemned, like Uhura, to "hailing frequencies open, Captain" in the movies. (The tv show had given Uhura somewhat more, though still not as much as the male characters did, but the first and second movies? Not so much.) This all might sound as not so impressive when compared to later tv and films, but back then, it had not been precedented in Star Trek. ( Spoilers for decades old movies and novels ensue )
The other days
