While “Star Trek” had seen several full-blooded Vulcans before — T’Pring (Arlene Martel) notably appeared in “Amok Time” — Lt. Saavik was the first full-blooded Vulcan to have a major role on the U.S.S. Enterprise. In Nicholas Meyer’s 1982 feature film “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” Lt. Saavik is first seen engaged in a specialized Starfleet test called the Kobayashi Maru. The test puts the student in a simulation wherein they serve as a starship captain, and are ordered to rescue a civilian vessel from a fleet of Klingons. In “Star Trek II,” Saavik is seated in the captain’s chair before the audiences is given that context. It looks like she is giving orders to Sulu (George Takei) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), perhaps as the new captain of the Enterprise. It isn’t until she fails the test that its nature as a simulation is revealed.
Saavik spends several scenes of “Star Trek II” discussing humanity with Spock, and seems entirely skeptical of serving on a majority-human ship. She is always cool and collected, more baffled than annoyed.
Saavik might be seen, functionally at least, as a “reboot” of Spock. By 1982, Nimoy was 51 years old, and Spock was no longer a naïf on the Enterprise. He knew Captain Kirk (William Shatner) quite well, and had come to accept — and even sometimes appreciate — the illogic of his crewmates. Saavik was relatively inexperienced, and had the same questions about humans that Spock had back in 1966. It was refreshing to have a familiar dynamic back in “Star Trek” without fundamentally altering the baseline chemistry of the original crew or rebooting the entire franchise. Saavik was a savvy addition.