Kirstie Alley in Starlog, 1982

Kirstie Alley in Starlog Magazine, June 1982:

“When I was a little kid I used to watch Star Trek on TV. Every week, every episode, I’d sit there thinking, ‘I should play Spock’s daughter.’ I mean, I could arch my eyebrows as good as Leonard Nimoy! Get ’em waaaay up there. Whenever I’d watch the show I’d write dialogue for myself so I could actually take part in the story. When Leonard said a line I’d respond.

“When my manager told me about this part, I thought, ‘Perfect! It’s not Spock’s daughter but it’s pretty close.'”

And this was an interesting observation on the challenge of portraying an emotionless female and worrying how the audience might react:

“The most difficult aspect of the job was developing Saavik in a believable, acceptable way. With a man, it’s easier to adapt to an emotionless personality than it is with a woman. When you’re trying to show no emotion as a woman, you can come off as being cold and unlikeable if you’re not careful. It was hard to be unemotional and yet remain feminine.”

This made me think about how we tend to think of women as more emotional and men as more rational/logical, which means it’s easier to accept men in a range of roles, but also makes it harder for men in real life to express a full range of emotions for fear of it seeming “unmanly” .

For women, that assumption of women=emotion/men=reason is a lose-lose – if you’re emotional you ‘re irrational or overly sensitive, but if you’re unemotional you’re “cold and unlikeable” or “unfeminine”. I think that overall issue persists in society, even though characters like Saavik and T’Pol and other women Trek characters like B’Elanna, Dax and Janeway, help us challenge that underlying assumption.

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How true, own the original starlog.com paperback issue No.59 of. Kirstie was followed later in Starlog.com # Issue 102 explaining why she didnt reprise for Saavik in Star Trek III also her co-star Actor Merritt Butrick as David explains also in Starlog.com # issue 95 of Paramount’s “Less than called for” salary offer, acknowledging their offer yet still supported Alley’s stand. Also doesn’t compare the two Savikk’s except to say of his own performance instead. Adding what he was attracted to by script isnt what was seen in edit of final film TREK 3 expressing his displeasure saying “what you saw between David & Saavik (Robin Curtis) was the middle of every scene. Even his character’s death which Kirk gave a wonderful eulogy over his son’s body which was omitted.

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