Splat From The Past #2616 - Robin Curtis

[TMC]

Tommy "Throwback" Kovac chats it up with Robin Curtis, best known as "Lt. Savaak" in "Star Trek lll & lV", she was also in Ghost Story" (1981), "Hexed" (1993), "The Unborn ll" (1994), she guest-starred on "Knight Rider", "The New Mike Hammer", "MacGyver", "Night Court" and many others. Totally radical!.

[TMC]

Why is Kirstie Alley preferred so much over Robin Curtis for Saavik in the Star Trek movies?

I think the hardest part of playing Vulcans is that you have to be able to create emotion in the audience without showing any yourself.

Leonard Nimoy was a master of this. Kirstie Alley cheated a bit here, but overall she was very good at creating a feeling in the viewer without showing any herself.

One of the best scenes in Star Trek II is the exchange between Saavik and Kirk on the Genesis test planet.



She is lost. She believes that they have been defeated. Khan has the Genesis torpedo and the Enterprise has vanished.

She asks Kirk, almost pleads with him, to tell her how he beat the Kobiyashi Maru test. But she does so in a way that shows us how she is feeling without really emoting at all. The way she says “I’d really like to know” is done in such a Vulcan way.

He tells her how, ending with the statement that “I don’t believe in no win scenarios” and calls Spock.

Her reaction is one of surprise and amusement, but not a grin. Not a laugh or anything happy.

She conveys emotions of relief, surprise, and joy. Without emoting in any way.

That is a very difficult thing to do.

In contrast, Robin Curtis was an android

She delivers the news of David’s death the way one might give a drink order at a bar.

She empathizes with his Pon Farr by just looking at Spock. She looks like she is watching an HR presentation on a Tuesday morning.

Robin Curtis couldn’t create emotion with the audience, so she was just kind of there.

It also didn’t help that she was given a much more thankless part in a lesser film than Alley got.

But Alley created emotion without emoting. Curtis relied on others to carry the load, and so she was dull and forgettable. Not a bad actress at all, but Vulcans are not easy to play.