classictrek:

The character of Saavik was, according to Harve Bennett, the only element of Samuel A. Peeples’s script for The New Star Trek that made it into the final film. An earlier version of the character was a male Vulcan science officer named Wicks who served as Spock’s apprentice in the first two Star Trek II drafts by Jack B. Sowards. Wicks became the half-Romulan, half-Vulcan Savik once Peeples’s script had been rejected and she appears in Soward’s Star Trek: The Omega System. Her final name was reached during revisions on October of 1981.

While it’s never given any screen time, Saavik’s heritage is actually featured in the shooting script for Star Trek II: “Lt. Saavik is young and beautiful. She is half Vulcan and half Romulan. In appearance she is Vulcan with pointed ears, but her skin is fair and she has none of the expressionless facial immobility of a Vulcan.”

At the time, it was commonly assumed that the character was going to serve as a replacement for Leonard Nimoy’s Spock if the movies went on without his resurrection and return to the Enterprise.