20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (1982)
6. Spock And Saavik’s Vulcan Dialogue Was Filmed In English
Early in Star Trek II, Captain Spock and Lieutenant Saavik have a brief exchange in Vulcan (with English subtitles) after Kirk boards the Enterprise:
SAAVIK: He's never what I expect, sir.
SPOCK: What surprises you, Lieutenant?
SAAVIK: He's so -- human.
SPOCK: Nobody's perfect, Saavik.
You may be surprised to learn, however, that this scene was filmed in English. The “Vulcan” dialogue was written after the fact by linguist Marc Okrand (who would go on to develop the Klingon language in Star Trek III) to match Leonard Nimoy and Kirstie Alley’s lip movements, and then looped by the actors in post-production. In 2018, Okrand recalled a fortuitous 1982 lunch meeting with a friend who worked at Paramount:
She said: “That’s really interesting. We’ve been talking to linguists. There’s this scene in the movie where Mr. Spock and this female Vulcan character have a conversation. When they filmed it, the actors were speaking English. But in postproduction, everyone thinks it would be better if they were speaking Vulcan.” They wanted a linguist to come and make up gobbledygook that matches the lip movements. And I said, “I can do that!”
On February 19, 1982, de Forest Research weighed in with a memo including the following about Vulcan pronunciation: “Please note that the Vulcan words should be pronounced with a short e sound; for instance ke (keh), de (deh), etc.”
Finally, the subtitled dialogue was revised to make it (a little) harder to tell the actors weren’t speaking Vulcan on set. Here are the lines as they were originally recorded on set:
SAAVIK: He’s not what I expected, sir.
SPOCK: What did you expect, Lieutenant?
SAAVIK: He’s very human.
SPOCK: We can’t all be perfect, Saavik.
(This same technique was used for the Kolinahr scene set on the planet Vulcan in Star Trek—The Motion Picture.)