Take her out, Mr. Saavik

"Mr. Sulu, aft thrusters. Ahead one-quarter impulse power."

?????? Thrusters AND impulse power ????? Why not warp drive as well just to be sure? ;)

Just goes to show Kirk was right to be anxious.

I think he wasn't nervous about Saavik in particular, but taking it out with a whole crew of trainees.

I think it was just the principle that a cadet was commanding his beloved starship.

i remember my brother wondering this years ago when we were watching it..

basically it was just for a silly 'cute' scene so the audience could lol at shatners reactions of his pride and joy being piloted out of spacedock by a cadet (although shes a Lt) like when Bones gave him the romulan ale

Cause there is a woman piloting his ship

Actually, it always bugged me that she said "one quarter impulse power." In STTMP (and they used the exact special effects footage, for budget reason), Kirk said "thrusters ahead," and no mention of impulse -- which was appropriate. The impulse drive is the Enterprise's sublight propulsion, capable of taking the vessel up to high fractions of the speed of light; again, in STTMP, almost as soon as the ship is clear of the orbital drydock, Kirk tells Sulu to take the ship to "warp point five" -- i.e. half the speed of light.

So one quarter power from the impulse engines should have shot the Enterprise out of the orbital drydock like it had been fired from a cannon. That's why in the first movie, Kirk has the ship slowly move out of drydock using maneuvering thrusters only, for the very same sort of reason you don't floor the gas pedal when you're pulling out of your garage.

Honestly, this scene has always bothered me because it makes no sense, and directly contradicts a near-identical scene from the first movie. It epitomizes how bad Star Trek has sometimes been at maintaining consistency and continuity, and it comes out of a simple, lazy, totally avoidable writing mistake.