Gillian Taylor

Gillian Taylor, PhD was the assistant director of the Cetacean Institute until 1986. Dr. Taylor was an expert in Cetacean Biology and was especially fond of two Humpback whales in her care, George and Gracie.

In 1986, Gracie became pregnant, and Dr. Taylor had to arrange for them to be released back into the wild due to the inability to keep them in captivity. When the time came for them to be released, Gillian was contacted by Admiral James T. Kirk, who had come back in time to secure humpback whales for transport back to the 23rd century where they would repopulate the species and make contact with the alien probe that was unwittingly causing Earth's destruction. Taylor was understandably disbelieving of Kirk's claims, and infuriated with Spock's rather indiscreet method of communicating with the whales (Spock had entered the whales' tank and mind-melded with one of them and informed them of the plan to rescue Earth in the future).

However, after learning that the whales were released prematurely without her knowledge, she desperately sought Kirk out. She was revealed to the truth to her surprise when she experienced being beamed up and greeted by Kirk on board his stolen cloaked Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

After rescuing the freed whales from a group of whalers, Taylor willingly time-traveled to the 23rd century along with George and Gracie, explaining that she had nothing in the present, and reasoning that the future would need somebody who actually knew something about whales. She was later assigned to a Federation science vessel shortly after her arrival to the 23rd century, in order to "catch-up" on the past 300 years.

Dr. Taylor had a photographic memory, claiming she could "see words." She could thus quote spoken passages verbatim from memory. 

Background
Gillian Taylor was played by actress Catherine Hicks.