The original art from the unused Steve Chorney poster for Star Trek VI is available on eBay.

It is $20,000.

A publicity photo of Kim Cattrall as Valeris from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. 

It was near the end of principal photography on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country that London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts graduate (and Porky’s, Police Academy, and Mannequin star) Kim Cattrall did something that no actress had done before: she got naked on the bridge of the Enterprise. According to multiple contemporary accounts, the actress had arranged for a discreet photo session on the empty bridge set in Studio 8 of the Paramount lot with a wardrobe that featured the iconic Vulcan ears and nothing else. 

In the the April 1992 issue of Cinefantastique, one anonymous crew member reported on the fallout: “Nimoy saw [the pictures] and hit the roof.” The movie’s executive producer then personally destroyed the prints and negatives from the very unauthorized shoot, fearing that if the images ever got out, they could deeply harm the franchise.  

When asked about the incident by Mark A. Altman for Cinefantastique’s look at the making of the final film featuring the original cast, Cattrall succinctly replied, “I can’t talk about that.”

Photo scanned from my personal collection.

Kim Cattrall as Valeris, alongside an unidentified background player in a publicity photo for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. 

Valeris was not originally part of the conspiracy that causes so much trouble for the Enterprise and her crew. In Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn’s original screenplay, there was a complicated tracking sequence that climaxed with Kirk, Spock and Scotty coming across the conspiracy after they break into a secret Klingon base. Unfortunately, this was estimated to add up to $5,000,000 to the movie’s budget — money that the studio didn’t want to spend. 

As director, Meyer opted to cut this (expensive) portion of the film and streamlined the reveal of the conspiracy, allowing the production to use existing sets while saving some runtime in the end.

In Starlog #205, Flinn talked to Craig W. Chrissinger about how Meyer’s rewrite handled this: “With the cutting of the cabal scenes, it was necessary to come up with something a little more intriguing, and Valeris was right there. When I read it, I liked it. It didn’t bother me at all. If anything, it’s nice to have good and evil represented in all races because that’s much more in line with reality. There sometimes is an ambiguity in Star Trek because you don’t want just white hats and black hats. I guess there are some bad apples on Vulcan, too.”

Flinn then went on to give readers a bit more detail about the character’s origins in the production: "Valeris originally was, in fact, Saavik, but we couldn’t get Kirstie Alley for the role. Kirstie was already on the Paramount lot doing Cheers, so both Nick and one of the executives made calls to her. I don’t know any of the details, but the next thing I knew, we were changing the name to Valeris.”

(As to why the production didn’t simply move down to the next available Saavik, Robin Curtis? No idea. Maybe Meyer just liked working with Alley and wanted her back.)

Photo scanned from my personal collection.

In a 2011 screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for the Hero Complex Film Festival, Nicholas Meyer was matter-of-fact about the way that he and Gene Roddenberry butted heads while the director was working on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. 

“There are moments in one’s life where you look back and you say, ‘Well, I wish I had done this differently.”

“If I’m interpreting him correctly and if I’m believing what he said, Mr. Roddenberry really believed in the perfectability of man, of humans, and I have yet to see the evidence for this. So [Star Trek] VI is a film in which the crew of the Enterprise has all kinds of prejudice, racial prejudice, vis-a-vis the Klingons. And some of their remarks, including how they all look alike and what they smell like, and all the xenophobic things which we grappled with — that was all deeply offensive to him because he thought there isn’t going to be that. In fact, in his original Star Trek concept, there wasn’t any conflict. So he always had problems with writers who were trying to write conflict, because that’s what drama is, so he was very distressed with the world of the Enterprise – the kind of ‘music’ I was writing.”

Meyer attended a meeting with Roddenberry, to try to find a point on which the creator of the Star Trek: The Original Series and the man who had been hired to move its characters through their final mission, could agree. It didn’t work out.

“His guys were lined up on one side of the room, and my guys were lined up on the other side of the room, and this was not a meeting in which I felt I’d behaved very well, very diplomatically. I came out of it feeling not very good, and I’ve not felt good about it ever since. He was not well, and maybe there were more tactful ways of dealing with it, because at the end of the day, I was going to go out and make the movie. I didn’t have to take him on. Not my finest hour.”

Roddemberry died soon after.

With Harve Bennett’s departure from the sixth Star Trek feature, there was a sudden, sharp need for an executive producer who understood the franchise from every angle. Naturally, Leonard Nimoy’s name came up. He discussed his taking on the role with William Shatner and Chris Kreski for Star Trek Movie Memories:

“By the time [Paramount Studios president] Frank Mancuso called me and said, ‘Let’s have lunch,’ my agent had already informed me that he was going to ask me to make Star Trek VI. However, when we started talking about that idea, I was still surprised that he offered to let me direct, executive produce, whatever I wanted to do. His exact words were, ‘Be my partner. Help me get a Star Trek movie into the theaters in time for the twenty-fifth anniversary.’

“So of course my first question was, ‘What about Harve Bennett?’ I knew that he’d been pitching an idea of his own, and I didn’t want to step on his toes, and I didn’t want to be used by the studio as some convenient means of excluding Harve from the picture. At that point Mancuso said to me, flat out, ‘Harve Bennett is gone,’ and there was a real touch of anger in his voice. I was surprised, because I’d never heard that before and Frank is a very gentle gentleman.

“Once I’d heard that, I said ‘Well, let me think about it, and see if I can come up with an idea that might seem worthwhile.’ Three days later, I had it. I came back to Mancuso and said, ‘Okay. Here’s my idea. The Klingons have this terrible problem. Their economy is screwed up just like the Russians. We’ve always used the Klingons as our analogy for the Communist Bloc, and now, for the first time, they’ll have to reach out for help and admit they have a problem. The crew of the Enterprise will try to help them.’

“Mancuso says, ‘Will there be a Gorbachev?’ This was right around perestroika time and I said ‘Absolutely.’ He said, ‘Great! Do it! Will you direct it?’ And I replied, ‘I can’t say, as I sit here today, that I will direct it, because I definitely want Nick Meyer to write it, and we may have to offer him the director’s chair in order for that to happen. If he wants that, we shul jump at it, because this pictures gonna have to come together in just about fourteen months.’ It was now the summer of 1990 and we now wanted to open the picture of September of ‘91. At that point, I asked Mancuso if it’d be okay for me to approach Nick Meyer about this myself, and he said ‘Sure.’ So I immediately put in a call to Nick, and we made plans to meet ten days later, on Cape Cod.”

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In 1992, Nicholas Meyer spoke to Cinefantastique’s Ron Magid about returning to direct Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country after Nimoy and Shatner had handled the previous three installments.

“I don’t think you could distinguish the fact that Shatner and Nimoy were directors from the fact that they were actors working with a director and we were all trying to make a movie. If anything, what did some up again and again, not just with Shatner and Nimoy, but with all of the original cast members, was the fact that they had been involved in the series with these characters for so long that they didn’t always agree that certain lines would be said by their characters. Actually, I had a great deal of fun working with them. I find them individually and collectively charming.”

Meyer also detailed how the ensemble would also offer input on matters that went beyond characters and dialogue, such as lighting. Cinematographer Hiro Narita wanted a moodier, frequently dramatic tone and that caused some clashes with people who, naturally, wanted to look their best in their final outing in the series.

“I was occasionally in the middle, but only occasionally. When it came down to it, I lit the actors. They’re what’s important and why should they go through the movie feeling upset? It was usually about close-ups, not about the wider shots. I wanted a kind of gritty theatricality. I’m a big opera fan and I think Star Trek is a species of opera. I wanted the film to have a theatrical, operatic quality and I think I got that.”

However, he admits that budgeting was a concern:

“My vision was much, much grander, and it got scaled down and down. I didn’t have the production money or the shooting days or the locations. I’m not sure it’s appropriate to get into Paramount’s little behind-the-scenes stuff.”

This post made possible by this blog’s Patrons. If you’d like to help They Boldly Went continue to offer unique Star Trek content, please consider becoming a supporter for as little as $1 a month through Patreon.