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.

Set Photo: Nicholas Meyer directs James Doohan and Kim Catrall, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, 1991