Kim Cattrall’s Star Trek VI Character Wasn’t Created By The Movie’s Writers
Before Sex and The City, Kim Cattrall was involved in espionage on the Enterprise. The actress played Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a role that she had an unprecedented amount of control over shaping. A new oral history of Star Trek reveals, among other things, that Kim Cattrall was free to make up the character of Valeris from scratch—including the Vulcan’s “interesting” haircut.
In fact, everything about the character’s hair was Kim Cattrall’s idea. The actress wanted to dye it black to match Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, and that Supercuts do was apparently to better display her signature pointy Vulcan ears. Cattrall even got to name her Star Trek VI character—with some input from director Nicholas Meyer, of course.
If that sounds odd, the role being cast without a name for the character, there’s a good reason for that. Another piece of trivia from the book The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years is that Valeris was originally supposed to be Saavik.
Star Trek fans will remember Saavik as the Vulcan character originated by Kirstie Alley in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—also directed by Meyer. Alley failed to return for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and the role of Saavik was instead given to Robin Curtis.
When the 6th Trek movie rolled around, it seemed like a no-brainer to have the story’s female Vulcan and Spock’s protege continue to be Saavik. However, original Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry put the kibosh on Kim Cattrall’s character being Saavik, once he found out about her planned heel turn.
In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Cattrall’s character becomes a villain after falling in with a crowd of Klingon-hating Federation patriots. In addition to Roddenberry’s issue with making one of Trek’s heroes into a villain, Cattrall didn’t want to be the third actress to play the same character. She preferred instead to craft a completely new character. Enter Valeris.
Kim Cattrall recalls that the name Valeris came from the Greek god Eris, with Meyers adding the “Val” to make it sound more Vulcan. “I felt it was very much my own.” Cattrall said of the moniker. The former Police Academy star went on to say that Valeris wasn’t, “Like the other women in Star Trek,” and described the women that were on the show in the ’60s as “beautiful women in great-looking, tight outfits with fabulous makeup and hairdos.”
On the flip side, Kim Cattrall wanted her character to be “a very definitive Vulcan woman” and “a warrior.” This is apparently where the infamous “haircut” came from. “I dyed my hair black and had it done very sixties and shaved my sideburns because I felt my ears would look much stronger,” said Cattrall. “I was a revolutionary, and I wanted my appearance to reflect that.”
The actress was presumably referring to the fact that her character ends up being a saboteur who, along with members of the Klingon and Romulan empires, is attempting to thwart peace talks between the Federation and the Klingons. They, of course, fail, paving the way for an uneasy alliance between the two powers that culminates in the Enterprise D having a Klingon Starfleet officer onboard during the Star Trek: The Next Generation era.
Perhaps the most scandalous revelation involving Kim Cattrall on the Star Trek VI set (aside from her infamous on-set photoshoot) is that the actress pocketed a bunch of her prosthetic ears from the shoot. “I’ve kept all my ears,” Cattrall said. “It’s a wonderful memory of having done the movie.” What would Samantha say?
