20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984)
18. Mark Lenard's Redesign
Lenard was delighted to have been asked to reprise his role as Sarek for Star Trek III, even if this did come with a few challenges. One such challenge was to decide on how the character should look, almost twenty years having passed since his last appearance on screen.
Lenard remembered that the make-up crew working on the film were not the same people who had worked on the series, with Fred Philips, who had helped design Sarek, having since retired. There was a period of adjusting the eyebrows and the haircut, though to help they secured a video of the original episode Journey To Babel.
The ears were redesigned too. In the episode, they are larger and more exaggerated. In the film, they are scaled-down and more petite. Not only was this more comfortable for the actor, but the larger screen of the cinema allowed the crew more license for finer details.
Finally, there was the issue of the actor's age. In the original series, he was aged up considerably to look the part of Spock's father. However, Nimoy felt that by 1984, Lenard looked old enough. They did whiten his hair a little, but other than that, there were few tweaks required.