10 MORE Star Trek Moments You Never Knew Were Improvised
8. Letting His Hair Down
If Berman-era Star Trek had to be word perfect, there also couldn't be a hair out of place. So much so that when René Auberjonois quite literally decided to let his hair down during the filming of Crossover — the one with Kira, Shakaar, and go-go Odo gadget turbolift arms — it caused quite a stir amongst the bigwigs.
Towards the end of the episode, as Odo is perched on the floor, having just trashed his quarters, a couple of strands can be seen hanging from his otherwise meticulously kept shapeshifter do. The wayward coiffure came as news to makeup artist Michael Westmore. "Decisions like that go through a chain of command," Westmore noted in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion.
Producers were surprised too. As Ira Steven Behr remarked, also in the DS9 Companion:
We were amazed by it. When we saw that scene in dailies, I couldn't look at anything else except that friggin' hair.
It was all part of Auberjonois' plan. He had loosened up the locks in an effort to "evoke an image from a Japanese print [he'd] seen of a warrior in defeat". The improv. didn't end there. According to the DS9 Companion once more, it was Auberjonois who decided to throw that gift plant from Kira across the room "to symbolise Odo's estrangement from her". No wonder his hair was messy!