Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The USS Excelsior
5. Obligatory Reused Set Alert
While only a partial bridge set was constructed for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, audiences were given a better look at the interior of the USS Excelsior in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Star Trek: Voyager's Excelsior-centric episode, "Flashback".
In the case of The Undiscovered Country, all of the interior sets used to represent the Excelsior were simply redressed and repainted sets from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The bridge in that film was a heavily modified version of the bridge that was also used for the Enterprise-A, previously constructed for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
However, for the Excelsior's reappearance in "Flashback", depicting the ship's interior proved problematic. In the years between Star Trek VI and Voyager, the Enterprise-A slash Excelsior bridge had gone on to be reused as countless other bridges, including the USS Enterprise-B in Star Trek Generations and the USS Promethus, the Xhosa, and Romulan warbird (to name a few) in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In fact, in the intervening years, so much of the set had been removed, repainted, and reconfigured, that it was unrecognizable as the Excelsior.
According to Star Trek: Voyager production designer Richard James:
What we did was we tried to find if any of [the original Excelsior bridge set] existed from old feature stock. There were a couple of walls that were still in existence that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had modified into a Klingon set wall. They let me use those. I thought it was a help, but actually, as it turned out, we could have just built it from scratch. Anyway, we did incorporate those walls.
Despite the massive undertaking to restore the Excelsior bridge to match its appearance in The Undiscovered Country, corners had to be cut on a television budget and schedule. As such, the Excelsior bridge in "Flashback" is slightly smaller and less detailed, with several modifications including carpeting rather than metallic floor plates and a new, less elaborate captain's chair.