In 1968, a young actress arrived on the set of Star Trek expecting a career-defining opportunity. Instead, she faced an unprecedented request from the show’s creator himself—a demand about her costume that pushed her past her limits. The confrontation that followed was reportedly so explosive it stopped production entirely and left a mark on Star Trek history that fans still debate today. Was it a crossing of boundaries or a complete misunderstanding?
Terri Garr was still early in her career at that point, years before her Oscar nomination and iconic roles in Young Frankenstein and Tootsie. In 1968, she was a working actress taking guest roles and hoping one would lead to something bigger. One of those roles was on the original Star Trek series. Notably, this wasn’t even Garr’s first appearance on the show.
She had already played a minor character earlier in the series, meaning she knew the set, the crew, and how the production operated—which makes what happened next more striking. The episode in question was “Assignment: Earth,” which was essentially a backdoor pilot for another series Gene Roddenberry was trying to launch. The episode centered on a mysterious secret agent named Gary Seven, with Garr cast as his secretary, Roberta Lincoln. The costume for Garr’s character was already extremely short by the standards of the time.
But just before filming began, Roddenberry himself reportedly decided the skirt needed to be shorter—significantly shorter. According to the Lance Parkin biography “The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry,” Roddenberry didn’t simply send a note to the wardrobe department. The biography describes something far more direct and invasive. Roddenberry allegedly went to costume designer William Ware Theiss—known throughout the show for pushing boundaries with revealing outfits—and pushed for Garr’s skirt to be shortened further.
Then, according to this account, Roddenberry knelt down in front of Garr on the active soundstage and began rolling the hem himself, in front of the entire crew. Garr reportedly felt so offended by this situation that she did something rarely seen from actresses on a professional television set in the 1960s. She left the set in protest, as a direct reaction to what had just happened in front of everyone. However, not everyone who was actually there that day tells the story the same way.
Robert H. Justman, the associate producer on Star Trek, wrote his own memoir called “Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. ” His version of this moment is much more restrained and less dramatic than the “angry walkout” narrative. According to Justman, Garr didn’t react the way the Parkin book describes.
He said she understood the entertainment business and was essentially accepting of the situation. She didn’t object explicitly in the moment when Roddenberry adjusted her costume. There was no walkout in his account. But even in this more restrained version, Justman noted that Garr looked embarrassed when she was called to film.
Even in the calmer account, there’s acknowledgment from someone who was literally running the set that she felt uncomfortable and embarrassed in front of the cast and crew. What’s clear from both accounts is that Garr finished filming the episode. The character of Roberta Lincoln appears on screen in “Assignment: Earth” to this day. But according to all versions, she came away from that day with a genuinely negative feeling about the entire experience.
Garr didn’t want to discuss Star Trek again—at all. In an interview with Starlog magazine, she was asked about her time on the show and gave a telling response: “I did it years ago, and I mostly deny ever having done it. ”
Think about that phrasing. She’s not saying it was fine or just a job.
She’s essentially saying she pretends it never happened. That’s not the response of someone with warm, nostalgic feelings about being part of one of the most popular sci-fi series in television history. According to multiple accounts, she never returned to the Star Trek franchise in any capacity—no conventions, no guest appearances in later shows, no reunion specials. She wanted nothing to do with it going forward.
In later interviews, Garr didn’t just avoid Star Trek specifically. She expressed a general aversion to science fiction as a genre, which makes sense if her first significant exposure to the genre was tied to an uncomfortable and humiliating experience on set. What makes this story different from typical Hollywood gossip is how consistently Garr distanced herself from the entire experience across multiple interviews spanning her career. This wasn’t a fleeting complaint that faded with the next news cycle.
The Star Trek original series has a well-deserved reputation for being progressive for its time. It featured one of the first scripted interracial kisses on American television and a genuinely diverse bridge crew. But stories like this remind us that progressiveness on screen and behind the scenes weren’t always the same thing. The wardrobe department on the original series was already known for pushing boundaries with costumes.
That was part of the show’s signature style. But there’s a real difference between a costume designer making creative choices and the show’s creator personally kneeling down to shorten an actress’s skirt by hand before filming a scene in front of the full crew. Whether Garr stormed off angrily or silently endured an embarrassing moment and completed the scene, all accounts agree something disturbing happened that day. The accounts only differ on how visible Garr’s reaction was in the moment.
The power dynamics of a 1968 set were exactly what you’d expect from that era. The creator and executive producer sat at the top, with total creative and professional control. A guest actress had far less leverage, job security, and far more career risk if she made a scene or gained a reputation for being difficult. Even in Justman’s version, where Garr doesn’t storm off dramatically, her embarrassed appearance tells you she didn’t feel she had room to object further, even if she wanted to.
The Starlog quote about denying she ever did the show isn’t just a throwaway line to a fan magazine. It comes from someone who, years later, after a successful career, still preferred to pretend that experience never happened. This is why this particular piece of Star Trek trivia has endured for more than half a century. It’s a small, very specific window into what life might have looked like for a young actress on a hit show in 1968, with little power, working for a man who had complete creative control over everything from storylines to her costume measurements.
The two accounts—Parkin’s biography and Justman’s memoir—don’t fully agree on the details, but they point to the same uncomfortable core: Roddenberry, a skirt, and an actress who never got over it, regardless of the years that passed or her later career success. The detail that lingers most isn’t the skirt itself, or even the kneeling. It’s that decades later, with an Oscar nomination and a fully successful career behind her, Garr still couldn’t discuss that afternoon without wishing she could pretend it never happened.
