By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
In retrospect, it’s remarkable that the golden age of Star Trek didn’t have more behind-the-scenes injuries. In addition to the potential for stunts to go catastrophically wrong, these actors had to frequently simulate that their ship or station was under attack by leaning in various directions while the camera was violently shaken. However, Deep Space Nine star Nana Visitor once received an injury so bad she was sent to the hospital, and her treatment was delayed because her Bajoran makeup made the medical staff think she had a broken nose.
Nana Visitor Heads To The Hospital
The tale of Nana Visitor’s weird trip to the hospital begins with “Dramatis Personae,” one of the weirder Season 1 episodes of Deep Space Nine. She slipped, but it wasn’t onset. Instead, she fell down while walking on some wet stairs, injuring her back. At first, Visitor emulated her tough-as-nails character and insisted that she could film all of her scenes, causing executive producer Rick Berman to insist that she go to the hospital.
Berman is one of the more notorious figures in Star Trek history, one who has been accused of being a “raging homophobe” by TOS and TNG writer David Gerrold and of being “very misogynistic” by DS9 star Terry Farrell. The latter’s comments have led to an ongoing perception of Berman as someone who was dismissive of the female stars who worked for him. Credit where credit is due, though: as soon as Nana Visitor tried to film her scenes after her injury, it was Berman who insisted that she go to a hospital right away.
The actor complied, and she went directly to the hospital, meaning that she didn’t take the time to remove her Bajoran makeup before leaving the set. You might not think this is such a big deal…after all, Bajorans look almost entirely human. So Nana Visitor rocking up to the hospital with her makeup still on was unlikely to freak out as many people as, say, later costar Michael Dorn leaving the set while still wearing his full Klingon makeup.
However, when Nana Visitor arrived at the hospital, she ran into a problem. Namely, that the physicians did not immediately attend to her injured back. That was because they assumed that she had come to the hospital because she had a broken nose. Ironically enough, that was because of the primary physical feature differentiating Bajorans from humans in Star Trek: a kind of nose flap that, in retrospect, could very easily be confused for a broken nose.
Fortunately, all’s well that ends well with this tale of mistaken injury identity: Nana Visitor was eventually able to get the hospital staff to treat her back once they realized she didn’t have a broken nose. And she was able to continue shooting her scenes for “Dramatis Personae,” an episode that impressed future showrunner Ira Steven Behr because of how many bold risks it took way back in the show’s first season. When all is said and done, this incident leaves us with one question that may never be answered: does Starfleet have its own version of OSHA to help keep 24th-century workplaces safe?
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