But Khambatta was able to assert at the time that “everybody was so nice and helpful to me.”11 Whatever her merits as an actress—and a role in which she was transformed from a navigator reporting what her instruments were saying into a stiff, monosyllabic robot possibly wasn’t the best way to assess those—Khambatta suffered for her art. Having already had her head shaved, she burned her throat on the dry ice used in a shower scene, and almost fell fifteen feet through a gap in the set. Most horrifically of all, the xenon lights used in her final “ascension” sequence were so bright they seared
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