Welcome to MANNING THE HELM The WALTER KOENIG Fanlist!
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WALTER KOENIG
Walter is an actor, writer, teacher and director, known for his roles as Pavel Chekov in Star Trek and Alfred Bester in Babylon 5. Most recently, he wrote the script for the 2008 sci-fi thriller / legal drama InAlienable.
Koenig played Ensign Pavel Chekov, navigator on the USS Enterprise, in the original Star Trek television series (starting in Season 2) and in several movies featuring the original cast. He was cast as Chekov primarily because of his resemblance to British actor/musician Davy Jones of the Monkees, in a bid to attract a younger audience. As the 30-year old's hair was already receding, costume designers fashioned a Davy Jones-style "moptop" hairpiece for him. In later episodes, his own hair grew out enough to accomplish the look with a comb-over.(The studio's publicity department, however, ascribed the inclusion of Chekov to an article in Pravda that complained about the lack of Russians in Star Trek.) Gene Roddenberry asked him to "ham up" his Russian accent to add a note of comic relief to the series.
Koenig is also credited for writing the Star Trek: The Animated Series installment "The Infinite Vulcan," making him the first "original cast" member to write a Star Trek story for television. Interestingly, the character of Pavel Andreievich Chekov never appeared in the animated version of Star Trek due to budget reasons, so Koenig never got to reprise his character on the animated series as the rest of his fellow Star Trek castmates did. Chekov's accent has been criticized as inauthentic, in particular his substituting the 'w' sound in place of a 'v' sound (e.g, "wodka" for "vodka"). Koenig has said the accent was inspired by his father, who had the same difficulty with the 'v' sound.
He received Saturn Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Film for both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Koenig reprised his role of Pavel Chekov for the fan webseries Star Trek: New Voyages, To Serve All My Days and the independent Sky Conway/Tim Russ film Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, both in 2006. He and Majel Barrett are the only regular Star Trek cast members without stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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