Trekkers commit two admirals to eternal rest

Ensign Pavel Chekov manned navigation, foreground, 
in Star Trek: The Original Series. The set lives on at Star 
Trek: The Original Series Set Tour, where I visited in 2025.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Star Trek fans lost two storied admirals last week in Patrick Stewart, "Captain Jean-Luc Picard" of The Next Generation franchise, and Walter Koenig, "Ensign Pavel Chekov" of The Original Series cast.

Stewart and Koenig contributed vitally to making Star Trek the paradigmatically utopian science-fiction exploration of the human condition that it has been for 60 years. Both actors embraced their Trek stardom, rather than, as many actors do, wringing their hands over typecasting in fanciful fiction. 

A classically trained Shakespearean stage actor, Stewart nonetheless reveled in science fiction in film and television, taking on roles such as Charles Xavier in the X-Men universe, and, in his 80s, reprising the role of Captain Picard for three seasons of an eponymous Paramount TV series, 2020-23. 

"For huge numbers of people, I will always be Jean-Luc Picard, and that's fine," Stewart told The Independent in 2003, Ars Technica repeated. "I really believe we created an admirable individual." No pun intended, I'm sure; Star Trek stories saw both the captain and ensign promoted to admiral before all was said and done.

Koenig was a favored guest on the Star Trek convention circuit and joined fan fiction projects, such as New Voyages and Renegades, as a writer and actor. (More on Star Trek fan fiction upon my visit to Star Trek: The Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, New York, a year ago.)

A Gen-Xer, I grew up in the Cold War 1970s and 1980s, devouring reruns of the 1966-69 Original Series. 

Walter Koenig in 1967, 2013
Left: promotional image via Pixabay CC0 1.0
Right: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 

Conventional wisdom back then held that Chekov was added to the cast in season 2 to correct the omission of a Russian on the multi-ethnic bridge crew. According to The Making of Star Trek (1968), a book ostensibly co-authored by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, the Russian daily Pravda had called out Star Trek utopianism as hypocritical American imperialism for want of a Russian character. Roddenberry accepted the critique and moved to make amends with the addition of ship's navigator Chekov. 

William Shatner told a different story, however, in his co-authored Star Trek Memories (1993). Shatner wrote that the Pravda story was a publicity stunt that Roddenberry made up. 

No Pravda story as Roddenberry described has ever been found. Yet the truth might lie somewhere in between. Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson took a deep dive on the question in 1999. He concluded that someone had told Roddenberry about a Pravda story, and Roddenberry probably was genuine in saying he acted on it. And why not? Chekov was good for both franchise publicity and Roddenberry's transcultural vision.

Roddenberry's and Shatner's narratives agreed on a different aspect of the character. Regardless of his ethnicity, Roddenberry and Star Trek's Paramount producers wanted a younger character on the bridge to draw in youthful viewers. According to Mikkelson, Roddenberry, insightfully keyed into the popular culture, conceived of a character evocative of The Beatles or The Monkees, specifically teen idol Davy Jones. When Koenig first appeared as Chekov, he even wore a mop-top wig until he could grow out Davy-esque locks.

Anton Yelchin, 2011
Georges Biard via
Wikimedia Commons
CC BY-SA 3.0

A good related story about Chekov's debut concerns his Eastern European accent. Koenig said he drew on his heritage to come up with the speech pattern. Born to Russian-Jewish parents, he was, however, a Chicago native. The accent was wholly affected, and critics often have described it as "campy," more caricature than authentic rendering. Long before both perestroika and the internet, most American viewers knew no better. 

Yet cast as Chekov in the 2009 Star Trek reboot film, Anton Yelchin was capable of the real thing. Also of Russian-Jewish origin, Yelchin was born in St. Petersburg and moved to the United States as a baby with his parents. He grew up speaking Russian at home.

Though Yelchin could have put on an authentic accent, he chose to embrace some Cold War camp as a nod to the original Koenig portrayal. 

A tip off to Yelchin's homage is the substitution of a w sound for the letter v, as in "nuclear wessels": a line that Koenig self-deprecatingly repeated to comedic effect as Chekov in Star Trek IV. Yelchin, who died in tragic accident in 2016, at age 27, knew that a true Eastern European-accented English rather tends to substitute a v sound for the letter w, not the other way around.

Anyway, for me as a kid, the Chekov strategy fired on all warp cylinders; I bought what Roddenberry was selling. I did identify with Chekov's youth. I became a supporter of both the United Federation of Planets and, to end the Cold War, the United Nations. And I became a Trekker for life. 

Patrick Stewart, 2013
Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

Patrick Stewart hit the small screen as Captain Picard in 1987. I was 16. I remember having friends over to watch the Encounter at Farpoint premiere. 

Stewart's Received Pronunciation of the Shakespearean school was hardly Davy Jones's Mancunian. But it was just the thing for the countless stirring lines he delivered on themes of humanity, liberty, and leadership.

Stewart the actor spoke often of being inspired by a grade-school English teacher; I am indebted to a few of mine. I'm not sure I have "the right stuff" of a Captain Picard. But already by the end of the 1990s, I had the hair.

I am grateful to Walter Koenig and Patrick Stewart for the characters they gave us. May their souls travel at warp speed in eternal exploration of the heavens.