It would have meant an even smaller part for Walter Koenig, probably, since most of the action on the Excelsior is centered around Sulu. I think the movie is fine the way it is.
I see two ways to look at it. Is it good in terms of Chekov's character development, an earned promotion, a good career choice, and so on. Or is it good for Koenig as an actor, giving him more lines in the script and more acting scenes and other opportunities? One needn't follow the other. Chekov could be reduced to crewman and a third-watch ass't navigator, but have a major dramatic role in the film. Or he could be promoted to Admiral and have a two-line cameo. So Exec on the Excelsior as good for Chekov the character or Koenig the actor? Or both?
In the novels following Star Trek VI, Chekov did indeed become Sulu's Exec after the Enterprise-A was retired.
Basically what Harvey said. With Chekov as the first officer of the Reliant and Sulu as the Captain of the Excelsior both got their own moments in those films but were largely cut off from the ensemble interaction and simply not present for huge chunks of the film. Getting promoted off the Enterprise was a double edged sword in that sense. And that Kyle was an officer on the Reliant and Rand was on the Excelsior is so minor as to constitute trivia. It'd be nice to see the crew move on and up from their Enterprise jobs, but then there's the problem of how to simultaneously do that and then use all of them in a movie. Although, say, a hypothetical film or special where Chekov was Sulu's exec? Hell, Chekov being Captain of the Enterprise-B in the Genesis intro (which admittedly clashes with the theme of Kirk besting some young guy) would have made more sense then him rushing off to Sickbay in a thinly veiled redress of McCoy's role.
_____ In all seriousness, I don't know if there would have been anything to gain by making Chekov Sulu's XO in ST:VI. In both Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country, one of the nice things was that we got to see how Chekov and Sulu acted outside he dynamic of the ensemble. Putting Chekov on the Excelsior would have denied Sulu some much-needed character development. We also would have missed Chekov proclaiming "CLOAKED?!" in his adorable fashion.
I agree. I've always wondered if this was Shatner's idea or if it was a Berman thing. Either way, I've always found it to be tired and trite. I think it would have been way more touching and symbolic for Kirk to grab Chekov by the shoulders and say something like, "I'll go. She's your ship now, Pavel..." It would have also done a much better job of introducing the film's theme. Plus, it would open up an alternative scenario in those a fore mentioned subsequent novels of Sulu and Checkov romping around the galaxy in dual Excelsiors.
Well the original idea was for Kirk, McCoy and Spock to be the three guests. Since Nimoy and Kelley would only have glorified cameos, they turned the parts down, so they substituted Scotty and Chekov. As far as I know they mostly just rewrote their dialogue, the things that Scotty and Chekov actually do in plot purposes could have just as easily been done by Spock and McCoy respectively (and Chekov deputizing people as nurses and heading down to the sickbay is the most egregious example of this). I like that. Passing the baton on to the character who was once defined by being the young guy.
The novels where Chekov assumed the role of XO for Sulu depict him as somewhat cautious and maybe even a little bit damaged as a result of the events on the USS Reliant. It's actually a pretty good and believable concept. The book War Dragons by Diane Carey is the one that comes to mind.
The funny thing is, Khan was also cut off from the ensemble interaction - he never met Kirk face to face, or even set foot on the same ship, planet, or other source of gravity at the same time! That didn't reduce his dramatic role much. Separation thus might have done good for one of the familiar characters, too. In the sense of not being automatically bad. ...Especially if the story then has two of them separated from the main bunch, which means the two can have extensive dialogue between them. Sulu alone on the "guest ship" was essentially reduced to one-liners after the teaser was done, and partially because he alone could only do one-sided exposition. If paired with another character of dramatic value, he could argue dramatically interesting things like whether to help the politically inconvenient Kirk or not - without automatically defeating his nameless, worthless opponent in the argument by the sheer weight of his own dramatic worth. Personally, I think the action in ST6:TUC was already satisfactorily split between various parties, and further splitting would only have been detrimental. We already had two strong foci, Kirk/McCoy/Martia on the prison world and Spock/Chekov/Uhura/Scotty/Valeris aboard the ship, plus cuts into Klingon scheming, Federation politics and a teeny weeny bit of Sulu action. A third strong focus would have been distracting IMHO. Timo Saloniemi
It did reduce his screentime. Khan isn't actually present for most of the Wrath of Khan. The difference is, of course, that Khan is an adversary, and a sizeable amount of the film revolves around fighting and out-thinking him - there a long stretches of the film where he's not present but the crew are dealing with the fallout of what he last did, or are thinking of new ways to outwit him, and so on. Since neither Chekov or Sulu are adversaries, they don't get that kind of focus. Chekov is essentially a chess piece moved around by Khan's gambits, he's most useful in giving a concrete tie to the Enterprise in the sequence where Khan is introduced. I never said it was. Seperation can be good for giving characters interesting scenes - most of the scenes Sulu is in in TUC are about Sulu, after all - but bad in the sense they'll get less screentime. I'd agree with that.
I was always under the impression that the Reliant was a huge black mark on Chekov's record and that's why he was stuck on the Enterprise-A as a commander all those years.
I don't think the Reliant was a black mark at all, but rather an unfortunate event. As far as being the same rank on the Enterprise-A for several years, I never saw it was a given that every officer becomes a captain if they stay in the fleet long enough. Some people with distinguished service records retire as commanders in real life (I knew a World War II veteran who was a bomber pilot in a couple of battles who did so).
It might have been entertaining, though moving into fanwankish territory, for us to spend some more time on the Excelsior and see, for once, the "lesser" characters having been put into positions of responsibility by Captain Sulu. We already know Rand is the communications officer aboard the Excelsior. What if we'd also gotten Dr. Chapel as the Chief Medical Officer? Or Commander Kyle, who'd appeared in TWOK, as First Officer or some other important position? Or even perhaps our fondly remembered Kevin Riley in some role? All of these would be characters who could have been given a one or two line cameo, as Rand was, rather than needing a lot of screen time as one of "the seven" would feel they did. Yet being that it was the final TOS film, it might have been touching to see as much of the "TOS gang" as possible involved. Regarding the original question of Chekov, since we have seen that he had served as both a security chief and later a first officer in the films, it made little sense for his character to be back at the navigator's station in TFF and TUC. It was fine in TSFS and TVH, because our characters were renegades who had come together to help Spock. But by TFF, having him back at his TOS post made little sense. All the attempts at character development that had been made in TMP and TWOK were ignored. It would have made far more sense for Chekov to be Sulu's first officer, especially since Sulu and Chekov have always had a close relationship. But, more than likely, it would have meant an actually smaller role for Chekov, which Koenig the actor probably would not have liked.
The way I see it, Chekov was under-used in Trek VI: a couple of weak jokes and two observations--one about phasers and the other about boots--that make him look like an incompetent boob. Two well-written scenes of Chekov, an experienced science officer and exec, serving as Sulu's "Spock" would have been much better. As it is, Chekov is handled with more respect in Abrams' movie.