Star Trek Publicity Myths

[ZapBrannigan]

Famous stories that were probably total baloney.

The first one that comes to mind is Pravda supposedly complaining that the Enterprise didn't have a Russian character. And it turned out that GR really thought the show was lacking a Davey Jones-type character. Enter Mr. Chekov.

The odd thing is, if he was supposed to bring in young women viewers, why didn't they feature him more? It's like they didn't think it through.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Chekov was supposed to be featured more in the third season (He has a prominent role in "Spectre of the Gun," the season premiere), but the time switch to Fridays at 10 killed that. Most of the young audience was away from home or fast asleep at that hour.

 

[T'Bonz]

The odd thing is, if he was supposed to bring in young women viewers, why didn't they feature him more? It's like they didn't think it through.

No offense to Chekov, but we were all looking at Spock.

 

[T'Girl]

Famous stories that were probably total baloney.

The network execs didn't want a female first officer (number one). Actually they loved the idea, they just didn't want Majel Barrett in the role.

 

[Melakon]

The first one that comes to mind is Pravda supposedly complaining that the Enterprise didn't have a Russian character. And it turned out that GR really thought the show was lacking a Davey Jones-type character. Enter Mr. Chekov.

Here I come
Beaming to the scene
I get the funniest looks from
Girls who are green
Hey hey I'm a Russian
And people say I'm rushin' around
I'm too busy saying
Russia's where everything's found

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Famous stories that were probably total baloney.

The network execs didn't want a female first officer (number one). Actually they loved the idea, they just didn't want Majel Barrett in the role.

I think this one started as a story to spare Majel's feelings, and in order to maintain it, Gene had to keep women out of command roles from then on, unless it was an alien group like the Romulans.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Here I come
Beaming to the scene
I get the funniest looks from
Girls who are green
Hey hey I'm a Russian
And people say I'm rushin' around
I'm too busy saying
Russia's where everything's found

(song continues)

I have a thick campy accent
Which makes it hard to act very well
They brought me in as a sex symbol
And that's a really tough sell!

 

[Ssosmcin]

I don't think they were trying to bring in the lovelier sex with Chekov, because they were already there. T'Bonz is right, Spock brought them in by the boxcar. Chekov was to appeal to the teen-beat crowd, to tap into the Davy Jones fandom. Not just "kids," which Star Trek probably had no trouble appealing to either, but a specific portion of the young 'uns. That segment which may not immediately go for sci-fi. The problem is, they didn't give Chekov much personality to go with his Monkees appearance. Davy Jones had more than the hair; he was a persona who sang sweet songs. Chekov had overblown Russian pride and a weird habit of trying to score with a yeoman while the Enterprise was in danger and his fellow stranded officers were being killed around him on Gamma Trianguli VI.

Honestly, he was a poorly drawn character. Any real likability came from Walter Koenig himself, who is a very down to earth, regular guy.

Having said that, I do agree the Pravda thing was most likely bullshit. Nobody has ever been able to dig up the article and, since Roddenberry lived in memos and saved EVERYTHING, you'd think a copy would be in the files. Granted, one may have been lost, but what a coincidence if that's the case. I can't imagine the Russian's giving a flying trapeeze what was being done on Star Trek, or even if they saw it. Would Russia have the series on their TV stations? At the same time we did? Didn't overseas countries get our shows later?

 

[stardream]

The odd thing is, if he was supposed to bring in young women viewers, why didn't they feature him more? It's like they didn't think it through.

No offense to Chekov, but we were all looking at Spock.

I do have memories during the 70s syndication days of girlfriends of mine gushing over Chekov. I didn't. He was...ok. We would rush home after school to watch it...ah the memories.

I did not have a 'TV boyfriend' with Star Trek oddly enough. I liked them all and thought them all very good looking but no. No sparks. Years later when I was a responsible mature adult and above such things I thought Tom Paris was kind of pretty but that was about as close as it came. I did however admire Spock's logic and tried to emulate that side of him which looking back I wonder why I bothered. It was a lost cause.

But anyway...back on topic. I heard all these myths and I believed them at the time. I remember being mad that apparently women didn't like Barret as number one because she got in the way of the men? I remember re-watchng the episode and I could not see any instance where she was in any way keeping the 'men from doing their jobs'. They didn't know it but that turned me into quite the little feminist.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Harvey's been doing a good job at busting a lot of these myths using actual production memos and various script drafts from the UCLA Roddenberry archive. See this thread: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=215992

Or check out his blog "Star Trek Fact Check": http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/

 

[Christopher]

The odd thing is, if he was supposed to bring in young women viewers, why didn't they feature him more? It's like they didn't think it through.

They featured him more than Sulu or Uhura. He even got a first name, unlike them.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The odd thing is, if he was supposed to bring in young women viewers, why didn't they feature him more? It's like they didn't think it through.

They featured him more than Sulu or Uhura. He even got a first name, unlike them.

Chekov got a lot of screen time in the original series, despite Koenig occasionally lamenting that he didn't get much to do on "Star Trek." Although, in Koenig's defense, I do understand the actor's desire to do more and better work.

Koenig was also featured in teen magazines of the time.

Chekov got to go on more landing parties than either Sulu or Uhura. Played a sizable role in "Who Mourns for Adonias?", "The Deadly Years," "The Gamemasters for Triskillion," "The Apple," "The Spectre of the Gun" and "The Way to Eden."

And, of course, Chekov screamed a lot.

 

[Melakon]

He's misused in the teaser for "Friday's Child". During McCoy's briefing about the Capellans, he just sits there, prominently near the camera, but doesn't get a single line. Must have been boring as hell for Walter.

 

[Christopher]

He's misused in the teaser for "Friday's Child". During McCoy's briefing about the Capellans, he just sits there, prominently near the camera, but doesn't get a single line. Must have been boring as hell for Walter.

He has a lot to do as acting science officer later in the episode. He was probably included in the teaser to establish his presence for later.

And really, sitting around for long periods without delivering lines isn't unusual for supporting actors in a production, given how piecemeal the shooting is. Try reading Chekov's Enterprise for Koenig's experience with the filming of TMP, where he often spent whole days just sitting in the background, or waiting to do a scene that ended up being delayed for days. Most of what actors do is waiting around, so if you can't handle boredom, you find another profession.

 

[alpha_leonis]

Having said that, I do agree the Pravda thing was most likely bullshit. Nobody has ever been able to dig up the article and, since Roddenberry lived in memos and saved EVERYTHING, you'd think a copy would be in the files. Granted, one may have been lost, but what a coincidence if that's the case. I can't imagine the Russian's giving a flying trapeeze what was being done on Star Trek, or even if they saw it. Would Russia have the series on their TV stations? At the same time we did? Didn't overseas countries get our shows later?

Not that I'm disagreeing with you -- but at the time, how many people on the Star Trek staff could have read a Pravda article in the original Russian? Did the Soviets publish an English edition at the time?

In context, TOS aired right in the middle of the Cold War, and not very long after the McCarthyist Hollywood blacklisting took place. The act of reading a Russian newspaper might still have been suspicious, even if they'd taken the step of creating a Russian character for the show.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Not that I'm disagreeing with you -- but at the time, how many people on the Star Trek staff could have read a Pravda article in the original Russian? Did the Soviets publish an English edition at the time?

In context, TOS aired right in the middle of the Cold War, and not very long after the McCarthyist Hollywood blacklisting took place. The act of reading a Russian newspaper might still have been suspicious, even if they'd taken the step of creating a Russian character for the show.

I do think GR invented the whole Pravda story, in the same humorous vein as Chekov's facetious nationalism would end up being, but for the record the Soviet Union did distribute English-language publications in the U.S. for propaganda purposes.

I semi-recall seeing a glossy, oversized magazine called Soviet Life (?) in a public library circa 1977. It was obviously meant to promote the idea that their economic system was sunnier, happier, more prosperous, etc.

It wasn't true, but truth wasn't the point. This was the Cold War, and our open society was open to anything they wanted to publish. They sent material like that to our libraries for free.

A detail in Gene's story, in my vague recollection, was that the Star Trek item was from the youth edition of Pravda. Maybe he'd seen an issue of that at the public library and embellished on it for Star Trek's sake.

 

[Christopher]

Keep in mind that Star Trek came along only a few years after The Man from U.N.C.L.E., in which David McCallum's Illya Kuryakin, a young Soviet agent working for U.N.C.L.E. alongside the American Napoleon Solo, became a breakout star adored by female audiences, and often referred to as "the blond Beatle" because of his moptopped haircut. Nobody was going to accuse a TV series of being politically subversive for portraying Russian characters in a positive light; if anything, TMFU and Star Trek both embraced the same optimistic ideal of cooperation between Americans and Soviets. And I suspect that the creation of Mr. Chekov owed far more to an attempt to imitate Illya Kuryakin's popularity than to any alleged Pravda article.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

David McCallum's Illya Kuryakin, a young Soviet agent working for U.N.C.L.E. alongside the American Napoleon Solo, became a breakout star adored by female audiences, and often referred to as "the blond Beatle" because of his moptopped haircut.

I hadn't even thought of that guy. Adding McCallum to Davey Jones, it seems that Chekov was a calculated attempt to just nail the teen Zeitgeist. And as the likely source of Chekov's Russian accent, it makes the Pravda claim even shakier.

 

[Phantom]

Chekov got to go on more landing parties than either Sulu or Uhura. Played a sizable role in "Who Mourns for Adonias?", "The Deadly Years," "The Gamemasters for Triskillion," "The Apple," "The Spectre of the Gun" and "The Way to Eden."

And, of course, Chekov screamed a lot.

Several of Checkov's bigger eps (like "Gamemasters...") were because Takei was still tied up with filming "The Green Berets", which was over-schedule.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I don't think they were trying to bring in the lovelier sex with Chekov, because they were already there. T'Bonz is right, Spock brought them in by the boxcar. Chekov was to appeal to the teen-beat crowd, to tap into the Davy Jones fandom. Not just "kids," which Star Trek probably had no trouble appealing to either, but a specific portion of the young 'uns. That segment which may not immediately go for sci-fi. The problem is, they didn't give Chekov much personality to go with his Monkees appearance. Davy Jones had more than the hair; he was a persona who sang sweet songs. Chekov had overblown Russian pride and a weird habit of trying to score with a yeoman while the Enterprise was in danger and his fellow stranded officers were being killed around him on Gamma Trianguli VI.

Honestly, he was a poorly drawn character. Any real likability came from Walter Koenig himself, who is a very down to earth, regular guy.

Having said that, I do agree the Pravda thing was most likely bullshit. Nobody has ever been able to dig up the article and, since Roddenberry lived in memos and saved EVERYTHING, you'd think a copy would be in the files. Granted, one may have been lost, but what a coincidence if that's the case. I can't imagine the Russian's giving a flying trapeeze what was being done on Star Trek, or even if they saw it. Would Russia have the series on their TV stations? At the same time we did? Didn't overseas countries get our shows later?

The Soviet Union did not get any American TV shows at all-that was just a bunch of bull from Roddenberry. There was supposedly the case of a Russian diplomat who was a fan of Bonanza and is believed to have said to Lorne Greene 'You forget this Hollywood business, and you come home' but that's it. The closest that any of the Communist countries got of American TV was China, whose CCTV (China Central Television) showed The Man From Atlantis and Garrison's Guerrillas as the first ever American TV shows to be seen on TV in China, and Romania, which licensed U,S. TV shows and broadcast them on Romanian television (here's an ad for the Romanian state bank: [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lNFFbkgUaA[/yt]) Citizens of the DDR also had access to West German TV as well.

As for Chekov, he's only good on Star Trek Phase II and in Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness (he got a great Chekov-centric episode on the former show, and got something to do that wasn't him screaming or saying that Russia does better things in the latter movies.) He's also shaping up well in the IDW comic book (based on the movies) with hints of a relationship between him and Irina Galliulin (who in this incarnation joined Starfleet and is on the Enterprise. )