Interesting or weird Character Combinations

[Kilana2]

Q dating Lwaxana Troi in Q-in-Law. The most hilarious encounter ever. Lwaxana with Q's powers was a destroying force. Worf enjoyed it immensely.

 

[Greg Cox]

When Chekov first appeared in "Catspaw" and "Friday's Child," his first two episodes in production order, he was a fill-in science officer when Spock was away. That was his original job on the show. He didn't appear as a navigator until his third episode, "Who Mourns for Adonais?", and that was only in one brief scene before joining the landing party and being back in more of a junior-scientist role; I suspect they only stuck him at navigation so they didn't have to pay another actor to say "Entering standard orbit" (though that should've been Sulu's line, really). Then he was navigator throughout "Amok Time" and it stuck from then on. People are so used to thinking of Chekov as the navigator that they forget he was a science officer first (particularly these days now that the DVD sets are in airdate order instead of production order)..

Yeah, that was what I kinda wanted to pick up on, and it turns out they're fun to write as a team: Chekov kinda brash and prone to blurting things out, and Spock as a somewhat patient mentor.

 

[marlboro]

I was born well after TOS went off the air so he always seemed to belong on the show, but I'm not sure I would have liked Chekov as a new character if I was watching in 1967. Novels like Traitor Winds, The Sundered, and the Janus Gate trilogy have done a nice job of fleshing him out, and I've come to like him quite a bit more than I used to.

He really is a strange character to introduce to a sci-fi audience in '67. I suppose he was brought in to appeal to a younger audience but, man, he is an odd duck. He's comic relief, but they only write recycled Russian jokes for him. He's there to appeal to a younger (female?) audience but he's not exactly an Adonis and he never gets to be cool.

I can just see GR brainstorming with his writers and asking them what's popular with 60's youth and them coming up with 1)The Monkees 2) Russians and 3)bad wigs. It's like they took Davy Jones and Illya Kuryakin in a blender and ended up with a guy who looks like a young Brother Theodore.

One of the things I like best about the novels is that we get to see the characters like Chekov, Sulu, Pulaski etc. fleshed out in ways that we never saw onscreen.

In other words, I'm forward to learning more about Chekov! Or at least seeing Mr. Spock giving him the old nerve pinch after he claims that Russians invented logic. In either case, it's 50 years past due.

p.s. I wonder how a female version of Chekov would have been received in 67. The show could have used some more women in the regular cast. Maybe someone like Lee Meriwether? She could do a bad Russian accent (Batmann '66) and she had a lot of tv experience.

 

[marlboro]

One of my favorite scenes I've ever written is the conversation between La Forge and Scotty in Chapter 9 of A Time for War, a Time for Peace. Just an absolute blast to write, especially the comparison of two instances where each was in command of the Enterprise, in "A Taste of Armageddon" and "The Arsenal of Freedom," and how each responded to it.

"That's six words, Scotty."



Another very weird combination was Lt. Barclay and Keiko O'Brien. I can't even remember which novel it was in, but I do remember the first scene involved Reg laying face down on some sod, and Keiko telling him he was going way overboard with his newfound love of turf.

At first that seems like a weird combo ( because it is) but it kind of makes sense. Barclay seems like a guy who would benefit from some time in a garden.

 

[Christopher]

He really is a strange character to introduce to a sci-fi audience in '67. I suppose he was brought in to appeal to a younger audience but, man, he is an odd duck. He's comic relief, but they only write recycled Russian jokes for him. He's there to appeal to a younger (female?) audience but he's not exactly an Adonis and he never gets to be cool.

I can just see GR brainstorming with his writers and asking them what's popular with 60's youth and them coming up with 1)The Monkees 2) Russians and 3)bad wigs. It's like they took Davy Jones and Illya Kuryakin in a blender and ended up with a guy who looks like a young Brother Theodore.

I'm impressed that you mentioned Illya Kuryakin, because people tend to assume that Chekov was the first good-guy Russian character in '60s American TV, forgetting that Illya had him beat by 3 years. Roddenberry always claimed he created the character based on Davy Jones and a totally fabricated Pravda editorial, but I'd lay long odds that Chekov was really an attempt to copy Illya Kuryakin and his "Blond Beatle" heartthrob impact on female viewers.

But yeah, maybe the character didn't quite work as well as he could have. I never realized what a good actor Walter Koenig was until I saw him perform without the accent in the way.

 

[marlboro]

Edit: I posted in the wrong thread.