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The other possible Chekov?

Laura Cynthia Chambers

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I was watching an interview with Walter Koenig from the Season 3 DVD set where he says that only one other guy was considered for the role of Pavel Chekov besides him. Does anyone know who he was?
 
Koenig said that there was one other guy who came in and read for the part, and he only found out (after a whole day of waiting) from the wardrobe guy (who began to measure him for his costume) that he had been cast instead of the other guy.
 
DavyJones-as-Chekov-500_zpsrwtmaexe.jpg
 
The mania of reusing the same actors over and over was part of the sixties and seventies I guess!
JB
 
I was watching an interview with Walter Koenig from the Season 3 DVD set where he says that only one other guy was considered for the role of Pavel Chekov besides him. Does anyone know who he was?

It was probably pretty much Koenig's part to lose, as both Roddenberry and Joe D'agosta both knew him from The Lieutenant episode he did.
 
Seriously though, I wonder if they considered Davy Jones from the Monkees, especially as he was allegedly the inspiration for the character.

Maybe an inspiration, but I think it's likely that the real inspiration for Chekov was David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Illya, introduced when the show began in 1964 and still going strong in 1967, was a young, heroic Russian with a Beatle-like haircut, and he was a breakout character who was enormously popular with female fans. (He was even called "the blond Beatle.") Roddenberry claimed that Chekov was partly inspired by a Pravda article complaining about the lack of Russians on the Enterprise, but there's no evidence that such an article existed or even could have existed, so this was another one of Roddenberry's... err... creative exaggerations. It seems vastly more likely that Roddenberry wanted a character that would appeal to young female viewers in the same way Illya Kuryakin and Davy Jones did, and so he just made an amalgam of them both. But he invented the Pravda story because it sounded more impressive.
 
Maybe an inspiration, but I think it's likely that the real inspiration for Chekov was David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Illya, introduced when the show began in 1964 and still going strong in 1967, was a young, heroic Russian with a Beatle-like haircut, and he was a breakout character who was enormously popular with female fans. (He was even called "the blond Beatle.") Roddenberry claimed that Chekov was partly inspired by a Pravda article complaining about the lack of Russians on the Enterprise, but there's no evidence that such an article existed or even could have existed, so this was another one of Roddenberry's... err... creative exaggerations. It seems vastly more likely that Roddenberry wanted a character that would appeal to young female viewers in the same way Illya Kuryakin and Davy Jones did, and so he just made an amalgam of them both. But he invented the Pravda story because it sounded more impressive.

Yeah I'd heard the 'Pravda' story was somewhat apocryphal but the Davy Jones story does seem to lend some weight. And yes, I can definitely see an Illya Kurayakin influence too.
 
Well, it worked, speaking of someone who was a young teenage girl during the TOS syndication era. Those were the days...
 
Memory alpha says it was this guy.
Which I find hard to believe! Doesn't seem young or engaging in any way in the few shows I've saw him in in the 60s.


http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Brad_Weston
Your skepticism is well founded. Cushman's TATV series is full of errors that have been well documented here on the BBS, and his book for season one is the only source presently cited for that claim at that article. I'd get a more generally reliable source supporting that claim, before believing it.
 
Walter Koeing was ina episode of Gidget playing a Russian can anyone upload the episode here?

There were some shows set in high schools in the '60s, and Koenig guested on one of them as a Russian exchange student. I've seen either excerpts, or even the full episode on Youtube, but I don't remember either the show, or the title. Any help?
 
Roddenberry claimed that Chekov was partly inspired by a Pravda article complaining about the lack of Russians on the Enterprise, but there's no evidence that such an article existed or even could have existed, so this was another one of Roddenberry's... err... creative exaggerations.
Trek fans trying to find the Pravda article: You lied!
GR: ...I exaggerated.
 
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Having seen that, no, it isn't the show I saw before. That one was B&W, and was a drama. So he must have played similar characters more than once.
 
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