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Character Spotlight: Pavel Chekov

By Ames

Ever hear an old Russian folktale called Star Trek: The Original Series? I have it on good authority that it was written by a little old lady in Leningrad. That’s right: we’re shining the spotlight on the Enterprise’s Russian navigator this week on A Star to Steer Her By, so be prepared to hear way too many tall tales from the garden of Eden, located right outside of Moscow.

Somehow it was easier coming up with enough best and worst moments from Pavel Chekov to fill out our list than it was for Sulu and Uhura, and even Scotty for that matter! Maybe it’s that we’ve just loved picking on Walter Koenig over the years, or maybe it’s that it just sounded like so much fun writing comic relief scenes for him. So read on below and listen to our banter on this week’s podcast episode (chat starts at 1:14:49). It’s definitely worth a couple ham sandwiches.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best Moments

The Russian waltz “I, Mudd” turns into one of the silliest sequences from The Original Series by the end as the crew puts on a dumb show to confuse the robots into having mental breakdowns. And this includes some pretty great work from Chekov, waltzing with Uhura and then illogically getting slapped by her, and dancing emphatically when he’s been ordered to be absolutely still. Does not compute!

Scared to death… er, life Despite being a pill throughout most of “The Deadly Years,” Chekov did end up contributing to the antidote for the other crewmembers’ old age problem simply by being a pathetic little coward. Because he was so scared to see Alvin’s dead body, Chekov was immune from the condition due to his increased adrenaline, which Doc deduces. Eek!

She wants to shop, and I thought I would help her In a rather cute moment in “The Trouble with Tribbles,” Chekov agrees to go shopping with Uhura on Space Station K7. It’s just a small little moment of bonding that could have been any of the characters, but it’s just good of Chekov to accompany the lieutenant while on shore leave, and being there when she adopts her pet tribble.

You started it, didn't you? We also have to give Chekov some credit for not snitching on Scott’s initiating the massive brawl all over the bar in “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Chekov was itching for a fight himself, but Scott throws the first punch and then Chekov keeps mum about it while Kirk is questioning all the combatants. How did the fight itself go? Well you’ll see…

Pavel of all trades We see a lot of instances of crewmembers filling in for each other on the ship. Last week, we mentioned how Uhura jumped in to do some rewiring work. And in “The Immunity Syndrome,” we see Chekov manning the science station throughout the episode during moments when Spock is either busy or on a one-way trip into a space amoeba, as one does.

If he shoots at me, I will just step out of the way Despite getting gunned down like a dog by Morgan Earp in “Spectre of the Gun,” Chekov does manage to help the others figure out the puzzle of their OK Corral setting. Billy Claiborne didn’t die in the shootout in real life (he ran away, like we could imagine Chekov doing), so the others realize this scenario doesn’t have to match history. Thanks, Chekov. Sorry about the dying part.

Arm… photon… torpedoes… As usual, we’ve got lots more moments to highlight from the minor bridge characters in the movies compared to the television show, so let’s start off with The Motion Picture. Chekov is mostly around to feed various lines of technobabble and to get his arm zapped by his console, but he also successfully juliennes the space potato in that horribly extended wormhole sequence.

Botany Bay? Oh no! We get a ton of action from Chekov while he’s serving on the Reliant in The Wrath of Khan though! He figures out (too late, mind you) that something is afoot on the Botany Bay when he finds a clue. And even more impressive, he somehow survives having a ceti eel latch around his brain, fighting off Khan’s manipulation that would have coaxed him into killing Kirk!

And Admiral, it is the Enterprise! As usual, The Voyage Home has the most stuff for the lesser main characters to do, which is a treat. And Pavel gets some time to shine when he and Uhura find the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise (a great touch!), infiltrate it, and sneak out some of its photons. And like when he escorted her to K7, he’s an entire gentleman and even lets Uhura beam out first!

Winter Storm Walter I just find this delightful. Chekov and Sulu hiking in the woods together and enjoying their little playdate in The Final Frontier is sweet enough on its own, but when Chekov wants to save face and avoid telling Uhura that they got lost before being called back to duty, he fakes a blizzard. And just how badly he impersonates the wind is just part of the charm of this scene!

Warp speed now! Man, we really are seeing The Final Frontier represented a surprising amount in our best moments in this spotlight series! It’s undoubtedly one of Chekov’s best moments, possibly because he has the most to do: tricking Sybok by pretending to be the captain of the Enterprise, going up against a Klingon Bird of Prey, and getting his party back aboard before warping away!

Next time, stick with synthehol Finally, just a small detail that Jake really liked from The Undiscovered Country. While the dinner scene with the Klingons mostly just came across as racist (as Ames noted in our Kirk spotlight), Walter Koenig just had perfect delivery of the line, “Only the size of my head,” jesting about the radiation surge and his hangover from all that Romulan ale.

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Worst Moments

Hey hey we’re the Monkees Place your votes on which of the early-season-2 wigs was the worst. Watching poor Walter Koenig in these absolutely atrocious Monkees wigs in episodes like “Amok Time” and “Who Mourns for Adonais?” is just painful. They look like really poorly styled women’s bob hairpieces, and I cannot take anyone wearing them seriously.

We all move up in rank It’s funny how little we actually see mirror Chekov in “Mirror, Mirror,” and yet what a great effect he has in establishing the world. He has all of three lines in the whole episode (plus a whole lot of great Koenig screaming), and yet we understand from how he so utterly fails at mutinying that in this world it’s kill or be killed. And Chekov clearly doesn’t have the chops.

Trouble on paradise planet On the other hand, we see entirely too much of Chekov in “The Apple,” and it’s mostly all cringe. Literally moments after watching Hendorff get killed and Yeoman Landon is concerned about their safety, Chekov comes onto her with a “I've been wanting to get you in a place like this for a long time.” The two of them are just horny teenagers all episode long and it’s all really immature.

If I live long enough, I'm going to run out of samples Chekov also comes across as just plain whiny and even more immature in “The Deadly Years” when he’s complaining and complaining about undergoing tests for McCoy to figure out what caused his afore-mentioned immunity. His fellow crewmates and everyone who’d been in that colony are dying / have died of old age, and he’s insensitive enough to complain about a couple samples?

You heard what he called the captain While the brawl in “The Trouble with Tribbles” is indeed a thing of beauty, it does make Chekov come across as both needlessly violent when Scott has to talk him out of attacking Klingons a couple times, and also as woefully incompetent when all his punches have exactly no effect on his assailant. It’s just a little “Chekov is weak” joke that’s kinda dumb when you think about it.

Piotr would be ashamed This one comes with a content warning for attempted rape. Like Kirk in “The Enemy Within,” when Chekov is affected by the Beta XII-A entity which is making everyone angry in “Day of the Dove,” he goes straight to sexually assaulting Kang’s wife Mara, and it’s uncomfortable and immoral and shameful. I will not be hearing excuses, energy being–related or otherwise.

Feeling a little Defiant Hey, another instance of Chekov being influenced by some kind of space craziness, this time by the area of space that also took the Defiant in “The Tholian Web.” Something about this area sends crewmembers into a fury, and Chekov is first on the list to go mindlessly ravenous. I’ve said before that this episode really doesn’t make a ton of sense, and here’s just more evidence.

Be incorrect, occasionally While we felt Spock and Bones were woefully out of character in “The Tholian Web,” Chekov felt miswritten in “The Way to Eden.” He belittles his old girlfriend’s way of life, and she counters that he’s always been so straight-laced and by-the-book. Since when!? Perhaps this was left over from when she was meant to be McCoy’s daughter, because being judgemental does not feel like a Chekov trait.

This is Ceti Alpha V! Yes, Chekov, a planet has to be “completely lifeless” for the Genesis Device to test there. We could understand how tricky it might be to account for a tiny organism or something, but you somehow missed a whole colony of augmented humans in The Wrath of Khan. How can someone miss that? And to not notice which planet you’re even on? What is this, amateur hour?

We are looking for nuclear wessels While I could just give hell to whatever accent Walter Koenig thought he was doing (nuclear wessels, my foot), let’s make this The Voyager Home moment about getting his ass captured by U.S. navy men, absolutely failing to escape and breaking his everything, and needing everyone else to stop what they were doing to get him rescued. And have I mentioned the whole “wessels” thing?

Put Chekov at the kids’ table from now on I give Nichelle Nichols credit for refusing to say “Guess who’s coming to dinner” in The Undiscovered Country because to have a black woman say a line with such racial undercurrents would be a mistake, so Chekov says it instead. You coulda just read the room and cut it entirely, but whatever. Then Chekov makes a fool of himself by speaking of “inalienable human rights” only to be positively schooled by Azetbur, and rightly so.

If shoe fits, wear it We’ve been surprised how many of our best moments have come from The Final Frontier, and on the flip side it’s just as surprising how many of our worst moments have come from The Undiscovered Country. Despite being a genuinely good film, it sometimes screws over its characters, like when Chekov is made a fool yet again by not checking crewman Dax’s feet before accusing him of being the movie’s Cinderella.

— Clearly all this has been a Russian inwention. Stay tuned for one final character spotlight from The Original Series, as we’ve only got Nurse Chapel yet to go. We’re also continuing our trip through Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, you can share Russian tales with us over on Facebook and Twitter, and check to make sure that wig isn’t on backwards.

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