// BBC ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS — MODA & SOCIETÀ
Star Trek actor Walter Koenig, who played Pavel Chekov, dies aged 90
The actor Walter Koenig, who played the spirited Russian crewman Pavel Chekov in the original Star Trek TV series, has died aged 90, his agent confirmed.
The US actor was a mainstay on the show from season two in 1967 until it ended in 1969, later reprising his role as the eager and earnest Chekov, with his Monkees-style mop-top haircut, in the six original cast movies from 1979 through 1991.
He also wrote an episode for the show's animated spin-off.
In the mid-late 1990s, Koenig portrayed a very different character, the ruthless Psi Corps telepath Alfred Bester, in another sci-fi space series, Babylon 5.
William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk speaking into his communicator with James Doohan as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott and Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov (right) in an episode of Star Trek from 1968
Born in Chicago and raised in Manhattan, Koenig was the son of Lithuanian immigrants and studied at the famous Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York, alongside the likes of James Caan, Christopher Lloyd and Dabney Coleman.
His big break came as the capable young Chekov, who would joke that everything was invented in Russia.
His character was introduced to appeal to younger audiences. But Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's studio also publicised the role as a response to criticism in Pravda, the main newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, about the lack of a Russian character. This was a claim Koenig later denied.
The show, which aired during the Cold War and Space Race between the US and Soviet Union, imagined a future in which nations worked together, and Chekov's Russian heritage fitted that ideal.
Koenig once said that the character's purpose on the NBC show was to "set out the bones of the plot and let McCoy, Spock and Kirk fill it in", according to the Hollywood Reporter., external