Walter Koenig

Name:	Walter Koenig
Also Known As:	Pavel Chekov
Occupation:	actor, writer
Medium:
Works:
Official Website(s):
Fan Website(s):
On Fanlore:	Related pages

from WKFS Journal #1 (1980), the artist is Judith Schmitt

Walter Koenig is the actor who famously portrayed Pavel Chekov on Star Trek: TOS and less famously Alfred Bester on Babylon 5, a character who was a senior Psi Cop and a recurring antagonist in the series.

from Chekov's Station (1974 yearbook), artist is Jack Townsend

Koenig was a frequent guest of honor at many conventions.

Fanworks by Koenig

Fans were very interested in Star Trek's stars, and this interest generated a lot of "side projects."

Shatner and Nimoy, of course, had the for-profit option of big-name publishers, hence the large selection of offerings such as I Am Not Spock, Nimoy's poetry paperbooks, Shatner and Nimoy's spoken and singing LP albums and much more.

The actors with less attention, such as Koenig (and therefore less money-making ability), were more available to fans and their fanworks. Nichelle Nichols, Koenig, and DeForest Kelley were much more willing to write poetry and introductions to zines, as well as creating small zines of their own.

Some examples:

• It Ain't the Lollipop! (Walter Koenig)
• The Big Bird's Dream (DeForest Kelley)
• The Dream Goes On (DeForest Kelley)
• The Dream Goes On and on... and on... (DeForest Kelley)
• The Lady's Alone Again Tonight by Nichelle Nichols, printed in Furaha #3
• The Machiavellian Principle is a 1982 Star Trek: TOS play by Walter Koenig. It was written to be performed at Ultimate Fantasy a disastrous convention which took place in the months following the second Star Trek movie. (In 1987, Creation Conventions included Koenig's play in a booklet about the actor entitled Through the Looking Glass.)

Koenig's Comments on Fanfiction

I've seen a lot of fan fiction. I've read relatively little of it. I think it's healthy, it's fun, and gives everybody (fans who write it) a chance to get more involved. It makes them feel closer to Star Trek, and on that basis, I think it's neat.

Koenig's 1976 Comments About Fandom and Conventions

Excerpts from a 1976 interview printed in 1977 in Star Trektennial News #19:

from issue #19, one of the pages from the interview

...the curious thing that I've always wanted to say on an interview and I never got to do it is, sure, when I come back to Los Angeles from a convention my life changes, the physical circumstances of my life change, there isn't that kind of attention, that recognition that I receive at a convention, and I live like everybody else. It's not that totally but I feel it's something that is magnified hyper-existence that one experiences in three days when one is at a convention. However, I cannot eliminate from my consciousness the fact that there are thousands and thousands of people now a viable present situation." out there who know me because of my experience on STAR TREK, because of my involvement and contribution, who are aware that that means I'm really living in a kind of a glass house, and I've come to the point where I feel a responsibility to those people out there, not in terms of STAR TREK but in terms of my own career. I feel somehow that I must apologize to then for the fact that it hasn't worked out, for the fact that I haven't had the kind of success that should go with all that attention that I receive at conventions, and all that interest. I feel like saying, "See, all your support has not been for naught, here I am doing other marvelous things too." Now obviously that isn't the way it should be, I shouldn't be concerned about that. I should be living for myself primarily and for my family, and that should be the end of it. But in effect, living in a glass house as I am, I feel I have a responsibility to those people. When I go to a convention and have to talk in terms of conjecture and possibility of what might happen, I find it a little bit embarrassing.

I think what I'm trying to say, Susan, is that I'd like success to be commensurate with the attention that I've received, with the approval, with the support that I have from those fans. The support is so strong for all of us, that I would like to be able to give them back something in exchange for that support. They go to those conventions and they do look at us with respect and warmth and with love, these people, and I'd like to say, "Yeah, I'm going to give you something back. Not something that is nine years old, I'm going to give you something back now." I'd like to say, "You can see me in a starring role on so and so and I did a heck of a good job." That's the kind of thing that goes on in my head.

I went to, I think, 11 or 12 [conventions] this year , and I think that's a low number with the exception of De, Bill and Leonard who ask for so much more; they don't attend many. I have four so far for next year. San Diego, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York, those are the four that I know about. I've metamorphosed some feelings, I started from one place in terms of conventions and I've come around to thinking quite differently. Originally there was a lot of feeling of self-consciousness and a feeling that it was very ironic, conventions were very ironic statements about myself because it had to deal with not where I was now, but where I was then, and the irony was a bitter irony that I didn't have as much to show for what I was now. The question I get very often from young people, however, is "Are you the guy who does STAR TREK?" It's always in the present.

A lot of these kids eight, nine, eleven, don't understand the show has gone off the air. I have re-evaluated conventions since the early ones; I'm being hired as a professional — I am an actor, and whether I'm saying somebody else's lines or saying my own lines, I'm the professional and that is my job while I'm there. I'm being paid for these appearances and consequently I have left a lot of the subjective personal feelings alone. Now I am a professional guest speaker and I'm there in a professional capacity. And when it comes to fulfilling the obligations of the convention, I think I have as professional an attitude as anybody, I'm always on time, I'm always there unless there's total confusion, but never consciously am I not prompt. I think I go beyond the call of duty in many cases with a lot more personal contact with the fans. It's a lot easier for me to deal with that situation if I think of it as a professional job. It becomes new a chance to meet people and enjoy meeting them, people with ‘fresh ideas and fresh points of view.

And with the eventuality of a STAR TREK movie and hopefully my involvement in the film, I feel the conventions represent not only what happened in the past, but I feel it's something is now a viable present situation.

Interactions With Fans

Walter Koenig did a impromptu dramatic reading of a threesome story starring his character, Sulu and a OMC from a 1981 zine after complaining that there was too much Kirk/Spock: Kandy Fong remembers Walter Koenig running across this zine for sale at a convention:

Kandy Fong:—Walter's coming around through, and he goes, "Oh, you've got slash. You got any, listen—Kandy, why is it can I never find any slash that has Koenig it in?" I mean, Walter in it. I mean—(laughter)... He wanted to know why his character wasn't being slashed. I'm kinda going

Marnie S: He was not... deterred by it. In fact, he used to tease George about it.

KF: Yes. (laughter) So, anyhow, he goes up and he sees this story, and I said, "And these stories are terrible." And he rolls it up and he decides to give a dramatic reading... About how the two guys had to go down to a planet and seduce the court of the queen, so they'd give them dilithium crystals, for the ship is trapped in orbit and can't get out. And so these two young men had to go down there and please the ladies of the—So, he's reading this thing out loud, very dramatically, and just enjoying the heck out of it. So --

MS: He got a huge kick out of things like that.

Another fan, Teegar, recounts Koenig's interactions with fans regarding changing allegiances and fandoms:

... we put out “Swap” and Chekov: In Love and In Trouble at the very lowest point of popularity for that character in Trek history.

This was the mid 1990’s. The last of the movies with the original cast members had been made and everyone had started to view the original series in the rear view mirror of history. Fans were much more excited about TNG, DS9, and the brand-new Star Trek: Voyager series that was just coming out.

Walter Koenig had moved on to greener pastures with Babylon 5 and actively encouraged his fanbase to do the same. He was a fixture on the convention circuit and was always making sarcastic comments that got that point across pretty clearly. I hate to place too much blame on him, but it does make it hard to fan the flames of enthusiasm for a character when the actor is going around essentially saying, “You don’t still like that old thing, do you?”

Fan Comments

First question: "Would you say 'nuclear wessels?' He did, to much laughter and applause.

[...]

After Star Trek's cancellation he had trouble finding work and sank into depress. Wrote a novel that no one read.

Poor Walter. And he's the only original cast member without a star, although to be honest he was in just two of the three years.

Fan Clubs

• Walter Koenig Fan Club
• Walter Koenig Fan Society
• Walter Koenig International