Summary
- Walter Koenig thanks fans for recognizing the importance of the supporting characters in Star Trek: The Original Series.
- Koenig and his fellow cast mates didn't realize how much fans loved their characters until attending a Star Trek convention.
- The supporting cast of Star Trek: TOS was originally secondary, but the audience's stamp of approval made them realize their importance and pushed for better development.
Star Trek legend Walter Koenig thanks the fans for showing the actors of Star Trek: The Original Series how important their supporting characters really were to the series. Koenig played Ensign Pavel Chekov in TOS seasons 2 and 3, and he reprised the role in 7 movies from 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture to 1994's Star Trek Generations. While the entire crew of the USS Enterprise is beloved by fans, there's no question Star Trek: The Original Series revolved around the three lead characters, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), and the rest of the cast were supporting players.
In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Walter Koenig discussed how he and his fellow Star Trek supporting cast mates, Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), James Doohan (Scotty), and George Takei (Mr. Sulu) didn't realize how much fans loved their characters until they attended a Star Trek convention. Koenig notes how important the fans' "stamp of approval" was. Read his quote below:
We were secondary characters. We were subordinate characters. We were at the end of the episode titles characters, you know. And if we had not gone out on the road, if we had not gone to conventions where 8000 people piled into a hotel in New York, we hadn't realized, or the audience hadn't realized how much they cared for us. And they did in the exchange of ideas between themselves. Then we would never have realized that we were important to the show. Or maybe we weren't until they gave us the stamp of approval. But once we got the stamp of approval, we thought we deserved more. And we're actors. We all think we deserve more. And in our case, they're all talented people. They did deserve more. But the audience gave us the hint. They said, "You guys are better than just that."… The people who created Star Trek had to acknowledge that to some degree, and make these subordinate characters a little bit more important than they were. They still could have done more.
