| The Animated
Series In 1972, three years after the cancellation of Star Trek, NBC made a deal with Filmation to bring the show back as a Saturday morning cartoon. The character of Chekov was the only third season regular who was not included in the cast of the animated series. In interviews Gene Roddenberry gave indications that Chekov may have been left out to make room for Arex -- a three-legged, three-armed, pencil-necked, red-skinned alien. Roddenberry had wanted more aliens on the bridge in the original series to show the diversity of Star Trek universe, but special effects technology of the 1960's limited him. In an animated series, creating characters with radically non-human anatomy was no more expensive that creating human characters. |
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The primary reason why Chekov was excluded from the cast of animated version of Star Trek
was probably budgetary. At $75,000 per episode, the cartoon was one of the most expensive
ever produced for the Saturday morning timeslot. In To the Stars, George Takei
reported that at one phase of the pre-production, there were also plans to omit the
characters of Sulu and Uhura to save money on voice actors' salaries. If you listen
closely to the episodes, you can tell that the producers ended up cutting corners in this
area by having almost all of the voices of the cartoon's "guest stars" supplied
by James Doohan, Majel Barret, or George Takei.
At some point in the early stages of planning, however, there must have been a time when
it was assumed that Chekov would be appearing on the bridge because Judith and Garfield
Reeves-Stevens' The Art of Star Trek includes a developmental sketch for the
character from the collection of Greg Jein. The picture to the upper left is my copy of
this sketch, rendered in Filmation-style color to give you some idea what an animated
Chekov might have looked like.
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