At this point, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has been praised several times, for example because of the traumatizing ear parasite sequence or the clever combination of series and film plot. As far as the last point is concerned, Nicholas Meyer’s 1982 science fiction film also has a serious logic hole of a depth that even the star concerned noticed. Still, he kept his mouth shut while filming. It’s about Starfleet Commander Pavel Chekov and his acquaintance with legendary villain Khan Noonien Singh.
Khan knows Chekov, but that’s not actually possible
The superman Khan is so angry in the sci-fi film because he was abandoned in an episode of Starship Enterprise on a planet that soon turned out to be a death trap. Now he wants revenge. So the second Star Trek film takes its plot trigger directly from an episode of the original series. Even series guest star Ricardo Montalban returns as an actor. When Captain Terrell (Paul Winfield) and Commander Chekov of the USS Reliant land on the planet in Wrath of Khan, Khan recognizes former Enterprise navigator Chekov. He exclaims:
I don’t know you, but you – I never forget a faceMr. Chekov, aren’t you!
Sure, he already met him in the series. One thinks. But there’s a problem: Walter Koenig’s Chekov wasn’t even part of the show when the season 1 episode Space Seed was filmed. Koenig didn’t come to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise until a season later, when Khan had disappeared again.
Star Trek star Walter Koenig noticed the mistake, but had good reason to keep his mouth shut
© Paramount
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
The blunder didn’t go unnoticed on set, because one man knew full well he’d never shot a scene with Ricardo Montalban as Khan: Chekov actor Walter Koenig.
In the book The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek the actor has his say about the first 20 years of the sci-fi universe. According to this, Koenig had been through Star Trek producer Harve Bennett Expertise on Continuity between series and films impressed. Couldn’t he just take a look at the Wrath of Khan storyline to check for any mistakes? Of course, Koenig noticed one thing in particular:
[…] There was a dialogue with Khan saying ‘Mr. Chekov, I remember that face’ – which he couldn’t because I wasn’t on the show when he had that episode. I was with that faced with an ethical dilemmato mention it to Bennett or not. I chose survival instead of ethics and didn’t mention it and, in fact, even Ricardo didn’t know [Montalban]. He didn’t know that he had never met me before.
Koenig’s silence is of course understandable. Chekov can hardly than the star of the series and the actor must have been happy about every further scene he received. Telling the truth might have meant losing that scene to another crew member. In the same book, Koenig also emphasized how much he enjoyed working with Montalban and Terrell actor Winfield, which was different from working with the outburst William Shatner.
But Walter Koenig wasn’t the only one who noticed the mistake.
The director deliberately left the mistake in there
© Paramount
Chekov in Star Trek TOS
In the audio commentary for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, director Nicholas Meyer addressed the Chekov problem. Accordingly, he would have had no problems on the Reliant Exchange Chekov for Uhura (Nichelle Nichols)., who was on the Khan episode. But he would not have done it consciously.
Nicholas Meyer’s reasoning: After all, the big one has too Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle made some mistakes in the details of his stories and explained afterwards that he didn’t care about such inaccuracies. This defense could also apply to Star Trek. So Chekov stayed in as a little wink moment for all fans in the know.
After Wrath of Khan was released, Walter Koenig often joked that Chekov made Khan wait in front of the toilet for far too long and that’s why the villain can remember him. (via Memory Alpha)
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