The American actor Walter Koenig , who has died aged 90, was unimpressed when, as a TV viewer, he caught a glimpse of Star Trek on its launch in 1966. “I’d flip through the channels,” he recalled, “and I’d see Styrofoam rocks – they were so obviously Styrofoam – and I said, ‘This has got to be phony.’ I didn’t give it a chance. I went past it.”

A year later, he was cast in the programme as Ensign Pavel Chekov, the baby-faced navigator of Russian parentage on the bridge of the starship USS Enterprise. This followed a search by Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry , for a character to appeal to young viewers, someone with the boyish, pop-star good looks of the Monkees singer Davy Jones .

Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov in Star Trek.…