Holy hell, the miniskirts. I know it was progressive for its time, women’s lib, etc. But: Female officers bending over console, butt swell hanging out. Almost every episode, over sexualized women needlessly emotional, constantly falling into male arms. Barely clothed, wisps of fabric. Spock saying that Kirk’s alter ego trying to rape his female officer made him interesting.
I’m at episode 14, 1st season. Is the rest of the series like this?
That said, there’s a hard, pure science to it I haven’t seen in later star treks. Can see how people then would find it fascinating. Also gets deep, in a weighty, high drama way.
They added Chekov because the Monkees were huge and Walter Koenig had a superficial resemblance to Davey Jones.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-monkees-davy-jones-inspired-star-treks-chekov.html/
The “you need to appeal to Monkees fans” came first. The Russian thing came second.
So I really doubt that was the reason they made him Russian.
Screenrant.com
There was no reason to add a Monkees (or sometimes attributed to the Beatles) character as specifically a Russian in your argument. It also doesn’t explain why there was a running gag about Chekov making “Russians did it first” jokes. It just says that they needed a kid with a bowl cut. The implementation details are what I’m talking about.