5. It Transcended Politics
The 1960s saw the Cold War reach new, and potentially cataclysmic, velocities. The Cuban missile crisis could conceivably have eradicated humanity. The economic and political ideologies which caused the conflict, Capitalism and Communism, inevitably became attached to national identities; Russia for Communism and America for Capitalism. When the network forced Roddenberry to include a young male character, in order to attract a female audience, he created Pavel Chekhov. Portrayed by Walter Koenig, the character of Chekhov was an inherently contentious cast member. In the midst of the Cold War, an era where it was entirely potential and in some likelihood probable, that Nuclear Warfare could break out over the most minuscule of misdemeanors, the inclusion of a Russian character in an American show was innovative given the insatiable American desire to demonize and vilify their Cold War ideological enemies.