Warped Factors: A Neurotic's Guide to the Universe [Hardcover]

Walter Koenig (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Known primarily for his role as the confident Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek series and films, Koenig (Chekov's Enterprise) offers a surprisingly fretful memoir, focusing on his lifelong battle with neurosis and the toll it has taken on his personal and professional relationships. The book's first half covers Koenig's childhood experiences and early TV roles, with the remainder devoted mainly to his career on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Even success in early TV roles on Combat! and General Hospital failed to mitigate Koenig's "Quasimodo" self-image, which carried over into his worldwide success with Star Trek. He often complains about his treatment on the show: regretting that producer Gene Roddenberry ignored his script ideas, feeling dismissed by Spock actor Leonard Nimoy and envying George Takei's (Sulu) sword-wielding performance in "The Naked Time" episode. Koenig's honesty, humor and obvious intelligence do much to enliven the book (one of several intros hilariously sends up the entire crew), as do flashes of terrific writing. But the Star Trek show and films have been reported upon innumerable times, and so this book, for all its charms, will likely appeal mostly to diehard Trekkies. Sixteen pages of color photos, not see by PW. First serial to Star Trek Communicator magazine.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Koenig, like every other Star Trek cast member, is ensured a birth in TV Valhalla regardless of the depth of his acting. He is a capable writer, though, who delivers such tidbits of interest as the disclosure that head Trekker Gene Roddenberry asked him to skew his portrayal of Lt. Chekov toward the comedic, which may seem cold mutton to most but to hardened ST-heads is valuable information. He also reveals that a factor in getting the part in the first place was a friendly makeup man's spray-painting his bald spot and that when he auditioned, the character had not yet been named Chekov, so he wondered "why a character named Jones would speak with a Russian accent." He gives us the rest of his life story, too, but much of his autobiography vends starship Enterprise antics. It is mostly glib, generally harmless, good clean fun. It doesn't go where no man has gone before, exactly, but as nice Trek lore, it will be a popular library acquisition. Mike Tribby

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Pub (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878339914
• ISBN-13: 978-0878339914
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #915,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is NOT a Star Trek book, March 7, 2004

By 

Eric Kassan (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Warped Factors (Audio Cassette)

While a decent portion of the book focuses on Star Trek, most of it does not. This is a book about Walter Koenig, a self-admittedly neurotic actor. For me, this difference made the book very enjoyable. Here you will get a humorous look into the actor's life, complete with looking for work, working as a hotel package boy, dealing with agent's lies, and more. This book was a lot of fun.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laughter And Insight--The Perfect Complement, November 30, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Warped Factors: A Neurotic's Guide to the Universe (Hardcover)

The price of this book wasn't peanuts. And Walter Koenig being one of the "lesser gods," I debated about buying it. I wasn't disappointed. Far from it. To quote a famous line, "I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants!" Koenig tells a humorous story tinged with the painful awareness that only a true neurotic can supply. We all can identify with the "other shoe" syndrome (waiting for the other shoe to drop). In "Warped Factors," we cringe while Walter "waits." I quickly found myself on first-name basis, silently begging, "Please, Walter--not again. Don't screw this one up." Alas, he usually did. Through him, I truly feel I experienced the Hollywood scene first hand: between laughs, I found my stomach tied in knots.

The Star Trek memoirs come late in the book, but no one will mind the delay. The humor makes up for it. As for the Trek lore itself, it's just more of the same old, same old. "I wish I'd had more lines," is the recurrent theme. Granted, Chekov's "Yes, Keptin" doesn't quite qualify for icon status as does McCoy's "He's dead, Jim." But Koenig's own attempts at scriptwriting don't improve on that. In one proposed outline, he includes a fencing match for Sulu. (Been there, done that.) This plot calls for mass annihilation of the original crew--a disaster that would have spelled death for the Star Trek ideal. It seems a depressing attempt to precipitate the inevitable end (rf. "Star Trek VI: In Flanders Field"--see appendix). Fortunately, it didn't take.

Regarding cast quarrels, Koenig seems to resent Leonard Nimoy. Twice he alludes to some falling out that he never specifies--but it seems to have left a scar. He does praise Nimoy's generosity in standing up for him and others during contract negotiations, but puts it down to "noblesse oblige." I must admit, I've had the same thought. But truth or not, it seems ungrateful of Koenig to mention it, considering that Nimoy's "Star Trek IV: The Journey Home" does more to flesh out Chekov's personality than the entire run of the original series. Koenig's attitude seems like petty vengeance for some perceived slight. Neurotic, huh? But hey--we were warned.

Nit-picking aside, this book may be the best Star Trek bio ever for pure enjoyment--surpassing even Nimoy's. Subjective writing is definitely Walter Koenig's forte. I haven't yet read his first book, "Chekov's Enterprise." Now that I've sampled his writing, I can't wait!

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So nu, he really is a Russian!, June 5, 2000

By 

Rabbi Yonassan Gershom (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Warped Factors: A Neurotic's Guide to the Universe (Hardcover)

Walter Koenig is the second cast member from classic Trek to openly discuss his Jewishness (the first being Leonard Nimoy. William Shatner is also Jewish but so far, he has made only very scant mention of it in his prolific pile of print.)

In this truly candid autobiography, we learn that Walter Koenig's grandfather's surname was originally Koenigsberg, and that the family were Russian Jews who from Vilna, Lithuania. (Where they were hated as both Russians and as Jews by the local Lithuanian populace). Like so many immigrants who came to the USA in the late 1800's, grandfather Koenigsberg had his name shorted at the immigration desk. His son, Isadore Koenig (Walter's father), worked for RCA in the 1930's and, because he spoke several languages, was sent to Europe as their representative in the 1930's. Walter describes a hair-raising childhood scene in a German train station, where his father lies through his teeth in order to pass for a visiting German-American in a land where Jews are already being forced to wear yellow stars. The ruse works, and the German officer encourages Herr Koenig to remain in Germany where "great things are happening in the fatherland." No thanks.

Back in the USA, the Koenigs are suspected of being Communists during the McCarthy era, both because they are of Russian background, and because Walter's father is a member of the Labor Party and reads the Daily Worker. The fact that the Rosenbergs -- an American Jewish couple accused of spying for the Communists in the 1950's -- were actually executed as traitors by the American govenment does not exactly make Walter feel secure about his identity. Is it any wonder he turned out to be, in his own words, such a neurotic?

His acting career seems to have happened almost by accident, based, in part, on the encouragement of a kind school teacher who saw potential in an unpopular child with low self esteem. Walter came up through the ranks like most actors, and eventually got the part of Chekov because of another Russian character he had previously played.

At the Trek audition, he played Chekov as a more serious character, but Roddenberry asked him to do it again in a comic mode -- which he did, and got the part. However, Koenig never felt that Chekov was given much depth beyond cliches about how the Russians claimed to have invented everything (a joke on real-life historical revisionism in the USSR), and doesn't feel that the character really came into his own until the Star Trek IV movie. Walter also points out a really major continuity blooper regarding Chekov: that Khan in Star Trek II recognizes Chekov from the "Space Seed" episode -- but that aired in the first season, and Chekov did not come onto the Enterprise until the next season! Prudently, Walter did not point this out to the producer, lest his character get written out of the scene.

One mystery that Koenig didn't clear up in this book is -- exactly where did he get the accent he used for Chekov? Over the years, quite a few critics have said it's not really an authentic Russian accent. And yet, his family were Russians -- er, that is, Russian Jews from Lithuania, which is not the same thing as a Russian from Moscow. Was his "Russian" accent based on a local dialect from his family background (where some Yiddish would have been thrown in also)? He doesn't say.

The Trek parts of the book didn't provide much new (to me, at least) info, but did give some interesting perspectives on anecdotes I had heard before. One disappointment was that he didn't go into much detail about his post-Trek part as the psi-cop, Bester, on Babylon 5. It would have been nice to hear more about how he developed this character, and what it was like on the B5 set, etc., especially since Walter felt that the Bester character had more depth than Chekov. However, since Warped Factors is basically a Trek book, maybe he is holding out on the Bester character for a more in-depth discussion in a future B5 book? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, this book is a good read -- even if it is a bit neurotic.