Judy Levitt, Star Trek film actor and Walter Koenig’s wife, has passed away

Actor Judy Levitt, the wife of Walter Koenig, has died.

In 2022, Star Trek fans lost several people familiar from its series and films. Some, such as Nichelle Nichols and Kirstie Alley, were famous even to non-fans. Others, such as two-time Star Trek: Voyager guest star Marva Hicks and Maggie Thrett, one of “Mudd’s Women,” were better known for their careers outside of the franchise but have a cherished place in many fans’ hearts. Sadly, another member of the Star Trek family has died before the year’s close.

On December 9, actor Judy Levitt, also the wife of Walter Koenig, died at age 83. Levitt’s daughter Danielle Koenig reported her mother’s death on Instagram on December 14, remembering her as “beautiful, effervescent, kind, goofy and wildly talented.”

Born in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1939, Judy Levitt married Walter Koenig—Star Trek’s original Pavel Chekov—in 1965. They would have been married for 57 years next summer. Their two children are Danielle Koenig and the late Andrew Koenig.

In 1967 and 1968, Judy Levitt landed her earliest credited roles, in two episodes of Mission: Impossible. She remained, for the most part, a background and supporting actor during her career. According to SciFi Radio, she will be seen for the last time in the forthcoming film Savage Midlife.

Judy Levitt played a doctor, an admiral, and an El-Aurian in Star Trek

Judy Levitt appeared in several projects with her husband, Walter Koenig. One was the 1989 science fiction movie Moontrap, which starred Koenig as commander of the space shuttle Camelot, battling alien cyborgs on Earth’s moon. Levitt played the commander of another shuttle, the Intrepid.

Levitt also twice played a Psi Cop, one of the telepathic law enforcement officers, on J. Michael Straczynski’s science fiction series Babylon 5. Fans of Babylon 5 will remember Walter Koenig played Bester, a senior Psi Cop whose sardonic and sadistic manner couldn’t have been more different from the energetic and friendly Pavel Chekov.

But Star Trek fans will recognize Judy Levitt best for her three small roles in Star Trek films.

Based on photographs at the Memory Alpha wiki, Levitt was the doctor at Mercy Hospital pushing the woman in the wheelchair to whom Dr. McCoy has given a new kidney in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

She was also the captain (though wearing an admiral’s cross on her tunic’s shoulder strap) with a pot of coffee who asks the Commander-in-Chief, “Bill, are we talking about mothballing the Starfleet?” in the early conference sequence of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). (See her line at 2:14 in the clip below.)

And she is an El-Aurian refugee in the opening, Enterprise-B sequence of Star Trek Generations (1994). Her back was to the camera, but she was reaching out directly to Commander Chekov, who was assuring the Lakul survivors, “You’re going to be all right; we are going to help you.”

Though she was not a major onscreen presence in Star Trek, Judy Levitt was clearly a major positive force as (in Danielle’s words) “a great friend, wife, grandmother, aunt and mother-in-law.”

May May Walter Koenig, Danielle Koenig, and all who knew and loved Judy Levitt find peace as they mourn her.