"My sense us that the next STAR TREK television series after ENTERPRISE has run its full seven years - I'm not suggesting it's not going to - will be a remake of The Original Series with a whole new cast," he says in excerpts available at Sci-Fi Pulse. "There will be new stories but they'll do them the same way we did and use the same characters - a new 'Kirk', a new 'Spock', and a new 'Chekov'. I know that's rather revolutionary, but to me it seen like a very logical progression."

The actor, who last played the famed starship navigator in 1994's STAR TREK GENERATIONS, says he's grown to appreciate his limited role in the sci-fi phenomenon.

"Chekov was so kind of one dimensional; he functioned as an expository device and just relayed plot information," he says. "So working on STAR TREK was often frustrating because it wasn't artistically challenging for me, and because of the interpersonal relationship with Mr. Shatner. But certainly STAR TREK was the best thing that happened to me in terms of the opportunity it gave me to travel the world, to make an appreciable amount of money and establish some lifelong friendships, no only among the cast but other people I met."

Koenig says that Shatner approached him and the rest of the original cast members to participate in his MIND MELD DVD project but he, along with others, felt it would unnecessarily bring up a past that they've all moved on from.

"I told his representative that as far as I was concerned that was in the past. And, besides, I thought Bill would come out looking like the victim, and we could come off looking bitter or petty or baring grudges. I think I'm bigger than that. So I wasn't in favour of that idea, as it was originally presented to me."

The actor is currently working on a screenplay called ILLEGAL ALIEN that he hopes to bring to the screen soon and also appears in a new special about life after STAR TREK. For more of the interview, check out this page.