10 More TV Storylines Actors REFUSED To Do

3. Sulu Gets A Katana - Star Trek: The Original Series

Even if you've never seen a single episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, there's a good chance you've seen the iconic image of a shirtless Sulu (George Takei) brandishing a sword and running around the Enterprise like a member of The Three Musketeers.

This scene occurs in the series' fourth-ever episode, "The Naked Time," where an inhibition-lowering infection spreads throughout the ship, in turn prompting Sulu to fancy himself a swashbuckler.

However, the episode was originally written to have Sulu using a katana instead, but George Takei refused to film the sequence with such a culturally stereotypical prop, instead opting for a sword. He said:

"Originally they wanted to put a katana sword in ­Sulu’s hands... It was technically consistent with my ancestry but, as a boy, I had never played samurai. I played Robin Hood! My parents had taken me to see Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood and it swept me away. I had my mother make me a Robin Hood outfit, and my backyard became Sherwood Forest."