10 Star Trek Characters More Important Than You Realised

Hikaru Sulu already has a major legacy as a positive force for Asian representation on American television. As actor George Takei himself stated, speaking to Stephen Colbert on the 50-year anniversary of The Original Series, “The Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth […] in its diversity […]”. Importantly, Sulu was a well-rounded, well-respected member of the crew.

A less realised (in both senses of the word) aspect of the character’s importance comes with the split to the Kelvin timeline. It was decided that, for the film Star Trek: Beyond, the character of Sulu (now played by John Cho) would be shown to be gay – a first for the franchise. There were problems, however.

First, if you’d paid for your cinema ticket, eagerly awaiting the ‘big reveal’, you might have missed it glancing down for a handful of popcorn. A kiss between him and his husband was apparently cut, so all we got was nanoseconds of them walking away arm-in-arm in the distance.

Second, Takei – openly gay and an LGBT rights activist – didn’t much like the idea of Sulu’s sudden coming-out. He considered that the character had been intended to be straight, and that better service could have been done to Gene Roddenberry’s vision, and to LGBT equality more generally, by creating a brand-new gay character for the film. He also criticised the moment as “a whisper of a scene”.

It was a first, nonetheless!