I do think it’s interestingly hopeful that out of all the speculation, no one is proposing that he got married and had a child out of societal/familial pressure before coming out. I hope the future fulfills those hopes.
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Also, having just now started watching Spaced, I can’t believe Simon Fuckin Pegg is writing Star Trek now. Him playing Scotty was a high point in otherwise terrible movies, but dang, baby he’s come a long ways.
ETA: I would give him a million dollars if he includes the line “you can’t drink a pint of Bovril” in the movie.
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There’s an argument over on Reddit that Sulu probably isn’t the first LGBT character.
TNG: “The Outcast” (S5E17) Riker falls in love with Soren, who is from a race of androgynous beings. Soren reveals a curiosity about the differences between male and female, Worf reveals some prejudice (not man or woman how is am I relate with someone not one of those?!) It turns out it’s acutally criminal perversion for Soren’s people to express sexuality. She comes out as female to Riker, and of course because Riker’s involved, a, ahem, relationship happens.
But because Rick Berman, any discussion of sexuality among the crew of the Enterprise is purely hetero, and they had to have women play the J’Naii. Frakes, to his credit, argued that Soren should have been played by a man.
Apparently Berman had no such qualms about women, though.
Or maybe he did; between TNG: “The Host” and DS9: “Rejoined”, apparently it became a huge cultural taboo for relationships to go beyond a host’s lifetime. Dax is risking (iirc, probably not) explusion for both she and the symbiont from Trill society. No such problems on TNG, but of course Crusher has to decline, apologetically, for her inability to go there with Odan, with some story about, “what about the next host? or the one after that?”
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Is this a clever way of opening the dialogue about how LGBTQ people often have to confront and move past parental expectation about their sexuality? well played takei, well played.
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You may have to get over it. After all, fake history is written by the fake winners.
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You mean Kirk was gay too? Noes!
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I guess he doesn’t take offense so no offense should be taken on his behalf, but really why does the gay character have to be one that was previously portrayed by a gay man?
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Over Trek? When I went to university, two decades ago. 
I find the metasituation of how they’re handling the franchise and its fandom more interesting than the reason for the controversy, though I still feel sort of bummed about their insensitivity to all involved in the franchise, at least, involved prior to JJ Abrams.
That always was one of my favorite scenes.
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I’m a “choose your own canon” kinda guy, and my personal canon does not include these new movies, so… These new movies can just do their thing, and I’ll treat them like I respond to people who think “The Wicker Man” has a scene about bees. Unless someone is requesting a dinghy, please, and some pagan hippies are singing about corn rigs and barley rigs…
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In my personal canon…
- NuTrek takes place in a galaxy that collides with the Star Wars galaxy.
- In that Star Wars galaxy, it was millions of years in the future after the Jedi Plague had drained their galaxy of dark matter and energy (which the Jedi and Sith get their powers from by way of the MidiChlorians)
- The last starving Jedi were suddenly rejuvinated and were awoken by their droids.
- They began to drain this new galaxy, interfering with warp and gradually making space travel all but suicidal, trapping humanoids on their worlds.
- But before they were trapped, the Star Trek humanoids triggered the Droid Revolution because they were tired of being slaves
- The Droids joined the last of the Borg against the Jedi.
- The ones trapped on the Star Trek Humanoid worlds turned into Cylons and began to slaughter the Star Trek humans
- They fled on Battlestar Galactica.
- Losing against the Borg, Luke Skywalker flees in the same direction
- The Borg eventually assimilate the Jedi, learn to combine Hyperspace and the Warp, and teleports in front of them.
- In our galaxy, the Borg, needing more races to assimilate, seeds the Earth and triggers the Cambrian explosion.
- Battlestar Galactica arrives and after some gene splicing and no small amount of alcohol manage to cross breed with the Neanderthals, creating modern humans.
- Luke crashes in California and replaces Mark Hamill, spreading the Jedi Plague here on Earth
- The original Star Trek happens inside the mind of T.J. Hooker star William Shatner when Draco Malfoy forces him to relive Kirk’s life when Shatner catches him betraying the Wizards to the Jedi
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As a comics reader, what Marvel has been doing is great, because it hasn’t just “let’s replace Thor with a woman!” but it’s taken place with Thor Odinson having his own narrative journey struggling to become worthy again rather than just being written out; and Falcon being promoted into Captain America hasn’t just been “wow he’s black now”, but was used to tell stories about what America he’s captain of in contrast to Steve Rogers who’s always represented an ideal America of the past, not Falcon’s flawed America of today.
All of the changes they’ve been making in the line-up have resulted in some good new directions for old characters because they can move past just being the same superhero they’ve been for forty+ years, with their replacements breathing new life into the titles.
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George is a sweetie, but there have been a few occasions over the last few years when his social attitudes have demonstrated the generation gap.
There’s plenty to dislike about the new Trek movies, but gaySulu is not one of them. “Turning one of the only real SF TV series into yet another idiotic action/SFX franchise” is.
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I think I agree with George on this one. Retconning a character gay isn’t much different than tokenism.
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Stop that.
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Product of his time and all that.
Takei also said that Roddenberry wanted to go further with equality but was constrained by the network. A more progressive Star Trek probably wouldn’t have made it to air.
Really I side with the remake on this one (though I still think the movies are terrible). No one remembers any details about Sulu’s relationship status from TOS, and if they do they don’t really care.
I suspect Takei’s reaction come from the fact that he’s spent decades with a specific vision of Sulu in his imagination, and changing the sexuality of that character is a fundamental change to that character.
This actually makes me re-consider some of the backlash to changing the race of comic-book characters. I assumed it was pure bigotry because I didn’t care about the change, but I don’t really care about the characters either. Diverse race and sexuality are important and need representation. But because they’re important changing the race or sexuality of a character is a major change because it implies a completely different life experience for that character.
I still this change is good because a new character would be a token, and I have no problem seeing old Sulu as gay. But I am a bit more empathetic to the people who complain when they do see their favourite characters change.
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It’s also tokenism at the expensive of the few straight asian male figures in media, a demographic that has been historically neutered by Hollywood and an issue Peg seems to be oblivious about.
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Surely there was only one true love affair in Star Trek (beyond Kirk/Kirk)
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That’s a good point. For one thing it suggests that gay men are only played by gay actors.
But a second implication is that because Takei’s sexuality triggered the change then Sulu was also gay when Takei performed him. So they’ve effectively taken the defining role of Takei’s career and changed a major characteristic of his performance.
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Because George says that was how he approached the character and how the character was written.
