Star Trek: George Takei is down for a Sulu spinoff

George Takei remembers when he was accused of assaulting people with a fencing sword on the set of Star Trek: The Original Series, and is up for a revival.

We have more Star Trek shows on the air than we have in a long time, with more on the way. There’s even one starring Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, his character from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In that context, is it possible that other Star Trek veterans could get their own starring vehicles?

The thought has clearly occurred once or twice to George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu on The Original Series and in several movies. When StarTrek.com asked him about the possibility of a Sulu show, he had a ready answer:

"Good idea. As a matter of fact, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Sulu got his own captaincy. The first scene is a shot of this huge, magnificent starship called the Excelsior, and then it zooms in on the bridge, and there’s a brand new Captain seated confidently at that center chair, elegantly sipping his cup of green tea: Captain Sulu. There’s this huge explosion in the galaxy, and the sound waves come rippling over and turn the ship into turmoil, and I shoot shields and the drama begins. That’s a nuclear explosion on the Klingon nuclear planet.At the critical point when we’re at the peak of drama, and Kirk is about to be blown up by the Klingons, to the rescue comes Captain Sulu with his Excelsior. He says, “Target that explosion and fire,” and then blows the Klingons to smithereens, thus saving the life and career of Captain Kirk. At the end, as all classic Star Trek episodes end, on the bridge of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk looks at the view screen ahead of him, and the giant image of Captain Sulu. And he stands up and says, essentially, “Thank you for saving my ass,” and Sulu looks down and says, “Good to see you in action one more time, Captain,” and he roars off.Scotty and McCoy are looking at the big ship Excelsior and, McCoy says, “Wow, it’s a great ship,” and Scotty chimes in, “Aye, but not so big of a Captain, I think.”  That’s a Captain Sulu movie — it shouldn’t have been subtitled The Undiscovered Country. It should be ‘Captain Sulu To The Rescue’. It’s the best of the Star Trek movies."

I get the idea that Takei has seen that one a few times.

According to Takei, fans thought this was actually going to lead to a spinoff at the time. “They mounted a huge tidal wave of letter writing, and by then we were in the email age, too. When we were on television, they were fan mailing us with pen and paper, but after that movie, fans inundated Paramount with email pleas for a new spin off series called ‘The Excelsior with Captain Sulu’. Those executives at Paramount didn’t see and didn’t hear, [so] they missed that opportunity. But the fans thought it was a great idea, and it surely would have been a huge, monstrous, galactic success.”

So could a new show happen? Takei is in his ’80s, but so is Stewart and he has a show. Stranger things have happened.

Takei also remembered his favorite episode of The Original Series, “The Naked Time,” when a disease spreads throughout the Enterprise lowering the crew’s inhibitions and Sulu runs around without a shirt poking people with a fencing sword:

Obviously that looks more fun than being at a console and saying “Aye. aye, sir, warp three!” Although apparently Takei’s fencing practice ruffled some feathers on set.

“When it came to shooting, they were filming on this particular part of the soundstage, and there were flats [a piece of plywood used in stage design] all over it, and at the far end, there was a big flat,” Takei remembered. “So, I found a space behind that flat, where I could practice my lunges. I was there fencing, and shouting ‘Aha!’ to myself on each one. Jimmy Doohan, who played Scotty, was a very perceptive person. He heard the sound of my stamping and panting, and huffing and puffing, and walked all the way from the opposite end of the soundstage, over to the far end of the soundstage where I was. Just as I’m lunging, he appears behind the flat, and I miss him, literally by inches, from his nose. He was shocked and startled, and went rushing back to the set, complaining to the Assistant Director, ‘George just assaulted me with his fencing foil!'”

"And so the Assistant Director came shuffling over. Again, he also had a great sense of timing. He appears as I lunge and I almost stab him. So he puts me down in the report for that day, writing ‘George is assaulting people.’ I was not assaulting these people! Nosey people who walked all the way across the soundstage to check out what I was doing. I am an actor of integrity, preparing for the scene, and those nosey ones got in my way! I still think they put themselves in harm’s way."

Okay, now I’m convinced a Sulu series would be a good idea.

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