Star Trek: George Takei Still Wants a Sulu Series

Since Captain Hikaru Sulu saved the day in Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country, fans have wanted a spinoff series focusing on the former Enterprise helmsman. Despite what tensions may have existed on the original show’s set, George Takei, who played Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series and the films that followed, is still on board. He spoke to StarTrek.com about the Sulu spinoff idea. In light of the success of Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access, Takei calls a Sulu series a “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.”

Takei goes on to say that there was a real fan effort at the time to see Sulu get a spinoff of some kind. “That’s what the fans thought it was going to be. 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.”

Would you like to see a Sulu series? Let us know in the comments section.