![]() There’s a brief scene in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond showing that Sulu has a daughter with a same-sex partner. In a recent interview with Australia’s Herald Sun, current Sulu John Cho, revealed that the character is now gay and appears so in the movie. It’s surprising considering the culture of inclusiveness Star Trek has propagated over the last fifty years. Yet even though Star Trek: The Next Generation dealt with LGBT issues, such as in the episode, “The Outcast,” there’s never been an openly gay character in the Star Trek universe. Unless you are a member of the Westboro Baptist Church it’s really not that big of a deal. ![]() In 2016, audiences take the idea of gay characters on television and film as a matter of course. (Shocking I know.) Network television and audiences in general just weren’t ready for it. The episode received the lowest ratings ever and many NBC South affiliates refused to air it. In point of fact this was just after the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” aired, featuring the first interracial kiss on television between Kirk and Uhura. Although Roddenberry was sympathetic to the LGBT cause, he knew he could push the envelope only so far. In the fantastic documentary To Be Takei, George discusses how he once spoke to Roddenberry about including a gay character in the show. At the time most suspected that George Takei was gay, including Gene Roddenberry. Yet despite the mult-ethnic, multi-cultural, and social justice foundations of Roddenberry’s program, one glaring omission from the show (at least glaring to this 21st century writer’s eyes) was the inclusion of an LGBT character. Making the pilot of the Starship Enterprise Japanese? That was a bold move, even for Gene Roddenberry. Many men who fought in the South Pacific remembered the atrocities committed by the Japanese. Remember Americans were only two decades removed from WWII by the time Star Trek rolled around. The inclusion of an Asian character, particularly one from Japan, was no less signficant than Nichols’ or Koenig’s characters. That’s how little Asians were represented on TV. Other than George Takei’s Sulu the only other actor I can think of off-hand is Bruce Lee as Kato in The Green Hornet. To say there was a dirth of Asian actors on television in the 1960s is an understatement the size of William Shatner’s ego. Then there was helmsman (and by Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Captain) Hikaru Sulu, portrayed by the one, the only, George Takei. You also had Walter Koenig’s Ensign Pavel Chekov, a Russian on television as a good guy, at a time where the USSR and the USA were a Klingon’s eyebrow hair away from nuking each other. The idea of a black female character who was NOT in a position of servitude in 1966 meant a lot. You could argue that Lieutenant Uhura was nothing more than a glorified phone operator, but I wouldn’t say that to Nichelle Nichols if I were you. It may seem pedestrian to the average viewer in 2016, but in 1966 having a television show with a mult-racial and multi-ethnic crew was groundbreaking. Star Trek was, and remains, a hopeful promise in a world filled with turmoil. ![]() It stood in stark contrast to the paranoia-filled television show The Twilight Zone, which more often than not examined the darker side of man’s nature. Star Trek was a response to the cautionary nuclear war narratives of 1950s science-fiction, films like The Day the Earth Stood Still. It was a sci-fi show that was hopeful and optimistic, that emphasized the best in human beings and the wonders that could be accomplished through global cooperation. It was a decade of social upheaval, and out of the morass came Gene Roddenberry’s brainchild. The television show originated in an era that included the assassination of a President, the escalation of the USA’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and racial tensions on a national scale. Star Trek has always been a universe of inclusion.
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