Star Trek Beyond: Simon Pegg responds to George Takei's criticisms of gay Sulu

Many Star Trek fans were delighted at the news Star Trek Beyond would reveal that the Enterprise's helmsman Hikaru Sulu (John Cho) was openly gay.

One individual who wasn't so impressed, however, was original Sulu actor George Takei; who deemed the decision "really unfortunate", due to its twisting of what creator Gene Roddenberry had intended with the character. He believes a far preferable decision would have been to create an entirely new character who had a history of being gay, as opposed to implying an existing one was closeted.

What's interesting here is that Takei has coded Sulu as heterosexual when he wasn't actually expressely defined as so in the original series, making it understandable that his sexual identity would be open to interpretation by the rebooted film series.

Simon Pegg, who both stars as Scotty and co-wrote Star Trek Beyond, has now responded to the criticisms (via The Guardian); stating, "I have huge love and respect for George Takei, his heart, courage and humour are an inspiration. However, with regards to his thoughts on our Sulu, I must respectfully disagree with him."

"He’s right, it is unfortunate, it’s unfortunate that the screen version of the most inclusive, tolerant universe in science fiction hasn’t featured an LGBT character until now," he continued. "We could have introduced a new gay character, but he or she would have been primarily defined by their sexuality, seen as the ‘gay character’, rather than simply for who they are, and isn’t that tokenism?"

"Justin Lin, Doug Jung, and I loved the idea of it being someone we already knew because the audience has a pre-existing opinion of that character as a human being, unaffected by any prejudice. Their sexual orientation is just one of many personal aspects, not the defining characteristic. Also, the audience would infer that there has been an LGBT presence in the Trek Universe from the beginning (at least in the Kelvin timeline), that a gay hero isn’t something new or strange."

"It’s also important to note that at no point do we suggest that our Sulu was ever closeted, why would he need to be? It just hasn’t come up before. I don’t believe Gene Roddenberry’s decision to make the prime timeline’s Enterprise crew straight was an artistic one, more a necessity of the time. Trek rightly gets a lot of love for featuring the first interracial kiss on US television, but 'Plato’s Stepchildren' was the lowest rated episode ever. The viewing audience weren’t open minded enough at the time and it must have forced Roddenberry to modulate his innovation."

"Our Trek is an alternate timeline with alternate details. Whatever magic ingredient determines our sexuality was different for Sulu in our timeline. I like this idea because it suggests that in a hypothetical multiverse, across an infinite matrix of alternate realities, we are all LGBT somewhere.Whatever dimension we inhabit, we all just want to be loved by those we love (and I love George Takei). I can’t speak for every reality but that must surely true of this one."

Certainly, both Pegg and Takei make strong points about the nature of LGBT characters in mainstream cinema, though perhaps the debate here only serves to highlight one of the more complex issues surrounding diversity in Hollywood; the question as to how we introduce diversity into a system which relies so heavily on its (very non-diverse) cinematic past. If the only films getting greenlit are remakes/reboots/sequels, then how exactly do we avoid just repeating the mistakes from the past without appearing to bow to tokenism?

Star Trek Beyond hits UK cinemas 22 July.