I understand why they did the whole gay thing with Sulu. And I'm completely fine with it. I mean really I do disagree with George Takai cause the original star trek broke so many rules and social boundaries. At its time Uhara was a first. She was an African American woman with the rank of officer even with a main role with lots of screen time. So what's so different about having a homosexual character. I just think it was unnecessary. Why change it. it does nothing for the story.
It's not about "doing something for the story", it's doing something for LGBT people. And it was a great way to do it. BECAUSE it's unnecessary. Sulu is not "the gay guy", he's the helmsman who happens to be gay, just like Kirk happens to be very flexible. Unimportant but very thoughtful representation. Why does everything have to be straight?
Kirk is portrayed as very open, starting with in TOS (The Original Series) where he just goes with the flow. There is this one thing where an alien that is pure energy (so not male or female) is in love with a human - and he's like "well, if you like her (they gave the alien a female voice and back then being gay was illegal..) go for it", not caring that it was an inter-species thing. Movie 'verse Kirk goes for aliens (with tails, so who knows how the rest of their anatomy looks), has threesomes.. In TOS there is a scene where (depending on how you interpret it) he's willing to "take one for the team" (namely Spock), and it inspired a lot of shippers even more (Spock/Kirk is the most famous ship in Star Trek); he is very non-judgmental and seldomly sees people's gender. One scene is iconic - he has a guest aboard and a person in a skirt walks past. The guest: "A woman?!" Kirk: "A crewman". (not to forget that in TOS there were men and women wearing both dresses and pants).
Thank you! I was never into the fandom, but I might reconsider :) I just saw all three new movies today, because I happened to watch some Pinto interviews and liked the way they described the Kirk/Spock dynamics, so I thought I might give it a try. Although I also had already heard about the series being very open (I remember reading about a kiss of Kirk with african american female role, don't know if that was Uhura as well), but I didn't think I might be so interested :) So, thank you again for clarification!
The interracial kiss was THE FIRST ONE EVER on screen (in American TV) and it was between Uhura and Kirk in TOS. [While they were progressive, they weren't progressive enough for more than one important female African American back then] If you have questions, feel free to drop by mu tumblr ;) it's furious-imperator.tumblr.com ^^ I'm always glad to introduce people to the amazing thing that is Star Trek and SciFi in general.
