Spoilers ST: Beyond - Surprising fact about Sulu

[Christopher]

Well hes thrilled that Beyond has a Gay character, but he isn't happy it is Sulu, because Gene intended Sulu to be straight, and Takei thinks they shouldn't mess with that.

I don't think that's really about Roddenberry so much as about how an actor tends to build an inner mental model of who his character is in order to build his performance. I've seen other cases of actors resisting changes to the characters as they understood them, because they were just too attached to the version that existed in their heads.

I mean, it's not like Roddenberry himself was opposed to changing his intentions. He was the one who had the Klingons redesigned for TMP and asked viewers to pretend they'd looked that way all along. Creators are generally far more willing to change their own creations than you'd expect. After all, the process of creation is itself a process of change, of trial and error and refinement.

 

[Greg Cox]

And I'm pretty sure that in all the speeches Gene gave about his vision of the future and what STAR TREK truly was all about, he never said "But, most importantly, Mister Sulu is straight! That's the most important part!"

 

[F. King Daniel]

A tidbit from Star Trek Beyond which may affect the ENT-era novels...

Spoiler: USS Franklin

Is referred to as a warp 4 ship from the 2160's.

 

[Csalem]

A tidbit from Star Trek Beyond which may affect the ENT-era novels...

Spoiler: USS Franklin

Is referred to as a warp 4 ship from the 2160's.

Don't think it will be too much of an issue as it was stated in the other thread that the novels cannot reference anything from the JJ-movies.

 

[Markonian]

Might this ban be lifted soon? STO is now allowed to incorporate Kelvin timeline (ST: KTL?) content, and the IDW comic series ends with a crossover with TOS.

If we get details on the Franklin, I wouldn't mind seeing this ship pop up elsewhere.

 

[Jinn]

STO is now allowed to incorporate Kelvin timeline (ST: KTL?) content

STO was always able to reference stuff from the new films. Its whole premise is Romulus blowing up.

 

[Daddy Todd]

OK, so Sulu being gay is a big retcon of the Prime Universe, but can anyone remember if it contradicts any of the Kelvin Timeline comics or YA novels? Like, does Sulu fall In love with a woman in any of the Starfleet Academy novels?

I can't remember anything from the comics, but I never got around to reading the YA novels.

 

[DimesDan]

so Sulu being gay is a big retcon of the Prime Universe,

It's not even a small retcon, it was an assumption he was straight.

 

[Jinn]

I don't really see the need to retcon anything. The Prime Timeline Sulu is not the same as Kelvin Sulu and can be straight while Kelvin Sulu could be bisexuel to avoid problems with comics/YA novels that established that he liked women (haven't read any of them so I don't know if thats the case). The problematic thing could be if Beyond established that Sulu was in a relationship for quite some time and if that would contradict anything the comics or YA novels established about him.

 

[Markonian]

STO was always able to reference stuff from the new films. Its whole premise is Romulus blowing up.

Only stuff that happens in the Prime timeline. They had the new uniforms in game early on but got to remove them, for example.

 

[tomswift2002]

A tidbit from Star Trek Beyond which may affect the ENT-era novels...

Spoiler: USS Franklin

Is referred to as a warp 4 ship from the 2160's.

How? The Dadelus class ships were capable of Warp 4.5 in the 2160's, not to mention Vulcan ships were capable of Warp 7.

 

[Christopher]

It just occurred to me that in pretty much every canonical instance where Sulu is shown to be affected by female allure -- "Mudd's Women," "The Lorelei Signal," Ilia in TMP -- it involves women whose allure is exceptionally intense. So that's not incompatible with Sulu being, say, predominantly gay but mildly attracted to women. After all, few people are 100 percent one orientation or the other; there's usually at least a little flexibility. Maybe it takes an exceptionally, superhumanly desirable woman to attract Sulu's notice at all. (That just leaves the creepy "Megas-tu" bit where he conjures an illusory woman to kiss, but that episode has plenty of other conceptual problems.)

And I'm not even convinced Mirror Sulu was heterosexual. Sure, he sexually harassed Uhura, but sexual harassment is more about power and intimidation than attraction. For all we know, Mirror Sulu harassed Mirror Chekov in the same way, just not on camera.

How? The Dadelus class ships were capable of Warp 4.5 in the 2160's, not to mention Vulcan ships were capable of Warp 7.

The 2160s are after Enterprise, and Starfleet in the novels has ships capable of at least warp 6 by that point. It doesn't seem inconsistent if a smaller type of ship of similar design to the NX-class is only capable of warp 4.

 

[Stevil2001]

In general, no. I just meant that The Captain's Daughter offered a very specific explanation for how Demora got her name, one that would make it unlikely for Sulu to give his daughter the same name in a different timeline (because he wasn't the one who named her), so that creates a bit of a clash.

Not an unprecedented one, however.

 

[Greg Cox]

It's not even a small retcon, it was an assumption he was straight.

Exactly. It was only an assumption.

"Canon" is not being violated here. Hell, it's barely being tweaked.

Plus, as noted, this is a new Sulu in a new STAR TREK anyway.

 

[tomswift2002]

The 2160s are after Enterprise, and Starfleet in the novels has ships capable of at least warp 6 by that point. It doesn't seem inconsistent if a smaller type of ship of similar design to the NX-class is only capable of warp 4.

Yeah, but even the original Daedalus-class ships, before their late-2150's refits to Warp 7 ships, were capable of Warp 4.5, so in terms of the original post, really having a Warp 4 capable ship from the 2160's is really pointless in terms of the overall thing with Enterprise. It's kind of like saying that I've got a rear-wheel drive car from last year and a rear-wheel drive car from the 1970's. Does it really matter that the cars are rear-wheel drive when the technology existed long before the 1970's? Does it really matter that the Franklin is a Warp 4 ship from the 2160's, when we know that the technology existed upto 2144?

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, but even the original Daedalus-class ships, before their late-2150's refits to Warp 7 ships, were capable of Warp 4.5, so in terms of the original post, really having a Warp 4 capable ship from the 2160's is really pointless in terms of the overall thing with Enterprise. It's kind of like saying that I've got a rear-wheel drive car from last year and a rear-wheel drive car from the 1970's. Does it really matter that the cars are rear-wheel drive when the technology existed long before the 1970's? Does it really matter that the Franklin is a Warp 4 ship from the 2160's, when we know that the technology existed upto 2144?

I don't understand your objection. It's logical that not all ships would have the same top speed. There are 3-speed bikes and 21-speed bikes. There are subsonic jets and supersonic jets. The Franklin is clearly a small ship, much smaller than an NX-class. So it makes perfect sense that it's lower-powered.

I doubt very much that the characters in the movie bring up the Franklin's top speed in the context of a history lesson about starship development. It's more likely that they bring it up in the context of "Hey, we need to use this ship to get off the planet and fight the bad guys, so what kind of performance can we get out of it?" In that context, knowing that it can only manage warp 4 is not about historical trivia, it's about what's going to happen in the next few minutes or hours.

 

[borgboy]

As for Damora's name, it could easily be handled with just one line or two commenting that Damora was a really popular name that year -- much like Ashley was hugely popular in the early 90s (my oldest niece is an Ashley and she always had two or three other girls with the same name in her classes)

 

[Christopher]

As for Damora's name, it could easily be handled with just one line or two commenting that Damora was a really popular name that year -- much like Ashley was hugely popular in the early 90s (my oldest niece is an Ashley and she always had two or three other girls with the same name in her classes)

Sure, but the thing is that The Captain's Daughter makes it the name of the place where Sulu and Demora's mother met, so it's a tribute to that specific place and time. If the book hadn't explained the origin of her name at all, there'd be no problem, but it gave the name a very specific origin.

 

[borgboy]

It's probably best just to not explain it. Even Peter David's ok with it, so I can live with it.

 

[Greg Cox]

It's probably best just to not explain it. Even Peter David's ok with it, so I can live with it.

Exactly. We just ignore that part from now on, like we ignore lots of stuff that was rendered apocryphal by subsequent movies or TV episodes. Or we just squint and pretend we didn't see that part.