It's an artefact of the "Phase II" Writers' Bible. Had we seen Ilia as a continuing character, she thus had a mysterious alien power which would/could be utilized in future scripts, equivalent in usefulness to Deanna Troi's empathic skills. The novelisation describes Sulu trying to hide an erection caused by Deltan pheromones. The Special Longer Version of the movie shows Sulu fumbling over Ilia's panel, hitting wrong buttons, when Decker asks him to "take Lieutenant Ilia in hand...", which was the scripted version of the scene, but unused by the theatrical. Roddenberry objected to Spock being killed off in ST II. I don't recall his death being a factor in the JFK storyline. However, Sarek sacrifices his life to save Kirk and Spock.
That novel has far too many erections in it. A real glimpse into what Trek would have become without a cold shower on its creator's erection.
[concentrating] "Captain, I'm sensing that the Klingon is skeptical of the value of my empathic abilities". [/concentrating]
Why can't they both just be bisexual? I'm astonished that this argument goes round in circles so much.
Yeah and so did many fans. Of course , there is no reason why Spock had to die. He could have been written out in another way. The notion that vessels at warp are immune to time travel is problematic in itself since there may be hundreds of ships warping around in Federation space at any one time. I would hope they could have come up with a better caveat than that.
Perhaps they are, but George is the one maintaining that his Sulu was straight, and the actor would know his own interpretation, especially when the writers didn't disagree.
I'm reading this book now based on your description and so far its an excellent novel that provides an enormous amount of context for nearly every question brought up by the first film. I'm looking forward to finishing it!
Well , we've never seen TOS Sulu spurn a man and we've never seen NuSulu spurn a woman so it seems more logical than assuming they are at opposite ends of the sexual spectrum.
Daniel Craig plays Bond as bi-sexual so your mileage may vary I understand where George was coming from: just because I'm gay doesn't mean my character is gay. That said, it shouldn't matter either way. It doesn't violate canon and writers do take characters to places actors would rather not go. It comes with the territory. I think it's doubtful that further TMP movies would have broached the subject. It took Star Trek a further 35 years to normalise character sexuality. Every other effort used a thinly veiled alien culture fighting against social norms or an evil depraved character.
Maybe someday there will be a nunutrek where Spock will be played by a woman, Kirk is gay, Chekov is bi. Maybe it'll take twenty more years.