Ah. Gotcha.
I'm not certain that's true. Strange New Worlds is centered around the original captain character created by Gene Roddenberry, as well as many other characters created for TOS. Picard was centered around the central character of TNG, also created by Gene Roddenberry. Prodigy featured characters created for Voyager by Berman, Piller, and Taylor. The Kelvin films were entirely about the TOS characters created by Roddenberry.
There seems to be a great deal of willingness to pitch Star Trek shows and films that are centered around characters created by someone else.
George Takei is no Anson Mount
Patrick Stewart didn't want to do the show originally. He wasn't the one who pitched it. In fact, he was very reluctant and had to be talked into it.
That is true, but also not really relevant to the point I was making. No one is avoiding pitching shows simply because the characters they would be based on were created by someone else. If they were, we would have never gotten Strange New Worlds. Because even though Anson Mount might be a better and more compelling actor, he's still playing a character that was created by Gene Roddenberry.
I distinctly remember rumors when I was a kid that Paramount was working on a Sulu series in the 90s after his appearance on Voyager but I assume it's all false. At the time, I didn't actually care about the idea because I didn't grow up on TOS but looking back, it could have been cool
I meant when the balloon was first being floated by George, Sulu was too much of a nothing character for anyone at the time to make the center of a show, and not have the central figure be their own creation.
He did the Starfleet Academy video games at that time. Even Christopher Plummer did one! Shatner would have done it if the money was right.
Nimoy? Probably not. He only did TNG to promote his own film.
Forgot about the game. Wasn’t nimoy in an episode of TNG? I swear I remember him acting across from spiner.
The benefit of a sulu show would be the occasional cameo.
Yes. Nimoy appeared in the 'Unification' two-parter to promote the release of Star Trek VI.
Yes, Nimoy did appear in TNG but only because he was executive producer of TUC and it was a cross-promotion. He turned down doing a cameo in Generations and likely would have done the same for a theoretical Sulu show.
In the UK I never realised the intention was for Spocks appearance in TNG to be any sort of tie in with TUC. It didn't air in the UK until 1993.
I guess if you saw it before TUC Spocks reference to the events in TUC would seem to promote the movie but seeing it over a year later the comments just seemed a natural reference.
I guess if you saw it before TUC Spocks reference to the events in TUC would seem to promote the movie but seeing it over a year later the comments just seemed a natural reference.
I can understand that. But, yeah, that was the intent. I think it was one of the studio heads at the time who came up with the idea of cross-pollinating the Trek worlds. Michael Dorn appeared in TUC as Worf's ancestor and Nimoy appeared in TNG as Spock. It was designed for each to promote the other.
It was a pretty gratuitous* casting crossover.
* - or shameless, blatant, or something
Maybe. However, at that point in Trek history, there had been extremely few crossovers and even hardly any "fan service" as we call it today. I think by that point, McCoy's brief cameo in Farpoint and Sarek's appearance were the only times anyone from TOS had appeared. And no one from the TNG era had appeared in any of the movies. And given that Vulcans are very long lived, having Spock appear on TNG did make sense.
And also they used TNG sets with a plant pot here and there
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I think a Sulu show could've worked where the Captain isn't the main character. Then you could've gotten a name TV actor for the lead and first officer. Tim Daly? Kyle MacLachlan? Bruce Greenwood? Blair Underwood? Maria Bello? Lauren Holly? The only question is whether Takei would've accepted that.
