They never had a 'Worf'-character in TOS, a tactical officer or chief of security that appeared week after week-- something every spinoff has had since. While Cupcake briefly serves in this capacity, its mostly for the sake of a punchline. I have a feeling that if we see him again, he wouldn't last for very long. While they may introduce a new character to fulfill this role (a new alien crewmember maybe, or perhaps a reimagined Yeoman Rand, basically as a subversion of her previous self) I would argue that they already have their new action character: Sulu.
Okay, obviously Sulu is the helmsman, and he acts as that through out the movie. He narrowly averted the debris field surrounding Vulcan and successfully maneuvered the ship into the atmosphere of Titan. But he's also an officer "trained in hand-to-hand combat." And while he jokes to Kirk that his education consisted solely of fencing -the flips, rolls, and judo kicks he employs while on drill platform speak to a higher level of martial arts training than just that. (Hiya! Throat punch!)
Additionally, he has weapons control. (John Cho's face when Kirk orders him to fire "everything they have" at Nero's ship has become a high point for me while watching the movie. He's quite a badass, this Sulu.)
So my question is, would there be any objections if that characterization continued? Do you prefer the botanist Sulu with a room full of alien plants (like in The Man Trap) or the secret badass "Don't call me tiny"-Sulu from TSFS?
P.S.= I just realized why from a storytelling standpoint the changes to Sulu make sense... this Chekov is a big science nerd --like Spock. By making Sulu an action guy like Kirk you can split them up (have one pair on the planet's surface and the other back on the ship) but have them serve the same functions within the story. Except their personalities have been reversed: Sulu is the cool collected one balancing out Anton Yelchin's swirling vortex of geeky enthusiasm.
