That trick never works!
Interesting conversation and lots of good points. Let’s hop in the way back machine and put us in the shoes of a show runner pitching to paramount.
Why a sulu show? Let me try to articulate an argument
A- cost efficiencies
Existing model of the ship (aka, no need to pay an sfx company to build a filming model)
Existing sets
Existing sfx footage of new ship (albeit limited)
B- familiarity
While the sulu character may not be immediately recognized, we can use tos series actors to sprinkle in and generate interest.
C- diversity
Using an Asian actor as the tentpole character would be ground breaking in that era (well, kinda ground breaking anyway)
D- show runner bias
While the title character may be a legacy one, the show runner will expand upon the very sparse existing tv and movie character framework
Plus all the supporting cast will be new and be the creation of the show runner.
E- addressing sulus lack of greater public knowledge
Therefore a show called “Star Trek: Excelsior” addresses the issue. Just like any new Star Trek show, an audience will learn about the characters and no prior knowledge of Sulu is required.
Now, hypothetical paramount execs, please contemplate the pitch. Did I over state anything? Did I under play anything? Are my arguments weak? (Don’t worry about my feelings. I’m married. I’ve heard it all).
Why a sulu show? Let me try to articulate an argument
A- cost efficiencies
Existing model of the ship (aka, no need to pay an sfx company to build a filming model)
Existing sets
Existing sfx footage of new ship (albeit limited)
B- familiarity
While the sulu character may not be immediately recognized, we can use tos series actors to sprinkle in and generate interest.
C- diversity
Using an Asian actor as the tentpole character would be ground breaking in that era (well, kinda ground breaking anyway)
D- show runner bias
While the title character may be a legacy one, the show runner will expand upon the very sparse existing tv and movie character framework
Plus all the supporting cast will be new and be the creation of the show runner.
E- addressing sulus lack of greater public knowledge
Therefore a show called “Star Trek: Excelsior” addresses the issue. Just like any new Star Trek show, an audience will learn about the characters and no prior knowledge of Sulu is required.
Now, hypothetical paramount execs, please contemplate the pitch. Did I over state anything? Did I under play anything? Are my arguments weak? (Don’t worry about my feelings. I’m married. I’ve heard it all).
This is definitely true, judging by how many times Trek drug out that damn Excelsior model throughout the Berman era, even going so far as to make it the Enterprise-B.
Maybe. Really, you're talking about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as the characters who would generate big public interest. Those are the true iconic ones in the public eye. And I doubt that any of Shatner, Nimoy, or Kelly would be up for doing cameos at that point. The other cast members were at the same level -- or less -- of public recognition as Sulu. Not sure there's going to be a big audience boost because Uhura shows up for an episode.
The only thing you left out, IMHO, is the argument I've made all along, which is that George Takei is a pretty mediocre actor and could never be the lead in a series like that. I just don't think it would have worked. And if we went with the casting from TUC, having Grace Lee Whitney as his communications officer would be even worse, from an acting standpoint.Now, hypothetical paramount execs, please contemplate the pitch. Did I over state anything? Did I under play anything? Are my arguments weak? (Don’t worry about my feelings. I’m married. I’ve heard it all).
Not sure about that, but it certainly would have been more of an ensemble show than some modern TV has been, with stories showcasing all the cast, and maybe ascended extra like O’Brien had done in TNG.
If made it would have been Star Trek: Excelsior than Star Trek: Sulu - def not a ‘solo with extras’ type of deal.
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If Takei were leading man material, why hasn't he been a leading man in anything at all?
Unfortunately for George, Flashback put the final nail in the coffin for a Captain Sulu show.
Kate Mulgrew acts him off the screen, and it's not even a particularly good episode.
His performances as Sulu were always pretty one-note, albeit with the caveat that he rarely had any material to work with.
Flashback does give him something, and he's fine, but doesn't really elevate anything.
I felt the same about Jimmy Doohan in Relics to be honest. It's the most he ever had to do in a Trek episode, and it's obvious that the technobabble-heavy dialogue that Burton and Spiner had learned to deliver naturally was a struggle. It highlighted one of the big differences between TOS and TNG.
I don't think an Excelsior show would ever have suited the house style of nineties Trek.
Kate Mulgrew acts him off the screen, and it's not even a particularly good episode.
His performances as Sulu were always pretty one-note, albeit with the caveat that he rarely had any material to work with.
Flashback does give him something, and he's fine, but doesn't really elevate anything.
I felt the same about Jimmy Doohan in Relics to be honest. It's the most he ever had to do in a Trek episode, and it's obvious that the technobabble-heavy dialogue that Burton and Spiner had learned to deliver naturally was a struggle. It highlighted one of the big differences between TOS and TNG.
I don't think an Excelsior show would ever have suited the house style of nineties Trek.
I grant you that Takei is an average actor. But if it’s an ensemble piece he wouldn’t be shouldering the whole burden of carrying the show.
And - to be fair - there are a lot of shows with mediocre actors on the air. The key is getting an ensemble that works.
To add to what @Dukhat wrote, "Flashback" was made several months before "Trials and Tribbleations." "Flashback" was actually made as part of Voyager's second season, but not broadcast until the third. The studio wanted a thirtieth-anniversary episode from both series, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but they were independently developed and filmed at wildly different times. It's really coincidence that we get one story that's set during the Original Series and features everyone but Sulu, and then there's a story set during the movie era that features only Sulu.
For me, the truly unfortunate thing about "Relics" is that it spent time on Scotty. I was more interested in the Dyson Sphere!
That said, I do like the scene Doohan and Stewart have in the holodeck. Otherwise, and Generations showed this as well, Scotty was just not suited to 90s Trek.
The creator credits on Strange New Worlds puzzle me. I'm sure the WGA has its reasons, but I felt it should have been a straight "Created by Gene Roddenberry." Yes, he's dead, but "The Cage" finally went to series, almost sixty years after it was filmed, with some retooling.
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Given the ego Takei has demonstrated over the years and the way he's talked about a Captain Sulu show, I seriously doubt he'd have been interested if it was designed as an ensemble and not built around him as the lead like Shatner.
If it makes you feel better about Berman, he wanted a new design made for the Enterprise-B because he felt the Excelsior was overused in TNG, but it was deemed more practical to put add-on parts onto the original Excelsior model.
An Excelsior show produced by UPN would have told 90% of the exact same episodes we got with VOY and ENT, just with a different ship and crew (and a new female character in a catsuit.)
That did seem to be the MO back then…especially the catsuit.
I dunno. He has done ensemble work, like Heroes, and stage shows as part of an ensemble. He was great in World Enough and Time.
Series that bring him on for a guest appearance are different from a series that would be built with him as a lead.
That is a fair point. I will never understand why UPN did what they did. They apparently wanted another TNG. Which, fair enough, TNG was enormously popular. But then why not just do that? Why not just pick a time period, plunk a new crew on a new Enterprise (or the Excelsior), and go out on TOS/TNG style adventures? Why do all the window dressing of something drastically different like Voyager only to insist that it be just like TNG?
Those shows aren't Star Trek (except the fan film). He thinks he's a pretty big deal in the Trek world.
It is true that during that period, the captain was considered the lead. One of the changes Discovery made, which I liked, was diluting that dynamic, which carried across to SNW (partly due to Anson Mount's paternity leave). I do think Sulu was fairly vanilla. Saavik and David would have been more fun, I think. This is why I think a mini series or a couple of TV movies while the sets were still available would have been cool.
Interestingly enough, that was at least partly the original intent for TNG. Riker was perceived originally as the driving force behind the episodes, with him leading the away teams. It was a frequent criticism of TOS that the captain shouldn't be beaming himself into danger every week, so they were going to rectify that by having Riker lead the away teams and, as such, become much of the focus. Picard was going to stay on the ship and therefore be not the sole lead. You can see that in the fact that TNG's credits put Stewart and Frakes as equals under the "starring" billing, and then everyone else got "also starring" billing.
(BTW, as an aside, it bugs me that Brent Spiner jumped Frakes' billing in Picard. I know the studio always has thought of Data as the breakout character from TNG, but Frakes always had starring billing alongside Stewart. That even carried through to the movies. Stewart first, Frakes second, then Spiner and the others. That Spiner got a higher billing than Frakes in Picard just bothers me.)
UPN didn't actually want to just make a TNG clone originally. They wanted a crew on a ship, yes, but they wanted something extra to define that it wasn't just a retread. So they came up with the lost ship idea. The problem was that they then handed that idea off to the writers and producers to flesh out. Just like when UPN created ENT, they wanted something more than just a crew on a ship, and the 'formation of the Federation' idea wasn't good enough for them, so they asked Berman & Braga to add more sci-fi elements to it, which was where the ill-conceived Temporal Cold War came from that was barely even touched upon.
I think that ultimately, the writers and producers of VOY simply couldn't realistically world-build, between their inability to write beyond TNG-level scripts, and UPN constantly hamstringing them with what they could and couldn't do. So we ended up with TNG 2.0, with status-quo stories that ended up being even less realistic than TNG based on Voyager's circumstances.
That's not exactly true. The additions to the model that were added for Generations -- so they could be damaged by the Nexus but leave the underlying model intact -- turned out to not be removable without damaging the model, which is why when the model was seen next as the Lakota, it still had the Generations modifications.
A hypothetical 1995 Sulu show would probably begin with the ship coming out of a minor refit to upgrade the secondary hull.
How many asian men got to be leads in Hollywood programs, especially 30 years ago? Even had George been leading man material, the odds were stacked against him.
Jackie Chan?
