Or, at least, Star Trek Beyond is presenting it like it’s not a big deal and praying fans follow suit.
Image: Star Trek Beyond poster, Paramount
The new film, which had its Australian premiere last night, depicts Enterprise helmsman Hikaru Sulu as gay. The Herald Sun says that the movie — rightfully — treats Sulu’s private life, in which he has a male partner and a child, as no big deal. (This daughter had better be Demora, is all I’m saying. Because Demora is awesome and deserves to exist in the alternate universe, too.)
According to John Cho, the decision was of course a nod to the original Sulu, everyone’s favourite Facebooking dad, George Takei. “I liked the approach, which was not to make a big thing out it, which is where I hope we are going as a species, to not politicise one’s personal orientations,” Cho told the Herald Sun.
A LGBTQ+ main character has been missing from Star Trek for decades (depending on how you characterise Jadzia Dax’s relationship with the love of one of Dax’s former lives in “Rejoined”). But no such complicated background is at issue here. Sulu’s gay and no one in the Star Trek universe judges him for it.
Fingers crossed that fans respond to this news in the way that Star Trek hopes humanity eventually will.