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George Takei

Japanese American actor George Takei played Lieutenant Sulu in the original 'Star Trek' television series and movies and is a popular social-media presence.

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Early Years

Stage and screen, public service and private revelations, quick facts:, who is george takei.

George Takei overcame the racial barriers of his time to launch a successful acting career. He starred as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu during the three-year television run of Star Trek , and later reprised the role for six movies. Prominently involved with gay rights and Japanese American groups, Takei has become a highly popular social-media presence.

George Hosato Takei was born on April 20, 1937, in Los Angeles, California. At the age of 5, he and his family were uprooted from their home and forced to live at Japanese internment camps in Arkansas and northern California. They returned to Los Angeles after World War II, and Takei enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley to study architecture.

While in college, Takei responded to a newspaper ad looking for Asian voiceover actors for the English version of the Japanese monster movie Rodan (1956). That led to more voiceover work, as well as small parts in television programs such as Perry Mason and the film Ice Palace (1960). Deciding to focus on acting full time, Takei transferred to the University of California Los Angeles, where he earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in theater.

In 1966, Takei became one of the few Asian Americans to be featured prominently on TV when he starred as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu on the science-fiction series Star Trek. He returned after taking time off during the second season to film The Green Berets (1968), but his role as Sulu was temporarily shelved when Star Trek was canceled in 1969.

Takei continued to make regular TV appearances in the 1970s, on such programs as The Six Million Dollar Man and Hawaii Five-O , while providing the voice of Sulu for the Star Trek animated series. Momentum gathered for the making of the movie, and Takei reunited with the rest of his old castmates for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and five sequels over the next dozen years.

The 1990s brought a steady stream of voiceover gigs, with Takei's signature baritone surfacing in the Disney animated feature Mulan (1998) and episodes of The Simpsons . The veteran actor also became a semi-regular guest on the Howard Stern Show , and in 2006, he was named Stern's official announcer following the shock-jock's move to Sirius XM Radio.

Takei was involved in a project close to his heart when he took on a starring role in Allegiance , a production about the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. The play premiered at San Diego's Old Globe Theater in September 2012.

Takei has remained a busy man away from show business. After narrowly losing his bid for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 1973, he joined the board of directors for the Southern California Transit District from 1973 to 1984.

Takei served on the board of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission for President Bill Clinton and was conferred with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by His Majesty the Emperor of Japan in 2004. He is also chairman emeritus of the Japanese American National Museum's board of trustees and serves as chair of the council of governors of East West Players, a renowned Asian-American theater organization.

In 2005, Takei publicly announced his homosexuality to Frontiers magazine. He married his longtime partner, Brad Altman, in September 2008.

In recent years, Takei has earned a following from a new generation of fans with his funny, incisive posts on Facebook. His expansive social-media presence, along with the 2013 release of Star Trek Into Darkness , has helped keep this accomplished actor and activist in the public eye.

FULL NAME: George Takei, born Hosato Takei BORN: April 20, 1937 BIRTHPLACE:Los Angeles, California

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George Takei

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George Hosato Takei ( born 20 April 1937 ; age 87), pronounced "Ta-Kay", is a Japanese-American actor best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the Star Trek franchise.

He debuted as Sulu in the Star Trek: The Original Series first season episode " Where No Man Has Gone Before ", with his character making the transition from the physics department to the helm by the next episode, " The Corbomite Maneuver ". In total, he appeared in 51 of the 79 original series episodes.

He later voiced Sulu in Star Trek: The Animated Series and displayed his vocal talents playing other guest characters. He then reprised the role in the first six Star Trek motion pictures , and the Star Trek: Voyager third season episode " Flashback ". His image also appeared in Star Trek Generations in a photograph in Kirk's cabin in the Nexus and again more prominently in Star Trek Beyond in a photograph that was among Spock 's possessions bequeathed to his alternate reality counterpart .

He has both narrated and recorded dialogue as Sulu in numerous audio novels and interactive games . Due to the fact that Sulu did not appear in the episode " The Trouble with Tribbles " (he was filming The Green Berets at the time), Takei was the only Original Series star not to appear in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 30th anniversary episode " Trials and Tribble-ations ". He did, however, appear as Captain Sulu in Star Trek: Voyager 's 30th anniversary episode, " Flashback ".

Takei most recently played Sulu in an episode of the fan films Star Trek: New Voyages entitled "World Enough and Time", which premiered in 2007 and featured fellow Trek performers Grace Lee Whitney , Majel Barrett Roddenberry , James Cawley , Jeffery Quinn , and John Carrigan . The episode was directed by Marc Scott Zicree and written by Zicree and Michael Reaves . Stuntman Tom Morga worked as fencing coach for Takei while stunt coordinator Leslie Hoffman served as his personal assistant.

Issue 356 of Starburst Magazine stated that Takei would be appearing in 2009 's Star Trek , directed and produced by J.J. Abrams . The magazine claimed that Takei would be featured in a "flash forward sequence" with Leonard Nimoy . [1] (X) TrekMovie.com subsequently confirmed this to be false. [2]

• 2 Early career
• 3 After Star Trek
• 4 Politics and activism
• 5 Awards and honors
• 6.1 Appearances as Sulu
• 6.2 Other characters
• 6.3 Other media
• 7.3 Web publishings
• 8 External links

Personal [ ]

Takei was born in Los Angeles, California, on 20 April 1937. According to Takei on the 9 January 2006 airing of The Howard Stern Show , he was named after King George VI, who had just become king of the United Kingdom.

In 1942, Takei and his family were interned by the United States at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas, along with many other Japanese-Americans. They were later sent to the Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California and returned to Los Angeles after World War II. Takei discussed this experience in a 1996 interview, stating:

Takei was educated at Mount Vernon Junior High School (where he served as student body president) and Los Angeles High School. He attended the University of California in Berkeley but transferred to the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), where he began studying theater. He earned a bachelor of arts in theater from UCLA in 1960, followed by a master of arts in theater four years later. After attending the Shakespeare Institute in England and the Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, he returned to the States where he studied acting at the Desilu Workshop.

Takei has been with his husband, Brad Altman, since 1988, having met at a gay and lesbian running and walking club. On 28 October 2005, Takei decided to publicly "come out of the closet" as gay, though this had been open information for some time. The story was widely reported in the media and was hailed by LGBT communities as a positive step for the larger gay community as well as for Star Trek .

Takei and Altman currently reside in Los Angeles, California. In 2008, following the California Supreme Court's decision to overturn a ruling which banned same-sex marriages in the state, Takei announced that he and Altman were engaged to be married. [4] [5] [6] Takei and Altman married in the Democracy Forum at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California on 14 September 2008 . Takei's TOS co-stars Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols were Takei's best man and "best lady", respectively. [7] Leonard Nimoy and his wife, Susan Bay , were among the invited guests. [8] Takei claimed to have invited his co-star William Shatner , for whom he'd had bitter feelings for years. Shatner remarked that he never received an invitation and lashed out at Takei, calling him a "poor man" and accusing him of having a "psychosis". The two have been feuding in the press since. [9] [10] [11]

In 2017, Takei was accused of sexually assaulting model Scott R. Brunton in 1981. [12] A year later, Brunton recanted his story. [13]

Early career [ ]

Takei's show business career began when he answered a newspaper advertisement for voice casting in 1957 and was hired to dub Japanese dialogue for the "monster movie" Rodan into English. He voiced eight different characters in the film. Shortly thereafter, he did voice dubbing for another Japanese monster movie, Gigantis the Fire Monster (also known as Godzilla Raids Again ).

Two years later, Takei made his acting debut on live television, appearing in an episode of Playhouse 90 with Dean Stockwell , which was followed by an appearance on Perry Mason . That same year, he acted in his first film, the drama Ice Palace . He soon after made an uncredited appearance in the war film Never So Few (which also featured Whit Bissell and John Hoyt ), although this film was actually released a month before Ice Palace . This was followed with a role in Hell to Eternity , a film starring Jeffrey Hunter , the man originally destined to play the captain of the Enterprise on Star Trek .

Takei went on to appear in the films A Majority of One (1961, with Madlyn Rhue ), PT 109 (starring James Gregory ), and Morituri (with Roy Jenson ). He had supporting roles in 1965's Red Line 7000 (co-starring Marianna Hill ) and 1966's Walk Don't Run (starring Samantha Eggar , with an appearance by Miko Mayama ) and An American Dream , as well as uncredited roles in the 1966 Matt Helm caper Murderers' Row (with James Gregory) and Jerry Lewis' 1967 comedy The Big Mouth .

In addition, he made guest appearances on numerous television programs, including The Twilight Zone , Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea , My Three Sons , I Spy (including an episode with John Abbott and Roger C. Carmel ), Felony Squad (with Ricardo Montalban ) and Mission: Impossible (with Eddie Paskey and Barry Russo ). It was around this time that Takei was cast as Sulu for the original Star Trek series.

Takei took leave from Star Trek to film a supporting role in the popular Vietnam War film The Green Berets . The filming of that movie, however, went over schedule and Takei was forced to miss work on a number of Star Trek episodes in the second season – most notably "The Trouble with Tribbles," in which Sulu was to have a "substantial role." His lines in the episode were given to Walter Koenig , the actor playing Pavel Chekov . [14] (X)

After Star Trek [ ]

Following Star Trek 's cancellation in 1969 , Takei appeared in another Jerry Lewis comedy, Which Way to the Front? , released in 1970. He appeared on a number of television shows, as well, including Ironside , Kung Fu , Baa Baa Black Sheep (starring John Larroquette and James Whitmore, Jr. ), an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man (with France Nuyen and Alan Oppenheimer ), an episode of Hawaii Five-O (with John Colicos ), and an episode of Hallmark Hall of Fame with ( Adrienne Barbeau ). In 1979, he and his fellow Star Trek castmates brought their characters to the big screen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture .

In 2004, he was in the commentary booth to record commentary alongside the cast of Invader ZIM ; the episode with his commentary is the first one, The Nightmare Begins .

Takei would go on to star in five more Star Trek films. His other credits throughout the years include guest spots on MacGyver (in an episode co-produced and co-written by Stephen Kandel ), Murder, She Wrote , Miami Vice , Kung Fu: The Legend Continues , and 3rd Rock from the Sun ("I'm George Takei, dammit!"). He also starred in films like Return from the River Kwai , Prisoners of the Sun (co-starring Terry O'Quinn ), Live by the Fist , and the science fiction westerns Oblivion , and Oblivion 2: Backlash . The latter two films – in which Takei plays the role of "Doc Valentine" – also stars the likes of Meg Foster , Julie Newmar , Jimmie F. Skaggs , Carel Struycken , and Musetta Vander . The 1998 B-grade movie Bug Buster featured both Takei and his former Star Trek co-star James Doohan , but the two did not share any scenes together.

Takei's more recent acting work includes the 2003 TV movie DC 9/11: Time of Crisis (co-starring fellow Trek alumni Gregory Itzin , Penny Johnson , Stephen Macht , Lawrence Pressman , and Allan G. Royal ) and the 2006 direct-to-DVD release A.I. Assault (co-starring Michael Dorn , Lisa LoCicero , Bill Mumy , Robert Picardo , and Terrell Tilford ), as well as guest spots on shows like The Young and the Restless , Will & Grace , and Scrubs . He also participated in the short film Roddenberry on Patrol , a comic look at Gene Roddenberry 's creation of Star Trek directed by Tim Russ and co-starring Russ, Robert Beltran , Richard Herd , Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols , Robert O'Reilly , Ethan Phillips , and Robert Picardo. He was also in the 2009 comedy movie The Pool Boys , which co-starred Enterprise regular John Billingsley .

In addition, Takei, known for his deep, low voice, has done voice-overs for a number of animated productions and video games. For Disney, he voiced the "First Ancestor" in 1998's Mulan (also featuring the voices of Miguel Ferrer and Frank Welker ), a role Takei would reprise in the 2005 direct-to-video sequel. Takei also provided the voice of Master Sensei in the Disney Channel series Kim Possible . Ricardo Montalban also had a recurring role on the series, and other Trek performers who appeared in the same episodes as Takei included John Cho and Clancy Brown . In 2009, Takei also voiced " Lok Durd " in two episodes of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series , becoming the first main Star Trek cast member to participate in a Star Wars television show production [15] ( Charles Rocket had previously been a Trek guest star who later did voice-overs for a Star Wars videogame spin-off).

Takei in Bender's Game

Takei has also supplied voice-overs for Hey, Arnold! , Batman Beyond (with Sherman Howard ), The Brak Show , the video game Freelancer , various episodes of The Simpsons , and Avatar: The Last Airbender , among many other projects. Perhaps most notably, Takei and many of his Star Trek castmates voiced parodies of themselves in the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" . Takei also appeared in the direct-to-DVD Futurama movie, Bender's Game , and in the 2010 Futurama episode "Proposition Infinity", in which he served as a moderator in a debate on the aforementioned proposition which would legalize robosexual (humanoid/robot) marriages.

On 9 January 2006, Takei was named the official announcer of Sirius Satellite Radio's The Howard Stern Show . He has been a semi-regular on the show ever since. In addition, Takei has served as guest narrator for several symphony orchestras, the most recent being the Seattle Symphony Orchestra's Sci-Fi Favorites concert in September 2007.

Takei had a recurring role on the NBC series Heroes , playing Kaito Nakamura , the father of time-traveling Trekkie Hiro Nakamura. As an in-joke , Kaito's car's license plate is NCC-1701 . Among the other Star Trek actors who performed in the series are Joanna Cassidy , Michael Dorn , Greg Grunberg , Dominic Keating , Malcolm McDowell , Zachary Quinto , and Cristine Rose ; Takei's Star Trek co-star Nichelle Nichols appeared in the show's second season. He concurrently met fellow Japanese-American performer Tamlyn Tomita on the set who played Kaito's daughter Ishi . With Tomita, Takei had a personal connection as her father had been one of the internees of the Manzanar internment camp during World War II and whose plight became a prime motivator for Takei's social engagement activism in later live, having been one himself. Tomita went on to guest star in Star Trek: Picard .

John Cho and Takei

On April 08, 2008 George appeared on Secret Talents of the Stars , a celebrity talent competition series which lasted for one episode on CBS . On the show, he publicly expressed his hidden, "secret" interest and talent in country singing, going on to train with Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry, whom he found out are both Star Trek fans. Takei then performed on the show.

Also in early April, Takei filmed a "last minute cameo" for the Adam Sandler comedy You Don't Mess with the Zohan . He also plays a "snooty maître d'" in the comedy American Summer , from the producer of the American Pie films. [16] In addition, he recently co-starred with John Savage in the action film The Red Canvas .

Takei appeared in the 2008 video game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 . In the first episode of the game show Wanna Bet? (broadcast 21 July 2008), Takei won $106,150 for his charity: The Japanese American National Museum. He was also a contestant in the 2008 series of I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here .

Takei's most recent film roles are in the Tom Hanks starred and directed comedy Larry Crowne teamed with Margot Farley and Holmes R. Osborne and the drama Strange Fame:Love & Sax with Michael Dorn and Ron Glass . In September 2010, Takei performed in a benefit for the Washington Shakespeare Company, in which excerpts from Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing were performed in Klingon . [17]

The science fiction icons lamenting being typecast

In the same year Takei also appeared in the "The Hot Troll Deviation" episode of CBS' popular, heavily Star Trek referencing, sitcom The Big Bang Theory as a figment of the imagination of lead character Howard Wolowitz, trying to give him romantic advise. Dressed in his Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home outfit he appears alongside the equally imaginary actress Katee Sackhoff , likewise clad in her Battlestar Galactica outfit, trying to do the same. Sackhoff starts bickering with Takei, questioning his credentials to give Wolowitz romantic advice, while poking fun at Takei's homosexuality. Both however, are also lamenting and exchanging notes on being typecast as their science fiction alter egos Starbuck and Sulu respectively, with Takei complaining that while he had done stage plays by Strindberg and O'Neill , all people want to hear is " Course laid in, captain! ". Takei was the first Original Series regular to make an appearance on the popular show and was later followed by Leonard Nimoy as voice actor, with William Shatner following suit in the final season of the series.

Takei was one of the contestants on the seventh season of Celebrity Apprentice, appearing in fourteen episodes.

As of August 2012, Takei was in filming for the second season of Supah Ninjas on Nickelodeon, playing the Grandfather and his evil twin, Kagema Fukanaga. He is also currently in rehearsal for the new musical Allegiance, in which he stars as Old Sam Kimura and Ojii-san. The play opened on September 7 at The Old Globe in San Diego, CA.

Politics and activism [ ]

In 1973, while the animated Star Trek series was on the air, Takei ran for and narrowly lost a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. He ultimately chose to continue acting rather than to pursue a political career, though he would remain involved in civic affairs.

Takei served on the Southern California Rapid Transit District's board of directors from 1973 through 1984. He also once served as a vice president of the American Public Transit Association and served two terms on the board of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, a position bestowed upon him by then-President of the United States, Bill Clinton.

He currently serves as chair of the council of governors of East West Players, America's foremost Asian Pacific American theater. He is also chairman emeritus of the Japanese American National Museum's board of trustees and was once a member of the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program's advisory committee. In addition, he is a member of the board of directors of the United States-Japan Bridging Foundation.

Takei is also a member of the Human Rights Campaign and was a spokesman for the organization's Coming Out Project. In April 2006, Takei spoke about being a gay Japanese American to audiences nationwide during a tour he called "Equality Trek".

Takei joined the many celebrities who took to protesting actor/comedian Tracy Morgan. Morgan onstage doing a stand-up routine, made several homophobic statements. Takei publicly declared Morgan, " A sad, sad man! " [18]

Takei frequently criticized Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, particularly for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He stated in 2020 that Trump calling COVID-19 "The Chinese Virus" sent "a cold chill throughout the Asian-American community, because he's sending a signal to the haters." [19]

Awards and honors [ ]

Takei received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1986. The following year, he and Leonard Nimoy shared a Grammy Award nomination in the "Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording" category for the audio version of the adaptation of The Voyage Home .

In 1991, Takei received the honor of placing his hand-prints and signature in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Emperor Akihito of Japan conferred Takei with the Order of the Rising Sun 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette in recognition of his work in Japan-United States relations.

Takei received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 8th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival in October 2007. [20] [21]

In 2007, the asteroid 7307 Takei was named for him, both in recognition for his work on Star Trek and also for his public service work. [22] [23] (X) [24]

On 29 June 2009, Takei received the Ivy Bethune Tri-Union Diversity Award for his outstanding support on issues of marriage equality and sexual orientation discrimination and for his work on the Arts in Transit program. Screen Actors Guild Magazine , Volume 50, No, 3, page 21

Star Trek appearances [ ]

Appearances as sulu [ ].

• " Where No Man Has Gone Before "
• " The Corbomite Maneuver "
• " Mudd's Women "
• " The Enemy Within "
• " The Man Trap "
• " The Naked Time "
• " Balance of Terror "
• " The Galileo Seven "
• " Shore Leave "
• " The Squire of Gothos "
• " Tomorrow is Yesterday "
• " The Return of the Archons "
• " This Side of Paradise "
• " Errand of Mercy "
• " The City on the Edge of Forever "
• " Operation -- Annihilate! "
• " Catspaw "
• " Metamorphosis "
• " Friday's Child "
• " Who Mourns for Adonais? "
• " Amok Time "
• " The Doomsday Machine "
• " Wolf in the Fold "
• " The Changeling "
• " Mirror, Mirror "
• " The Deadly Years "
• " I, Mudd "
• " Return to Tomorrow "
• " The Ultimate Computer "
• " The Omega Glory "
• " Assignment: Earth "
• " Elaan of Troyius "
• " The Paradise Syndrome "
• " The Enterprise Incident "
• " And the Children Shall Lead "
• " Spock's Brain "
• " Is There in Truth No Beauty? "
• " The Empath "
• " The Tholian Web "
• " For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky "
• " Day of the Dove "
• " Wink of an Eye "
• " That Which Survives "
• " Let That Be Your Last Battlefield "
• " Whom Gods Destroy "
• " The Mark of Gideon "
• " The Lights of Zetar "
• " The Cloud Minders " (stock footage; uncredited)
• " The Way to Eden "
• " The Savage Curtain "
• " Turnabout Intruder "
• " Beyond the Farthest Star "
• " One of Our Planets Is Missing "
• " The Lorelei Signal "
• " More Tribbles, More Troubles "
• " The Survivor "
• " The Infinite Vulcan "
• " The Magicks of Megas-Tu "
• " Once Upon a Planet "
• " Mudd's Passion "
• " The Terratin Incident "
• " The Time Trap "
• " The Slaver Weapon "
• " The Eye of the Beholder "
• " The Jihad "
• " The Pirates of Orion "
• " The Practical Joker "
• " Albatross "
• " The Counter-Clock Incident "
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
• Star Trek Generations (picture only)
• Star Trek Beyond (picture only)
• VOY : " Flashback "
• ST : " Ephraim and Dot " (archive audio)

Other characters [ ]

Other media [ ]

• George Takei also appeared in the games Star Trek: Shattered Universe and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy .
• Transformations
• Takei co-wrote (with Peter David ) a comic book annual for DC Comics , " So Near the Touch ".
• Takei narrated the audio novel of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier .
• Takei made an audio introduction to Star Trek: Federation - The First 150 Years .

Retrospectives [ ]

• Excelsior: The Many Lives of George Takei
• Lions and Tigers and Bears: The Internet Strikes Back [25]
• New Frontiers: The Many Worlds of George Takei
• Oh Myyy! (There Goes the Internet) [26]
• They Called Us Enemy [27]
• To the Stars
• Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe
• To Be Takei

Web publishings [ ]

• Takei's biography at his official site
• Interview with Takei (X) at StarTrek.com

External links [ ]

• GeorgeTakei.com – official website
• George Takei at Mastodon
• George Takei at the Internet Movie Database
• George Takei  at MySpace.com
• George Takei at the Miami Vice Wiki
• George Takei at Wikipedia
• George Takei interview at BBC – May 2006
• Interview at Archive of American Television
• George Takei at TriviaTribute.com – pictures, links, and trivia
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Calypso (episode)

'Star Trek' star George Takei on why his activism roots are deeply personal and being a Twitter legend

Takei was 5 when he was forced into a Japanese internment camps during WWII.

Famed “ Star Trek ” star George Takei was a child when he and his family were forced into American internment camps in the 1940s, and he says he still remembers being taught to recite the Pledge of Allegiance while being imprisoned, surrounded by barbed wire.

“I remember reciting the words, ‘With liberty and justice for all’ — innocent child — totally oblivious of the stinging irony of those words: ‘Liberty and justice for all,’” he said.

Watch the full story on "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET

Takei, best known for playing Hikaru Sulu in the original “Star Trek” TV series , was imprisoned with his family between the ages of 5 and 9 along with hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II . He depicts this part of his childhood in his new graphic memoir, “They Called Us Enemy.”

“I am hoping that there'll come a day when enough Americans know about this history — this dark and cruel history of America — that they will not allow it to repeat itself,” he said.

Takei, 82, has long been a vocal political activist . Most recently, he has come out against President Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding immigration and the federal government’s decisions to detain migrants at temporary facilities and separate migrant families.

“This president is someone who doesn't know history, who is reckless and he is inhuman. We have reached a new low with this president. … Every day is a new outrage,” Takei said.

He said he believes the fear mongering over immigrants coming into the U.S. is happening "at a grotesque scale."

“What's happening now on the Southern border with people who are coming here out of sheer desperation, fleeing for their lives, fleeing poverty and violence, some have seen their parents shot down in front of their eyes,” he continued. "We as children were always together with our family. My parents were always protecting us."

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced imprisonment of an estimated total of 120,000 Japanese Americans living in the U.S.

During World War II, horse racing was suspended at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California, and the federal government designated the park for multiple uses, including as a processing center for 20,000 Japanese Americans. Takei’s family was among them.

(MORE: George Takei starts petition to 'Stand Up For Muslims')

Though they were U.S. citizens, Takei said his family was targeted for their Japanese heritage.

“We looked exactly like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor,” he said. “Money was never, you know, returned. It was gone. And our home. You couldn't make mortgage payments. That was lost. We were stripped naked and brought here to a smelly horse stall.”

He and his family were held at the Southern California racetrack before being sent elsewhere.

“[Santa Anita Park] is where we were assembled,” Takei said. “And then from here, we were sent out to the actual barbed wire concentration camps that became the place where we would have stayed.”

From the race track, the Takei family was then sent to Rohwer Internment Camp in Arkansas and Tule Lake Internment Camp in California, where, altogether, they spent three years of their lives.

“It was, for my parents, a harrowing experience,” Takei said. “Just imagine, the government takes everything from you, everything that you worked for, in the middle of your life, and to have your business, your bank account, the home that you built taken away from you, and unjustly imprisoned, and having soldiers pointing guns at you… with our children.”

“But thank God, in today's context, thank God we were with our parents. We were grateful for that,” he added.

In “They Called Us Enemy,” which was released this summer, Takei depicts his journey living in the barracks of these internment camps and how he grasped for understanding of the situation from his father.

“[I’m] introducing the story through a 5-year-old's eyes, then I tell my adult story, what my parents were enduring, and all of the challenges and pain and anguish that they were going through. And so, it's a parallel story,” he said.

His graphic memoir will soon be available in every public library across America in an effort to keep this history alive for future generations. These truths of his experience are immortalized at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, of which Takei is a proud cofounder.

(MORE: 'Star Trek' Star George Takei reveals secrets of social media success)

He has used his childhood horror in other projects, too. He is a credited consultant on the TV series “The Terror: Infamy,” which debuted on AMC this week, and the Broadway show “Allegiance” was based on his family’s internment.

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Takei broke barriers in his “Star Trek” TV role as an Asian-American actor working in 1960s Hollywood. By portraying the beloved character Hikaru Sulu — the helmsman of the USS Enterprise — Takei was able to weaken stereotypes of Asian Americans at the time.

“I was certainly mindful of the role that I'm playing because of the kind of roles that had previously been played by Asian and Asian American actors and actresses,” he said.

Arguably one of his most legendary scenes on the show was his fencing scene.

“The writer had to be on the set, and he told me about the story, and he told me about the samurai sword and I suggested a fencing foil. And he said, ‘Oh, yeah, that's interesting. Do you fence?’ And I said, ‘It's my favorite sport.’”

(MORE: 'Star Trek' 50th: A look back at 5 decades)

Takei then trained with the same fencing instructor who choreographed the fencing scenes in the TV series “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” He went on to reprise his role as Sulu in an animated “Star Trek” TV series in the ‘70s, "Star Trek" video games and “Star Trek” films. He has also appeared in dozens of other films and TV series, including "The Simpsons."

Over the years, Takei has become an outspoken activist, including being a champion for marriage equality alongside his husband, Brad Takei. The two were married in September 2008 at the L.A. museum Takei helped cofound, and they call themselves “Team Takei.”

“For 21 years of my life with George as a committed couple — same-sex couple — we didn't really have any legal rights. And so we really were living, from the government's eyes, as two single men,” Brad Takei said. “But once we got married, we got all the rights and privileges that come with marriage. And we found out that marriage is really cool.”

“The other thing that's important to us is what if something happens to one of us, and we are taken to a hospital? Being unmarried meant that we couldn't visit each other,” George Takei added. “If Brad was injured in an accident, I couldn't go see him at bedside. That was a frightening thought.”

George Takei has become a modern-day legend on Twitter with more than three million followers.

“I try to humanize what I say,” he said. “Yes, I can be outraged and angry, but...I also see the ridiculousness of it and [I try] to laugh at the human condition.”

Takei doesn’t shy away from calling out what he describes as the “blind hypocrisy” of Trump and many of his policies, including the president’s stance on LGBTQ rights.

(MORE: Simon Pegg and Zachary Quinto respond to George Takei in the gay Sulu 'Star Trek' debate)

“He is a man who speaks without any information, without any knowledge of history, and vilifies and inflicts cruelty. That's a demagogue,” he said.

Trump is one of Takei’s most frequent targets on Twitter, even though they know each other from Takei’s involvement on Trump’s reality show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Takei recalled a moment when, during a press conference for “Celebrity Apprentice,” he asked Trump to have lunch with him to discuss marriage equality. This was before marriage equality was legalized and before Trump became president.

“We had lunch,” Takei said. “And I said to him, ‘You're a businessman. Marriage equality would be good for you; you'll make a lot of money. … LGBT people will love to come to New York and get married there… and he said, ‘Yeah, that's true, but I believe in traditional marriage.’”

“He was on his third marriage,” Takei continued. “I said to him, ‘I believe in traditional marriage, too.’”

Takei isn’t slowing down, from an ongoing book tour to promote his graphic novel to making Comic Con appearances to continuing his tireless public advocacy.

“I consider it my responsibility as an American citizen to actively participate, particularly because I know my childhood imprisonment — the unjust imprisonment,” he said. “If we don't participate, if we don't educate our fellow Americans to the vulnerability of our democracy, how fragile it can be, then we're not being responsible citizens.”

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New Podcast Will Hear From Asian Actors Who've Appeared On 'Star Trek'

Phil Yu, curator of the Angry Asian Man blog, has released a new podcast called All The Asians On Star Trek . He plans to interview every Asian who has ever appeared on Star Trek .

Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

37 episodes

The podcast in which we interview all the Asians on Star Trek. Hosted by Phil Yu.

All The Asians On Star Trek ATAOST

• TV & Film
• 5.0 • 101 Ratings
• APR 9, 2024

36: Garrett Wang - Part 3

In Episode 36, we conclude our conversation with Garrett Wang. For seven seasons, he starred as Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager. In Part 3 of our interview, Garrett talks about the nuances of cross-cultural casting; negotiating the relative Asian-ness of Harry Kim (how "Asian" is playing the clarinet?); his very first on-camera acting role as an extra in Death Wish IV; and the heartbreaking missed opportunity to reprise the role of (a finally promoted) Harry Kim in Star Trek: Picard. 

• MAR 26, 2024

35: Garrett Wang - Part 2

In Episode 35, we welcome back actor Garrett Wang. For seven seasons, he starred as Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager -- which, at present time, makes him the Asian with the most screen time across the entire Star Trek franchise. In Part 2 of our interview, Garrett talks about some of the early struggles in his acting career -- including parental disapproval -- his personal favorite episodes of Voyager, and how, perhaps contrary to popular perception, Harry Kim was actually the "busiest" man in the Delta Quadrant.

• MAR 18, 2024

34: Garrett Wang - Part 1

Garrett Wang is best known for starring as Ensign Harry Kim for seven seasons on Star Trek: Voyager. A fan-favorite regular on the convention circuit, he currently co-hosts the popular podcast The Delta Flyers, which recaps Voyager and now Deep Space Nine. In Part 1 or our interview, Garrett talks about the epic, arduous audition process that earned him the role of Harry Kim, the glacial pace of Hollywood diversity from the nineties to now, and the meaningful moment he realized he was carrying the banner of Asian American representation on Star Trek.

• MAY 24, 2023

33: Christopher Aguilar

Christopher Aguilar guest starred on Star Trek: Voyager when he was 12 years old, in the season three episode "Before and After," in which he played "Andrew Kim" -- the future son of Ensign Harry Kim and the grandson of Lt. Tom Paris and Kes. Wait, what? It's all very confusing and Christopher helps us clear it up. He talks about getting his start as a kid actor in Hollywood, channeling is own inner Kes while shooting Voyager, as well as his job eventually working as a cast member for Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. He also gets real about his journey, sharing about his work as a writer, performer and mental health advocate.

• DEC 15, 2022

32: Peipei Alena Yuan

Peipei Alena Yuan is a stunt performer, actress and filmmaker who served as the stunt double for Freda Foh Shen in the 2009 feature film Star Trek, directed by JJ Abrams. Outside of Star Trek, her long list of stunt credits includes Bullet Train, Stranger Things, The Terminal List, Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Flight Attendant, among many others. She talks about pivoting from visual effects to stunt work, her unexpected pivotal role in creating "Bully Maguire," and getting to perform a fight scene with a bucket list legend.

• NOV 2, 2022

31: Away Mission with Swapna Krishna

It's another Away Mission, in which we invite fellow Asian American fans of Star Trek to do a deep dive into an episode of their choosing. We welcome writer and journalist Swapna Krishna to discuss "Lineage" from season seven of Star Trek: Voyager. We discuss the ridiculous lack of privacy regarding pregnancy on the ship, parenting wisdom from Tuvok, and a lonely night of soulful saxophone for Harry Kim.  

Customer Reviews

101 Ratings

Great show!

Such amazing deep dives! Thank you so much!!!

Relaxing, interesting, enlightening, informative

Credit to this show for introducing me to so many interesting people with curious career paths. It has been so helpful to hear about all the different ways people have gotten to the Star Trek franchise as an illustration of how there are many ways to reach a goal. I’m ready for just hearing about all the asians in the film & adjacent industries! I enjoy hearing about how people have navigated around assumptions and stereotypes to do what they want to do. It gives me some inspiration for how to do that in my own life, too. Also, it is cool to have a whole bunch of new-to-me folks to look for in the credits of all kinds of projects. Thanks for letting us all listen in to these congenial chats!

One of the best Star Trek podcasts out there

This review is FAR overdue since I’ve listened to every episode and get excited every time I see a new one. Phil is a fantastic interviewer with a true love for the franchise. Hearing all the different stories and lives of people involved with Star Trek however big or small is wonderful. This is not a show to miss.

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John Cho, Sulu of ‘Star Trek Beyond,’ Navigates a Beckoning Universe

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By Nicole Chung

• July 18, 2016

In “Star Trek Beyond,” the third film in the reimagined “Trek” universe, the helmsman Hikaru Sulu has a husband and a young daughter — but don’t expect the crew of the Enterprise to be as surprised as some fans were by the news that Sulu is gay.

“In the film, his family was portrayed really nonchalantly, which I liked,” said John Cho, 44, who has played Sulu since 2009. “He wasn’t coming out of the closet.”

Mr. Cho hopes the revelation of Sulu’s sexual orientation, while not a major focus of the movie, proves encouraging to young fans. He likens it to his own experience as a young Korean immigrant in Houston, watching “Star Trek” for the first time and homing in on the Asian character. “Seeing George Takei on television was very meaningful to me, and I hope there’s a similar effect for gay kids watching,” he said.

Previously best known for a title role in the “Harold and Kumar” movies, Mr. Cho has lately been seen gracing many popular movie posters — not just for “Star Trek” — thanks to a social media campaign started without his knowledge that imagines him as Captain America, James Bond and other well-known characters. Earlier this month, Mr. Cho, who was in London for work, spoke by phone about “Star Trek Beyond” (due in theaters on Friday, July 22), his surprise at the success of #StarringJohnCho , and why worrying about the challenging reality of being an Asian actor in Hollywood isn’t good for him as an artist. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

My condolences over the loss of your friend and “Trek” co-star Anton Yelchin.

Thank you. He was a special, special kid. We just loved him to pieces, and it’s been very difficult. He was so young. The cast has been together a lot, and we’ve found that as comforting as it can be, under the circumstances.

George Takei recently said he was glad there was a gay “Star Trek” character, but he didn’t think it should be Sulu. What did you think when you learned about the decision to write Sulu as gay?

It was my understanding that George Takei’s Sulu was heterosexual. We have an alternate timeline in our “Star Trek” universe, but it’s the same genetic Sulu. So I was concerned that people would think we were saying that sexual orientation was a choice and not predetermined. I was also concerned that since it was a bit of a homage to him, George would say, “I’m someone who has worked as a gay actor to craft a straight character, and now you’re seeing just my sexual orientation.”

The posture of the filmmakers was that this was normalized in the future and it was nothing, really. It was a big revelation yet handled in a way that communicated it wasn’t anything the crew didn’t already know about him.

You mentioned that Mr. Takei was one of few Asian actors you saw growing up. Did the lack of representation affect you?

I wish I was strong enough for it not to matter. It does, I have to admit. It still affects me, and not just as an actor. Movies may be as close to a document of our national culture as there is; they’re supposed to represent what we believe ourselves to be. So when you don’t see yourself at all — or see yourself erased — that hurts.

The #StarringJohnCho campaign is drawing attention to a lack of diversity onscreen. How did you feel when you saw it?

My first reaction was, are they clowning me? I quickly realized it was sincere, and it was kind of amazing. Maybe [it caught on], because the posters made it seem possible. Instead of talking about it or demanding it, it was like, listen, it could be like this. For a minute, people were talking about it in a very serious way.

You’ve talked about facing racism in your professional life, not taking roles that rely on stereotypes. You’ve had to think about these issues in a way white actors don’t.

You might hear something along the lines of “They’re not going Asian on this role, because there’s another Asian in the cast,” which is something you’d never hear if you were white. At this stage of my career, it’s more oblique. It can be harder to maneuver your way into the discussion for bigger roles.

I get tired of talking about this. I get tired of living with it. The more I have to think about this, the more it makes me feel more like a politician and less of an artist. In the long run, that’s not good for me or anyone else. I don’t like when an Asian-American actor says, “I’m entering this business to change Hollywood.” It feels like the wrong reason — I would prefer they entered the business for artistic reasons, because they need to do it. I used to get offered roles, and if I felt they were a stereotype, I would [ask] my Korean friends, “What do you think of this?” I would go through these exhausting mental hoops, arguing both sides in my head, picturing this imaginary Asian-American council judging the role. I spent so much energy on that. Now I’m older, and I’m thinking, that’s not healthy! It’s antithetical to the artistic impulse. Actors are supposed to be these runaways that get in a covered wagon filled with hats and tambourines and go from town to town making people smile. Though it’s logical and necessary to think and talk about all of this, it’s a bummer as an artist to have to do it all the time.

What are some roles you’d love to take on?

I’d love to do a Shakespearean role onscreen. There are some radical things I’d like to do. I’d like to be in a western. I’d like to be ultraviolent onscreen; it’s completely different from anything I’ve done. Because I sidestepped all the stereotypical roles, in a way I’ve made a career out of not being Asian — a lot of my roles weren’t written as Asian — so there’s an impulse in me that wants to take a U-turn and play a very grounded, real Asian character, maybe an immigrant.

I’m also tuned in lately to my parents’ generation, thinking about their mortality and all the history that will go with them. I’ve wanted to do a project and record Korean-American kids interviewing their parents and grandparents, so we can preserve stories of the Korean diaspora. I guess it’s part of getting older and having kids, you think more about that kind of thing.

What are you working on next?

Right after this, I’m doing a small-budget movie about a Korean man visiting his father, who has fallen ill in Columbus, Ind. He meets a woman, and they’re both mourning their parents in different ways; there’s an interesting relationship. The announcement hasn’t been made, so I can’t talk about it in detail yet, but I’m also acting in and producing a drama in the cable space.

What do you like to do when you’re not acting?

It’s more like, what do my kids want me to be doing? [My wife, the actress Kerri Higuchi, and I] have two kids, 8 and 3. I have this fantasy of just being left alone for a week, so I can clean out the house and garage.

An earlier version of this article, using information from Mr. Cho, misidentified a role he once performed. It is Laertes, not Horatio.

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All The Asians On Star Trek

36: Garrett Wang - Part 3

Apr 9, 2024

In Episode 36, we conclude our conversation with Garrett Wang. For seven seasons, he starred as Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager . In Part 3 of our interview, Garrett talks about the nuances of cross-cultural casting; negotiating the relative Asian-ness of Harry Kim (how "Asian" is playing the clarinet?); his very...

35: Garrett Wang - Part 2

Mar 26, 2024

In Episode 35, we welcome back actor Garrett Wang. For seven seasons, he starred as Ensign Harry Kim on  Star Trek: Voyager -- which, at present time, makes him the Asian with the most screen time across the entire Star Trek franchise. In Part 2 of our interview, Garrett talks about some of the early struggles in his...

34: Garrett Wang - Part 1

Mar 19, 2024

Garrett Wang is best known for starring as Ensign Harry Kim for seven seasons on Star Trek: Voyager . A fan-favorite regular on the convention circuit, he currently co-hosts the popular podcast The Delta Flyers , which recaps  Voyager and now Deep Space Nine . In Part 1 or our interview, Garrett talks about the epic,...

33: Christopher Aguilar

May 24, 2023

Christopher Aguilar guest starred on Star Trek: Voyager when he was 12 years old, in the season three episode "Before and After," in which he played "Andrew Kim" -- the future son of Ensign Harry Kim and the grandson of Lt. Tom Paris and Kes. Wait, what? It's all very confusing and Christopher helps us clear it up....

32: Peipei Alena Yuan

Dec 15, 2022

Peipei Alena Yuan is a stunt performer, actress and filmmaker who served as the stunt double for Freda Foh Shen in the 2009 feature film Star Trek , directed by JJ Abrams. Outside of Star Trek, her long list of stunt credits includes Bullet Train , Stranger Things , The Terminal List , Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Flight...

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The podcast in which we interview all the Asians on Star Trek. Hosted by Phil Yu.

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Star Trek’s George Takei shares his journey ‘From Internment to Stardom’

Actor, writer and activist George Takei is known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek series, and has also spoken openly about his experience in an internment camp as a Japanese American during World War II.

He was recently in New Hampshire as a visiting fellow at Dartmouth College, where he gave a talk called “From Internment to Stardom.”

Takei spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about his experience during the war and his ongoing activism. Below is a transcript of their conversation.

George, you've written and spoken about your family's experience during World War II. You were just four years old when you were taken from your Los Angeles home and imprisoned at an Arkansas internment camp for Japanese Americans. How did that shape your identity as an American as you grew up?

Well, as you can imagine, it was a very formative period of my life. Five years old to eight and a half years old. I mean, Japanese Americans are a small minority. And I had it forcefully embedded in me that we are a hated minority. And certainly that was true not only during the time that we were behind barbed wire fences, but when we returned to Los Angeles. Nothing had changed just because the war was over. The hatred was still intense. I had a teacher that constantly called me the ‘little Jap boy,’ and on the playground she would pick me out to scold. And I remember how tightly and roughly she grabbed my arm and pulled me about. And I knew that she hated me, and I hated her right back. So I came back into a society that let me know that we were hated.

George, you faced a lot of discrimination and hate when you came back to your community, but over the course of your lifetime, you got a major role on Star Trek, and you were greeted with many fans and a lot of love. What was that transition like for you?

I was always conscious of my differences. I’d see other Asian roles played by other Asian actors, and they were usually stereotypical: either buffoons or villains. So even in the arena of my aspiration, there were no real heroes for me to aspire to, except when I went to Japanese films where I saw heroic roles being played by people that looked like me. So it was a constant reminder that it is a struggle. And of course, my father wanted me to be an architect. But here I am, passionately, wanting to be an actor. Those constraining forces [were] always around me.

More than 125,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. Do you think Americans know enough about this part of our history? Are we talking enough about it in history classes or at home?

I'm always shocked when I share my history, my childhood imprisonment, with other people, Americans, and they are aghast that such a thing happened in the United States. And that is one of our weaknesses, I think, because I think there's so much to learn from the imprisonment of innocent people, simply based on race. For so many Americans to be ignorant of that history of America, I mean, the lessons from my childhood imprisonment underscores the importance of that lesson for our times today.

As the years pass, fewer and fewer people who lived through Japanese American internment are still with us. What can we do to keep these stories alive?

I have been writing about it, and we put together a Broadway musical titled ‘Allegiance’ about it, and I've taken it as my mission in life to inform other Americans of that chapter of American history, because it's so relevant to America today.

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From George Takei's Sulu To Michelle Yeoh's Georgiou, 8 Strong Asian Characters Who Are Important To Star Trek

These folks are integral to the success of Starfleet.

Star Trek is a series that has, since its beginning, celebrated diversity. "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" is a cornerstone of Vulcan ideology and one the franchise has always embraced. In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islanders Month, we decided to revisit the notable Asian characters and actors who contribute to the franchise's diversity and served as an inspiration to others who came after them. 

From George Takei 's Hikaru Sulu to Michelle Yeoh 's Phillipa Georgiou, Asians have held notable roles in Star Trek throughout its run. Here are a few of the standouts over the years and a little on the actors who have made them so special. 

Hikaru Sulu (George Takei)

Hikaru Sulu was born in San Francisco, California, and rose to prominence in Starfleet during his time on the USS Enterprise with Captain James Kirk. He later would go on to Captain the Excelsior and would lead such a successful career that Starfleet named a ship after him decades later. 

George Takei, the actor behind Sulu, was a trailblazer for Asian actors in science fiction and someone who has been open about his own experiences and why diversity is so important. Takei grew up in a Japanese internment camp, and when he's not feuding with former co-star William Shatner , he's spending these days promoting his musical, Allegiance , which is centered on a Japanese-American family uprooted from their home and relocated following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. 

Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh)

Phillipa Georgiou was the Malaysian-born captain of the Shenzhou, but perished after engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a Klingon. Her former officer, Michael Burnham, later came into contact with another Georgiou from the Mirror Universe, who was then sucked into the Prime timeline. Though she once lived as a fierce Terran Empress, Georgiou eventually acclimated to the identity of her Prime universe doppelgänger and became a force for good in Starfleet. 

Actress Michelle Yeoh is someone who needs no introduction these days. Yeoh chased her exit on Star Trek: Discovery with the film Everything Everywhere All At Once , which earned her the honor of the first Asian actress to win a Best Actress Oscar. Now, Yeoh will return as Georgiou for a Star Trek: Section 31 movie that those with a Parmount+ subscription will enjoy later this year. 

Harry Kim (Garrett Wang)

Ensign Harry Kim was vital to the successful return of the USS Voyager in Star Trek: Voyager , though he never received the same level of acclaim his crewmates did. Frankly, Voyager did Harry Kim dirty , but those who watch the series will see plenty of great episodes with the ensign performing in even the toughest of circumstances and succeeding. 

Actor Garrett Wang was born in California and has advocated for justice for Harry Kim over the years. Apparently, he almost got an opportunity to reprise the role in Star Trek: Picard Season 3 (via Slashfilm ) but things fell through. Hopefully, Wang will get a chance to reprise the role in a future Trek series and finally get the justice for Harry Kim that he should've gotten on Voyager . 

Hoshi Sato (Linda Park)

Japanese-born linguist Hoshi Sato became one of the first humans to explore space on the Enterprise alongside Captain Jonathan Archer on Star Trek: Enterprise . Among her various achievements as part of that mission, Sato ultimately developed the linguacode universal linguistics matrix that would help future generations of explorers communicate with more ease than in her early years. 

Actress Linda Park was born in South Korea but was raised in California. She seemed to enjoy her time on Enterprise overall, but did mention in an interview with StarTrek.com that she felt most of Hoshi's stories were isolated from the rest of the crew. Park wished that Hoshi would've had more inter-character interaction with the other actors, but did enjoy the scenes that she did have with other characters such as John Billingsley's Dr. Phlox. 

Keiko O'Brien (Rosalind Chao)

Miles O'Brien is the unsung hero of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine , and behind every strong man is an even stronger woman. Keiko O'Brien served as a botanist on the Enterprise D , but when she realized she didn't need to be one on Deep Space Nine, she transitioned to a primary school teacher. Keiko was admittedly not thrilled about the change of scenery but remained a supportive partner and even helped save her husband's skin a few times. 

Actress Rosalind Chao was born in Anaheim, California, and almost portrayed a completely different character in the Star Trek universe. According to an unearthed casting memo from TNG , Chao was the original favorite for the role of Tasha Yar (via TrekToday.com ). That role ultimately went to actress Denise Crosby, and one could argue Chao got the better role in the end, given Yar's short run before being killed off. 

Samanthan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero)

Ensign Samanthan "Sam" Rutherford serves on the USS Cerritos on Star Trek: Lower Decks . Sam is a character that seems to excel in whatever role he's given in Starfleet, but never lets it go to his head. That's a great trait to have on the Cerritos , as the crew often gets into some hairy situations that needs people like him to keep the ship functional. 

Detroit's own Eugene Cordero serves as the voice of Sam Rutherford, who is also of Filipino descent. Cordero is also known for his live-action roles in shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , The Good Place , and Silicon Valley . 

Nurse Alyssa Ogawa (Patti Yasutake)

Nurse Alyssa Ogawa was often seen around Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the Enterprise D , she was one of the head nurses, and later a senior sickbay staff member. In the event that Crusher was away, Ogawa would make reports to senior staff in her absence.

Actress Patti Yasutake might be someone currently in the limelight for her role in the Beef cast for hit Netflix series. Of course, she has had a wonderful career in Hollywood with many roles in television and film. 

La'an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong)

La'an Noonien Singh is the chief security officer on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and a character with a direct link to one of the franchise's greatest villains. La'an is a distant descendant of Khan Noonien Singh, who was one of the main players in the Eugenics wars. La'an is very different from her ancestor , however, and has spent her time in Starfleet doing good for others around the universe. 

La'an is from space, but British actress Christina Chong is of Chinese descent on her father's side. Chong has made a huge impact with Star Trek fans in her limited time in the franchise, and viewers will know her from her roles in 24: Live Another Day and Doctor Who .  

Those looking to watch a whole lot of Star Trek will need a Paramount+ subscription to enjoy a wide variety of it. With that said, Pluto TV also has some Star Trek content available to its subscribers, provided they are fine with watching a rotating playlist. 

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Mick Joest is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend with his hand in an eclectic mix of television goodness. Star Trek is his main jam, but he also regularly reports on happenings in the world of Star Trek, WWE, Doctor Who, 90 Day Fiancé, Quantum Leap, and Big Brother. He graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Radio and Television. He's great at hosting panels and appearing on podcasts if given the chance as well.

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‘Star Trek’ actor George Takei is determined to keep telling his Japanese American story

“Star Trek” icon George Takei has a new picture book out for children ages called “My Lost Freedom,” tackling the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, including children, labeled enemies during World War II. (May 30)

FILE - Members of the “Star Trek” crew, from left, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, William Shatner, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy and Nichelle Nichols, toast the newest “Star Trek” film during a news conference at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, Dec. 28, 1988. (AP Photo/Bob Galbraith, File)

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FILE - Actor George Takei, who played the role of helm officer Sulu in the original television series, “Star Trek,” gives a “live long and prosper” gesture in front of a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise space ship at an exhibit at the Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif., on Oct. 20, 2009. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

FILE - George Takei arrives at the 75th annual Tony Awards on June 12, 2022, at Radio City Music Hall in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - George Takei arrives at the Star Trek Day celebration in Los Angeles on Sept. 8, 2021. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

A copy of “My Lost Freedom,” a children’s book by George Takei, is displayed at the section featuring in the “Being Asian in America” at a Kinokuniya bookstore specializing in selling books and magazines written in foreign languages in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

TOKYO (AP) — The incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans , including children, labeled enemies during World War II is an historical experience that has traumatized, and galvanized, the Japanese American community over the decades.

For George Takei, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu aboard the USS Enterprise in the “Star Trek” franchise, it’s a story he is determined to keep telling every opportunity he has.

“I consider it my mission in life to educate Americans on this chapter of American history,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

He fears the lesson about the failure of U.S. democracy hasn’t really been learned, even today, including among Japanese Americans.

“The shame of internment is the government’s. They’re the ones that did something unjust, cruel and inhuman. But so often the victims of the government actions take on the shame themselves,” he said.

Takei, 87, has a new picture book out for children ages 6 to 9 and their parents, called “My Lost Freedom.” It’s illustrated in soft watercolors by Michelle Lee.

Takei was 4 years old when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor , declaring anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States and forcibly removing them from their West Coast homes.

Takei spent the next three years behind barbed wires, guarded by soldiers with guns, in three camps: the Santa Anita racetrack, which stunk of manure; Camp Rohwer in a marshland; and, from 1943, Tule Lake, a high-security segregation center for the “disloyal.”

“We were seen as different from other Americans. This was unfair. We were Americans, who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. Yet we were imprisoned behind barbed wires,” Takei writes in the book.

Throughout it all, his parents are portrayed as enduring the hardships with a quiet dignity. His mother sewed clothes for the children. They made chairs out of scrap lumber. They played baseball. They danced to Benny Goodman. For Christmas, they got a Santa who looked Japanese.

Takei’s is a remarkable story of resilience and a pursuit of justice, repeated throughout the Japanese American experience.

It’s a story that’s been told and retold, in books like the 1973 “Farewell to Manzanar” by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston; “Only What We Could Carry,” edited by Lawson Fusao Inada more than 20 years ago; and “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration,” which just came out, compiled by Frank Abe and Floyd Cheung.

David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, headquartered in Washington, D.C., believes the message of Takei’s book remains relevant.

He said discrimination persists today, as seen in the anti-Asian attacks that flared with the COVID-19 pandemic . Inoue said his son has been taunted in school in the same way he was growing up.

“One of the important things about having books like this is that it humanizes us. It tells stories about us that show we’re just like any other family. We like to play baseball. We have pets,” Inoue said.

Takei and his family were sent to Tule Lake in northern California because his parents answered “No” to key questions in a so-called loyalty questionnaire.

Question No. 27 asked if they were willing to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Question No. 28 asked whether they swore allegiance to the U.S. and would forswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Both were controversial questions for people who had been stripped of their basic civil rights and labeled enemies.

“Daddy and Mama both thought that the two questions were stupid,” Takei writes in “My Lost Freedom.”

“The only honest answers were No and No.”

Takei said the questions did not explain what would become of families with young children. The second question was also a no-win, he said, because his parents felt there was no loyalty to Japan to denounce.

Tule Lake was the largest of the 10 camps, holding 18,000 people.

Young men who answered “Yes” became part of the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought in Europe while their families remained incarcerated. The 442, with their famous “Go for Broke” motto, is the most decorated unit of its size and length of service in U.S. military history.

“They were determined to prove themselves and get their families out of barbed wires,” Takei said. “They are our heroes. I know I owe so much to them.”

After Japan surrendered, Takei and his family, like all Japanese Americans freed from the camps , were each given $25 and a one-way ticket to anywhere in the U.S. Takei’s family chose to start all over again in Los Angeles.

In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act — after years of effort and testimonies by Japanese Americans, including Takei — granted redress of $20,000 and a formal presidential apology to every surviving U.S. citizen or legal resident immigrant of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during World War II.

Takei’s voice became choked when he recalled how his father did not live to see it.

He noted with pride the diversity depicted in “Star Trek,” a TV series that started in the mid-1960s and developed a devout following. There, the crew that flew together through the galaxies was of various backgrounds.

“Star Trek” writer, creator and producer Gene Roddenberry wanted to portray the turbulent times and the civil rights movement on a TV show but had to do it metaphorically to make it acceptable, Takei said.

“Different people, different ideas, different taste, different food. He wanted to make that statement. Each of the characters was supposed to represent a part of this planet,” Takei said.

Takei recalled how his father taught him how the government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg Address, could also prove a weakness.

“All people are fallible, even a great president like Roosevelt. He got stampeded by the hysteria of the time, the racism of the time. And he signed Executive Order 9066,” Takei said.

Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

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Star trek’s classic character mr. kyle explained.

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• Mr. Kyle, played by John Winston, appeared in 11 episodes of Star Trek: TOS and made a cameo in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
• Kyle's character assisted Spock and Scotty during their missions and temporarily served at the helm in "The Immunity Syndrome."
• Actor André Dae Kim portrayed a reimagined version of Kyle in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, increasing the diversity of the cast.

Although lesser known than his Star Trek: The Original Series crew mates, Mr. Kyle (John Winston) appeared in 11 episodes of TOS , and has taken on a new life in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . Actor John Winston played Kyle in 11 episodes of Star Trek: TOS and also made a cameo appearance in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . Winston's first TOS episode was "Tomorrow is Yesterday", in which he was credited as Transporter Chief. It wasn't until Winston's fifth appearance, in "Who Mourns For Adonais?" that he was identified as Lieutenant Kyle by Lt. Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy).

Kyle even featured in Star Trek: The Animated Series , where he was voiced by Scotty actor James Doohan. Like his Star Trek: The Next Generation counterpart Colm Meaney, John Winston's small role appeared to get bigger in subsequent episodes. Unlike TNG 's Chief O'Brien, the character of Lt. Kyle was never given a lead role in a spinoff, but he has recently been resurrected as a supporting character in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , played by Vampire Academy 's André Dae Kim.

RELATED: 12 Star Trek: TOS Characters Strange New Worlds Season 3 Must Add

Mr. Kyle In Star Trek: The Original Series

Mr. Kyle didn't have an easy time during Star Trek: The Original Series , as he was often incapacitated in the line of duty. Kyle was attacked by Khan Noonien-Singh (Ricardo Montalban) during his hijacking of the USS Enterprise in "Space Seed." Later, Kyle was attacked by Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) in "The City on the Edge of Forever" while the Enterprise medic was under the influence of cordrazine. Star Trek: TOS ' Mr. Kyle was more than just a punching bag, however, and he assisted Spock in finding vulnerabilities in Apollo's force field and helped Scotty to loosen Vaal's grip on the Enterprise.

As well as operating Star Trek 's transporters , Lieutenant Kyle also temporarily served at the helm in the episode "The Immunity Syndrome." It was Kyle who was piloting the Enterprise during their mission to locate the missing USS Intrepid. Many years later, Commander Kyle was serving aboard the USS Reliant with Captain Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield) and Commander Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) when they arrived at what they believed to be Ceti Alpha VI. When the truth was revealed, Kyle had another unpleasant encounter with Khan Noonien-Singh, who stranded him and his fellow officers on the ravaged Ceti Alpha V.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Kyle Retcon

Canadian actor André Dae Kim played Transporter Chief Kyle in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 1. Dae Kim's Asian heritage led to some debate among fans about whether he was playing the same Kyle from Star Trek: The Original Series , or the unnamed Asian transporter operator in Star Trek 's original pilot , "The Cage". André Dae Kim is playing the same character as John Winston , reimagined to increase the diversity of the SNW cast. It's the same reason that Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes) isn't played by a white man in SNW , despite being presented as such in Star Trek: The Animated Series .

Interestingly, the backstory of Kyle in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reveals that he previously served aboard the USS Shenzhou alongside then-Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). He transferred to the USS Enterprise at some point after the ship was lost in the Battle of the Binary Stars. The episode "Spock Amok" revealed that Kyle was " mean ", making the chore of cleaning the transporter pads a nightmare for those given the job. André Dae Kim left Strange New Worlds before season 2, but the character of Kyle will be back, as eight years later, he's a fully-fledged Lieutenant aboard Kirk's Enterprise in Star Trek: The Original Series .

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series follows the exploits of the crew of the USS Enterprise. On a five-year mission to explore uncharted space, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) must trust his crew - Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Forest DeKelley), Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) - with his life. Facing previously undiscovered life forms and civilizations and representing humanity among the stars on behalf of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, the Enterprise regularly comes up against impossible odds and diplomatic dilemmas.

Miko Mayama

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'Star Trek' actor George Takei is determined to keep telling his Japanese American story

The incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, including children, who were labeled enemies during World War II, has traumatized and galvanized the Japanese American community over the decades

TOKYO — The incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans , including children, labeled enemies during World War II is an historical experience that has traumatized, and galvanized, the Japanese American community over the decades.

For George Takei, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu aboard the USS Enterprise in the “Star Trek” franchise, it’s a story he is determined to keep telling every opportunity he has.

“I consider it my mission in life to educate Americans on this chapter of American history,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

He fears the lesson about the failure of U.S. democracy hasn’t really been learned, even today, including among Japanese Americans.

“The shame of internment is the government’s. They’re the ones that did something unjust, cruel and inhuman. But so often the victims of the government actions take on the shame themselves,” he said.

Takei, 87, has a new picture book out for children ages 6 to 9 and their parents, called “My Lost Freedom.” It’s illustrated in soft watercolors by Michelle Lee.

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Takei was 4 years old when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor , declaring anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States and forcibly removing them from their West Coast homes.

Takei spent the next three years behind barbed wires, guarded by soldiers with guns, in three camps: the Santa Anita racetrack, which stunk of manure; Camp Rohwer in a marshland; and, from 1943, Tule Lake, a high-security segregation center for the “disloyal.”

“We were seen as different from other Americans. This was unfair. We were Americans, who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. Yet we were imprisoned behind barbed wires,” Takei writes in the book.

Throughout it all, his parents are portrayed as enduring the hardships with a quiet dignity. His mother sewed clothes for the children. They made chairs out of scrap lumber. They played baseball. They danced to Benny Goodman. For Christmas, they got a Santa who looked Japanese.

Takei’s is a remarkable story of resilience and a pursuit of justice, repeated throughout the Japanese American experience.

It’s a story that’s been told and retold, in books like the 1973 “Farewell to Manzanar” by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston; “Only What We Could Carry,” edited by Lawson Fusao Inada more than 20 years ago; and “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration,” which just came out, compiled by Frank Abe and Floyd Cheung.

David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, headquartered in Washington, D.C., believes the message of Takei’s book remains relevant.

He said discrimination persists today, as seen in the anti-Asian attacks that flared with the COVID-19 pandemic . Inoue said his son has been taunted in school in the same way he was growing up.

“One of the important things about having books like this is that it humanizes us. It tells stories about us that show we’re just like any other family. We like to play baseball. We have pets,” Inoue said.

Takei and his family were sent to Tule Lake in northern California because his parents answered “No” to key questions in a so-called loyalty questionnaire.

Question No. 27 asked if they were willing to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Question No. 28 asked whether they swore allegiance to the U.S. and would forswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Both were controversial questions for people who had been stripped of their basic civil rights and labeled enemies.

“Daddy and Mama both thought that the two questions were stupid,” Takei writes in “My Lost Freedom.”

“The only honest answers were No and No.”

Takei said the questions did not explain what would become of families with young children. The second question was also a no-win, he said, because his parents felt there was no loyalty to Japan to denounce.

Tule Lake was the largest of the 10 camps, holding 18,000 people.

Young men who answered “Yes” became part of the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought in Europe while their families remained incarcerated. The 442, with their famous “Go for Broke” motto, is the most decorated unit of its size and length of service in U.S. military history.

“They were determined to prove themselves and get their families out of barbed wires,” Takei said. “They are our heroes. I know I owe so much to them.”

After Japan surrendered, Takei and his family, like all Japanese Americans freed from the camps , were each given $25 and a one-way ticket to anywhere in the U.S. Takei’s family chose to start all over again in Los Angeles.

In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act — after years of effort and testimonies by Japanese Americans, including Takei — granted redress of $20,000 and a formal presidential apology to every surviving U.S. citizen or legal resident immigrant of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during World War II.

Takei’s voice became choked when he recalled how his father did not live to see it.

He noted with pride the diversity depicted in “Star Trek,” a TV series that started in the mid-1960s and developed a devout following. There, the crew that flew together through the galaxies was of various backgrounds.

“Star Trek” writer, creator and producer Gene Roddenberry wanted to portray the turbulent times and the civil rights movement on a TV show but had to do it metaphorically to make it acceptable, Takei said.

“Different people, different ideas, different taste, different food. He wanted to make that statement. Each of the characters was supposed to represent a part of this planet,” Takei said.

Takei recalled how his father taught him how the government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg Address, could also prove a weakness.

“All people are fallible, even a great president like Roosevelt. He got stampeded by the hysteria of the time, the racism of the time. And he signed Executive Order 9066,” Takei said.

Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

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55 Years Ago: Star Trek Final Episode Airs, Relationship with NASA Endures

Johnson space center.

The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show’s cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only three seasons, it generated a devoted fan base disappointed by the cancellation despite their write-in campaign to keep it on the air. But as things turned out, over the decades Star Trek evolved into a global phenomenon, first with the original episodes replayed in syndication, followed by a series of full-length motion pictures, and eventually a multitude of spin-off series. With its primary focus on space exploration, along with themes of diversity, inclusion, and innovation, the Star Trek fictional universe formed a natural association with NASA’s real life activities.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first had the idea for a science fiction television series in 1964. He presented his idea, a show set in the 23 rd century aboard a starship with a crew dedicated to exploring the galaxy, to Desilu Productions, an independent television production company headed by Lucille Ball. They produced a pilot titled “The Cage,” selling it to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) network that then bought a second pilot titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC introduced the show to its fall 1966 lineup, with the first episode “The Man Trap” airing on Sep. 8. To put that date in perspective, NASA launched Gemini XI four days later, one of the missions that helped the agency achieve the Moon landing nearly three years later. Meanwhile, Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise continued its fictional five-year mission through the galaxy to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” The makeup of the Enterprise’s crew made the show particularly attractive to late 1960s television audiences. The major characters included an African American woman communications officer, an Asian American helmsman, and a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, later joined by a Russian-born ensign. While the show enjoyed good ratings during its first two seasons, cuts to its production budget resulted in lower quality episodes during its third season leading to lower ratings and, despite a concerted letter-writing campaign from its dedicated fans, eventual cancellation.

Despite the show’s cancellation, Star Trek lived on and prospered in syndication and attracted an ever-growing fan base, turning into a worldwide sensation. Often dubbed “trekkies,” these fans held the first of many Star Trek conventions in 1972. When in 1976 NASA announced that it would name its first space shuttle orbiter Constitution, in honor of its unveiling on the anniversary of the U. S. Constitution’s ratification, trekkies engaged in a dedicated letter writing campaign to have the orbiter named Enterprise, after the starship in the television series. This time the fans’ letter writing campaign succeeded. President Gerald R. Ford agreed with the trekkies and directed NASA to rechristen the first space shuttle. When on Sept. 17, 1976 , it rolled out of its manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California, appropriately accompanied by a band playing the show’s theme song, it bore the name Enterprise. Many of the original cast members of the show as well as its creator Rodenberry participated in the rollout ceremony, hosted by NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher . Thus began a lengthy relationship between the space agency and the Star Trek brand.

During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, the need arose to recruit a new group of astronauts to fly the vehicle, deploy the satellites, and perform the science experiments. When NASA released the call for the new astronaut selection on July 8, 1976, it specifically encouraged women and minorities to apply. To encourage those applicants, NASA chose Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, to record a recruiting video and speak to audiences nationwide. She came to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1977, and accompanied by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan L. Bean , toured the center and filmed scenes for the video in Mission Control and other facilities. NASA hoped that her stature and popularity would encourage women and minorities to apply, and indeed they did. In January 1978, when NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts from more than 8,000 applicants, for the first time the astronaut class included women and minorities. All distinguished themselves as NASA astronauts and paved the way for others in subsequent astronaut selections. Nichols returned to JSC in September 2010 with the Traveling Space Museum, an organization that partners with schools to promote space studies. She toured Mission Control and the International Space Station trainer accompanied by NASA astronaut B. Alvin Drew . She also flew aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope aircraft managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, in September 2015.

Meanwhile, the Star Trek brand renewed itself in 1979 as a full-length motion picture with the original TV series cast members reprising their roles. Over the years, several sequels followed this first film. And on the small screen, a reboot of sorts occurred in 1987 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new series set in the 24 th century aboard the Enterprise-D, a next generation starship with a new crew. That series lasted seven seasons, followed by a near-bewildering array of spin-off series, all built on the Star Trek brand, that continue to this day.

James Doohan, the actor who played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, had early associations with NASA. In April 1967, Doohan visited NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, spending time with NASA test pilot Bruce A. Peterson. A month later, Peterson barely survived a horrific crash of the experimental M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. He inspired the 1970s TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man, and the show’s opening credits include film of the crash. Doohan narrated a documentary film about the space shuttle released shortly before Columbia made its first flight in April 1981. In January 1991, Doohan visited JSC and with NASA astronaut Mario Runco (who sometimes went by the nickname “Spock”) toured the shuttle trainers, Mission Control, and tried his hand at operating the shuttle’s robotic arm in the Manipulator Development Facility. In a unique tribute, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong , the first person to step on the lunar surface , spoke at Doohan’s retirement in 2004, addressing him as “one old engineer to another.”

George Takei, who played Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and his husband Brad, visited JSC in May 2012. Invited by both Asian American and LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Groups, Takei spoke of leadership and inclusiveness, including overcoming challenges while in Japanese American internment camps during World War II and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He noted that Star Trek remained ahead of its time in creating a future when all members of society could equally participate in great undertakings, at a time when the country struggled through the Civil Rights movement and the conflict in Southeast Asia. The inclusiveness that is part of NASA’s culture greatly inspired him. JSC Director Michael L. Coats presented Takei with a plaque including a U.S. flag flown aboard space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission. He also visited Mission Control and spent some time with Robonaut.

Leonard Nimoy played the science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock. The actor watched in September 2012 when space shuttle Enterprise arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the last leg of its journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it currently resides. “This is a reunion for me,” observed Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” As noted earlier, the Star Trek cast attended the first space shuttle’s rollout in 1976. Following his death in 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti paid tribute to Nimoy aboard the International Space Station by wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform, giving the Vulcan greeting, and proclaiming, “Of all the souls I have encountered … his was the most human.”

Captain James T. Kirk, played by actor William Shatner, a life-long advocate of science and space exploration, served at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. His relationship with NASA began during the original series, with references to the space agency incorporated into several story lines. In 2011, Shatner hosted and narrated a NASA documentary celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program , and gave his time and voice to other NASA documentaries. NASA recognized Shatner’s contributions in 2014 with a Distinguished Public Service Medal , the highest award NASA bestows on non-government individuals. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert “Bob” N. Jacobs presented the medal to Shatner. The award’s citation read, “For outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” In 2019, Shatner narrated the NASA video We Are Going , about NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon. He has spoken at numerous NASA-themed events and moderated panels about NASA’s future plans. On Oct. 13, 2021, at the age of 90, Shatner reached the edge of space during the NS-18 suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness.

Elements of the Star Trek universe have made their way not only into popular culture but also into NASA culture. As noted above, Star Trek fans had a hand in naming the first space shuttle Enterprise. NASA’s Earth observation facility aboard the space station that makes use of its optical quality window bears the name the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). The connection between that acronym and the name of a Klingon officer aboard the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series seemed like an opportunity not to be missed – the facility’s official patch bears its name in English and in Klingon. Several astronaut crews have embraced Star Trek themes for their unofficial photographs. The STS-54 crew dressed in the uniforms of Starship Enterprise officers from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the second full-length feature motion picture of the series. Space shuttle and space station crews created Space Flight Awareness (SFA) posters for their missions, and more than one embraced Star Trek themes. The Expedition 21 crew dressed in uniforms from the original series, while the STS-134 crew chose as their motif the 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek.

As much as Star Trek has influenced NASA, in turn the agency has left its mark on the franchise, from episodes referencing actual and future spaceflight events to NASA astronauts making cameo appearances on the show. The first-season episode “Court Martial” that aired in February 1967 featured a photograph of the December 1965 Gemini VI launch adorning a wall aboard a star base. In the second-season episode “Return to Tomorrow,” airing in February 1968, Captain Kirk in a dialogue about risk-taking remarks, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the Moon?” a prescient reference to the first Apollo mission to reach the Moon more than 10 months after the episode aired. Astronaut Mae C. Jemison , who credits Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration to become an astronaut, appeared in the 1993 episode “Second Chances” of Star Trek: The Next Generation , eight months after her actual spaceflight aboard space shuttle Endeavour. In May 2005, two other NASA astronauts, Terry W. Virts and E. Michael Fincke , appeared in “These are the Voyages…,” the final episode of the series Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the 2016 documentary “ NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space ,” host NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover states, “Science and Star Trek go hand-in-hand.” The film explores how for 50 years, Star Trek influenced scientists, engineers, and even astronauts to reach beyond their potential. While the space station doesn’t speed through the galaxy like the Starship Enterprise, much of the research conducted aboard the orbiting facility can make the fiction of Star Trek come a little closer to reality. Several of the cast members from the original TV series share their viewpoints in the documentary, along with those of NASA managers and scientists. Over the years, NASA has created several videos highlighting the relationship between the agency and the Star Trek franchise. In 2016, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden led a video tribute to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode.

In 2021, on the 100 th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, his son Rod hosted a virtual panel discussion , introduced by NASA Administrator C. William “Bill” Nelson , about diversity and inspiration, two ideals the Star Trek creator infused into the series. Panelists included Star Trek actor Takei, Tracy D. Drain, flight systems engineer for the Europa Clipper spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim , Swati Mohan, guidance and operations lead for the Mars 2020 rover at JPL, and Hortense B. Diggs, Director of the Office of Communication and Public Engagement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mutual attraction between NASA and Star Trek stems from, to paraphrase the opening voiceover from the TV series, that both seek to explore and discover new worlds, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. The diversity, inclusion, and inspiration involved in these endeavors ensure that they will live long and prosper.

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‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Season 2 Confirms July 2024 Netflix Return

Another batch of 20 episodes are heading exclusively to Netflix!

Picture: Paramount+

The rescued season of Star Trek: Prodigy has finally confirmed its Netflix release date. The next batch of episodes has been confirmed to be arriving on Netflix on July 1st, 2024. 

In case you missed the news last year , Netflix acquired the rights to Star Trek: Prodigy away from Paramount+. It carried the first season from Christmas Day in 2023, with the confirmed second season skipping Paramount+ to be exclusive to Netflix.

Netflix didn’t quite acquire the global rights to the show, with many local distributors continuing to carry it. According to Unogs , 23 regions of Netflix carry Star Trek: Prodigy , including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Brazil, Argentina, France, Israel, Singapore, most European regions, and select Asian territories.

Following season 1 being added to Netflix late last year, it featured in the Netflix Kids top 10s in a handful of countries , including the US, UK, and Australia, but its best-performing countries were Germany and Austria.

Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 – Picture: France TV / Paramount+ / Netflix

The wait for season 2 has been a long time coming. Last summer, we were told that the finished season wouldn’t be coming to Paramount+, but after the rescue, the release of season 2 was pushed to 2024. The wait was made even worse by the fact that the show had already aired in some countries. In France, for example, the series has been available since February 2024 .

Season 2 kicks off with Dal, Rock Tak, Zero, Jankom Pog, and Murf continuing their training to join Starfleet Academy and are called aboard a new ship for a mission under the command of Admiral Kathryn Janeway.

The new season has 20 episodes in total, with multiple two-part episodes, including the season opener and season finale, plus two split episodes in the middle. It’s unclear whether Netflix intends to split the new season in half.

The Star Trek: Prodigy voice cast includes Kate Mulgrew, Brett Gray, Ella Purnell, Rylee Alazraqui, Angus Imrie, Jason Mantzoukas, Dee Bradley Baker, John Noble and Jimmi Simpson.

The episodes for this season are as follows:

• Directed by: Ben Hibon
• Written by: Kevin & Dan Hageman
• Directed by: Andrew L. Schmidt & Patrick Krebs
• Written by: Aaron J. Waltke
• Directed by: Sung Shin
• Written by: Erin McNamara
• Written by: Keith Sweet II
• Directed by: Ruolin Li & Andrew L. Schmidt
• Written by: Jennifer Muro
• Directed by: Sung Shin & Sean Bishop
• Directed by: Sean Bishop
• Written by: Diandra Pendleton-Thompson
• Written by: Alex Hanson & Aaron J. Waltke
• Directed by: Ruolin Li
• Written by: Erin McNamara, Jennifer Muro, Diandra Pendleton-Thompson, Keith Sweet II & Aaron J. Waltke
• Written by: Alex Hanson
• Written by: Kevin & Dan Hageman & Aaron J. Waltke

Netflix has yet to officially unveil the new season, but we’ll update this post once we have more information.

Let’s round out this article with some new first looks for the upcoming season:

Picture: France TV / Paramount+ / Netflix

Are you looking forward to the new season of Star Trek: Prodigy hitting Netflix? Let us know in the comments down below.

Founder of What's on Netflix, Kasey has been tracking the comings and goings of the Netflix library for over a decade. Covering everything from new movies, series and games from around the world, Kasey is in charge of covering breaking news, covering all the new additions now available on Netflix and what's coming next.

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Published Jun 4, 2024

WARP FIVE: Costume Designer Anthony Tran Weaves Real Life and Past Influences into Discovery's Tapestry

The Star Trek: Discovery costumer details Vulcan wedding gowns, Breen uniforms, and more!

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery.

StarTrek.com

Welcome to Warp Five, StarTrek.com's five question post-mortem with your favorite featured talent from the latest Star Trek episodes.

Star Trek: Discovery 's fifth and final season has taken the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery , and viewers, across the galaxy on an epic chase that has led us to places such as Q'Mau, the caves of Mak'ala, Halem'no, the Eternal Gallery and Archive, the Infinity Tunnel, Sanctuary Four, and more.

With each new destination, we've discovered new cultures and new environments. The ambitious fifth season's look and feel was brought to life not just by the talents on-screen, writers, and creatives, but the countless teams behind-the-scenes including props, sets, and costume designers.

StarTrek.com had the opportunity to talk to the costume designer Anthony Tran about incorporating real life cultural influences and Star Trek 's past into the designs of the 32nd Century, designing T'Rina and Saru's finale wedding looks, and more!

Making First Contact

Behind-the-Scenes of "Life, Itself"

For Anthony Tran, Star Trek was presence that came in and out of his life since his youth. He recalls his first contact when he was a young child.

"My parents were fans of The Originals Series ," states Tran. "I remember at one point we were in LA randomly, I grew up in Southern California, and we met George Takei. My parents are immigrants from Vietnam, and they were so stoked about it. I had seen bits of it, but I wasn't immersed in the world. I was later reintroduced again with the 2009 film ."

Approach to Season 5's Designs

"Red Directive"

Tran drew from various aspects of his culture, studies, and background for all of this season's looks, which he took time to walk through with StarTrek.com. 

"Our first episode, we went to a planet called Q'Mau," details Tran. "The references are pretty clear that it's Bedouin, Tuareg, traditional nomadic tribes. But I also looked at Miao and Hill tribes, and Vietnam and Thailand, just purely from a textile perspective. The work they do is really interesting; the stuff they do with headdresses and all that we later played with a bit when we went to Halem'no [in 'Whistlespeak'], looking at things that were not purely traditional influences that people look at."

"Jinaal"

"Growing up and even looking at the Vietnamese ao dai, the way that's cut and its linear-ness, that influenced what we did with Saru when he became an ambassador, with how we played with lines and the collars," reveals Tran. "All the geometry of that, the layering of the skirt and the pant, that feels very near Eastern Asian."

"I'm such a costume history buff," Tran shares. "That was my way into becoming a costume designer, looking at our history, and being a huge fan of John Singer Sargent and all these people that would paint great costume portraits. When I worked a bit in museums, I had a hands-on approach to textiles. That's why I always feel like costume design, even though we're in the 32nd Century with Star Trek , it still feels grounded and lived in. We had an amazing textile artisan breakdown team in Toronto, and the way we would take things that were new and just made them look older, so you could feel there was history in them."

"Labyrinths"

"In terms of the stuff for the [Eternal Gallery and Archive in 'Labyrinths'], we had the character Hy'Rell who was an Efrosian," says Tran. "That was actually inspired by a president in another series; the way they cut his costume, and there was this very specific quilting they did on that. I used that as a springboard for what we did. We just did it in a different way with glue versus sewing, updating some techniques."

Tran gives credit not only to his 65-people strong costume department, but the entire art department led by Doug McCullogh, Olatunde Osunsanmi, Michelle Paradise, Alex Kurtzman, stating, "There were just so many hands on deck, but everyone was so open to ideas."

Noting how science fiction shows in the last 10-15 years all "merged together a little bit in aesthetic," Tran found balance by incorporating his Asian background — "things that maybe people haven't looked at that exist" — and playing with all the beloved touchstones from previous Star Trek series that the numerous genuine Star Trek fans in his department enjoy. "There's a lot of collaboration," notes Tran. "In terms of creating new worlds, it's starts with the scripts and the various worlds, which were so vividly imagined. Then Doug [McCullogh] and I were designing in tandem. He started a little bit earlier than I did. When I looked at the sets, I was like 'Okay, cool. Knowing that’s what you're doing, we'll play off the colors.' He was going these rune designs in the first episode with Q'Mau, so I incorporated those into the costume. There was a kind of reciprocal back and forth between us."

A Wedding to Remember

"Life, Itself"

The costumes Tran delighted in designing the most this season were all the looks for Saru and T'Rina's wedding in "Life, Itself." Specifically, T'Rina's Vulcan wedding dress.

Tran shares, "T'Rina's wedding dress was my way in. I remember when I met with the team early on about doing the show, they told me there was a wedding at the end," which resulted in him germinating on all his ideas throughout the course of a year. 

Influences for T'Rina's wedding dress came from previous Vulcan wedding looks from T'Pring in both The Original Series and Strange New Worlds , and T'Pol in Enterprise . Focusing on the nuances in Vulcan culture, Tran explains, "Coming from a Vietnamese background, I know what Vietnamese clothes look like versus Cambodian clothes versus clothing from Thailand." Trying to keep distinct cultural identities, it was important for Tran to factor in T'Rina's Ni'Var background in the 32nd Century, but also all the various iterations of Vulcan designs."

Behind-the-scenes of "Life, Itself"

"We [emphasized] the strong shoulder T'Rina had, and played with both of T'Pring's iterations, which had linear-raised designs," Tran details. "The idea for me became how do we create our own 32nd Century version of lace? Lace is such a great overly used textile in wedding costumes. That symbol that's on her chest is a symbol of Ni'Var. We had a great tailor, Ritta [Koleva], who patterned out her costume, and then our build team, led by James Bolton, basically took a 3D print of her body, and then we carved out all of those lines on her body. It was actually gold leather that we then re-applied up to the top of the texture and raised it so it feels very dimensional and super modern."

"Then the veil was inspired by T'Pol, who in Enterprise , had this veil that was sitting on the back of her head," adds Tran. "Trying to create some more structure with that and make something that was dramatic. It was a little bit inspired Princess Grace's wedding dress from the '50s that I saw at a museum. If you look, there's a very distinct lace, and an over-skirt element to it. That was another reference for T'Rina there."

Not only that, Tran calls all the wedding guests' looks the "greatest hits of Discovery ," that captured a Royal Wedding feel with 30 additional looks, as well as Starfleet's formal wear. "It was a big operation," Tran comments. "It was really fun creating new ideas of people and new ideas of cultures. It was a 65-person costume department, and by the end of working together for the better part of a year, you really get to know people's strengths and the things they enjoy doing. We also had a great milliner and designed this really crazy hat that she had a great time building. Someone who really loved to sculpt created new laces and sculpts. It was just an idea of celebrating the work we'd done together in this big culmination, that also coincided with the finale."

Weaving Past Influences into the 32nd Century

"Erigah"

One of the essential designs under Tran's purview for this ambitious season was the monolithic Breen , which took four months of prototyping alone. "One of the first things I met with Michelle Paradise and Olatunde [Osunsanmi] was Breen, Breen, Breen," Tran recalls. "It's the season of the Breen. I remember at first, I thought, 'Oh, we just need 10 [uniforms],' and by the end of it, we made 60 of them."

"There's a responsibility where obviously that costume is pretty iconic and specific," explains Tran. "The idea of trying to update that became a little bit tricky. There was this discussion of their refrigeration technology. I actually found a bunch of photos, I think from a Christie's auction, of the original costumes. I studied those religiously for a bit and was hand-drawing out ideas of just trying to slim it down a bit, making it feel a bit cleaner and sleeker, which was the aesthetic for Disco from the beginning."

"Taking that and the root inspirations, which were those diagonal plates and figuring out how to recut those," says Tran. "There was this whole refrigeration technology element, that the Breen were going to be gelatinous, but they had this suit that was keeping them together. The original costume had these backpacks on them. So, for me, the idea was this was the genesis for that technology, that was the cooling system; there might be tubes everywhere, inspired by NASA cooling suits. We started weaving tubes into things, playing with hoses and such. All those lines and things are from the original Deep Space Nine costumes. In terms of profile and all that, obviously with helmets, we slimmed all that down, keeping a little bit of a nod to that beak shape, making it feel a bit more modern since they're obviously a thousand years or so later."

Boldly Going Further into the Future

At the end of "Life, Itself," we see the now Admiral Burnham and Cleveland Booker in their home on Sanctuary Four. Their son, Captain Leto, makes a surprise visit to accompany her to her former ship for its next Red Directive mission.

Tran concludes the conversation with StarTrek.com going through the various looks for the coda. "The [designs] were very script-driven," says Tran. "Book and Burnham were living this remote lifestyle. We were trying to ground the clothes and make them feel as real as possible. They feel very contemporary, but they're all askew. Book's sweater is asymmetrical. Burnham wears these weird textures with her pajamas, and then later has this work-wear outfit where the jacket has all this belting on it. It was about playing with things that were contemporary and making sure it felt really lived in and earth."

"Then, one we got to the uniforms, I don't think we’ve ever sprung that far into the future before, so playing with those was a lot of fun," Tran continues. "I love the jumpsuits from TNG; that's my favorite Star Trek look. When it came to [Captain Leto] and what he would look like, that was my inspiration. But since we were jumping so far forward, the idea of layering came in. How we sewed and put it together felt very dimensional. Everything is sewn stacked on top of each other, but the reference is pretty TNG in terms of my own taste there."

"With Admiral Burnham's costume, we used that same idea, this stacking the way things were sewn and the way they were put together as from technology from the future," he adds. "Her costume is obviously inspired by those Wrath of Khan uniforms. Again, playing with that, it felt like a great celebration of Star Trek springing so far in the future, but referencing all the things that I think people really love about the [franchise]."

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Christine Dinh (she/her) is the managing editor for StarTrek.com. She’s traded the Multiverse for helming this Federation Starship.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

• Behind The Scenes

L.A. Asian American Groups Call for Shane Gillis to Apologize for ‘Offensive Racial Remarks’ — or Netflix Should Cut Ties

By Jack Dunn

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Several Asian American groups gathered in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles Thursday afternoon to call for comedian Shane Gillis to apologize for using “offensive racial remarks” in his stand-up performances.

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At the time, Gillis had been recently announced as a new member of “Saturday Night Live,” but the controversy was followed by him being dropped from the show just four days after the casting. In a statement at the time, Gillis said, “I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I said. My intention is never to hurt anyone. But I’m trying to be the best comedian I can be. And sometimes that requires risks.”

In the years since, Gillis has emerged as a prominent name in comedy. Along with a successful stand-up tour, he independently produced “Tires” before selling the six-episode series to Netflix, which has since renewed it for a second season. His “SNL” arc also came full circle this spring, when he hosted an episode.

At the press conference, Aoki shared that he sent letters to both Netflix and Anheuser Busch brewing company demanding Gillis make amends. The lack of response prompted him and other Asian American community leaders to hold a press conference on the matter.

“All of this sends a very hurtful message. If you duck a few years, slowly build your career back up and continue on as if nothing had happened, you can come back even stronger than ever,” Aoki said. “There’s a history of the industry allowing comedians who make offensive racial remarks… to not have to apologize.”

Cindy Wu, founder of the Anti-Asian Hate Coalition, said that Gillis’ refusal to take responsibility is “deepening the wounds” of Asian American communities.

“The aftermath of COVID-19 has led to many Asian Americans grappling with increased discrimination and violence. Our communities are still healing,” said Wu. “So I call for accountability and apology.”

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