Didn’t Enterprise propose an entirely different solution to that conundrum? I don’t remember the killer shrimp version.
Personally I’d never had a problem accepting that TOS Klingons “really” looked like the movie version, or would have except for budget constraints. But for whatever reason, the franchise instead decided to tackle the discrepancy head-on (so to speak, har har). Given that fact, I thought the answer they came up with was as plausible as could be reasonably expected.
Eh. I think with Demora, the banter between Kirk and Scotty about Sulu starting a family and so forth, I’m leaning pretty heavily towards Sulu being straight, but I guess there’s no way to know, since any of that content could imply a number of things.
Exactly, which is why I think it’s a reasonable idea; there’s really no huge burden of canonicity that would have to be accomodated or overthrown in this case. As has been mentioned, gay people can have kids too, so that’s not an obstacle. It doesn’t take anything away from the character; it adds something that wasn’t fully explored in the first place. If that’s an unacceptable retcon, then logically Sulu can’t have a romantic interest of any kind at this point, since his preferences weren’t plainly and unambiguously established in the series. What, he’s suddenly interested in girls after four decades? How likely is that?
Making Kirk gay at this point would be somewhat problematic, but the series didn’t really bother to establish Sulu’s romantic proclivities one way or the other. If the proposed “prequel” film elects to depict the young Sulu canonically as a relentless womanizer, I suppose that would be a serious obstacle. I’m not sure what George Takei would think about that, though.
Should Captain Kirk be Jewish?
You mean he’s not?
Why should Sulu be exempt from the same treatment all the other Star Trek characters got? Because he’s the only actor who’s openly gay, and now we have to assume his character was really straight? Please. :rolleyes:
I think there’s something to be said for simply leaving the old material alone and stop the bloody retconning! Should a Star Trek character be gay? If they decide to extend the franchise, absolutely! But for Og’s sake, now they’re going to make a movie about the Kirk’s and Spock’s teen adventures, or some fucking thing. Sure, one can do this, and idiocy along these lines has been perpetrated before, but is it so wrong to decry the practice in general, even if there’s precedent?
I needed a memory jog, so this is what the wikisphere says. In sum, Klingons looked like regular people with bad haircuts because that’s all they could afford while producing TOS. The Klingon’s bumpy appearance was introduced later because budgets allowed Roddenbury to realise his “original” vision (I’d call bullshit on that claim, given the paper trail from the 60s). Whatever, no reason to be any more bothered by the appearance of the Klingons than the radical changes in the appearance of Starfleet vessel interiors. Then you get that lovely picture of Worf, the very angry-looking, venom-spitting crab or whatever the Hell he is. They should have stopped dead on that path so as not to compound the problem, but no. They had to do a Tribble homage in DS9, and forced the costume discrepancy into becoming an unavoidable continuity issue. Worf says “we don’t like to talk about it”. Sadly, the Voyager writers had far less decorum. Hence the inane garbage about the Agments, influenza gone bonkers, and so forth.
Why didn’t they just CGI some bony foreheads into the scenes from TOS, if it was that much of a problem, for frick’s sake? How ironic, if they worried about fan’s objection to altering canon, or were limited by budget constraints.
Oops! Forgot the link.
But, as has been noted, if Sulu’s sexual orientation was never established in canon, then having him be gay in upcoming material would not be a retcon. If Sulu had been shown whoring his way through the galaxy with space-chicks, then yeah, retcon (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). But he has no established sexual orientation at this point, so having him be gay isn’t really a retcon. Your assumption of his heterosexuality doesn’t mean that his being made gay is a retcon.
Again, according to the wikisphere, a recton is “the adding of new information to “historical” material, or deliberately changing previously established facts in a work of serial fiction.” If Sulu’s orientation is left unknown, not retconning would be to leave it that way, because it was irrelevant to the story being told. We’ve already got him having kids in Generations (along with all the other foolishness in that flick), but that’s now canon, so it’s too late to do anything about it. But why compound the error over and over again?
I just think the whole retconning practice has produced so many dubious or outright laughable results, I’d really prefer they just put a permanent moratorium on all the backfilling and start looking foreward again.
Well good on wikisphere for deciding that “adding new information to ‘historical’ material” is retconning. I don’t agree 100% with that portion of the definition. If a fact is unknown, then revealing it later isn’t necessarily a retcon. Like for example Worf was established early in Next Gen as having a foster brother, but nothing else about him was mentioned. So when the foster brother showed up and was given a name and a face, that’s a retcon? According to the sages at wikisphere it is. Ridiculous.
Because “retcon” =! “error.”
Well, I give up, then. Meanwhile, whatever redeeming value the Trek franchise ever had has been almost completely squandered, and among the worst of it has been the backward-looking material, as Generations and the Enterprise series amply demonstrate. Have fun at STXI with teen Kirk, I guess, as that kind of crap must be what the fans want, or they wouldn’t be doing it. When out of good new ideas, just retcon, right, and brew stale water with the old ones!
I thought Star Trek was over?
Well, I used to see him working every Friday night…
A retcon is changing fictional history.
A recton is a particle that emanates from Uranus.
“San Francisco… I was born there.”
I trust this issue is resolved. 
I may be, but the info. we have thus far suggests rather strongly an 11th film is at some stage of development, and will not involve actors from any of the Trek series produced thus far. The hints we have are that a proposed concept for the film will involve the adventures of Spock and Kirk in their Academy days. There have been conflicting statements made by those involved in some capacity with the franchise, but I believe the latest news is STXI is a go.
I always thought he was a little too interested in studying the Captain’s log.
Which, since Spock was an officer under Captain Pike 15 (?) years before Kirk took command of the Enterprise, would be a retcon and a near-irreconcileable one.