George Takei Tricked A Star Trek Director Into Thinking Sulu Was Going To Blow Up The Enterprise

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On the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, as it was seen on the original 1966 run of "Star Trek," Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) was most often seen seated at the Conn station, where he piloted the ship. Sulu was rarely the centerpiece of "Star Trek" episodes — he lamented that Sulu never got a family, for example, while most main stories were handed to Captain Kirk (William Shatner, with whom Takei has infamously feuded) – but he was often in frame, pressing buttons and flipping switches with a determined look on his face.

For many Trekkies, Takei, while not credited in the opening credits of "Star Trek," was nonetheless an indispensable member of the show's ensemble. He was always present, and his piloting skills were always needed. Takei managed to infuse Sulu with a lot of character, and there are a lot of subtle but noticeable elements to Takei's performance. He gave great side-eye, and projected a certain degree of personality. When he finally did have action scenes, the character was only that much more enriched.

Also, Takei, to lend his role a note of verisimilitude, invented a system of how the buttons in front of him worked. He internally decided that some buttons on his station correlated to certain actions on the bridge, and he would always press the same buttons if given an order to, say, take the Enterprise to warp. Takei's system, though, once had him butting heads with one of the weekly episodic directors. In the book "Star Trek: The Oral History: The Original Cast," Takei related a story of how he had to explain to the director that he couldn't push certain buttons for a shot the director wanted. The button the director wanted him to push, according to Takei, was a self-destruct button.

George Takei doesn't recall the exact episode in question, nor does he call out the director by name, but he does recall his interaction over Sulu's control panel. As he related it: 

"There was one director who wanted me to hit a button near the top of the panel, just for the camera effect, but that's not where warp one, two, three, four, or impulse power is. We got into a very involved discussion about it. He kept saying, 'This is science fiction, I just need it for a shot.' So to persuade away from that, I told him that was the button we used last week to implode the engines. There are certain conventions and you just can't break them." 

And good for Takei for retaining his actorly integrity. There aren't many close-ups of Sulu's control panel on "Star Trek," but one can look up stock images on the Getty Images website and get a good look at it. As you can see, it's a grid of unlabeled light-up controls. While likely just knocked together by a CBS propmaster or set designer, in the universe of "Star Trek," that panel looks like it requires a lot of special training to master. Takei surely had that in mind when he was manipulating the panel while in character as Sulu. 

As of this writing, Takei is 88 years old and is one of the only major actors from "Star Trek" still alive. He is also still acting, having played a voice role on an episode of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Takei has also recently appeared on stage in the musical "Allegiance," which is based on his own experiences being interred in Japanese internment camps by the American military in the 1940s.