Simon Pegg ‘Respectfully Disagrees’ With George Takei Over Sulu’s Sexuality

[Crash2Parties]

12. Roddenberry's show had something the new ones do not:

Optimism.

Ever since the Bush Jr. years, and especially after 9/11, entertainment has fully embraced a dystopic future. There is an entire generation that has known nothing else. Remember Superman? He was supposed to give hope - now he's a dark, dangerous figure. Same for the Enterprise - it now looks like a war machine. The current Star Trek reboots seem to be about war, or impending war, always a threat. Star Trek was supposed to be about exploration. Exploring boundaries, especially, of what it meant to be human. Was someone with blue skin human? And if so, what did that say about people with black skin in the real world?

So while I think it's interesting that they have a gay character and it's not a focal point, just an attribute, they aren't really exploring the current issues of our embedded cultural assumption of a 100% pure gender binary.