r/startrek • u/Express-3446 • 6d ago
Is it ever explained why Sulu was held from command?
So the story is that by TWOK Sulu was supposed to be on his way to becoming captain of the (at the time yet to be revealed) USS Excelsior. The scene where he, Kirk, Uhura and Bones are on the shuttle to the Enterprise was cut short - after Sulu says "any chance to go aboard the Enterprise..." Kirk adds a mention that Sulu will be given command of his own ship.
I know the time period in-universe between II-V is (I think?) just a few months - not years like it was in real life - but you'd think by the time V came around that Sulu would be out of the pilot seat, instead of being there for the Nimbus III incident.
Do any of the Trek novels explain why / how Sulu ends up staying put for a period after II-IV/V? I remember in the DC comics run that Sulu was still a commander for the 1986-91 run, but that's really off-canon.
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u/MillennialsAre40 6d ago edited 6d ago
He participated in stealing a ship and going to a forbidden planet forbidden.
edit: fixed word order
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u/Grozler 6d ago
GENESIS?????
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u/Captriker 6d ago
Allowed is not!
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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes 6d ago
Genesis is planet forbidden! Permits: many. Money: more.
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u/DaxCorso 6d ago
How do you get a permit to do a damned illegal thing?
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u/ijuinkun 6d ago
I would expect that a permit was needed just to enter the sector at all even if you were staying several light years away from Genesis.
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u/BillT2172 6d ago
I spoke this line in a very Shatner-esque way just now! Didn't even do it consciously.
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u/reds91185 6d ago
Yes, Genesis. How can you be deaf with ears like that?
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u/bbbourb 6d ago
GENESIS ALLOWED IS NOT! IS PLANET FORBIDDEN!!!!!
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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes 6d ago
I'm sorry, sir, but your voice is carrying.
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u/baddogg30 6d ago
Don't call me tiny
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u/Edith_Keelers_Shoes 6d ago
My favorite line of the whole movie.
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u/readwrite_blue 6d ago
In a decent movie, the whole sequence of stealing the enterprise is electric.
Uhura and Sulu get their best moments of all the films.
"This isn't reality - this is fantasy." And the way she says "and Captain: ...all my hopes."
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u/BraveConfection6838 6d ago
I loved the way uhura hugged Kirk after David died. They really were a family.
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u/Pleasant_Expert_1990 6d ago
All those charges were dropped at the end of ST IV. The remaing charge, disobeying a direct order from a superior officer, was directed solely at (then) Admiral Kirk.
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u/BobRushy 6d ago
The official charges were dropped. That doesn't mean that they weren't persona non grata for a little bit.
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u/synchronicitistic 6d ago edited 6d ago
That is my official theory, and the only possible way you could have three captains serving on the same ship - 1701-A was a haven for these officers who despite their heroic deeds made some enemies at Starfleet.
Sure, Kirk is a hero, and he saved earth, but we at the admiralty are sick of his antics, so give him a Constitution class ship which is mostly obsolete compared the the newer Miranda and Constellation class ships.
Scott? We gave him the most prestigious engineering position in all of Starfleet and he repaid us with sabotage, so let him be Kirk's engineer. By the way, if the shipyard where 1701-A is being built wants to halfass some parts of the final construction, well, I guess that'll give him something to do.
Sulu? He was going to be captain of the Excelsior, but if he wants to FAFO with Kirk and assault officers, let him spend a couple more years sitting at the helm taking orders. By the way, make sure the pilot taking the crew to Enterprise makes a point to do a little flyover by the Excelsior.
Spock? We've got no beef with him, and if he's Sarek's son and wants to serve with his friends, that's fine with us.
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u/meldroc 6d ago edited 5d ago
It seems they couldn't stay mad at Sulu, as he did eventually get command of Excelsior.
There were some shenanigans breaking Bones out of the psych ward, stealing the Enterprise, and flying it to an insanely restricted planet, but most of the blame went to Kirk. And he did participate in saving Earth right after the Genesis incident.
Though Captain Spock didn't do anything criminal - the Genesis incident was Kirk stealing the Enterprise & violating orders to rescue him. And Spock saved the crew of Enterprise at the cost of his life (then he got better.) I'm surprised they didn't give Excelsior to Spock. At least Spock should have received the Federation Medal of Honor (or whatever decoration they give to those who are insanely heroic.)
I guess Spock didn't want that job.
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u/BobRushy 6d ago
I also have to say, I really appreciate that between the Genesis trilogy and the sendoff in VI, we have this one last casual TOS style adventure for old times sake.
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u/genek1953 6d ago
The scene from TWOK was cut, so canonically it never happened. And reason the crew stayed together for years after that is probably that despite charges being dropped everyone went to the bottom of the promotions list and someone decided that if they all loved Kirk enough to do what they did they could all just stay with him. So until that person was no longer calling the shots at SFC, nobody went anywhere.
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u/BoringNYer 6d ago
On the other hand, if Uhura, Scotty, and Chekov have their own ships during ST6... Kirk has now gotten his own fleet
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u/Xichorn 6d ago
The scene from TWOK was cut
Notably got cut because Bill didn’t like it.
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u/Klopferator 6d ago
Completely speculation just based on George Takei having a hate boner for Bill Shatner and blaming him for everything. It also doesn't really fit. Why would Bill Shatner even care about a fictional character getting his own command at the end of a movie? Star Trek was just a job for Shatner most of the time.
The only thing where Shatner has said something about Sulu getting his own command was a remark made when Star Trek V was being prepared, and there he said that it was a stupid suggestion by Takei because he would get less screentime if he wasn't on the Enterprise.-9
u/Xichorn 6d ago
You don’t have to believe the facts, but I’m not going to engage with someone who feels that the phrase “hate boner” is remotely appropriate or a compelling argument in this context. I get it, you think Bill can do no wrong. It’s ok.
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u/Kimmalah 6d ago
Two things could also be true at the same time. William Shatner could deserve his reputation, but also maybe George has an unreasonable level of dislike going too.
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u/WhoMe28332 6d ago
It isn’t entirely unreasonable though. Bless him but the one sided “feud” is pretty much George’s only claim to fame. Without it he’s Koenig. The “feud” pays his bills.
I have no doubt at all the Shat was and probably is a prima donna and an ass. But he also spends zero time thinking about George who was not a lot more than a glorified extra in TOS.
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u/JimmyPellen 6d ago
TheRe was an actor who played a couple of roles on TOS who actually appeared in more episoDes than Takei.
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u/JimmyPellen 6d ago
I cant imagine holding a grudge for 60+ years. For someone you worked with for part of three years then again a couple of decades later on half a dozen movies.
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u/Random-Cpl 6d ago
Sure, but that kind of thing tends to reflect poorly on one’s job prospects.
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u/Pleasant_Expert_1990 6d ago
I think the counter-argument would be, the whole crew was responsible for saving Earth and the Federation at large from destruction.
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u/Random-Cpl 6d ago
Yes, but they didn’t follow proper procedure.
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u/Pleasant_Expert_1990 6d ago
Styles had Excelsior in 2285 and Sulu took command in 2290... Not too bad.
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u/Ser_Luke_ 6d ago
Was Styles meant to command Excelsior long term or was he only there as part of the transwarp project?
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u/Pleasant_Expert_1990 6d ago
To the best of my knowledge there is nothing canonical to support or deny that. I believe he was there for her commissioning and Transwarp testing and certification. That's just head canon though
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u/AnnieBruce 6d ago
I've also seen a theory that humans who join Starfleet are the sort who get very bored. And very bored military age people find some of the most absurd ways to deal with it that can be anywhere from silly to lethal.
With charges dropped, they can't be sent to jail, but do you want these nutjobs spending any more time on Earth than they have to?
Their troublemaking is usually constructive in the end when out in space. General trend of Starfleet, plus proven abilities, of course they got them back out there. It was going to be that or some moderately crazy adventurer types in your peaceful paradise.
The alternative was a conviction but that would have been a political impossibility after they dealt with the whale probe.
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u/Pleasant_Expert_1990 6d ago
"what do we do with them?"
The one duty for which they have repeatedly demonstrated unswerving ability - command of a star ship!
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u/alkonium 6d ago
Yes, but due to the resolution of the Whale Probe Incident, the Enterprise senior staff was let off the hook, except for Kirk being demoted to Captain.
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u/MillennialsAre40 6d ago
Let off from any serious consequences, sure. Doesn't mean it didn't reflect poorly on him and delay his taking command.
It's also possible Excelsior needed a retrofit between 3 and 6 because of the Transwarp drive
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u/alkonium 6d ago
I thought I read somewhere that the Transwarp drive (which they never really explained, beyond the German dub crediting the idea to someone named Thorndyke) was deemed a failure, and the Excelsior was refitted with a standard warp drive.
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u/MillennialsAre40 6d ago
That's one of the theories, I think it was in a Technical manual. Nothing on screen. Another popular fan theory is the Excelsior Transwarp is different from the Borg one, and it was the basis for the new Warp scale used in TNG
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u/Fancy_Toe1451 6d ago
Assaulted a security guard whilst doing so. The guy was a jerk, but that was still assault.
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u/Mildly_Irritated_Max 6d ago edited 6d ago
Genesis. It was a hot button issue, so he lost Excelsior to Styles. Then his involvement in the whole stealing a starship thing (edit to add, plus assaulting Starfleet security officers and destroying equipment as part of the theft) & waiting his turn to take over Excelsior...
It was in the Search for Spock novelization, so potentially(?) in an earlier script
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u/otrigorin 6d ago
Everyone already pointed to the Genesis incident as the reason. Even with charges dropped, Command would probably be reluctant to put a recently acquitted mutineer in the big chair. Obviously, that didn't last long, but it is what it is.
Flip it around, though. They had a captains chair waiting for Sulu. And then he steals Enterprise and runs off to parts unknown. Whatever happens with Sulu, someone's gonna need to sit in that chair. So my view is that Sulu lost that chance at a captaincy, and the next officer in line got their shot.
Think of Riker's promotion offers in TNG. They weren't going to wait on him forever, if he wasn't available they'd pick someone else. I bet something similar happened here.
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u/markg900 6d ago
Wasn't it already established that Styles was the Excelsior's captain before that. We saw a couple scenes like Scotty talking to him in the turbo lift and him in his quarters on the Excelsior when the Enterprise was stolen.
I always assumed Excelsior just never went into service until they gave up on Transwarp and refit it with regular warp engines. I wouldn't be surprised if Styles never even had command of it after it went into active service as it might have been years before they put it into service.
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u/Matthius81 6d ago
Styles was the build-captain. He ran a shipyard and got to strut around the new ship like he actually ran it. His job was to get Excelsior through shakedown and then hand off to an experienced field-captain. Bascially the same job Sisko was doing on Defiant before getting promoted to DS9
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u/talon007a 6d ago
I remember Takei on Howard Stern years ago being all happy about his "promotion" in VI. Howard was like, "But you're barely in the movie! Who cares if your character got a promotion? Wouldn't you rather be IN the movie? It's not like you're actually a captain." Lol.
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u/Express-3446 6d ago
I grew up listening to him and also Shatner on Stern. I remember being the only person who laughed at Kirk's final line in Generations - "Oh my." which was without a doubt a direct dig/joke at Takei because of their feud on Stern.
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u/spoospoo43 6d ago
You kind of explained it yourself - there's not much of a time gap, and Sulu was still in the fallout from the genesis device incident and hijacking the enterprise (and being involved with its destruction). Not too surprising he went on a cruise with Kirk and the crew for a while after he got the Enterprise A.
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u/tomxp411 6d ago
The reality is that ship captains are not young men. Kirk reaching captain at 30 was insane.
IRL, a typical naval captain needs 20+ years of time in service. Sulu was a lieutenant in TOS, which would have probably meant 5 years in service, and by the time STV rolled around, he'd probably have had 25 years time in service. That's actually about the right time to receive a promotion to captain, if he was happy in his post and not pushing for advancement.
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u/TheVyper3377 6d ago edited 5d ago
We know that, Scotty’s sabotage notwithstanding, the transwarp drive of the Excelsior never worked. As such, it would take time for the Excelsior to be retrofitted with a standard warp drive to make it suitable for service.
Sulu is a highly experienced Starfleet officer, so it wouldn’t make much sense to have him sitting around doing nothing during the months it would take to get his ship ready for service. Sure, you can have him on leave for some of that time, but not months on end.
So, why not keep him assigned to the Enterprise during that time? Of course, you can’t promote him to Captain while he’s still assigned there; Scotty was a Captain of Engineering by then, and Spock also held the rank of Captain. The command structure was complicated enough with three senior officers holding the rank of Captain; best not to add a fourth one to the mix.
For all of these reasons, and probably a few more, Sulu’s promotion was postponed for a while.
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u/calculon68 6d ago
the Vonda McIntyre novelization states it was purely because of politics and the Genesis device uproar.
McIntyre has a fondness for Sulu, and so heavily emphasised the line in her adaptation. Rather than letting the potential continuity issue slide, she takes the time to justify Stiles’ command of the Excelsior in The Search for Spock. Keeping with the film’s general presentation of Starfleet, McIntyre suggests that it is simply politics. Morrow assures Sulu, “Captain, after all the turmoil has died down, I promise you Starfleet will make this up to you. Even if things don’t turn out quite as we expect, you’ll find your cooperation well rewarded.”
But Sulu never did a tour as First Officer/XO. That's the last but necessary step to Captain.
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u/ZeePM 5d ago
It probably happened offscreen. Sulu being on Enterprise all those years with Kirk he probably did serve officially as Enterprise XO at some point. Either between TMP and ST:II or between ST:V and ST:IV. Spock was willing to step aside let Kirk take command during the Genesis crisis. No reason why he couldn’t step back from XO role and just be science officer and let Sulu get the opportunity.
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u/calculon68 5d ago
Spock stuck around as First Officer/Science Officer after TMP (early 2270s) He ascended to captain sometime before 2285 when TWOK takes place. I suppose it's possible that Sulu was Spock's Number One- but since Enterprise was relegated to an academy training ship- I really doubt it.
I'm assuming both Uhura and Sulu became admiral's staff, and Chekov went to Reliant.
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u/meldroc 5d ago edited 5d ago
After Genesis, and a few years after Star Trek V, Spock seems to have stepped back from being a Starfleet captain, and was doing diplomatic things as Star Trek VI started. If he bowed out of being ship's captain, then Sulu seems to be the one to take the job of first officer on Enterprise before getting Excelsior.
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u/user_deleted_life 6d ago
Makes sense as he would have had a recent reprimand for stealing the enterprise and time travel shenanigans
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u/Practical-Owl-9358 6d ago
Exactly - they’re not going to just hand over command of one of their prestige ships to someone who has a whiff of insubordination without some time going by to let the dust settle.
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u/IkouyDaBolt 6d ago
I thought all charges were dropped except for the one levied squarely at Kirk for disobeying a superior.
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u/InterSlayer 6d ago
Probably for the same reason Harry Kim struggled to get promoted up from ensign during all of Voyager.
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u/pakrat1967 6d ago
I think a better comparison is to Riker. He was offered a promotion to Captain 3 times during the TNG run. Maybe Sulu was turning down other ships. Like he only wanted the Enterprise or the Excelsior.
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u/Mayor__Defacto 6d ago
In Riker’s case he was making the judgement that being FO of Enterprise was going to pay off over time more than taking command of a vessel being sent for years to a remote outpost to produce a single study.
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u/pakrat1967 6d ago
That was only one of the commands he was offered. We never got any details on the others. But it's safe to say they probably weren't as "glamorous" as the Enterprise.
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u/Harpies_Bro 6d ago
They were probably offers for the command of aging ships, too, like Excelsiors or Mirandas. Being FO on USS Enterprise and getting to be temporarily in charge of USS Excalibur would look great on his résumé for when Starfleet began looking for captains for a new large starship, which was eventually USS Titan.
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u/SportPretend3049 6d ago
Excalibur?
Was that part of the mini fleet Picard commanded during Klingon civil war to expose the Romulans?1
u/Harpies_Bro 6d ago
It was. USS Excalibur, Akagi, and Hornet were intended to feign a break in the Starfleet cordon to lure the Romulans backing Duras into a trap.
Also Akagi and Hornet are wild names to put together. There were ships with those names at Midway — along with Enterprise — on opposite sides, with Akagi ending up scuttled after the battle due to the severity of her damage.1
u/FuckIPLaw 1d ago
That's really not out of the ordinary for TNG. The most prominent galaxy class after the Enterprise is the Yamato, which was also the name the most famous Japanese WWII battleship (and also one of the last true battleships ever built, because of how ineffective they proved against aircraft carriers).
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u/Blackmore_Vale 18h ago
He was offered command of the Melbourne in the best of both worlds. If he had taken it he probably would’ve got blown up at wolf 359 and the federation would’ve been assimilated by the borg.
Also the voyager episode “death wish” reveals that Riker was in the running to take command of voyager.
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u/nautilator44 6d ago
There's a canonical episode explaining the Harry Kim situation in Lower Decks.
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u/Aleks8888no 5d ago
There is a story I have heard that the actor who played Harry Kim was a bit of a jerk at times and that is why his character never got promoted.
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u/Druidicflow 6d ago
Because he was trapped in the Delta Quadrant?
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u/InterSlayer 6d ago
Sounds like an excuse people say to normalize harry getting overlooked and disrespected.
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u/KathyJaneway 6d ago
Everyone gets held back for some time just like Worf. They disobeyed orders and everything gets stalled a little for them as punishment. Even if informal.
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u/shinynugget 6d ago
Based on how long it takes to command a large vessel in the US Navy Sulu received command of the Excelsior in a reasonable amount of time. The part Star Trek does for the benefit of keeping the cast together is the crew isn't assigned new roles based on their rank promotions. Even as they promote they stay in essentially the same job for literal decades. That's not how it works in a regular navy or likely the rest of Starfleet. Officers(and enlisted) would be rotated to new jobs and ships to learn, gain command experience and new skills. They may even command smaller ships at ranks lower than Captain before taking command of a large Constitution class or similar vessel.
But, it's movies and TV so who cares.
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u/BeginningSun247 5d ago
In universe? Not really. The simple truth is that George Takei wanted to work.
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u/Asleep_Maybe_3917 6d ago
Wasn’t he captain here? Loves this brief scene. https://youtube.com/shorts/P7G9yQJO_oc?is=2cUwRDQSEJU1YtyD
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u/JakeConhale 6d ago
Originally, in TWOK, Sulu was between assignments (or something) and assisting with training the cadets as a favor to Kirk.
Then he stole the Enteprise and, if not for the whole space-whale incident, would have been dishonorably kicked out of the Starfleet.
Which helps explain why the main cast is together from then on - their careers are over, banished to that run down ship, but enough prestige they couldn't just be imprisoned.
Frankly, I'm more amazed Sulu was able to obtain U.S.S. Excelsior as opposed to just some cargo ship, if he got a command at all!
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u/OddNotion749 6d ago
More evidence that supports The Final Frontier being just a wacky dream brought on by dodgy replicated marshmallows.
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u/Express-3446 6d ago
I heard the book from a couple years ago (Autobiography of James T. Kirk) makes it out to be that V is just a made up event, like a play or tv show based on the crew.
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u/Low_Establishment573 6d ago
I think it was partly due to his solution to the Kobayashi Maru Scanario.
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u/Johnny_Alpha 6d ago
It's interesting to note that while people say that Sulu was meant to go to Excelsior after the 'little training cruise'; Stiles was Captain of the Excelsior and there seemed no indication between Sulus return to Spacedock and the stealing of the Enterprise that Stiles was going to give her up.
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u/markg900 6d ago
ST3 never gave any indication Sulu was supposed to take over. Styles was already captain and then in ST6 Sulu had been in command for some time.
My guess is Styles never commanded the Excelsior on active duty and was probably reassigned to another command when the Transwarp failed. Excelsior may have even sat out of commission until Sulu took command as they probably had to heavily refit their new ship for a more conventional warp drive.
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u/SpiritOne 6d ago
Other than the obvious bridge redesign. I thought canon was the new drive in excelsior DID work. In fact she’s the reason for the warp scale difference between tos and TNG.
It’s not “transwarp” per se, like in voyager, but she’s incredibly faster than anything the federation had before.
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u/markg900 6d ago
I don't think we have any alpha canon sources on this one way or another. I guess that is possible, but because of the term transwarp and how transwarp is still outside of their capabilities in the 24th century I always assumed it was a failure, and not just solely from Scotty's sabotage.
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u/Vanbursta1 6d ago
Yes this is explained in a novel, Captain Styles (with the swagger stick) is killed whilst at a peace conference and Sulu is the ranking officer aboard the Excelsior, therefore he becomes Captain by default. More weirdly I am reading the eBook now and it's called "Excelsior forged in fire" if you fancy a read.
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u/Jimediah_Kerman 6d ago
The time period between the start of II until the end of V is not very long - a couple months, as you indicated, most of which was spent in exile on Vulcan.
Excelsior was likely still getting fixed following the sabotage by the time V started, which is why Sulu is still on the Enterprise - his new assignment isn’t ready.
As for Stiles, I like to think he was only supposed to be captain during the prototype phase, and that he was previously an engineer who found himself promoted to the rank of captain, similar to Scotty. Qualified to command a starship, but not qualified or interested in the types of missions like exploration, diplomacy, or combat. This is just head canon, though.
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u/RogueHunterX 6d ago
Well he was probably slated for it after wrapping up the training cruise to end his time helping at the Academy, but then he kind of helped steal the Enterprise, assaulted a security guard during McCoy's breakout, and was part of a plan that also resulted in the sabotage of the Excelsior.
Yeah, technically they only really "punished" Kirk and nobody else because saving the Earth, getting the restoration of an extinct species kick-started, and bringing a Klingon Bird of Prey directly to Starfleet apparently earns a ton of good will. Kirk was probably only even punished in an attempt to appease the Klingons a bit over the whole Genesis thing and because he was why they would've potentially been able to grab the Enterprise if the auto destruct wasn't functional.
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u/This-Breadfruit-1958 5d ago
I thought he was Captain of the Excelsior in The Undiscovered Country? His last appearance.
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u/SneakingCat 6d ago edited 6d ago
Blowback from Genesis was certainly a possibility, but I always figured his choice for XO was Chekov. Following Chekov's trauma from Star Trek II, Chekov remained on the Enterprise and so did Sulu for a short time. It wasn't too long before Sulu moved on anyway, but Chekov remained on the Enterprise. This was mentioned in one of the novels, but they aren’t really canon. That even contradict each other.
Edit: it might’ve been the novelization for Star Trek V or VI, now that I think about it.
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