George Takei will always be remembered as the unflappable Enterprise helmsman Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek, but there’s far more to him than that, as David Sutton discovered when he caught up with him in Fulda, Germany, to talk about Star Trek’s past and future, growing up in an internment camp and coming out as a gay man.

How does it feel to be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Star Trek this year?

The 40th anniversary? It’s something we never dreamt would be happening. Because when we were doing Star Trek as a TV show back in the 1960s our ratings were very low and every season we were hanging on by our fingernails. So our goal was always just to survive for another season, not decades. And when finally we were cancelled, we just thought, well, that’s it – that’s the end, and we’ll go on with the rest of our careers. So, to be talking to you here in Germany, in the sixth year of the 21st century – about something we did back in 1965, when the second pilot was shot – is something totally undreamt of. And the fact that we’re here with thousands of Star Trek fans from all over the world… there’s even one young lady from Japan here!

This longevity is thanks to the fan base. It’s the fans who gave us this totally unexpected phenomenon. Gene Roddenberry created the series, but this phenomenon was created by the fans – with their dedication, with their faith, with their unquenchable support; people coming from all over the world and gathering at conventions. So I see this whole year as an opportunity to say thank you. We’ve lived so much longer than we ever expected and prospered in so many wonderful ways.

For someone of my age it’s probably impossible to imagine a world without Star Trek. It’s easy to look back, with hindsight, at this incredible phenomenon, but when you were working with Gene Roddenberry and the rest of the team over 40 years ago you can’t have had any inkling that this was more than just another acting job…

Because I’m a visionary, back in 1965 as we were filming the pilot film, I said to Jimmy Doohan: “This is something of quality. This has substance and cutting-edge imagination. In the sixth year after the beginning of the 21st century, I will be in Fulda, Germany, pontificating!” Yes, of course!

No, seriously, I loved acting, and I heard of a regular series role – I mean, steady employment – and we saw the script and it was a quality script. Isn’t it wonderful, we said, to be cast? I desperately wanted the part, and when I was cast I was overjoyed and really excited. But, no, we had no idea it was going to turn into this kind of 40-year phenomenon.

I don’t suppose that any other television series, at that point, had experienced such a thing – it’s as if you created the template for the whole idea of ‘cult’ TV shows…

Well, our five-year mission was aborted after three years… the most destructive Klingons were not those you saw on the show, they were the programming executives at NBC! So we had a TV series, and then in the 1970s a cartoon series, and then a motion picture that led to a further series of major films, and a series of conventions – I mean, no other show has given birth to all that; to so many different transmogrifications of the same concept. It’s quite extraordinary. It’s been one surprise after another – we’re certainly not going to be surprised by anything that happens. So, there may be other news to come – and we probably won’t be surprised by that either.

How would you account for this enduring popularity and the show’s incredibly wide reach in terms of audiences around the world?

Star Trek stood for a glowing, shining ideal rather than just being a detective show or a dusty Western. Star Trek talked about how we approach the future, what is ahead for human civilisation. And part of the answer that Gene gave was to have confidence in our ability to solve problems, in our ability to engage challenges, our ability to innovate, to create, to invent – that’s how we face the future. So many of these other pessimistic shows that call themselves science fiction and deal with the future, I don’t think they help us advance. You know, pessimism can’t motivate you to make any progress.

The thing with science fiction is that it challenges the imagination. And Gene used science fiction as a metaphor for contemporary issues – like the Civil Rights movement. We had racial warfare going on at the time, urban riots, in the 60s; we had the Vietnam War that was tearing the country apart; we had the hippy movement, which was culturally revolutionary; the Cold War, two great powers, threatening nuclear annihilation – all that we talked about, but in a science fiction context. It’s a marvellous vehicle not only to challenge the imagination but also to focus the imagination on current issues.

There were people of different races, different nations working together; and, most amazing of all, Russians and Americans working side by side. What was astounding fiction way back then, what was a shocking vision 40 years ago, is today a reality.

It’s the people who see the future with optimism that help move society forward. And it takes visionaries like Gene Roddenberry to set the goals for the scientists, the technicians, the inventors, the innovators. When the goals have been set by the imaginers, like Gene, then the others work to make that reality – to make cell-phones happen, to make space-stations happen, and hopefully to make the transporter happen! So, despite the slight problems we have today, I’m optimistic that the next 10 years will see amazing developments progress not just in science and technology but in social terms too and in terms of world progress. I’m optimistic that we’ll overcome these problems and face new ones.

The show has connected with people all over this planet. People of different languages, different cultures; across oceans and across borders. I think it’s a powerful message that Gene Roddenberry sent out.

Do you think that that vision has survived the social changes of the intervening decades?

I do think that Gene’s vision of the future as something that’s engaging, and possible and challenging and tapping the best in humankind, has changed since his passing. Gene created Star Trek and The Next Generation, and subsequently it has veered off. Deep Space Nine has taken a darker tone – the venality of people, their darker aspects. Enterprise, the final spin-off series, went in the opposite direction – literally – going backwards, where Gene always went forward – he was forward-looking, seeking new adventures, new challenges, discovery, innovation. That aspect, I think, has been lost over the years.

It’s clear that you remain as optimistic about the future as ever, but can you square such optimism with a post-9/11 world filled, once again, with racial and religious tensions or the kind of situation we in the West now find ourselves in?

Whenever I have the opportunity, I talk about my childhood behind the barbed wire of American internment camps. Many Americans don’t know about it, and our history books have been very quiet on that dark chapter of American history. I was very young then and didn’t really know what was happening, but I still remember that scary day when US soldiers with bayoneted guns came to our Los Angeles home to order us out. We were taken to the smelly horse stables of a nearby racetrack and housed there for a few months while the camps were still being built. Approximately 120, 000 Japanese Americans were rounded up summarily and with no trial or due process, simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbour. It was one of the most unconstitutional acts in US history. We were innocent people, loyal American citizens who were rounded up, and I remember growing up behind those barbed wire fences; I remember the sentry towers with the machine guns pointed at us.

The strange thing is that children are amazingly adaptable, and the most abnormal things become normal; this became my normality. It became normal to me to line up three times a day to eat in a noisy mess hall; it became normal to me to go with my father to bathe in the communal shower; it became normal to me to begin the school day with a pledge of allegiance to the American flag. I could see the barbed wire fence and the sentry towers right outside my schoolhouse window as I recited the words: “With liberty and justice for all.”

Too many Americans don’t know this particular bit of their history. And because we don’t know, history seems to be repeating itself all over again in the United States. In the wake of 9/11 people who happened to ‘look like’ terrorists – innocent people perceived to be from the from the same ethnic groups as the terrorists – were rounded up; obviously not on the same scale as the Japanese American round-ups, but there were newspaper reports of research scientists being accosted by the FBI at their places of work, being marched out and publicly humiliated and taken away. There were reports of hysterical people taking pot-shots at people who weren’t even Muslims, but Hindus! One in Arizona was killed.

This kind of madness was happening all over again. And that’s why it’s so important that our history books be clear, particularly on those chapters where we faltered, where we didn’t live up to our American ideals.

You came out as a gay man very publicly last year – can you tell us a bit about that?

Brad and I have been together for two decades now, and we’ve been ‘out’ in that sense, with friends and family, for many, many years. And in public too – we support many non-profit organisations – our names are carved together in granite on donor walls – we’ve not been closeted.

But last year the Californian State legislature did something historic – it was something that had never happened in any state legislature in the US – they passed the same sex marriage bill, a landmark. And all that was required was the signature of the governor on that bill – who also happens to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor, who had made many statements to the effect that having worked in Hollywood, he was very comfortable with gays and lesbians – “I’ve worked with them – some of my best friends are… you know! All the clichés!” He was asked directly on a talk show whether, if the legislature passed the same sex marriage bill, he’d sign it. And he said he would. So I fully expected that when the bill passed he’d sign it and that would become the law of the State of California. When he reneged on that, playing to the narrowest, most extremist portion of his conservative base, and vetoed it, I felt I needed to speak to the press for the first time about being gay if I were to have an authentic voice with which to speak out against the veto.

And what was the public response – from Star Trek fans and others – like?

It has been very, overwhelmingly positive. One thing that came out of it was an invitation from the Human Rights Campaign – the biggest, most well-funded gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy group in Washington DC, who asked me to go on a nationwide speaking tour, mostly at college campuses, in April – it was called ‘Equality Trek’; they had to get ‘Trek’ into it – and the response was incredibly positive. I also did the Howard Stern show for a week. He got an Arnold Schwarzenegger imitator to come on the line – he was very good, I thought it was the real thing – and I was so persuasive that Schwarzenegger said that next time the bill came through, he’d sign it.

There has to be a continued commitment to debate and democracy. That’s why you need people like Howard Stern – to stand up for the importance of free speech, open discussion, the espousal of ideas, even those you disagree with.

The thing is, the whole thing is such a contrast to my childhood, when something completely abnormal was normalised – it’s normal for two people who love each other, who take responsibility for each other, to be married, to share their property, pension, insurance.

What’s abnormal is these extremists who try to get their extremist views written into law. That is a desecration of our system of law. There’s a division between Church and State, but they are trying to get their religious beliefs expressed in a secular law.

There are people of faith who are also decent, fair-minded people – I have great respect for people of faith – and it’s important to keep the conversation going, not to tar and feather them. And if you talk to them with respect, they will come to understand. As with Star Trek, I am optimistic about the future.

Has Star Trek had a positive or negative effect on your career, would you say? Did it lead to typecasting or difficulties working on other projects?

I’m very proud of my association with Star Trek. Many people ask: “Hasn’t that been a burden to you?” Everything in life has a positive and negative side, but I don’t dwell on those negatives. The blessings I’ve gained have far outweighed the negative side. Being one of the few recognisable Asian-American actors means I’ve got to work in projects all over the world.

Typecasting? It hasn’t happened. Just in recent years I’ve done Equus… an Edinburgh festival play set in WWII where I played a Japanese soldier stranded with a US GI. I’ve had a wonderfully varied career.

In Britain, I’ve done pantomime! That’s the farthest from Sulu you can imagine. I played the genie of the lamp in Aladdin in Reading and on another occasion they wrote a special part for me, I was the narrator of Snow White, a wizard in silver-black lamé who appears in a poof of smoke with laser lights going!

Now that I wish I’d seen…

We played it in Brighton! It’s only an hour’s train ride from London! You must learn to live life!

Do you think that Star Trek has a future? After all, Enterprise was cancelled after four years and now we hear that Paramount are auctioning off their huge collection of Star Trek props and costumes at Christies in the autumn.

Oh, déjà vu! Déjà vu, all over again! We felt that way in 1969, and then we felt that when the animated version ended, and then we felt that way when the first film went way over budget and way over schedule and we thought: “There’ll be no more like this. Paramount’s not going to invest this kind of money.” But then it did so well at the box office, and they said: “We’ll do just one sequel”, because usually sequels perform in descending order at the box office. But it was the reverse, and we did a whole series of movies! This is not the end, it just goes round and round.

And now there are the fan-made films, like New Voyages, appearing on the Internet – it’s an amazing thing. The Internet is something we didn’t talk about in Star Trek – despite how visionary it was about other technologies. Our communicators have become a very real nuisance in today’s society! So much of the technology we speculated about has become a reality today, but the Internet was something we didn’t even speculate about, and it’s wonderful – a 21st century town square; a place where ideas and opinions and foolishness are shared.

And that has given birth to a new form of Star Trek. Some fans who were passionate about the show contacted Paramount and asked permission to make their own non-commercial Star Trek movie. The amazing thing was that Paramount said: “Yes, you can do that.” And they got great CGI people to do the special effects, and then Walter Koenig appeared in the second one, and contacted me and said: “George, these people are wonderful – I had a great time. If they contact you, you should consider it.” And sure enough, they did contact me. It’s very exciting, and I’m eagerly looking forward to starting work on that in September.

What about the announcement that JJ Abrams is going to make the Star Trek XI film?

I’m excited, if it’s true. I truly thought that now, finally, it was over. Everything has its life, and I thought maybe that this was the point when it was going to fade away. I wonder – did the fan-based webcast films make Paramount think again? I’d love to be involved – after all, I’m the youngest and most vigorous of the group!