Who played the character Hikaru Sulu in the original series?

George Takei played Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek series. Sulu began as an astrosciences physicist in the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and became the Enterprise’s senior helmsman and a regular member of Captain Kirk’s bridge crew.

Takei was cast by producer Gene Roddenberry in 1965 and continued into the broadcast series when NBC accepted the show. The character was usually called simply Sulu during the original run. His first name, Hikaru, was introduced later in the 1981 Star Trek novel The Entropy Effect and subsequently became part of the character’s established identity.

The role is sometimes confused with Nichelle Nichols’s Uhura, James Doohan’s Scotty, or Walter Koenig’s Chekov, all fellow Enterprise officers. Takei also reprised Sulu in Star Trek: The Animated Series, the first six feature films, and a 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager. In the films, Sulu eventually became captain of the USS Excelsior.