Posted in: Movies, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: Beam Me Up Sulu, star trek

Beam Me Up, Sulu Directors on Star Trek's Ongoing Cultural Relevance

Beam Me Up, Sulu directors Timour Gregory and Sasha Schneider discuss Star Trek's ability to still resonate with fans 60 years later.

Beam Me Up, Sulu directors Timour Gregory and Sasha Schneider come from two different points of view about how they came to love Star Trek, with Gregory being a lifelong Trekkie and Schneider embracing the journey as a newer fan. Together, they chronicled one fan's journey to rediscover his original fan film, Stan Woo's Yorktown, which he started in 1985, in the Tribeca and Giant Films documentary, Beam Me Up, Sulu. Along with his friends and colleagues in the cast and crew, Woo reached for the stars, casting TOS star George Takei to reprise Hikaru Sulu and late Asian Hollywood legend James Shigeta in a separate role. On top of Woo's cinematic journey, Gregory and Schneider also wanted to share Gene Roddenberry's legacy of sci-fi, storytelling, and inclusion through the artists and fans who embraced his franchise over its 60-year history, and to underscore the importance of representation by sharing Takei and Shigeta's stories. The duo spoke to Bleeding Cool about how fans embraced Roddenberry's legacy through Star Trek and how the franchise's messages continue to resonate through new generations all the way to Starfleet Academy.

Beam Me Up, Sulu: Directors on How Star Trek Fans Differ from Other Fandoms, and How Starfleet Academy Continues to Expand Roddenberry's Ideas

BC: How did you want to address the narrative of fandom? There's been so much that's evolved through generations. Were there certain things you wanted to steer clear of that might get in the way of the themes you wanted to share with Beam Me Up, Sulu?

Gregory: Yeah, with fandom, the thing that struck us most about it was how inclusive, kind, and compassionate everybody is to each other and the actors. You see these interactions between fans and actors that are so very genuine. Obviously, George making that fan film was the extreme example of that, but we would see at conventions little interactions between. Actors and fans, where there was this leveling of everybody, which was very interesting to us.

That was one of the things we were trying to explain with the film, and figure out why it's like that, because it doesn't seem to be like that in every single fandom or every single franchise. The Star Trek fans do seem to excel in this way, and we came back to the ethos of the show that Gene Roddenberry wanted from the start, which was that in the future, we're all going to be able to work together, respect people, and treat others with dignity. It's like the fans and the actors are both engaged in this endeavor together to move humanity forward, which is very interesting for a fandom and not something you see in fandoms of sports teams, musicians, or things like that.

Schneider: Yeah. Well said.

Is there a narrative the Star Trek franchise hasn't addressed that they should tell?

Gregory: I think the commitment in Star Trek, as I see it, always must be towards what we call "a pop culture of ideas," so using pop culture to, in whatever way, whether it's subtle and subtext, or whether it's actual text, to contain ideas and provoke thought. It doesn't have to be just like "ripping from the headlines," like "This is happening today in this country, and so we're going to do like a one-to-one analogy." It can be more subtle than that, but the idea should always be that we're exploring ideas that are going to affect the here and now, and I think Star Trek continues to do that.

We love Starfleet Academy, and it does a really good job, especially in the last couple of episodes we've seen, of striking that balance between talking about what's happening today and provoking ideas. If you're doing that, there will always be new things to talk about, right? Because there will always be new challenges that society is facing. If Star Trek continues to do that, and I think that's what (Gene's son) Rod Roddenberry, who's our executive producer, feels his mission is, then there will always be new things that it needs to deal with and approach. People will look to things like Star Trek and pop culture in general to try to make sense of these crazy times that we're living in.

Beam Me Up, Sulu, which also features appearances from Christina Chong, Alexander Siddig, Ian Alexander, and Garrett Wang, will be available on digital on February 17.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!