TOS Sulu is a rare command officer in Star Trek Fleet Command, and it’s good to see Sulu looking like the great George Takei.
With Sulu, we get a much needed Morale and critical hit officer, who will be extremely useful on your explorers.
Captain’s Maneuver
Optimist at Heart – At the start of each round, TOS Sulu has a 55% chance of inspiring Morale for one round.
Given how powerful morale is in Star Trek Fleet Command, this is a pretty good captain’s ability. I think I’ve covered Morale enough by now, but if I haven’t, it’s a condition that sets off other officer’s abilities, as with TOS Sulu’s ability below.
Officer Ability
I’ll Protect You! – If the ship is an Explorer and has Morale, TOS Sulu increases its Critical Hit chance by (6% 8% 10% 12% 15%) every round.
Before anything else at all, please, please, please take note that TOS Sulu only works on Explorers. (So when I put him on my Stella for an armada, he didn’t do anything at all. I’m blaming a lack of sleep and not enough coffee. Never enough coffee.)
The next thing you’ll notice is that this ability is similar to Khan’s in terms of generating critical hits. But there are two huge differences. The first is that you need morale active to set this off, and secondly, it’s not cumulative. So you’ll need to pair him with a morale officer like Kirk or TOS Kirk, or just put him as captain.
So Khan’s ability can eventually get it so that all of your hits become criticals, in long battles. TOS Sulu will max out at 15%. But keep in mind that this is added to the regular critical hit chance of your ship, so on my Augur, for example, that has a regular critical hit chance of 9.7%, putting my tier 2 TOS Sulu on board with morale will pop this up to 17.7%. So that’s a nearly 1 in 5 chance to score a critical hit in every round, and with three guns, that probability goes up substantially.
It’s not quite as good as Khan’s, but again, with Territory Capture, you’re going to need to be able to crew multiple ships for PvP.
By the way, the line “I’ll Protect You” comes from the TOS episode, The Naked Time. It was followed by “fair Maiden,” and was followed by the line that inspired TOS Uhura‘s officer ability, “Sorry, neither.”
Sulu Character Background
The character of Sulu wasn’t in the first Star Trek pilot, The Cage. In the second pilot, he shows up as the ship’s second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before as the head of the ship’s Chief Physicist. It’s also the only episode where we see Sulu in a blue uniform. By the third filmed episode, The Corbomite Maneuver, he’s taken his traditional place on the bridge.
While George Takei may be Japanese, the name Sulu is not, as there is no “L” sound in the Japanese language. Takei claims (and who is anyone to doubt him) that the name was selected by Gene Roddenberry for the Sulu Sea. The idea was to make the character representative of not just one country, but of eastern Asia in general, and Roddenberry thought of the Sulu Sea as touching all the shores of Asia.
This seems like by far the most likely explanation, as it fits in with everything that Roddenberry was trying to do.
One other explanation, that seems much less likely, though a bit more fun, is that it’s a mispronunciation of studio executive Herb Solow‘s last name. And while I’m pretty sure this isn’t the origin, I am sure that I wanted to mention Solow, and I’m not sure when else I’d be able to do so. He was vital to the development of Star Trek, and a fascinating man. Now back to Sulu.
Sulu’s first “chance to shine” episode was in the episode mentioned above, The Naked Time, where he goes around the ship, pretending to be a French swashbuckling swordsman.
Takei’s influence comes through here, as the writers originally wanted to have Sulu wielding a Samurai sword. Takei suggested that it should be a fencing foil, reasoning that by the 23rd century, “a man’s cultural heritage should be greater than just his ethnicity.”
Lastly, I’m still working on the Sulu article, which will have a biography of the fascinating George Takei.