Hikaru Sulu

Hikaru Sulu is a minor character in the original Star Trek series, played by George Takei. He was originally staff physicist, but ended up being transferred to helm. He gets promoted to captain and gets his own ship in Star Trek VI. His daughter is Demora Sulu.

As with many of the minor characters, he is somewhat of an enigma—his first name wasn't even revealed until that last film. The character is meant to be of Japanese decent, but was raised in San Francisco. In the Japanese version of Star Trek, his name is changed, as Sulu is not a standard Japanese name; Japanese does not make a distinction between r and l.