"The second one, where Benedict Cumberbatch played Khan, I thought was unfortunate. Benedict Cumberbatch is a wonderful actor. I love everything that he’s done, but if he was going to be playing that character, J.J. should have made him an original character that’s singular to him. Because the Khan character first appeared in our TV series, “Space Seed,” and Ricardo Montalban was sensational in our second movie – he was the title character, The Wrath of Khan, you know! The other thought that Gene Roddenberry always had in the back of his mind — and that was his philosophy — was to embrace the diversity of this planet. Khan was created as East Indian character. The name is East Indian. We needed a big-name star who was a wonderful actor as well. Ricardo is Latino, but he brought his spectacular charisma and made Khan a singular, iconic character. It’s really owned by Ricardo Montalban, and to cast a white, British, wonderful actor, and name that character Khan, is really not understanding Gene Roddenberry’s philosophy. But I enjoyed the action-adventure parts of the second movie, Into Darkness."

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-George Takei absolutely nailing discussion of whitewashing (via imonlyhalfvulcan)

[Link to the original article]

I’m so glad that he’s talking about this. It’s one thing for Garret Wang to say something, but it brings a lot more exposure when Takei says the same thing.

(via thetrekkiehasthephonebox)