Actor George Takei is taking up the role that made him famous, but it won't be coming to a movie theatre near you.  Trek fans may or may not be aware of Star Trek: New Voyages, a fan-run project that continues the original five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise.  It's a high-quality series with some big names attached, and now it's getting the pros.  Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) recently appeared in an episode, and now George Takei and Grace Lee Whitney will be reprising their Original Series roles in an episode penned by Marc Scott Zicree and Michael Reaves entitled "World Enough and Time."

Said Zicree, "I recalled a terrific Sulu story my friend Michael Reaves came up with for Star Trek Phase II, a series Paramount was going to do in the mid-70s.

  After a year of building sets and buying stories, the studio made the movies instead, so the script was never written. Ironically, Michael's story had Sulu aging 30 years and raising a family on an alien planet, so it seemed perfect timing to do it now."  Zicree met with Takei, whom he'd known for some time, and pitched the idea.   "I told him, 'You're a brilliant actor who never got the Sulu episode you deserved, and this is it.  He read the synopsis then and there and said, 'I'm in.'"

The episode premieres August 23rd, at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills.  Both the premiere and episode will be streaming real-time worldwide on the Internet, so fans everywhere can tune in for the historic event.

(Sources: Star Trek: New Voyages Official Site, Aint It Cool News)