Following today’s news that Sulu will be revealed to be gay in this summer’s Star Trek Beyond, it would’ve been easy to guess that original actor George Takei — who’s gay himself — would be thrilled by the news.

Welp, you guessed wrong.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter this afternoon, Takei revealed that not only is he disappointed in Sulu being gay, but he tried to talk the filmmakers out of doing it.

The reason for his disappointment? This was not what original Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry intended, Takei argues. But as THR notes, there isn’t hard evidence of Sulu being straight:

He explains that Roddenberry was exhaustive in conceiving his Star Trek characters. (The name Sulu, for example, was based on the Sulu Sea off the coast of the Philippines, so as to render his Asian nationality indeterminate.) And Roddenberry had always envisioned Sulu as heterosexual.

Proving that is not so simple a matter, however. Sulu never had an on-screen love interest during Star Trek’s initial four-season run. He did mention a daughter, Demora, who appeared in 1994’s Star Trek Generations, the seventh film in the series (she was played by Jacqueline Kim).

But the only reference to how Demora was conceived appears in a secondary canonical source: the 1995 Star Trek novel The Captain’s Daughter. “It was, to put it crudely, a one-night stand with a glamazon,” Takei explains. “A very athletic, powerful and stunningly gorgeous woman. That’s Demora’s mother.”

Later in THR’s report we learn how Takei tried to block the twist from happening:

Takei first learned of Sulu’s recent same-sex leanings last year, when Cho called him to reveal the big news. Takei tried to convince him to make a new character gay instead. “I told him, ‘Be imaginative and create a character who has a history of being gay, rather than Sulu, who had been straight all this time, suddenly being revealed as being closeted.'”

Not long after Cho’s bombshell call came another, this one from [director Justin] Lin, again informing that Sulu was indeed to be gay in Star Trek Beyond. Takei remained steadfastly opposed to the decision.

“I said, ‘This movie is going to be coming out on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the 50th anniversary of paying tribute to Gene Roddenberry, the man whose vision it was carried us through half a century. Honor him and create a new character. I urged them. He left me feeling that that was going to happen,” Takei says.

Later, Takei was further led to believe that they were indeed making a new character gay:

After that, all was quiet from Beyond until a few months ago, when Takei received an email from Pegg “praising me for my advocacy for the LGBT movement and for my pride in Star Trek,” he says. “And I thought to myself, ‘How wonderful! It’s a fan letter from Simon Pegg. Justin had talked to him!'” Takei was certain the creative team had rethought their decision to make Sulu gay.

That is until last week, when he received an email from Cho informing him that the actor was about to embark on an international media tour for Beyond. Cho said it was bound to come out that his character was gay, and “what should he do?” A disappointed Takei told Cho to go about his promotional duties, but that he was “not going to change” his mind on the matter.

“I really tried to work with these people when at long last the issue of gay equality was going to be addressed,” Takei says. “I thought after that conversation with Justin that was going to happen. Months later, when I got that email from Simon Pegg, I was kind of confused. He thinks I’m a great guy? Wonderful. But what was the point of that letter? I interpreted that as my words having been heard.”

Again, for Takei to be against this is pretty bizarre, considering the actor himself is openly gay and has always been an advocate of LGBT rights. And while we can appreciate his interest in respecting Rodenberry’s original vision, we can’t help but wonder how long we have to maintain 100% of any creator’s original ideas. Especially when a series like Star Trek is 50 years old, and a company still has the ability to create as many installments as they want.

It puts a bit of a damper on a day which found many people applauding Star Trek’s decision to make such a significant character a homosexual.