George Takei Turned Down a Simpsons Monorail Episode, So Leonard Nimoy Got the Part
Takei would not joke about bad transit, which opened the door to a bigger star and a closing gag that broke the show's own physics rule.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend · Matt GroeningConan O'Brien, then a young comedy writer on the animated series The Simpsons, had his guest star picked out for an episode about a con man who sells the town of Springfield on a faulty monorail. He wanted George Takei, the actor who played helmsman Sulu on Star Trek, to lend the story some space age authority.
Takei turned him down flat. Takei said, "I'm on the Transportation Board in San Francisco," and he could not in good conscience be part of a story built around transit as a bad idea. O'Brien said he was crushed, because Takei was the guy he wanted.
The no turned into an upgrade. O'Brien recalled that Al Jean, a writer and producer on the show, came to him and said they had heard Leonard Nimoy would do the part. Nimoy, the actor who played the pointy eared science officer Spock on Star Trek, outranked Takei's character in the fictional universe. O'Brien's reaction was, "He outranks Sulu. This is great."
The casting also led to a fight over a core writers' room rule from Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons. Groening's rule was, "Things can be improbable, but not physically impossible." The show was not a cartoon where the Roadrunner cartoon coyote can explode into 75 pieces and reappear whole in the next shot. If Homer Simpson fell into a gorge, he had to come back bruised, bloody, and banging his bandaged head against the cliff on the way up on a gurney.
Nimoy's ending broke that rule. After the monorail crisis passes without anyone dying, Nimoy looks around and says, "Well, I guess my work here is done." Barney, the town drunk, answers, "You didn't do anything." Nimoy replies, "Didn't I?" Then he beams out.
O'Brien recalled that Jean raised the rule that nothing impossible can happen and no one can beam out. O'Brien argued that Spock could. Groening overruled the rule, saying that if the joke was good enough, it could stay. O'Brien went with other writers to meet Nimoy and record his voice, called it a dream come true, and the beam-out stayed in the episode.
Questions people ask
What happens in the monorail episode?
The episode is built around a traveling salesman who persuades Springfield to spend its money on a monorail instead of fixing its streets. The train is shoddy and dangerous, and the town has to be saved at the last minute. Takei refused because he did not want to lend his name to a story that makes public transit look foolish.
Why was Nimoy considered an upgrade over Takei?
Nimoy played Spock, the logical Vulcan science officer on the original Star Trek television series, while Takei played Sulu, the ship's helmsman. On a starship, the science officer who advises the captain outranks the driver, which is why O'Brien joked that Nimoy outranked Sulu. Both actors were widely recognized science fiction celebrities in the 1990s.
What does it mean to beam out?
A transporter beam is a fictional Star Trek technology that converts a person into energy and reassembles them somewhere else, shown as a sparkling disappearance. Real people cannot do it, so it violated the Simpsons rule against the physically impossible. The writers let it pass because, in their judgment, Spock beaming out was funny enough to earn an exception.