Star Trek hero George Takei unleashed such a wave of interest after posting a link on his Facebook page – to a website which was selling a 'Takei T-shirt' – that the site's ISP assumed that the traffic was a DDoS attack and took the site down for several hours.

The Star Trek star posted a link to a gay-pride T-shirt with a Takei twist to his two million fans on the social network and the click-through rates were so high that his servers believed they were being attacked by a nefarious bot rather than customers with a genuine interest in Takei-themed T-shirts.

The Takei T-shirts that drove the internet wild

"Apparently, my fans here collectively can now resemble a coordinated worldwide web assault," Takei said in a Facebook post, after the site had been brought back online.

Fans had a lot to say:

Eric Moore: "Nothing photon torpedoes can't fix" Tyson Hickey: "What can we say, "we are legion"." Timothy Rigney: "Call the ISP and tell them you need "MORE POW-arrrrr!!"

The shirts feature a range of puntastic gay-rights slogans playing on the name of the star - who played Hikaru Sulu, the Enterprise helmsman and later the commander of the Excelsior in the Star Trek TV and film saga.

All proceeds from the sale of merchandise go to the non-profit Old Globe Theater in San Diego, which is staging Takei's musical show Allegiance this autumn. ®