On February 27th, Leonard Nimoy the actor best known as playing Star Trek’s Mr. Spock passed away. Though I’m not the biggest Star Trek fan, I am enough of one that his death affected me, as it affected millions the world over. If you call yourself geek or nerd than you loved this man. I would call him science-fiction royalty but in that realm he was more of a God though he would never describe himself as such. If you think that description to be hyperbolic, let me assure you that if you go to any country the world over and hold up your hand with your fingers spread apart into that familiar V, there will be someone who recognizes the gesture. When the world lost Leonard Nimoy, it lost someone special. Science-fiction is not a highly regarded genre when it comes to film and TV but a great actor can turn any material into art. The final scenes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for instance are some of the most heart-wrenching in all of cinema regardless of genre. Spock’s death still remains one of the saddest endings of any movie and watching the scene again after Leonard Nimoy’s passing feels especially poignant.
I have a confession to make. When I was a small child, I hated Star Trek. To me it was a boring show where everyone talked instead of fighting and none of the ships looked as cool as they did in Star Wars. This of course really only pertained to the original series and when I was exposed to the movies a few years later my opinion of Star Trek softened. Sure, there was still too much talking and not enough blasting (or phasering as it were) but the effects were better and even if I didn’t quite yet understand the beauty of Gene Roddenberry’s utopia, where all ethnicities could live in harmony and money was a thing of the past, I at least had the sense that this was something important.
Unlike the fantasy setting of my beloved Star Wars, Star Trek was set in our own galaxy. It was a representation of the future of our society and where we might be headed if we played our cards right. The aliens in Star Wars such as Chewbacca and Jabba the Hutt exist solely to give us something cool and exotic to look at whereas Star Trek had Mr. Spock who was there to hold a mirror up to mankind and examine what it really means to be human.
Spock as an alien was unlike almost any that had come before. Most science-fiction up to that point featured aliens created through cheap rubber prosthesis , garish make-up or sometimes both. All the better to make them seem as inhuman as possible. Aliens prior to Star Trek were used mostly as villains, terrifying invaders that threatened to land their flying saucer’s in your backyard and disintegrate the family dog with their ray-guns. Vulcans on the other hand were aliens in name only. As Spock, Leonard Nimoy wore the barest prosthetic, just a set of rubber ears. Spock’s appearance was such that he could easily pass for human and did on occasion. Spock was the first time that we as a culture were introduced to the idea of a benevolent extraterrestrial. The decade previous to Star Trek had been rife with stories of flying saucers and little green men but now it was conceivable that those little green men might come in peace to benefit mankind rather then to enslave it. The character of Spock was the ultimate expression of tolerance and equality on Star Trek. I realize how it sounds to highlight a white male when discussing one of the first shows to feature an African-American female in a leading role but Spock didn’t represent a white male he, represented the whole of the universe that wasn’t Earth. Spock’s inclusion on the otherwise human saturated Enterprise was a metaphor for our evolution as a society, this wasn’t just blacks, whites and Asians living together in harmony, this was us embracing a level of tolerance where would could accept a whole other species and treat them as equals.
Leonard Nimoy defined the character of Spock more than any of the writers that worked on Star Trek ever did. Gene Roddenberry may have created Spock but Leonard Nimoy gave birth to the character. Nimoy created the Vulcan salute based on the way Jewish priests held their hands during blessings. “Live long and prosper” was likewise adapted from the Jewish faith. The Vulcan nerve pinch came about because Nimoy reckoned that a being as intelligent and enlightened as Spock would have studied human anatomy and devised a method to incapacitate people without resorting to the savagery of a fist fight. Leonard Nimoy played Spock not as a being devoid of emotions but one in complete control of them. Using his famous Vulcan logic, Spock was able to analyze and comment on the way humanity was driven by it’s urges and feelings no matter how irrational they may be.
It’s very rare that a person comes along and changes the face of pop culture but that’s just what Leonard Nimoy did. So beloved and ingrained in the public consciousness was the character of Spock, that when rumors first started circulating that the character was to die in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan Leonard Nimoy received death threats.
It feels reductive to remember Leonard Nimoy solely for Star Trek. After all the man was also a singer, a poet, a writer and a successful director among other things. But it’s Spock that he will always be remembered for regardless of his other accomplishments. Leonard Nimoy himself accepted this and eventually even embraced it. So powerful a creation was Mr. Spock that Nimoy would find his own decisions sometimes affected by his alter ego. Yes the man who created the character in the first place would often times find himself wondering WWSD -What Would Spock Do? If the man himself had trouble separating Leonard Nimoy from Mr. Spock than it only stands to reason that the fans would too.
It can be hard to explain just why some of our favorite fictional characters resonate so much with us. For many of us someone like Spock is more than a role played by an actor. He comforted us when we had no other friends to turn to, he didn’t call us dorks or make fun of us for playing video games. He didn’t disapprove when we came home with a less than stellar report card. For many of us we didn’t just lose one of our favorite actors last week, we lost a friend. Of course Leonard Nimoy’s legacy will live on in our hearts and minds, for those are the only places that any of us can truly hope to live forever. Nimoy himself said as much in his last tweet: ” A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.” Rest in peace Mr. Nimoy, you truly lived a long and prosperous life.