Live Long an Prosper: My (belated) Thoughts on Leonard Nimoy
Posted by Leah on
3/23/2015 12:50:57 PM
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen Here!
As you can tell by the lateness of this post, I’m not fully used to keeping up with the times for the sake of this website yet. I hope to get better at that as more time passes, but for now I guess I’ll stick to “better late than never”.
As far as celebrities go I’m not really the typical fan. Of course I have those who I tend to stick by, watching and/or listening to almost anything they come out with; I also have those who annoy me to the point where I mute the TV or radio if they’re on, as everyone does. But for the most part celebrity deaths, marriages, divorces and the like don’t seem to impact me as much as other people. And then, on February 27 of this year Leonard Nimoy died.
Although (of course) I never got to meet him, I felt a connection with Mr. Nimoy, as so many did. You could say that some of my earliest memories included him, as Spock. From as far back as I can remember Spock brought my father and me closer as we would watch episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series for as long as they aired on TV. And as the years went on we’d also watch the Star Trek Movies whenever they were on and as soon as they came out in theaters, supplemented by a healthy dose of Star Trek: The Next Generation when that came out. The rest of my family wanted no part of it, but it was always something special my father and I had.
Years later, after I’d grown up, I introduced my husband to the Star Trek Movies and he fell in love as well. I couldn’t believe he’d never seen them, but he was always more of a Star Wars fan. Then, 2 years ago for Christmas he got me both The Original Series and The Next Generation complete DVD box sets. We’ve watched them all from front to back in chronological order and of them all, our favorites are the Spock focused episodes.
I know that Leonard Nimoy was so much more than just Spock. He has 135 acting credits to his name (although quite a few of them are as Spock) including recurring roles on the Mission Impossible series of the early 70s, host of the In Search Of series, Vincent Van Gogh in the movie Vincent, Dr. William Bell on TV’s Fringe and many, many more. He was a prolific photographer, coming out with several books of his work including The Full Body Project and Shekhina and hosting many photography shows over the years. He was a poet, again publishing many books of his work including You and I and Come Be With Me. He even dappled in music earlier in his life releasing such works as Highly Illogical and The Way I Feel.
And yet, although he was so much more than Spock, he was and will always be known as Spock, the half-human, overly logical, emotionless Vulcan from Star Trek. It was his defining role and one he fully embraced, much to the delight of Trekkies around the world. With his death the world became a slightly less logical place. Live long and prosper!