19 thoughts on “Leonard Nimoy, 1931-2015

  1. “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”

    Best putdown of an ex, ever. Take that, T’Pring!

    Mr. Nimoy will be missed.

    • Of all the original ST cast, he is the one I most would have liked to have met. IMO Spock will live forever as one of the great television/film characters of all time.

  2. Yes, joanr16, that is one of his best.

    I just viewed a video of a comical song that he recorded way back in the hippie days. It’s posted at alicublog. While it had the sixties feel that we all like to have fun with, it made me think of just how long he’s been around. He was able to mix fun and with some real curiosity about the world, although the dark period of “In Search Of” would best be forgotten.

    When many of us were younger and casting about for role models, Spock was there beside Maynard G. Krebs. We were more fortunate than we knew.

  3. I’m sure he was great but I might be the only person I know of (besides my wife) that has never actually sat through an entire episode of star trek, though I loved me some lost in space when I was a kid!

    • Uncledad — There’s not much point watching the original ST series now, because much of the original series didn’t age well IMO. It’s like Cheese in Space on a shoestring special effects budget. There are a few episodes that stand up, but what made it compelling were the main characters, who were great fun and who became major elements of western popular culture. Lost in Space really doesn’t stand up in that regard.

  4. IMO Spock will live forever as one of the great television/film characters of all time.

    I agree. He said (in the interviews below) that he was particularly drawn to the character because, being half-human and half-Vulcan, there was a natural inner conflict that meant he wasn’t going to be just some actor reading lines. He also said that they had to get the pointed ears just right, or he would’ve ended up being a joke. After many prototypes, and at the last minute, they suceeded.

    @goatherd – people generally agree that his music stunk, but he struck a chord with his poetry (and I’ve never really appreciated poetry).

    A couple great video interviews: part one, and part two.

  5. “who became major elements of western popular culture”

    Science Fiction just never interested me, the word itself makes absolutely no sense, sort of like Jumbo Shrimp! I’ve never seen any Star Wars movies either! I have lots of friends who loved the show as well, I just could never get passed the production value, to me it had a soap opera feel, I think it was the lighting? But hey I never liked the Beatles either so……………

  6. Science Fiction just never interested me..

    I thrived on this stuff, being a tech nerd growing up in the 60s. I often explain to younger people, that the 1960s was the most futuristic, most progressive time ever in recent history. It’s almost impossible for them to grasp this, given the constricted neanderthal times we’re now in.
    Star Trek – set several hundred years in the future, embodied the progressive ideas + themes of the 60s as normal + ordinary (for example, a crew made up of many races, nationalities and even species – working together – radical for that time). Despite the cheesy production effects, and the sometimes lame scripts, it’s this optimistic, progressivism-as-normal stance that makes the series endure, even among kids today. It’s amazing to meet kids – and watch their faces light up with hope – who’ve just discovered Star Trek TOS (the original series) or the Beatles or any of the best, progressive things of the 1960s.

    • Yeah, I loved SF in my youth and still have a keen appreciation of it, even though I don’t read much fiction any more. Some of the great SF writers, like Ray Bradbury and Ursula Le Guin, were and are great writers, period. Great SF demands that we re-think everything, from the nature of reality to what it means to be human, and I love that. SF in film hardly ever rises to the same level as the best of the literature, although that tends to be true in other genres as well.

  7. Mr. Spock was my favorite character on Star Trek and I know it’s illogical or silly but I see Leonard Nimoy and Mr. Spock as one and the same. It’s emotional. By the way, my dog’s name is Mr. Spock and yes, he is half human.

  8. I know practically every original “Star Trek” episode by heart – and I haven’t seen the show in at least 30+ years!
    I used to watch that on PIX channel 11 at 6pm every weeknight.
    I also watched “The Odd Couple afterwards, and then at 11pm “The Honeymooners” – also, every weeknight. And I remember most of the lines on those.

    And Mr. Spock will live forever.
    He summarized the emotional roller-coaster of every child and teenager.
    were times we knew we had to be logical, and had to control our emotions. And, he set a fine example.
    But the most fun episodes, were the ones where Spock loses it!

    And I always loved Leonard Nimoy as an actor.
    Unfortunately, he kind of got typecast in his role, and didn’t get too many opportunities afterwards to show his dramatic and comedic talents.

    Well, at least ‘he lived long, an prospered.’

    RIP, Leonard Nimoy.
    You won’t be soon forgotten.

    :’-(

  9. “re-think everything, from the nature of reality”

    Last time I checked there was only one reality?

  10. I was in the 7th grade when Star trek was born. I was hooked on the first episode, enjoyed the series, spin offs and the films. The first Star trek film was really a hoot, the old guys were back to fix the universe. I’m gonna miss that Vulcan.

  11. Leonard Nimoy wrote a letter a few years ago in support of the two-state solution. In his ‘real’ life he was involved and articulate. What they used to call, ‘A class act’. Yes, I loved his portrayal of Spock – in the last episode I recall of the movie franchise, Spock was pursuing peace and reconciliation between the Vulcans and Romulans who had a linked history and must have been, in Nimoys mind, an allegory of the Palistinian crises. (The Jewish and Muslim religions are Abrahamic faiths, with common roots.)

  12. Last time I checked there was only one reality?

    Yes, but an ant’s reality is different than yours; your understanding of reality when you were a child is different than it is now, and so on.
    One of my favorite quotes – “we see the world not as it is, but as we are”. Frightened people experience reality as fearful; Loving people experience it as supportive. Consider how Buddha or Jesus saw the world/experienced reality versus the rest of us.

    It’s important to distinguish between your perception of reality versus reality itself, and that your perception is basically your biology plus your conditioning, what you’ve been trained to see and evaluate.

  13. Moonbat,
    Point well taken, I saw an episode of Nova recently on absolute zero cryogenic stuff and they actually prove that matter can exist in two places at once if it’s cold enough! RIP Leonard.

  14. My three fictional heroes when I was a kid were Mr. Spock, Linus van Pelt, and Alfred E. Newman. Two of them were human, two were secure, and two were smart.

    Moonbat: about the 60s being futuristic and progressive; yes, *sigh*. But on the other hand the Bomb was hanging over our heads. I’m glad the Cold War’s over; the war-on-terror is calming by comparison. We’re still living in science fiction, but with a bit less science and a bit more fiction.

  15. In recent years I’ve greatly enjoyed listening to Leonard read short stories on the public radio show/podcast Selected Shorts. He will be missed.

    Star Trek was remastered in 2006 and the special effects were updated. If you haven’t seen since then, you might want to check it out.

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