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I Am, and Shall Always Be, Your Fan
You can imagine James Doohan sitting in heaven, having a wee dram, and raising his head when he suddenly hears something. Everyone else is announced with bells, you know. This is a high, familiar white. DeForest Kelley rolls his eyes.
“Pointy-eared hobgoblin made it,” he says.
—
In 1992 — February 26th, in fact — the Smithsonian opened a Star Trek exhibit. Props and models and costumes to some; holy relics for others. The press was invited to a special event before the doors were opened to the public, and the entire cast was there, seated in front of an Apollo mission lunar lander. After questions and answers from the adoring press, everyone filed into the exhibit to take pictures of the cast standing next to something they’d held a quarter-century before for a few minutes. Shatner, I recall, didn’t have much time for this stuff. Nimoy, I recall, had a grand time, and I remember the thing that was the most UnSpockish: that great toothy smile of delight.
Spock did smile, of course. Once before the character was nailed down. Once when he was suffering from a script that required him to show emotion. Once when he was so overjoyed he hadn’t killed his best friend he completely lost all control and was happy. The older Nimoy got, the more Spock seemed to smile — without ever actually doing it. That’s why he was so good, and that’s why we expected we might actually see him appear one more time in a movie or TV show. To do the one thing that went against his character as he had defined him — and completed the character as he played him for decades.
Few actors, if they’re lucky, get to define a character. Nimoy defined a species. There would be other Vulcans, but they all played off the way he played Spock. The super-rational / unemotional character was originally imagined as a female first officer, and as played by Majel Barrett — creator Gene Roddenberry’s wife — she was rather off-putting. The idea of a human who had absolutely no emotional reactions to anything made her uninteresting, and they retooled the character to come up with Spock. He didn’t lack emotions — if anything, he had more than anyone else. He didn’t suppress them. He didn’t deny them. He just took them off the table, put them off to the side.
Nimoy’s challenge was to make this character not only compelling but sympathetic. Perhaps he decided he would under-act in exact proportion to Shatner’s over-acting. The raised eyebrow, that was the brilliant touch. It could be scientific curiosity in the face of certain death; amusement over someone’s sputtering idiocy; forbearance; disapproval. His posture was a model of self-control; the only time he ever indicated exertion was when he pursed his lips. Nimoy gave Spock just a few tics and traits, and from this spare toolbox created a character of surprisingly emotional resonance.
The actors who played Vulcans after Nimoy played a facet of Spock. Mark Leonard, who played Spock’s father, amplified the gravitas. Tim Russ, who played Tuvok on Voyager, picked up the peevish annoyance with humans. T’pol from Enterprise, played by Jolene Blalock, channeled the sarcasm. Zack Quinto, tasked with the job of recreating Spock in the current movies, had to add something, and that was the rage and violence the “Amok Time” episode explained away as mindless animal passion. They’re all good. Not one of them has Nimoy’s ability to make Spock funny, which he could do with understatement (“That renowned Tholian punctuality,” a line delivered as dry as a baked brick) or anal-retentive cluelessness.
Everyone had to be different than Nimoy’s creation, but there was nothing they could do he hadn’t done already.
Like Holmes, Spock died; like Holmes, he came back, although it was different. If you watched Star Trek II the first day it came out and had avoided any spoiler, Spock’s death was a shock; when he stood up after saving the ship and Picarded his tunic, you realized: crap, they’re really going to do this. Seeing Kirk slumped on the other side of the glass in despair after Spock turned away to die was like being six and seeing your father cry. Then the funeral speech. Those damned bagpipes.
http://youtu.be/vtQUePN5y40
It felt immensely sad then. All these years on, and it feels the same today.
Published in General
He was excellent in that role, but I think his performance as Mel Murmelmann was better for the reason that it had more range. The 79 Body Snatchers was one of the few remakes that i think was actually better than the original and Nimoy was a big factor in that.
In hindsight I’m happy to see the fictional race most famous for their dedication to logic and reason believed in souls, and clearly had a religion of sorts. Search for Spock was my first exposure to Star Trek and remains one of my favorites; I still consider it and its immediate sequel to be the exceptions that prove the odd-even rule.
May your katra find peace, Mr. Nimoy.
James, a really nice send off for a true cultural hero. Thanks.
Belief that life arose literally from nothing, and that life’s information-processing capacity simply disappears upon a sufficiently serious malfunction of its biological substrate, are highly illogical.
Fellas, that was no fireball. When the photon torpedo casing went behind the crest of the Genesis Planet, the sunrise met it’s descent and we saw the sun appear where the torpedo disappeared – (apparently the Genesis Planet rotates from East to the West -opposite of the Earth’s rotation, otherwise known as dramatic license). Just some pre-Abrams-reboot lens-flare.
He most definitely achieved greatness. In a way few actors ever do. Jack Lemmon was a great actor, for sure. But there was nothing like this same outpouring of emotion that happened when Nimoy died.
I got home and asked my 15-year-old daughter if she knew what happened.
“Spock died.”
He was far better than an “everyman”. He was Spock.
It should be remembered that shortly after Star Trek ended, Nimoy showed up as the character Paris on Mission Impossible. Paris was such a different character than Spock – all smiles and full of joie de vivre. It drove home to me what a fine actor Nimoy really was. The fact that he spent most of his career typecast in a way that deprived him of roles that would showcase his breadth of talent explains a lot about his love/hate relationship with Spock.
I would first add that Nimoy became a good director too.
I came to Star Trek fandom the long way around. I only saw occasional episodes of the original Star Trek series in re-runs during the 70s. I was crazy about space and NASA, but for some reason Star Trek didn’t grab me like 2001 and Star Wars did. For a time I was firmly in the Star Wars camp in the Wars v. Trek debates. It was Nimoy and the Wrath of Khan that started to bring me round. During the movies of the ’80s I came to be a fan. I think the stumbling block for me was Roddenberry’s “Galactic UN” world. It was not credible with it’s total lack of commerce in a socialist utopia. But as Lucas drove Star Wars into the ground, Trek picked up the flag and surpassed as the space opera show for me.
Through it all Spock and Kirk shown bright. Those two were a brilliant pairing. The original troika with Bones was somewhat redundant to Kirk. It was the magic of Nimoy and Shatner that made that show work. Those two could take terrible, cheesy lines and make them sing. They could lift a sophomoric plot to entertaining and sophisticated levels. That is not a small capability. One needs only to watch the original pilot and see that without Nimoy and Shatner, Star Trek would not have last.
And now there is only one…
I must be allergic to that death scene, and Kirk’s words at the funeral.
Every time I watch it, I get something in my eye.
I’m just old enough to have seen the original broadcasts as a special treat on Friday nights when my Dad let me stay up to see it even though it was past my bedtime. My father and I never missed it. It made the characters indelible in my mind and I remember being fascinated by the idea of an alien race with their own characteristics. Although I had no appreciation of acting at 5 years old, I certainly swallowed Nimoy as Spock hook line and sinker. Thats the beauty of being so young. He might as well have been real.
I echo the sentiments above, you know you are getting old as you watch all your childhood heros move on.
“He was a man. Take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again.”
Tommy, that wasn’t a fireball, it was the sunrise.