THE USS Enterprise has lost another of its crew.
Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock, the starship’s first officer, has died at age 83.
Nimoy was the original Spock in the Star Trek TV series and he carried over the half-Vulcan, half-human character to film.
Hands down, Spock is Star Trek’s most beloved hero, overshadowing even his commander, Captain James Kirk.
Nimoy’s passing is in many ways also Spock’s. Actor and character have become so fused the distinctions have blurred.
While there have been many reincarnations of Spock, the role will always belong to Nimoy. He tried to shuck off the spiky ears and the Vulcan hand salute by taking on other movie, TV and stage roles (he also published a book of children’s stories,) but the multitude of Trekkies never let him forget that he was Spock.
Nimoy himself was fascinated by Spock’s huge cult following and attributed it to the fact that people “recognize in themselves this wish that they could be logical and avoid the pain of anger and confrontation.”
I grew up on Star Trek. It was in black and white, the stories were campy and melodramatic, but it teleported me to alien, exotic worlds. Starships flew at warp speed, Kirk fired phasers, and the Enterprise transported its crew by “energizing” them (“beam me up, Scotty”).
Captain Kirk commanded a multinational, multiracial crew, something radical for a TV series at the time. The helmsman, Mr. Sulu, was Japanese. The navigator, Mr. Chekov, was Russian. The communications officer, Lt. Uhura, was female and black.
Oddly enough, Star Trek didn’t fare too well on TV. The show’s ratings never took off and NBC was ready to ditch it after several episodes. But fan power helped extend its run. The viewers launched a letter campaign to persuade the network to keep the show. NBC obliged, but pulled the plug after 79 episodes.
Star Trek did a lot better as a movie. In 1979, Paramount released Star Trek: The Motion Picture, bringing aboard all the actors from the TV series. The film was a modest success, earning $139 million worldwide. Still, Paramount must have sensed a megafranchise in the making because it came out with a sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, three years later.
In all there were 12 Star Trek films, with total take of $1.242 billion, making it one of the most successful movie franchises.
There’s more. Propelled by a huge cult following, Star Trek has spun off into comics, books, magazines and games. An entire fantasy realm has sprung up from the Star Trek saga. On the Internet and at conventions, Trekkies debate just how fast warp speed is and whether a human comes out of the transporter as a clone (“you cannot be alive once torn down to your constituent pieces. You have ceased to exist. Your mind has stopped, torn to pieces by the transporter, your body taken completely apart. What steps out on the other end is not you, but a duplicate; an exact replica, a copy.”)
Tributes have begun to pour for Nimoy from colleagues and fans. “I loved Spock,” said one particular Trekkie, US President Barack Obama.
Perhaps the most fitting accolade was the one tweeted by Terry Virts from the International Space Station. The astronaut photographed the Vulcan salute, framed by the porthole view of Nimoy’s home state, Massachusetts as the ISS passed over the US.
To an Earthling like me, Spock will always be somewhere out there in vastness of space, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no man has gone before.
