Normally, I’m pretty good with words. At the moment, I’m not at my best, for reasons I hope are self evident. However, I’m going to do my best to remember someone who gave more to my life than he ever knew.
I never got to know Leonard Nimoy the way my fellow cast members did, so I can’t remember him in the personal way that they can. I didn’t know Leonard as a friend, or even as a colleague. I can’t tell you what he was like off the set, because I never had the privilege of visiting with him off the set. In fact, by the time he worked on Next Generation, my character was off exploring other planes of existence, and I was a nineteen year-old kid who was stumbling around, trying to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
When you are part of the Star Trek family — and that’s what it is, in ways that are as wonderful and complicated as all families are — you are part of a very small and special group, where news travels fast. Though I never got to be close to Leonard, I knew that he was a wonderful and lovely man, because that’s all anyone ever said about him. I feel that I haven’t earned the right to eulogize him, but a lot of people are asking me to, so if you’ll allow me a few minutes of your time, I’d like to do my best to remember Leonard the way most of us will be remembering him today: as the actor who played a character who was deeply important to all of our lives, because everyone who watched and loved Star Trek is part of our extended family.
When I was a kid, long before I put on Wesley Crusher’s sweaters or piloted the Enterprise, I loved Star Trek. I watched it all the time in syndication on our black and white television, and when the other kids at school wanted to play CHiPs or the A-Team on the playground, I wanted to turn the jungle gym into the Enterprise. On those rare occasions that I convinced my classmates that we were boldly going toward new worlds on lunch recess, one of the Cool Kids would claim the role of Captain Kirk, and I would always happily assume the role of Mister Spock.
I was too young to fully understand why, but as I got older and looked back on those years, it became clear: I identified with Spock because he was weird, and cerebral, and he was different from everyone else. He was just like me, but the things that made me a target of ridicule on the playground made him a valuable and vital member of his ship’s crew. In ways that I couldn’t articulate at the time, I wanted to be Mister Spock because if I was, I could be myself –quiet, bookish, alien to the people around me — and it wouldn’t be weird. It would be awesome.
When I was cast to play Wesley Crusher, and became part of the Star Trek family, one of the first things I got excited about was meeting Mister Spock, and the actor who played him. It never happened, really, so I never got to know the man behind the ears and the eyebrows and the character that meant so much to me. But as I said on Twitter this morning, we in the Next Generation stood upon his shoulders, and we got to explore a universe that wouldn’t have existed without him. I’ve met thousands of people over the last decade, who have told me that Wesley Crusher meant the same thing to them that Mister Spock meant to me, and for that I am eternally grateful to everyone who was part of Star Trek before I was, including Leonard.
Mister Spock made it okay for me to be the weird kid who eventually grew into a slightly-less weird adult, but it was Leonard Nimoy who made Mister Spock live, and who made Star Trek — and every science fiction TV series since 1966 — possible.
Thank you, Leonard, for making it okay to be me, and for making it possible for me to explore brave new worlds, and boldly go where you had gone before. I wish I’d gotten to know you the way so many others did, because everyone says you were as awesome and wonderful as I hoped you would be. Rest in peace, sir.
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An absolutely beautiful piece of ‘hommage cum social disobedience’ happening in Canada; with the intent of (I’m assuming) honoring Leonard Nimoy’s passing.
search for “spocking fives”
😉
You’re welcome.
GREAT job Wil , very moving. Much love to Leonard ! Goodnight Mr. Spock, rest easy….in our hearts, you will always be!
Thank you Will for posting some thoughts that we all have experienced.
LLAP.
Leonard Nimoy lived to be 83. My parents and others of Mr. Nimoy’s age watched Star Trek’s 5-year mission (which turned out to be only 3) in its first run on NBC. The first generation of Trekkies had come into being without our knowledge. I am 62 years and, thanks to syndicated reruns, my peers, friends and I became heirs to the Trekkie label. You, Wil, and your contemporaries are the next generation (pun intended) to believe in the legend of the now-growing franchise. Today’s young adults–nerds, geeks, college students and so many other young chariots of fire–are now carrying the torch. And concurrently the newest Trekkies are being born, the most recent Terrans who will go boldly where four generations have gone before: to their television sets, movie theater screens, VHS tapes, laser discs and DVDs, books, novels, the internet and weblogs stardated 12 March 2015. They will take “the precious” into presently undiscovered countries of media. We are all keepers of the legacy left to us by Mr. Spock and all the members of all the crews of the USS Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy lived long, prospered, and got to see first-hand the impact of his life on the world. And what a wonderful impact it is. You are a very, very lucky man Leonard, more beloved than many world leaders or contemporary saints. And most fortunately for all us Trekkies of all generations, you will NEVER, EVER be missed.
I just came to this–a little later, perhaps, than I could have done, but now I’m here. I too grew up knowing about Spock and about the USS Enterprise. I too– But it almost feels self-aggrandizing, going on in this fashion with a constant chorus of “I, I, I.”
When Lauren Bacall died, when Robin Williams died, when Philip Seymour Hoffman died, it was sad and it was disheartening, but the shock didn’t keep hitting me over the head for weeks afterwards. In a sense, although I never had the chance to meet Leonard Nimoy, to speak to him, there is the sensation of having lost an old and very dear friend. I have tears burning in my eyes as I write this, although I have yet to let them fall–a legacy, it is almost certain, of the extreme self-control promoted by Star Trek’s most famous Vulcan.
It is useless now to touch on what I would have wanted to have happen, but it is nigh impossible to keep silent–as a writer, as a creative person, I would have been honored to have a chance, even if only the one chance, to work with this man.
And here my small memorial ends, because the grief and the tears threaten to spill over the barrier of that vaunted self-control.
Leonard Nimoy was an exceptional man for any time. Here’s the benchmark: He is best remembered for playing a character that, among his many firsts and uniquenesses, has been the butt of countless jokes. He lived his life under the microscope of celebrity in age when it seems that every six-year old has an internet-ready camera in his hip pocket, and despite all this, in the month that it’s been now since his passing, I have not yet encountered one snide remark about the man, or the way he lived his life. That is a testimony we should all aspire to.
Live long and prosper, Mr. Crusher!
It really is too bad and sad that @TheRealNimoy didn’t pass just a week or so sooner so he (hopefully) would have been included on the Academy Awards (Oscars) In Memoriam.or that the event didn’t happen until after 2/27/15
Seems Spock should have been by all rights immortalized along with Paul Walker both who were to me the world’s two most tragic losses since Robin Williams, PSH and James Gandolfini.
Now by the time of next year’s ceremony he most surely will be left off the list and that is a crying shame because he was as much a movie star as Walker or anyone in a hit franchise.