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Vale: Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy, best known as Mr. Spock of Star Trek, has died, aged 83.

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US actor Leonard Nimoy, best known as the half-alien, half-human Mr. Spock of Star Trek, has died, aged 83.

He died at home of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a condition he attributed to the smoking he gave up 30 years earlier.

As science officer of the starship Enterprise, Spock became an iconic television character on the TV series that ended its three-year run in 1969. He received three successive Emmy nominations for his role.

Nimoy’s Spock became a cultural touchstone, a living representative of the scientific method and a voice of pure reason with phrases such as, “Highly illogical.”

“Spock was a character whose time had come,” Nimoy later wrote. “He represented a practical, reasoning voice in a period of dissension and chaos.”

Trekkies everywhere greeted each other with Nimoy’s “Vulcan salute” – a gesture he adapted from one he had seen at an Orthodox synagogue when he was a boy.

Nimoy also appeared in Star Trek feature films and directed six movies.

He also was Spock in feature films, including: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

He later became Spock Prime, a Mr. Spock who inhabited an alternate universe in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. He did a cameo performance as the same character in Star Trek Into Darkness.

He went on to direct the 1987 comedy Three Men and a Baby and the 1988 drama The Good Mother.

Other television credits included Dragnet, Bonanza, Dr. Kildare, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Rawhide, The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables, The Outer Limits, The Virginian, Get Smart, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible and A Woman Called Golda.

Most recently, he appeared on Fringe as maniacal, genius professor William Bell, and he voiced Spock for a 2012 episode of The Big Bang Theory.

In addition to his work on In Search Of… Nimoy lent his resonant, intelligent voice to a variety of films, TV projects and documentaries, including Ancient Mysteries. There were Broadway performances and even quirky music projects.

But to millions of sci-fi and television fans the world over he is indelibly, utterly, Spock.

“My folks came to the U.S. as immigrants,” he said in a 2012 speech at Boston University. “They were aliens, and then became citizens. I was born in Boston a citizen, and then I went to Hollywood and became an alien.”

Live long and prosper…

UPDATE: ELEVEN screens Star Trek: The Motion Picture at 8:30pm tonight and TEN screens Star Trek (2009) at 10pm Sunday.

Source: LA Times, Variety.

30 Responses

  1. Good idea: screening Star Trek in memoriam
    Bad idea: advertising it for 8:30… but not starting it on time… letting IACGMOOH run long in an effort for viewers to sample it who’ve turned over to watch Star Trek.
    It’s programming like that that makes people not like you. And in the end doesn’t work, because people who might’ve tuned in for Star Trek (like us) end up getting annoyed and popping on a dvd instead.

  2. The remaining original cast members are William “Kirk” Shatner and Nichelle “Uhura” Nicholls, with Walter “Chekov” Koenig, who joined in the second season. An additional sadness is that Nimoy did not survive to the fiftieth anniversary of “Star Trek”

  3. He was also loved as the voice of Galvatron in the 1986 animated Transformers movie which Michael Bay respectfully honoured by having him voice Sentinel Prime in Transformers : Dark Of The Moon (providing a delicious twist which was a rare treat in the otherwise awful series).
    We recently bought the blu-ray boxset of the original Star Trek series and the remaster is absolutely stunning so we are enjoying the origins of his character. Well, well worth picking up. RIP and thanks, Leonard.

          1. DaveM, and Ten wonder why they lose their audience, they advertise Star Trek the motion picture to attract an audience, play big brother in the jungle, it’s called misleading advertising …..

  4. There are actors and actors, Leonard Nimoy was an extraordinary actor. T’Ish hokni’es kwi’shoret (the consciousness calling to you from space Mr Spock) Go well LN, you will be missed

  5. Not to forget his Simpsons cameos in Marge vs the Monorail and The Springfield Files…”The following story of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. They’re all lies. But they’re entertaining lies, and in the end, isn’t that the real truth? The answer …is no.”

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