Personal: My love note to Spock, Mr. Nimoy and 'Star Trek'
In place of an author’s note, I have spilled all my thoughts into this sloppily written, messily edited and kinda late post. I’m prolly gonna embarrass myself. It’s been a hard year, people.
In the event you missed the news, Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock on the original Star Trek series, died on Friday, Feb. 27, at the age of 83.
I may have bawled at the news. Well … maybe some quiet sobbing.
This scene hurts even more now.
If I haven’t embarrassed myself enough in the past, I’ll just come out and make this clear: I’m deeply and emotionally attached to my fandoms. I love many series and franchises, but I claim few fandoms. Rurouni Kenshin helped me in high school and got me through my father’s death. DBSK pulled me through my hell years after college when I was alone and depressed. And Star Trek, my first true fandom, has done so much for me personally and for the world.
That sounds corny as hell. Let me explain.
I discovered Star Trek because my father was a big fan of the original series and of the spin-off, The Next Generation. (I’ll just go ahead and say it now: Patrick Stewart is not allowed to die. He can fight me on this.) For reasons I’m not about to unpack here, my feelings toward my father in the years since he passed have been complicated. But we both loved Star Trek. And that shared love is a memory I have that I can consistently look back on and have positive feelings about.
It’s fitting that the movie that got me into Star Trek - one of my dad’s favorite’s - was The Wrath of Khan. If you’ve been paying any attention to the memorials that have poured from Mr. Nimoy’s fans and friends, you’ll notice some words that are repeated quite often. “Friend” and “Human” to be specific.
Gifs from http://harlequinnade.tumblr.com
Spock was pretty special and he shined in that movie. Spock was the character that so many sci-fi nerds could relate to. He was the outsider. Being half-Vulcan and half-Human, he didn’t quite fit in either world. Despite that though, he was undeniably cool. He never attempted to hide his intelligence. He had a wit drier than desert sand.
He was fucking awesome.
And Leonard Nimoy was pretty awesome, too. While he sometimes felt trapped by the weight of his role of Spock, he also embraced the character as a part of himself. Spock’s iconic salute has its roots in Nimoy’s own Jewish ancestry. Spock inspired untold number of children to enter the sciences, but it was Mr. Nimoy who met them and encouraged them to succeed (even if he didn’t quite understand it). And it was Leonard Nimoy himself who penned a note - as Spock - to a little girl who felt that she would never fit in the United States because she had a black mother and white father.
I could go on. During the show’s original run, Leonard Nimoy pushed to ensure that his costars, specifically Nichelle Nichols and George Takai, were treated equally. In his later years, as a photographer, he shot a photo essay featuring heavy-set nude models to emphasize the beauty of all women.
We've lost a truly admirable person. And as the news of gross OU frat boys and instances of institutionalized racism by the police continue to make headlines, I worry that there are few of these type of people left.
And part of my sadness is that the death of Leonard Nimoy means that there is one fewer alumni of a show that changed the world.
I can admit, Star Trek, ESPECIALLY the original series is campy. The sets and props are laughable, the story lines are strange, and the effects are very outdated. But the show and its creators had ideals that are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago. When Gene Roddenberry envisioned the crew of the starship Enterprise, he pictured a team where race and gender did not matter.
So that meant, in the early 1960s in America, there was a TV show where women and people of color - including a black woman and a Asian man - were put in roles where they were leaders. The crew of the starship Enterprise were all educated, they were all officers and they were all developed characters with fleshed out back stories. I have to repeat this: Women and POC were on a mainstream television show in the 1960s and they weren't stereotypes!
There's no Trek fan who hasn't heard the story of the first time Whoopi Goldberg saw Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura on TV:
“Well, when I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mom, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”
It don't want to take this note any further off topic. I just want to make it clear how much I love this show and how much I - and every Trek fan - loved Leonard Nimoy. He embodied the ideals of Star Trek, both on-camera as Spock and behind the scenes. There is no one in the Trek universe who can fill his shoes. Rest in peace, Mr. Nimoy, and thank you.
(Now I've depressed myself. OTL)
In the event you missed the news, Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock on the original Star Trek series, died on Friday, Feb. 27, at the age of 83.
I may have bawled at the news. Well … maybe some quiet sobbing.
Click to viewThis scene hurts even more now.
If I haven’t embarrassed myself enough in the past, I’ll just come out and make this clear: I’m deeply and emotionally attached to my fandoms. I love many series and franchises, but I claim few fandoms. Rurouni Kenshin helped me in high school and got me through my father’s death. DBSK pulled me through my hell years after college when I was alone and depressed. And Star Trek, my first true fandom, has done so much for me personally and for the world.
That sounds corny as hell. Let me explain.
I discovered Star Trek because my father was a big fan of the original series and of the spin-off, The Next Generation. (I’ll just go ahead and say it now: Patrick Stewart is not allowed to die. He can fight me on this.) For reasons I’m not about to unpack here, my feelings toward my father in the years since he passed have been complicated. But we both loved Star Trek. And that shared love is a memory I have that I can consistently look back on and have positive feelings about.
It’s fitting that the movie that got me into Star Trek - one of my dad’s favorite’s - was The Wrath of Khan. If you’ve been paying any attention to the memorials that have poured from Mr. Nimoy’s fans and friends, you’ll notice some words that are repeated quite often. “Friend” and “Human” to be specific.
Gifs from http://harlequinnade.tumblr.com
Spock was pretty special and he shined in that movie. Spock was the character that so many sci-fi nerds could relate to. He was the outsider. Being half-Vulcan and half-Human, he didn’t quite fit in either world. Despite that though, he was undeniably cool. He never attempted to hide his intelligence. He had a wit drier than desert sand.
He was fucking awesome.
And Leonard Nimoy was pretty awesome, too. While he sometimes felt trapped by the weight of his role of Spock, he also embraced the character as a part of himself. Spock’s iconic salute has its roots in Nimoy’s own Jewish ancestry. Spock inspired untold number of children to enter the sciences, but it was Mr. Nimoy who met them and encouraged them to succeed (even if he didn’t quite understand it). And it was Leonard Nimoy himself who penned a note - as Spock - to a little girl who felt that she would never fit in the United States because she had a black mother and white father.
I could go on. During the show’s original run, Leonard Nimoy pushed to ensure that his costars, specifically Nichelle Nichols and George Takai, were treated equally. In his later years, as a photographer, he shot a photo essay featuring heavy-set nude models to emphasize the beauty of all women.
We've lost a truly admirable person. And as the news of gross OU frat boys and instances of institutionalized racism by the police continue to make headlines, I worry that there are few of these type of people left.
And part of my sadness is that the death of Leonard Nimoy means that there is one fewer alumni of a show that changed the world.
I can admit, Star Trek, ESPECIALLY the original series is campy. The sets and props are laughable, the story lines are strange, and the effects are very outdated. But the show and its creators had ideals that are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago. When Gene Roddenberry envisioned the crew of the starship Enterprise, he pictured a team where race and gender did not matter.
So that meant, in the early 1960s in America, there was a TV show where women and people of color - including a black woman and a Asian man - were put in roles where they were leaders. The crew of the starship Enterprise were all educated, they were all officers and they were all developed characters with fleshed out back stories. I have to repeat this: Women and POC were on a mainstream television show in the 1960s and they weren't stereotypes!
There's no Trek fan who hasn't heard the story of the first time Whoopi Goldberg saw Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura on TV:
“Well, when I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mom, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”
It don't want to take this note any further off topic. I just want to make it clear how much I love this show and how much I - and every Trek fan - loved Leonard Nimoy. He embodied the ideals of Star Trek, both on-camera as Spock and behind the scenes. There is no one in the Trek universe who can fill his shoes. Rest in peace, Mr. Nimoy, and thank you.
(Now I've depressed myself. OTL)