(Originally published on TheOdyssey.com on Sept. 6, 2016)
It has now been over a year since Leonard Nimoy passed away, but his legacy continues to resonate in our hearts just as strongly today as it ever has. The way Leonard portrayed Spock seems to encapsulate all the good things that Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s creator, envisioned for the future. Nimoy helped keep Star Trek going — not just through the original series and its subsequent movies, but through the spin-off series and even the new rebooted films. There’s just something about Spock that appeals to everyone, and a lot of that is because Leonard put so much of himself into the part.
As Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy so liked to point out, Spock was the only non-human member of the starship Enterprise. He was almost completely devoid of emotion and was always very matter-of-fact. While you would think that this would make him less relate-able or even less likable, it has the opposite effect. The more time we spend with Spock, the more time we grow to love who he is. Even his good friend James T. Kirk said of him, “Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most…human.” He may be half-Vulcan, but Spock still goes through many of the same personal battles that we do. Through his own adventures, we learn things about him and about ourselves. We can start to learn what it means to be human.
One of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek series is “Amok Time.” In it, Spock must journey back to his home planet of Vulcan to take part in a sacred ritual preceding marriage. It’s here that we learn that our unemotional science officer has people he considers to be close friends. He asks Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy to accompany him. You can see that their presence alone seems to be a comfort to him, even if he doesn’t vocalize it. By the episode’s end, Spock returns to the Enterprise thinking he has killed his captain and best friend in a duel. His reaction is one of such elated happiness that McCoy remarks, “You can’t tell me that when you first saw Jim alive that you weren’t on the verge of giving us an emotional scene that would have brought the house down.” We see from Spock just how important friendships can be.
Spock was a very dutiful and responsible first officer aboard the Enterprise. It would be quite the understatement to say that he was efficient. Spock knew and respected what the more important things in life were. He was not above laying down his own life in order to save others. In fact, that’s just what he did in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” In order to escape the clutches of the titular villain, Spock seals himself in the ship’s engine room which is being flooded with radiation in order to fix the damaged warp drive. He succeeds, allowing the Enterprise and her crew to escape from harm. There was a cost, though, and Spock reminded Kirk just before he died that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.”
We not only see lessons from Spock on the TV show but in real life as well. In 1968, a biracial girl was being persecuted for being a “half-breed.” She wrote to Leonard Nimoy, knowing that the character of Spock was a “Half-breed” being half human and half Vulcan. Leonard wrote her back, encouraging her and showing her some much-needed love. In part of the letter, he said to her, “Spock understands the trauma of human existence, for he is not home with earthmen or Vulcan; he can function only in the fabricated and neatly ordered society of the Enterprise. There, he knows who he is; he relates to his role very specifically, and this gives him a kind of cool.” Leonard has encouraged many to become scientists, doctors, and astronauts. He encourages us to think, to use logic.
As life goes on, and we continue to live it, we can take with us what we have been given by Leonard Nimoy. While he is not with us physically anymore, he lives on in his work and in the Star Trek legacy. Though we may miss him still, and wish he were here to show and teach us more, our lives are blessed through what we already have of him. As Spock once said, “Loss of life is to be mourned, but only if the life was wasted.”
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