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Acknowledgements
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(1931– ). American actor and director.
Provided
voice for: Star Trek (animated tv series) (1973-1975); Star Trek:
Strategic Operations Simulator (video game) (1983); Transformers: The
Movie (Nelson Shin 1986); Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Enhanced (video
game) (1992); The Halloween Tree (Mario Piluso 1993); Lights: The
Miracle of Chanukah (animated short) (1993); "Marge vs. the
Monorail" (1993), "The Springfield Files" (1997, episodes of The
Simpsons; The Pagemaster (Pixote Hunt, Maurice Hunt, and Joe
Johnston 1994); Star Trek: Judgment Rites (video game) (1994);
"Where No Duckman Has Gone Before" (1997), episode of Duckman;
Armageddon: Target Earth (documentary; narrator) (1998); Invasion:
America (Dan Faucett 1998); "Space Pilot 3000" (1999),
"Where No Fan Has Gone Before" (2002), episodes of Futurama;
Seaman (video game) (1999); Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists
(Gordon Hunt and Evan Ricks 2000); Atlantis: The Los Empire (Gary
Trousdale and Kirk Wise 2001); Atlantis: The Lost Empire (video game)
(2001); Civilization IV (video game) (2005); Land of the Lost (Brad
Silberling 2009); Kingdom Hearts: The Lost Empire (video game) (2009);
Star Trek Online (video game) (2009); Transformers: Dark of the
Moon (Michael BAY 2011).
Acted in
and directed: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984); Star Trek
IV: The Voyage Home (1986).
Directed:
"Death on a Barge," episode of Night Gallery (1972);
"The Triangle" (1982), episode of The Powers of Matthew Star.
Produced:
Deadly Games (tv series) (1995-1996).
Prior to Star Trek, Nimoy had worked
steadily but unobtrusively for fifteen years, including some performances in
science fiction film and television that have been noticed only because of his
later celebrity. Perhaps the most interesting of these is his wise-cracking
reporter in an episode of The Outer Limits, "I, Robot,"
demonstrating a versatility he would rarely be asked to display during his
later career. (He would also take on the better, and more characteristic, role
of the compassionate lawyer defending the maligned robot in the 1995 remake of
the episode.) Having encountered Gene
RODDENBERRY while filming an
episode of The Lieutenant (1963-1964), he was recruited to appear in his
next series, Star Trek. However, in the original pilot, Spock was only a
minor supporting role, an odd-looking alien with funny ears designed to add an
air of the exotic to the Enterprise crew; but NBC's displeasure with
Majel Barrett RODDENBERRY's
female second-in-command elevated Nimoy to that position in the second pilot
and also foregrounded his half-Vulcan heritage of suppressed emotion.
Thoughtfully and passionately, Nimoy seized upon the role, developing
distinctive elements of Vulcan culture like the nerve-pinch (reportedly as a
device to keep him away from fisticuffs) and the Vulcan hand salute (originally
a Jewish gesture) and insisting upon the integrity of the character even during
the reign of insensitive third-season producer Fred FREIBERGER.
The highlight of his Star Trek careercame
in the 1968 episode "The Tholian Web," which now lacks the power of its initial
airing because, now, viewers know immediately that the death of Shatner's Kirk,
and the elevation of Spock to the captaincy, are only temporary, and not a
prelude to a permanent casting change. But unlike an earlier episode, "The
Galileo Seven" (1967), which had disingenuously endeavored to argue that
Spock was unfit for command, he did perfectly fine in that role in "The
Tholian Web," capably dealing with the alien menace at hand. But even
Nimoy's greatest fans would probably concede the appropriateness of ultimately
finding Kirk alive and returning him to commanding the Enterprise; for
clearly, while he was not as talented as Spock, he had always looked
comfortable in the captain's chair, and Spock never really did.
After the cancellation of Star Trek,
Nimoy smoothly transitioned into a regular role in Mission:
Impossible, replacing Martin LANDAU
(another brilliant but reticent Jewish actor) as the team's specialist in disguises.
In a few episodes, one can observe him attempting to bring some depth and
complexity to the character of Paris, but the character was written as a
cipher, and Nimoy grew bored with the show and left after two seasons.
(Possibly, as a perpetual outsider, he also did not much appreciate the show's
neocolonialist approach to dealing with world problems.) During the 1970s,
along with appearances in television movies, he became the host of the
paranormal documentary series In Search Of .... Now, many science
fiction performers have earned extra paychecks by narrating or hosting
documentaries about UFOs, Bigfoot, asteroid impacts, and so on, but Nimoy
uniquely cared about what he was doing; he actively participated in
research and preparation for series episodes, as if he actually believed that
the show might uncover valuable new data and contribute to the world's
understanding of unusual phenomena, and he may have also enjoyed the unusual
experience of being in charge of a project. Later, however, as the series began
to run out of subjects and its inefficacy became more apparent, Nimoy visibly
lost interest in the series and was probably relieved when it was finally
cancelled.
Nimoy originally resisted the notion of
reprising the character of Spock, declining to participate in the planned
television revival of Star Trek and, initially, the planned feature film
that replaced it. He was finally lured back on board the Enterprise, I
suspect, not so much by a larger paycheck but by script revisions that actually
gave him something to do with the part. Thus, while other series actors were
content to rediscover their old mannerisms, Nimoy was striving to actually act
in the resulting film, so that buried within the somnabulating pomposity of Star
Trek: The Motion Picture is an interesting 20-minute movie about Spock, his
failure to achieve a complete Vulcan lack of emotion, and his ultimate
acceptance of his human heritage. Nimoy also figures in the film's most
impressive scene, as a spacesuited Spock flies out on a lonely mission to
investigate the immense and mysterious alien spacecraft. With nothing more to
do with the character, Nimoy arranged for Spock to be killed off in Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but the unexpected success of that second film
inspired great pressure to bring Spock back—pressure that Nimoy eventually
succumbed to in exchange for the opportunity to direct the third Star Trek
film. His work on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was merely
competent, given the necessity of wrestling with a complicated and contrived
story line in order to undo everything that had occurred in the second film and
restore the Star Trek universe to its previous condition, but Star
Trek IV: The Voyage Home was another story—a brilliant film that finally
recaptured the humor and charm of the original series while unfolding an
evocative ecological drama about the future revival of the extinct humpback
whale. The unassuming Nimoy suddenly seemed poised to become a great science
fiction film director, but he unwisely steered clear of the genre in the
directing assignments he chose, and after one great success (Three Men and a
Baby [1987]) and one egregious failure (The Good Mother [1988]) his
directing career essentially came to an end, though he did garner a few more unheralded
assignments in film and television.
After doing Spock for two more films and a
two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Nimoy has only
worked sporadically as an actor and seems to be keeping himself busy mainly
with undemanding voiceover assignments, which have continued to the present. But
recognizing a need to make some substantive connection between the original
series and his Star Trek reboot, J. J. ABRAMS wisely recruited Nimoy to
put on his Vulcan ears one more time and, in the role of elder statesman, to
effectively give his blessing to a next generation of Star Trek that would
prove worth watching. But needless to say, despite his now-legendary stature,
he was not the star of the film but only, and as always, played a supporting role.
And did it very well.
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