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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).
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" (he would
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 originalpilot, 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 came in 1968—although today, one cannot replicate the electric
thrill of watching the episode "The Tholian Web" when
it first aired, observing the apparent death of Shatner's
Kirk and the elevation of Spock to the captaincy, and realizing that this might
be a permanent switch, due to Shatner's voluntary or
forced departure from the cast. And unlike an earlier episode, "The Galileo
Seven" (1967), which 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 it was inevitable that
Kirk would eventually be found alive and returned to the top spot—because
while he was not as talented as Spock, he had always looked comfortable in the
captain's chair, and Spock did not.
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 a complicated
and contrived story line that would undo everything that 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, 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. A
prominent television commercial showed that he could still be summoned back to
provide solid support for his old partner Shatner,
and in light of his 1983 appearance on Shatner's T.J. Hooker series, there are surely
plans to have Nimoy make a guest appearance on Boston Legal. And while I know nothing
about the embryonic plans for an eleventh Star
Trek movie, Spock is the one character from the previous series and films
that I would most like to see again—even though, sadly and unavoidably, he will
never be the star of the film.
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