Simply fascinating Mr. Spock

For the Love of Spock

When Leonard Nimoy passed away last year, it marked the demise of the original Mr. Spock. But he also opened a window for his son, Adam, to direct this tribute to his father and to his Vulcan alter ego. Here are six things we learned from this Spockumentary. ❚ Nimoy’s parents weren’t very supportive of his acting career. He sold vacuum cleaners to finance a move to California, and while looking for parts he drove a cab, worked at an ice cream parlour, managed apartment buildings and sold aquariums to doctors’ offices. ❚ Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had Nimoy in mind for the part of Spock, and rather than audition the actor, he tried to sell him on it. Nimoy remembers thinking: “If I keep my mouth shut I might get this job.” ❚ In the first-season episode The Corbomite Maneuver, Nimoy was told by director Joseph Sargent to react to a huge alien ship “as something that’s a curiosity rather than a threat.” In the next take, Nimoy raised an eyebrow and pronounced the vessel “Fascinating.” It became an enduring Spock-ism. ❚ He was not a fan of 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. (He wasn’t alone.) “Making that first movie was very dispiriting,” he says in an interview. “Very depressing. We had a bad script. We did our best.” He only agreed to appear in the film after Paramount settled a lawsuit for using his image without compensating him. ❚ Nimoy fell and broke his nose while filming the 2009 reboot Star Trek. Says director J. J. Abrams: “When you’ve wounded Spock you just want to kill yourself.” But rather than stop shooting, Nimoy insisted they go ahead. ❚ Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame does a spot-on James T. Kirk impression. ΩΩ Ω