Leonard Nimoy, The Man Who Gave ‘Star Trek’ Its Heart
Leonard Nimoy, The Man Who Gave ‘Star Trek’ Its Heart – It’s only surrendering slightly to hyperbole to say that, for many people, Leonard Nimoy was Star Trek Certainly, Spock — the emotionless Vulcan who nonetheless acted as an everyman as often as he did a dispassionate outsider — was not only the role he was most often associated with, it is the longest-loved character inside the franchise, with Nimoy appearing both in the very first episode filmed — The Cage,” the unaired pilot shot in 1964 — and the most recent movie, 2013’s “Star Trek Into Darkness.”
Nimoy’s was the face, or at least the ears, most commonly associated with the franchise, and the origin point for many of its most well-loved concepts — the Vulcan salute and Vulcan nerve pinch, both created by Nimoy himself. Initially created as an alien out of necessity, to show that humans were not traveling through space alone in the far future, he quickly became a lens through which the show’s writers could explore humanity.
Leonard Nimoy passed away this morning from complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (CPD). He was 83.
