Tweet This
Maybe it was those Vulcan ears. But news of Leonard Nimoy’s passing automatically triggered memories of the 83 year-old actor’s most celebrated role as Mr. Spock --- both the Starship Enterprise’s first officer and science officer.
Try as he might to break free of being typecast as the dispassionate half human/half Vulcan we all came to know and love, audiences never let Nimoy forget that it was his role as Mr. Spock that continually got under their skins.
How could such a cool customer like Spock capture the hearts and minds of so many over the last half century?
The short answer may be that Mr. Spock knew how to handle stress and pressure under fire in a decidedly non-human fashion. Spock was never so cold to resemble the Borg, but he was arguably something of an space-based anti-hero to Trekkies the world over.
Leonard Nimoy (Spock) at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention 2011. Credit: Wikipedia
Yet something else about Spock had great appeal in Star Trek’s original 1960s-era television incarnation. Simply that in such a tumultuous era, when centuries of gender bias and misogyny were gradually being rectified by the feminist movement, both genders may have secretly found Spock’s ability to function above the societal fray refreshing.
After all, for a generation or more, a large part of the gender conversation has been about two things --- how men should handle the everyday stresses and whether they should publicly express their emotional vulnerabilities in ways that their great grandfathers would have never dreamed. Nimoy, as Mr. Spock, avoided all such societal noise.
Although some audiences may like real sweat on their action heroes, Spock evoked cool simply because he was so detached. And while, to my knowledge, the 1960s-era Spock never got the girl, he did teach us all a bit more about the virtues of logical thinking in a pinch --- a trait that’s sorely missing for most of us.
Does this mean that space generations of the far future will need to become dispassionate Spocks to deal with the weeks and months of inevitable boredom inherent in long-duration space travel?
That’s a distinct possibility, particularly on years-long space missions --- even to and from
And unless we get a leg up on travel approaching light speed, then Trekkian dreams of missions to “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations” will be moot anyway.
If we do get out among the stars, then we will need astronaut/space-farers of both sexes that are passionate enough about their work to get the whole “vision thing” but unflappable enough to think under extreme and wholly unexpected conditions. That is, in ways that can hardly be foreseen from our vantage point here on the inner edge of our solar system.
Such scenarios will likely require either humans who have been neurologically reprogrammed to handle stress in superhuman ways, or at least have new cognitive skill sets for handling life and death situations that currently no one can even imagine. After all, to paraphrase a tagline from another iconic film series, “in space, no one can hear you scream.” Thus, the ability to figuratively “take a breath” and “walk around the block” will be needed on voyages to the next star system over.
As for Nimoy, the actor, he was always one of my unsung heroes. As Spock, he had the uncanny ability to wring emotion from a character that except in rare moments never seemed to raise his voice above an even-tempered baritone.
But Spock’s signature farewell clinched the deal and made the character’s Vulcan culture so enduring. When he would intone “Live long and prosper,” there was no doubt that he meant every word.
Nimoy will be missed.
