27 Feb 2015
Sad news last weekend, with the passing of Leonard Nimoy, actor and legend.
In Mr Spock, we had a true cultural icon - a cornerstone for the dawn of a new era, born of the technological promises of the post war era - space travel , robots and laser weapons, mostly.
Leonard Nimoy first played an alien in Zombies Of The Stratosphere, but it was as the character Spock in the original Star Trek series that he became an icon, receiving three Emmy nominations, and inspiring many with his role as the character who was eternally baffled by human emotions.
Despite a wide variey of later roles, he was and remains indelibly Spock - in an attempt to distance himself, his first biography was titled 'I Am Not Spock', but his second volume in 1995 was called 'I Am Spock'.
It would be almost too easy to launch into a piece extolling the virtues of Star Trek, an eye-opening , groundbreaking show - it was the first tv show to feature an interracial kiss, and it introduced themes of morality and philosophy into popular 'mainstream culture'.
That said, its initial BBC screenings were somewhat random, with each series being televised on different days at different times. Some episodes were withdrawn entirely for displays of 'sadism' and suchlike! Heavens Above!
I watched very little t.v. in my youth (in fairness, there wasn't a lot on t.v. back then, and whilst an American sci - fi show with its exotic denizens exerted a powerful influence on me, it was an alien artefact, as distant from me as the worlds it featured).
As a wee lad in school in the windswept wilds of Scotland, I remember proudly wearing my cut-out Spock mask (though which brand of cereal it was from eludes me) and rampaging around the playground with my pals. It was a hierarchy thing too, with almost everybody wanting to be Captain Kirk - but I always wanted to be Spock, as I identified with the weird alien loner.
My family moved (relocated) a lot and dysfunctional was my middle name, so the 'outsider' thing stuck.
Anyway, I digress...
Even across the globe in the playgrounds of an obscure school in the Scottish lowlands, Leonard Nimoy was hugely influential !
A true icon for our times
May he rest in peace.
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