Rest Long and Prosper: A Letter to Leonard Nimoy

Leonard,

For a man who portrayed no emotion on the set of Star Trek, I am surprised with the amount of emotion I feel for your passing.

I never met you, and I never will. But my life has been immensely impacted by your work. Your work in Star Trek, from both pilots (before Shatner even) to the most recent film, has been watched and studied by me since I was 12 years old. The success of my weekends and summers through Jr High were measured by how many episodes of Trek I watched. I would wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch the original series and stay up late at night watching the films (especially The Voyage Home) over and over again.

You where what made the show different. Any human character can be duplicated or replaced by another, but there was and has never been anyone quite like the character you created in Spock. A character who claimed to have no emotion, but when the chips where down displayed an immense amount of heart, hidden behind a vail of logic. Your performance and skill made that believable. You were one of the top factors in making Star Trek a credible show and the standard to which science fiction storytelling has been compared to ever since.

I regret that I will never meet you. I will never get to say thank you or show you my respect. You will always be remembered by me as one of the greats. An actor who made a legend of himself and brought greatness to everything he was in. While the work that you did can never be replicated, know that you have inspired many and that the world and the spaceways are a better place because of you. You will be missed.

Yours truly,

A fan

P.S. It would be logical if, when I beamed up to heaven, that we share a bottle of Romulan Ale and hang out.

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