Monday, March 9, 2015

Living Long and Prospering

I’m a Trekkie. I can’t help it. I grew up watching TOS with my dad. It was one of our bonding moments each week when The Enterprise showed up on screen and we’d hold our breath to find out which rerun was playing.

I watched a little of Next Generation to say that I love Captain Picard and loathed Wesley Crusher but not enough to have a favorite episode.

I watched the first couple of seasons of Voyager with my friends Marc and Kevin in college. It was a standing date. Marc would record (on VHS!!!) Voyager each week and Kevin and I would join him Sunday afternoon to watch. It was awesome. Perhaps it was the company of those two that makes Voyager my favorite Star Trek series.

Of course then there’s Enterprise. How can I not love that show? I mean, Sam Freaking Beckett was the first captain. Okay, so they call him Captain Archer but we all know that Scott Bakula is Sam Beckett and that’s all there is to it.

But of all the characters in all the series that ran over the last 40+ years, Spock was always, ALWAYS my favorite. He was fascinating. He was half human, half alien, which made him mysterious and so, so cool. He infuriated Doctor McCoy, which was so much fun. His cool eyebrow raise and calm exterior hid awesomely green blood and a capacity for loyalty that all humans should strive to achieve.

News of Leonard Nimoy’s death made me sad and yet watching all the snippets shown of him in the ensuing days has been enlightening. He lived long and he prospered. He had passions that he followed and he stood for ideals. He didn’t want to be known as ‘just’ Spock, at least not in the beginning but then he embraced the ideals of Spock and that’s kind of awesome.

When I first heard they were remaking or, rather rewriting the history of the TOS characters, I worried. I mean, how in the world could Zachary Quinto be expected to do justice to the character of Spock. Leonard Nimoy WAS Spock.

But because I can’t help my geekiness, I watched the movie and it was so much fun. Zachary was no Leonard, but he was fine.

Lately, with all the news about Leonard Nimoy’s life, Olivia has been trying to do the Vulcan hand sign. Her hands are weak, her fingers don’t like to separate the way. I tell her to keep trying but then remind her that it doesn’t really matter if she can’t do it. But I kind of love that she wants to.

Don’t we all kind of want to impart some of our own geekiness onto our kids? Isn’t that part of living long and prospering? No? Just me? Okay then. Oh well, live long and prosper anyway.

1 comment:

Julie said...

I'm proud to say that Riley said, "OH NO!" when I told her because she actually knows who he is! We watched the re-booted movies. Speaking of, did you know that Chris Pine plays the love interest in the 2nd Princess Diaries movie?