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RIP Leonard Nimoy

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I clearly remember the saddest moment of my childhood.
I had just turned nine. My friends and I were packed into a Calgary movie theatre to watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
It was easily the most amazing thing I had seen. The story, the special effects. Ah-maze-ing! To this day it remains not only THE Star Trek film, but just a damn good movie.
And then it happened. In the final act of the film, Spock, my favorite Trek character, the one I identified with the most, died.
True, he died the most heroic of movie deaths, but he died nonetheless.
I was crushed.
The idea that heroes died wasn’t something that had really occurred to me before. But there it was. Spock was dead. Heroes die. Sometimes they have to die for the sake of their friends.
These were big ideas for my little brain to wrestle with. To this day, I tear up at that death scene and I’ve never forgotten it.
That punch-in-the-gut moment came rushing back Friday afternoon with the news that Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock since the first Star Trek pilot episode, passed away.
For me, like many who grew up watching the adventures of the Enterprise and her crew, Star Trek was more than just another TV show. It was a classroom that taught us about big ideas, about the world we lived in, about how to relate to other people and the importance of striving to do great things.
It also taught us that it was OK to be different. As a odd ball kid who was more at home reading than playing in the park, who often felt like an outsider, Nimoy’s portrayal of Spock was instructive.
Spock was a weirdo on that crew. The most alien of the bunch. The ultimate outsider. But his actions, driven by his intelligence and heart (even if he expressed it in cool, logical terms) is what made him great and won the unswerving loyalty of his friends.
Spock’s use of science, his ability to analyze data and his reliance on facts to solve problems had a lasting impact on me.
On a very personal level Star Trek taught me about friendship. That core group of Spock, Kirk and McCoy, were about as different as three people could be. They came from radically different backgrounds, had vastly different, usually conflicting, points of view about any given situation.
But they were always together. Forever loyal to each other, even when in the midst of a heated conflict. Even at their worst moments, they were at each others’ sides. That’s what friendship is supposed to be, isn’t it? Sticking together, through the worst of it, no matter what. Real friends never abandon each other. Ever.
This might all sound simplistic or like common sense, but in our popular culture there are very few examples of entertainment that can impart those kinds of lessons.
Even the new, flasher, updated Star Trek reboot is unable to capture that feeling which was so ably presented by Nimoy and his co-cast.
So Spock is dead, for real this time. No bringing him back, save for in re-runs. But that means he’ll keep teaching kids value lessons, even though he has boldly gone where we will all end up going.

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