Only a few days younger than William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy was born on March 26, and would also have turned 90 years old this year.
Like Shatner, Nimoy was a versatile actor with a long and impressive list of credits, but will always be best known for his work in Star Trek.
As we mark his birthday, let’s look at three “hands-on” contributions Leonard Nimoy made to Vulcan culture. We’ll also consider the most iconic or “epic” example of each.
These elements are now seen across the franchise’s 55-year history, but Nimoy was the first to do them all—and two of the three were his ideas originally!
Leonard Nimoy Creates a Pain in the Neck
Nimoy’s first contribution to Vulcan lore came early.
When he read the script for “The Enemy Within,” the fifth Star Trek episode produced, Nimoy was disappointed to find it called for Spock to sneak up behind the “evil,” duplicate Kirk in the engine room and hit him over the head with the butt of a phaser. He wrote in I Am Spock (1995), “it seemed more appropriate for the Old West than the twenty-third century” (p. 58).
Seeking a more civilized choice for his character, Nimoy postulated Vulcans could apply “special energy” (p. 58) to the proper pressure points and render an enemy unconscious. Aided by William Shatner and his “talent for fainting on cue” (p. 59), Nimoy sold episode director Leo Penn on the move, and the “Vulcan neck pinch” debuted.
Watch Leonard Nimoy himself tell the tale—and share his thoughts on what violence in entertainment is justified and what isn’t—in this interview on Canadian television from 1969.
According to the Memory Alpha wiki, 27 Vulcan neck pinches appeared on The Original Series, but apparently only once in Star Trek: The Animated Series, in the episode “Bem” (a casualty, perhaps, of Filmation’s limited animation style).
Over the course of the franchise, Vulcan characters other than Spock have employed it—and non-Vulcans have, too, including Michael Burnham in the pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery.
As for the most epic nerve pinch?
It’s hard to beat that first one. It must have been especially striking in 1966, when no one, either Kirk’s doppelganger or the audience, saw it coming! The phaser scream at the exact moment only heightens the moment’s drama.
But for many viewers, Star Trek fans or not, the most memorable Vulcan neck pinch must be the one Spock delivers to the rude punk rocker on a 20th-century San Francisco bus in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Incidentally, the finger-flipper who receives Spock’s fingers in return was played by Kirk Thatcher, who wrote and sang “I Hate You” for the film’s soundtrack.
Leonard Nimoy Stages a Meeting of the Minds
Leonard Nimoy didn’t create the Vulcan mind meld. As he wrote in I Am Spock, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry himself did, to replace “a dull, expository scene” in an early draft of “Dagger of the Mind” (p. 59).
But Nimoy did have to sell the concept on screen—and he certainly did.
Wanting “to emphasize the importance of touch to Vulcans” (p. 59), Nimoy slowly and deliberately placed his fingers around actor Morgan Woodward’s face, physically expressing the danger Spock risks to obtain the truth about the Tantalus Penal Colony from Simon Van Gelder’s “tortured mind.”
Using his hands, face, and voice in concert to convince the audience of the power in this “ancient Vulcan technique” proves Leonard Nimoy was a master of his craft, and remains one of his most exquisite performances as Spock.
Spock’s most famous mind meld is no doubt the one in which he transferred his katra, his “living spirit,” to Dr. McCoy during the climax of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But the hand audiences see touch McCoy’s face, in a close up insert, is not the hand of Nimoy!
In an interview from the 1990s preserved on a German fan page, Nimoy said:
"… For some reason or other … they had somebody else put their hand on McCoy’s face, and it was done in a very clumsy, indifferent kind of manner which I’ve never forgiven them for. I get angry about that kind of stuff. It’s a very important character issue, and whoever put their hand on McCoy’s face didn’t know that."
Fortunately, in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, now-director Leonard Nimoy ensured the Enterprise’s security cameras presented Admiral Kirk with the scene of this crucial mind meld as Nimoy had performed it!
Spock’s mind meld with McCoy is arguably his most important, since it made possible his eventual return to the land of the living. But the meld Nimoy performs most impressively must be his mind meld with the mother Horta in “The Devil in the Dark.”
In a lesser actor’s hands—literally—the scene would be laughable. But in the hands of Leonard Nimoy, it’s a compelling and haunting portrait of anger, grief, and resignation.
Leonard Nimoy Bestows a Blessing on the World
Long-time Star Trek fans have heard the story innumerable times, but it never fails to charm.
During the filming of “Amok Time,” Nimoy wanted to devise a formal, ritualistic gesture with which Vulcans would greet one another. Here’s the story of what happened as I first heard it, in the 1983 TV special, Leonard Nimoy: Star Trek Memories.
It’s a delightful story even in abbreviated form, but here is Nimoy telling it again, thirty years later, for the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project. In this longer telling, Nimoy situates the hand gesture more fully in its original, Jewish liturgical context.
Nimoy’s observation that “people don’t realize they’re blessing each other” when using the Vulcan salute took on extra poignance in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to rage.
Given the necessity for physical distancing, several commentators—in outlets ranging from StarTrek.com to CNET, and even in the U.S. Congress and the British government—suggested the Vulcan salute could and should replace handshakes, at least for the time being.
(See? We Star Trek fans have always been ahead of the curve!)
It’s hard to think of a more “epic” use of the Vulcan hand salute!
What a wonderful legacy for Leonard Nimoy to have left: Not only his magnificent work over five decades as Spock, but also a way for the world to safely signify best wishes for the blessings of “peace and long life!”
What’s your favorite neck pinch, mind meld, or Vulcan salute? Tell us about it on Twitter, on Facebook, or in the comments below!