As Star Trek fans remember Leonard Nimoy on what would have been his 90th birthday, they will—quite logically—remember his many magnificent performances as Mr. Spock.
But even had Nimoy never played the half-Vulcan, half-human Enterprise science officer, he’d still likely be more than familiar to science fiction fans.
Let’s celebrate the birthday of Leonard Nimoy by taking a look at the treks he took—some classic, others less so, but all notable—in other science fiction film and television.
Leonard Nimoy wants to shift the orbit of this planet
One of Leonard Nimoy’s earliest Hollywood roles was Narab, in the gloriously and goofily named 1952 12-part Republic serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.
Narab wasn’t a large part. Nimoy received ninth billing in the credits. And by no stretch of even the most active imagination is this alien henchman one of his great performances.
Narab’s high point seems to be his big death scene in the serial’s last chapter, which you can watch below, starting at 9:44:
Even so, it’s amusing to see Nimoy playing a Martian because Gene Roddenberry originally conceived Spock as “probably half Martian.” And like the Vulcans Roddenberry ultimately created, these Martians claim to be “much further advanced in intelligence and scientific achievements than you Earthmen,” as their leader says.
The zombies’ plan to explode an H-bomb and bring Mars into Earth’s orbit around the Sun also coincidentally anticipates the scientific implausibility on which the plot of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan hangs.
(Stay tuned: This won’t be the last time we see parallels between Nimoy’s Star Trek and non-Star Trek roles!)
Leonard Nimoy (barely) enters The Twilight Zone
No overview of Leonard Nimoy in science fiction can overlook his appearance, however brief, in the classic anthology series The Twilight Zone.
Unlike his Star Trek co-stars William Shatner and George Takei, Nimoy never had a major role in a Twilight Zone story. In the 1961 episode “A Quality of Mercy,” he plays a U.S. soldier in World War II named Hansen, but he isn’t the episode’s star. That honor went to Dean Stockwell—yes, who later played Al the hologram opposite future Star Trek: Enterprise star Scott Bakula’s Dr. Sam Beckett on Quantum Leap.
(It’s always fun to play Six Degrees of Star Trek!)
You’ll get a sense of the episode’s plot in this skillfully edited eight-minute synopsis from YouTube user reggie. (Nimoy is the solider on the field phone who, near the video’s end, announces the bombing of Hiroshima.)
With Stockwell spending much of his screen time in Japanese makeup and attempting a Japanese accent, “A Quality of Mercy” hasn’t aged well. It may be just as well Leonard Nimoy wasn’t the lead. On the other hand, as Emily Todd VanDerWerff wrote for The A.V. Club:
"… it’s still a surprisingly stark and beautiful portrayal of the mindset of [writer Rod] Serling and those who agreed with him about the cost of war, and it offers at its core an obvious, if wrenching thought: The life you end may be your own."
Leonard Nimoy travels three times to The Outer Limits
Although he didn’t land a starring role in The Twilight Zone, Leonard Nimoy did headline an installment of the 1960s’ other great science fiction anthology TV series, The Outer Limits.
In the 1964 episode “I, Robot” (no relation to the Isaac Asimov book of the same title, and preceded, serendipitously enough, by an episode titled “Wolf 359”), Nimoy portrays newspaper reporter Judson Ellis. He is covering the trial of a robot, Adam, accused of killing his own creator.
(Machines turning on their makers? That would never happen in Star Trek! Am I right, M-5? Nomad? V’Ger? Uh, guys…?)
Nimoy is clearly enjoying his role.
The way he plays Ellis reminds me more than a little of reporter E.K. Hornbeck (a fictionalized H.L. Mencken) in the classic courtroom drama Inherit the Wind: cynical and skeptical, wise in the ways of the world, eager to drum up publicity, but also witty, gregarious, and thoughtful.
(Six Degrees of Star Trek time again: Recognize the woman Nimoy is acting with in that scene? She is Marianna Hill, who played Dr. Helen Noel in “Dagger of the Mind.” And for good measure, “I, Robot” also features John Hoyt, who played Enterprise CMO Dr. Philip Boyce in “The Cage.”)
When Showtime revived The Outer Limits three decades later, Nimoy starred in a remake of “I, Robot” directed by his son, Adam. This time around, he played Adam the robot’s lawyer.
If YouTube has any clips from this episode, I, alas, cannot find them. But you can watch the whole episode at Dailymotion. (And I recommend you do!)
Adam Nimoy gave the Fatherly blog this glimpse of what working with his famous dad behind the scenes was like:
"It was a good balance of synergy between us … When he had notes to give me while we were on set, he was very respectful and would talk to me in private instead of in front the whole crew … I wanted his feedback and I welcomed it because he had a voluminous amount of experience …"
Nimoy’s third Outer Limits appearance was, chronologically, his first. He was in the 1960 episode “Production and Decay of Strange Particles” (along with Joseph Ruskin, who played master thrall Galt in “The Gamesters of Triskelion.” as well as various aliens in later Star Trek series).
A Nimoy character rushing into a radiation-filled chamber to handle dangerous materials? Eerily prescient of Spock’s demise in Star Trek II, don’t you think? (Yeah, I really do think…!)
Leonard Nimoy has his body snatched by “pod people”
In 1978, Leonard Nimoy starred as psychiatrist Dr. David Kibner in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a remake of the 1956 horror classic.
A popular and successful self-help expert, Kibner is unfortunately an early victim of alien spores that fall to Earth. And unlike the spores on Omicron Ceti III in Star Trek’s “This Side of Paradise,” these extraterrestrial pollinators have no interest in making their human hosts hale, hearty, or happy.
In this scene, the spore-created and -controlled duplicate of Dr. Kibner—one of the so-called “pod people”—reveals the spores’ origin and motivation to a frightened Matthew (Donald Sutherland) and Elizabeth (Brooke Adams).
For her part, New York Times film critic Janet Maslin enjoyed this “dazzling remake,” but didn’t think much of Leonard Nimoy in it. “Leonard Nimoy isn’t right for the role,” she complained in her review; “he isn’t funny enough. And, besides, in a movie like this it’s much too easy to figure out which side he’s on.”
But the film’s director, Philip Kaufman, shared a different take on Nimoy’s performance with The Hollywood Reporter on the occasion of the film’s 40th anniversary:
"Leonard Nimoy’s character … undergoes a certain kind of transformation and there’s a tragedy in that."
If you ask me, the real tragedy is that Dr. Kibner, unlike Spock during his brush with alien spores, didn’t get to experience, for once in his life, being truly happy. Nor did Dr. Kibner get to enjoy swinging from a tree branch under the adoring gaze of the lovely and talented Ms. Jill Ireland!
Leonard Nimoy goes in search of the unexplained (and scary!)
In the 1954 sci-fi creature feature Them!, Leonard Nimoy had an even smaller part than he had in Zombies of the Stratosphere. He played an unnamed officer serving in what seems to be an Army “X-Files” outfit investigating all kinds of “strange phenomena,” including “flying saucers.”
(Wondering about those sweet and strange aromas on the department’s big board? Them! is all about giant, mutant ants created by nuclear radiation. So where there are sweet and strange aromas—perhaps not unlike those Captain Kirk smells in “Obsession”—freakish insects are sure to follow.)
It’s not a very consequential role, but it did presage Nimoy’s tenure (1976-1982) as host of the documentary series In Search of… .
In each episode, Nimoy guided viewers on a tour of such enduring, unexplained mysteries as Bigfoot, Atlantis, the fate of Amelia Earhart, ESP, the Loch Ness Monster, and more. The show wasn’t science fiction per se, but it usually didn’t qualify as science fact either. as each installment’s “disclaimer” during the introduction implied.
I vividly remember watching In Search of… on a regular basis as a kid, long before I ever saw my first Star Trek episode.
Usually, I found the topics fascinating (as a certain Vulcan science officer might say). Once, I even made my own deck of ESP cards to see if I could pass the kind of psychic tests I’d seen on the show. Alas, I could not. Unlike Elizabeth Dehner or Gary Mitchell, my “esper rating” must be low indeed.
But one In Search of… episode traumatized me: the 1977 show on “Killer Bees.” This one was grounded in scientific fact—frightening fact. After watching it, I was convinced I’d walk right into a swarm of Africanized honey bees on my way home from school some day! Thanks for the nightmares, Leonard Nimoy!
Fun fact: When The History Channel revived In Search of… a few years back, it tapped Zachary Quinto, who followed in Leonard Nimoy’s footsteps as Spock, to follow in his footsteps here, as well.
Leonard Nimoy exists on the fringe
In the classic Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Leonard Nimoy acted in a story about parallel universes. Decades later, he did so again over several episodes of creator J.J. Abrams’ cult favorite series Fringe (2008-2013).
Nimoy played Dr. William Bell, the megarich founder and CEO of research and tech behemoth Massive Dynamic. In Bell’s alternate universe, Massive Dynamic appears to be headquartered in the World Trade Center, which survived the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
(I remember this reveal causing quite a stir when it first aired in 2009!)
William Bell sacrificed himself to save his former research partner Walter Bishop and Olivia Dunham in Fringe’s second season.
But after returning in an animated episode in the third season, Bell appeared again in the fourth and became the series’ “big bad.” He wanted to to destroy both his own universe and the one in Bishop lived.
It’s not hard to see why this character appealed to Nimoy. The role offered chances to explore morality and philosophy, and an opportunity to play against type as a villain.
What thespian can resist the chance to “play God”?
A final footnote on Fringe: I can’t imagine Fringe fans who also know Star Trek lore have failed to notice the name of William Bell’s cargo freighter, the SS Talos, echoes the name of the very first “strange new world” ever seen in Star Trek, Talos IV.
Leonard Nimoy as the voice of science fiction
Leonard Nimoy started voice acting as Spock in Star Trek: The Animated Series, but he did more of it as his career progressed, including in several genre projects.
He voiced Galvatron in the 1986 Transformers movie, for instance, and Mr. Moundshroud in The Halloween Tree (1993), a film narrated by and based on the works of science fiction Grand Master Ray Bradbury.
Around the turn of this century, Nimoy also voiced animated versions of himself in episodes of creator Matt Groening’s series The Simpsons and Futurama. To be strictly accurate, he voiced his own head in the latter series.
Even as only his head, Nimoy brought gravitas!
Around the same time, Nimoy and his fellow Star Trek alumnus John de Lancie formed Alien Voices, an audio theater company dedicated to dramatizing classic science fiction by the likes of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Unfortunately, judging from its dormant Facebook page, Alien Voices appears to have died in 2015 along with Nimoy.
But the voice and face of Leonard Nimoy live on for science fiction fans.
His work as Spock remains his most enduring contribution the genre.
Even so, from Zombies of the Stratosphere to Fringe, he’ll forever be associated with speculative entertainment, a genre in which, as his most famous character was fond of saying, “There are always possibilities.”
What’s your favorite science fiction performance from Leonard Nimoy outside of Star Trek? Let us know on Twitter, on Facebook, or in the comments below!