Redshirts Always Die
Fansided

Leonard Nimoy’s sci-fi career beyond Star Trek

By Mike Poteet

LOS ANGELES - AUGUST 9: Actors Leonard Nimoy (L) and William Shatner (R) promote the "Star Trek" 40th Anniversary on the TV Land network at the Four Seasons hotel August 9, 2006 in Los Angeles, California. Episodes of the show will air September 8. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES - AUGUST 9: Actors Leonard Nimoy (L) and William Shatner (R) promote the "Star Trek" 40th Anniversary on the TV Land network at the Four Seasons hotel August 9, 2006 in Los Angeles, California. Episodes of the show will air September 8. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) /
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Leonard Nimoy has his body snatched by “pod people”

Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy /

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!

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