“Taxi!”Leonard Nimoy says that he will no longer play Mr. Spock, and good luck to him with that.
Not that we doubt his good intentions, and they seem very good indeed:
“I want to get off the stage. Also, I don’t think it would be fair to Zachary Quinto. He’s a terrific actor, he looks the part, and it’s time to give him some space. And I’m very flattered the character will continue.”
Many a great actor has been less generous. And if it means no more tortured two-Spock storylines in future Star Trek movies, so much the better. God bless Nimoy and director J.J. Abrams, but the two Spocks meeting cute was certainly the weakest part of last year’s great Star Trek film revival. If that trend continued, the next film would have had the two Spocks time-traveling separately back to Central Park in 1938, only to find themselves fighting over the same cab.
One Spock going uptown and the other downtown, undoubtedly. “It is logical that you should drop me at the Cotton Club before continuing on to your destination at the site of the not-yet-constructed United Nations building,” etc, etc.
So this is better. Still, Nimoy has a long history of being dragged back into the Star Trek franchise, so who knows if he might turn up again in, say, 2020.
Nimoy turned 79 in March (he was born the same year as James Dean and Boris Yeltsin) and just told the Toronto Sun that he’s going to retire from the stage entirely to concentrate on photography. He also visited Vulcan — Vulcan, Canada — last weekend.
Well, best wishes to him, wherever the next cab takes him. He’s earned a smooth ride.
(News tip: Mr. Duffy)