[moron4hire]

I don't know why, but that one got me. Maybe it's leftover grief from all the friends and family I lost last year. I'm not one to engage in celebrity worship. Indeed, I think it's a bit of a problem in our modern culture. But Nimoy and the character of Spock were both very inspiring. That has to count for something.

[TeMPOraL]

I'm also not for celebrity worship. But I know that Star Trek formed me as a person, it's not just responsible for my interest in technology, it made me the very person I am now, taught me to always solve things peacefully, made me believe in the future of prosperity through science and good parts of human nature. I feel grief now, and I know I will feel the same when Kirk, Picard and other of my childhood role models shall depart.

Farewell Spock. It's for us who are left to work towards the bright future you shown us.

[moron4hire]

TNG was the series that was on when I was a kid, so my attachments are much more oriented there. But I understand it completely. My favorite parts were always when Geordi and Data worked together to come up with a solution to a seemingly impossible problem.

And as I grew up, I started seeing all of the parts of the show: the way good leadership inspires the best in people, and how good leadership is about creating a sense of unity rather than being a God-like character demanding worship. How working together in diverse groups and hearing input from everyone can find solutions no one person would have found on their own. How saving the day doesn't have to be about violence, it can be about engineering, or just being there for someone. That the search for truth and knowledge is often the best motivation for anything.

It made me want to be the one who made the things and fixed the other things and save the day because of it. I call it "Wanting to Be the Guy". The go-to person. The one that can be counted on.

The entire run of Star Trek series' has a lot of flaws. I recently rewatched the first season of TNG with my wife: boy howdy does it stink. But I think a lot of that has more to do with the economics of serial television. The team that put together Star Trek gave themselves a phenomenal undertaking. And I think they covered a huge range of the human condition in an incredibly tasteful, nuanced manner. That's extremely commendable.

[TeMPOraL]

I understand.

I personally haven't even watched the whole TOS. TNG was on when I was a kid as well, and this is the best and I think most true to the spirit part of the show.

But then the Kirk's crew were part of the show's legacy, so I grew connected to them as well.

> the way good leadership inspires the best in people, and how good leadership is about creating a sense of unity rather than being a God-like character demanding worship. How working together in diverse groups and hearing input from everyone can find solutions no one person would have found on their own. How saving the day doesn't have to be about violence, it can be about engineering, or just being there for someone. That the search for truth and knowledge is often the best motivation for anything.

Couldn't have said it better myself. This show was the embodiment of benefits of cooperation. It inspired me not only to love science and technology, but first and foremost to be the best person I can. To love the truth, to love the fellow men with whom I'm stuck together on the same piece of rock orbiting a giant gas ball. To always seek peace and progress. To stay helpful, and stay curious.

> The entire run of Star Trek series' has a lot of flaws. I recently rewatched the first season of TNG with my wife: boy howdy does it stink. But I think a lot of that has more to do with the economics of serial television. The team that put together Star Trek gave themselves a phenomenal undertaking. And I think they covered a huge range of the human condition in an incredibly tasteful, nuanced manner. That's extremely commendable.

True, it's hard to rewatch old series now, they just feel off - a lot of that is due to its age. And yet I can still clearly see the message these shows had. As someone once said, maybe TNG was the last sci-fi that was hopeful of the future.

And while I know the newest Star Trek series, Enterprise, was somewhat controvelsial among fans, I do believe it's intro is the best summary, the very embodiment of what is the spirit of Star Trek.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yijcWsLda8

[moron4hire]

Hehe, I loved Enterprise. And I thought the same thing about its intro music. I think people just got caught up in their hero worship, again, and it prevented them from wanting to like the show. Then the ratings machinery took over and it really hurt the ending of the series.

I've similarly felt a lack of aspirationalism in modern sci-fi. That's one of the aspects that I like about Interstellar. It almost feels like a pre-warp, Star Trek universe Earth. It's gritty and bleak in a lot of places, but the overall message is one of hope. People also complained about the plot, but I thought it was pretty typical Christopher Nolan fair, so if you don't like that flavor of ice cream, you probably shouldn't have ordered it in a sunday, if you catch my metaphor.

[topkai22]

I don't think it is celebrity worship. I don't know a thing about Nimoy outside his work, although other posts make it seem that he was a interesting, likable, and good man. We are affected by Nimoy's passing because we enjoyed his work, identified with his character, and because Star Trek and Spock represent ideas that we wish to hold on to.

The world of Star Trek TOS and TNG normally felt unambiguously better than ours, but it felt better in ways that were achievable. A world focused on exploration, with a society that did not shy away from conflict but worked to resolve it peacefully. It felt like what a steadfast belief in modernity could lead to. In the word's of Neal Stephenson (who I think borrowed the term from someone else) Star Trek and Spock serve as forms of cultural hieroglyphs, recognizable symbols of a great possible world developed from an unshakeable faith in modernity and progress.

I think we morn in part because we will miss our hieroglyph. While there have been a number of unamibigously pro-science/modernity movies lately, Spock stood out for generations. He stood for progress and goodness. He managed to be absolutely moral and absolutely logical. And I think it is the blow to those ideas we mourn as much as the man.

[ArkyBeagle]

I do not expect I heard the word "logic" before I heard it on Star Trek. I still don't know what they meant by it (never explain, never explain... ) , but I caught something there.

If you are nerd enough :), you will have caught all you could of the interviews with Gene Roddenberry. Gene was caught genuinely by surprise that Spock was such a hit. If you look at how Nimoy played Spock in "The Menagerie", where they (rather crassly ) reuse footage from the rejected pilot, the evolution of the character is startling.

Leonard Nimoy simply hit that part and the creation of that character out of the park.

One of the things that Frank Zappa used to use to talk about the space-between-the notes in art was "put the eyebrows on it". Isn't that a Spock reference? Were there eyebrows in theater or film before Nimoy?

[jgeorge]

I am far more troubled by his passing than I am openly willing to admit. No celebrity worship here either.

What got to me was his comment a year or so ago on Twitter where he said that he would be anybody Grandfather just for the asking. I asked him, because I never new my grandfather (either one) and darnit if having him for even a virtual Grandfather wouldn't be the best thing ever. But in doing that, I more feel like I've lost a member of the family than I did when I actually lost some members of my family.

[moron4hire]

Yeah, that's exactly why I slapped this together today: http://imgur.com/gallery/oJPiNDl

Hollywood works really hard to create a portrayal of Ubermensch out of people who are just people. In some cases, those people aren't good people, and that's where the celebrity worship worries me. I think a lot of people confuse the characters the actors play, and the words they speak written by other people, for the actor themselves.

And even when you think someone looks like a good person, outside of what characters they've played, you don't know the whole story. Look at the allegations against Bill Cosby lately. Are they true? I don't know, and it's not my place to say--we have a legal system for that very reason. And people make mistakes sometimes, too (though, in this case, they'd be pretty big, awful, questionably-forgivable mistakes, if they turned out to be true, but the example is the only one I could think of off of the top of my head). It's just another good enough reason to adopt a general policy to not elevate celebrities so high.

But in the case of Nimoy, he really seems like he did his best to enjoy life and be a decent person towards others. I don't know if he ever did anything specifically humanitarian, but if the story of Mr. Nimoy ended there, it'd be a pretty good one, one that more people should emulate.

Yeah, it feels a bit like losing a grandfather for me, too.