Leonard Nimoy started a bunch of fights when I was a child.
Although I enjoyed Star Trek, its reruns were on at the same time as a show I loved much more – The Brady Bunch – and with one TV in the house, my brother and I would argue about which one to watch. My Mom tried to divide the week up for us but when it was my turn to command the dial, I couldn’t endure the taunts about how stupid my show was so I eventually gave up. Spock won!
But in later years, when Williams Shatner was doing Priceline commercials, Nimoy was taking on new roles in new series. He voiced a Spock action figure that taunted Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. And he played William Bell in Fringe, where he appeared occasionally but was referenced so often that he appeared in your head in nearly every episode. Fringe was one of those kept-alive-by-fans series. If you loved it, you loved it like crazy and we certainly did. Nimoy had that commanding presence, serious face and spine-tingling voice that made him perfect to play the mad scientist.
So while we mainly recall Nimoy, who died last week, for his pointy-eared pioneering space-man Spock, let’s not forget that his career continued past Star Trek. He was able to make us forget Spock as he embodied other roles late in life. He’ll also always be William Bell to me.