Live long, prosper and rest in peace

Mr. Spock has been beamed up for the final time. He goes where Gene Roddenberry, Majel Barrett or Nurse Chapel, Scotty and Bones, and all those nameless ensigns who died on the away team, have gone before.

Leonard Nimoy, who played the Star Trek’s iconic Vulcan, died Friday from lung disease at the age of 83. Spock wasn’t the only character Nimoy brought to life. He played other roles. But what Nimoy did with the Spock character was bigger than life. He and Spock became inseparable, despite Nimoy’s insistence “I am not Spock.”

Spock represented the best in humanity no matter that he was half Vulcan, the race known for logic without emotion. Roddenberry’s Star Trek did the same, trying to show the world the best humanity is or could be. And those messages are what, I believe, make Star Trek and Nimoy different from other celebrities and separates them from the despicable cult of celebrity. His passing and the messages from the original Star Trek, a/k/a TOS, and carried on in The Next Generation, or TNG, make this remembrance as worthwhile as the themes he helped create.