I Am Spock

Filled with behind-the-scenes anecdotes about his years on the Star Trek television series as the remorselessly logical Dr. Spock, the actor and director reflects on his relationship to his hugely popular character.

Few actors are as inextricably associated with one role as Leonard Nimoy is with Star Trek's Mr. Spock. In 1975, when he was embarking on a post-Star Trek career, Nimoy published an autobiography with the tongue-in-cheek title I Am Not Spock. Twenty years later, despite a fruitful career as a film director (Three Men and a Baby, The Good Mother) and theatrical actor, he here reembraces his legendary half-Vulcan alter ego. Star Trek fans will find this a, well, fascinating history of the "birth" and evolution of Spock?Nimoy explains the original conception of the character and describes his own contributions to the development of Spock's persona. He also provides an insider's account of the production of the TV show and the highly successful series of Star Trek movies, and offers his insights into why the Star Trek phenomenon has maintained such a grip on our cultural imagination. Nimoy's admirers may find this fairly impersonal memoir disappointing; it touches only tangentially on the author's private life. But this is an intelligent and entertaining look at an actor's engagement with a character who "seemed to take on an existence of his own." Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Twenty years ago, Nimoy published a book declaring I Am Not Spock and started one of the big showbiz rumors of our time--that he hated his dramatic alter ego, the pointy-eared, half-alien first officer of the starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek. The rumor's not true, says he in this very congenial new book focused on Spock so exclusively that other roles Nimoy has played get short shrift and, with a few exceptions (such as the account of filming the acclaimed Good Mother, which Nimoy directed), non^-Star Trek events get less. But that's the way a Star Trek memoir should be, and Nimoy's ST recollections top the others in entertainment value, not least because of the amusing dialogues between himself and Spock that he scatters throughout. Nimoy doesn't distract us with the greater personal detail Nichelle Nichols and George Takei vended in their recent life stories, and he's a far sight less self-inflating than Bill Shatner in his ST autobios. Maybe Nimoy's being a bit too much of a nice guy, you sometimes feel, maybe there was more friction and frustration than he lets on. But with all these happy Star Trek stories to read, who cares? Ray Olson