Thank you, Mr. Nimoy. Your characters and story-telling always had a positive impact on me. I'm sure going to miss you, but you lived a life to make all of us proud.
Found a nice Nimoy tribute by writer David Gerrold:
"A great television series always has a star character at the center. Trek had Kirk. All In The Family had Archie. Mary Tyler Moore had Mary. The Big Bang Theory has Sheldon. But every great television series often has a "glue" character who holds it all together. All In The Family had Edith as the glue. Without her, the show doesn't work. Mary Tyler Moore had Lou Grant. Without him, there's no gravitas. TBBT has Leonard (and occasionally Penny). Without that grounding in reality, the show flies apart.
Spock was the glue. He was the gravitas. Ironically, as much as he represented logic and rationality, he was also the heart and soul of the show. While everyone else plugged into their emotions, Spock was the voice of human rationality at work. But Spock was the most impossible character to write for. Without emotion, he could be a dry dull caricature. A robot.
D.C. Fontana gave Leonard Nimoy the scripts that expanded on Spock's nature. Leonard Nimoy brought Spock to life as a way of being, as a role model, as a unique vision of complex individual. Spock was rational. But he was also aware of his emotions. His job was to be the master of his feelings, not enslaved by them. Given 79 scripts by nearly 60 different authors, Leonard Nimoy created a singular vision of the rational being, so vividly that he became a cultural icon -- more than any other character in modern fiction or television.
Okay, yes, we see lots of Darth Vaders at various conventions -- but Darth Vader isn't a hero, isn't a role model. He's a variation on Ming the Merciless, an impressive villain, to be sure -- but Spock? Spock is the hero of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in a league with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who ... and uh ... and uh ... no one else.
The remarkable thing about Spock isn't Spock and it isn't just Nimoy's singular invention of Spock --- it is that Spock is very much a reflection of Leonard Nimoy's own character as a man.
Nimoy was gracious, friendly, loving, supportive, brilliant, and ultimately a person who continually challenged himself to expand his own horizons. He was generous in nature, humble in spirit.
So Spock was never just a performance as much as it was an evocation of the soul within.
I think, to a great degree, it was that inner nature that most of us were responding to.
I did not get to spend a lot of time with Leonard, there were always too many others shoving in to spend time with him -- and I'd already had my moment. I'd given him lines to speak, and he'd brought them to life. I couldn't ask for better. No writer could. But in the moments we did spend together, he always made me feel important.
If there is one lesson I would want to learn from Leonard Nimoy, that would be the one -- how to love life to the fullest and cherish everyone in it.
I'm not going to miss Leonard, because he's still here in my heart. I will, however, regret that there will be no new memories to have."