As I type this, it's just gone 3am, a time that I think can be safely categorised as "the middle of the night". Why am I up now? Well, I went to bed at 7pm feeling really tired, and I guess 7 hours must have been enough sleep, so I got up about an hour ago and thought that I might catch up on some work while the house is quiet.
Then I found out that Leonard Nimoy has passed away.
Star Trek was a significant part of my life when growing up. Wednesday nights at 6pm was when we'd sit down to watch Star Trek on BBC2, and I used to record the shows on a tape recorder so that I could listen again (we didn't have a video recorder at the time). I also remember running up a fairly decent phone bill over several months talking to a similar aged kid who was also into Star Trek, as down the phone we'd pretend to command a starship. Because, let's be honest, we all want to command a starship. Flying through space, in charge of hundreds of people and a piece of technology that can, apart from other things like fly from planet to planet and blow up asteroids, materialise as many pies, chocolate cakes and cans of beer as you want, rocks.
And Spock was always awesome. Regardless of what problem was facing the crew, he'd have some fantastic Vulcan solution to it, whether it was logically working out the solution to a problem, spotting a tiny detail about something from looking through his scope on the science station, or just being able to knock someone out with a nerve pinch, you know that you'd always want him on your team.
I'm fortunate enough to own a copy of his second autobiography, I Am Spock, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and learning about the man that created the character. Everything I've read and heard about him seemed to point at one thing - he was a great man.
Even his last tweet was brilliant.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
— Leonard Nimoy (@TheRealNimoy) February 23, 2015
Thank you.
By Beth Madison (_DSC5611-1 crp) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Wil Wheaton has written a brilliant post about Leonard Nimoy which I'd recommend is well worth a read.
