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Comment Re:Hum (Score 1) 411

I think, once he had come to terms with the good and the bad of playing an iconic and culturally significant character, he was willing to accept that Spock had been a positive influence on a lot of people. In the later years he showed a good deal of pride, and really he and other members of the cast were quite influential in a very positive way.

And, from the perspective of the Star Trek franchise, I think Nimoy has to be given a lot of credit. His portrayal of Spock made him probably the most popular actor of the cast (Bill Shatner has talked in the past of how he got a bit jealous that the bulk of fan mail during the TOS run usually came for Nimoy).

While I don't think much of the reboots, I think there's a reason that Abrams got Nimoy to reprise the role, and showed little interest in Shatner reprising Kirk. Spock is a touchstone character, and if you're going to try to bring some credibility to your reboot, you're going to want to pick that kind of a character for the job.

Comment Re:Leonard Nimoy is why we have nice things (Score 4, Insightful) 411

It was a pretty inspirational cast; Spock's dedication to science was inspirational, and there are plenty of people who talk about how Scotty inspired them to engineering. Nichelle Nichols and George Takei both were members of minorities who were given fairly prominent positions on the Enterprise at a time when many minority characters were still played by Caucasians (I'm thinking about Mickey Rooney's obnoxiously awful portrayal of an Asian in Breakfast At Tiffany's, released just five years before ST:TOS).

Comment Re:In search of... (Score 2) 411

I was thinking that that was my favorite scene as well. I actually also like the similar scene from The Motion Picture (not included in the original theatrical cut, sadly) where Kirk looks to Spock, who has tears streaming down his face, and explains "I weep for V'ger as I would for a brother." In a movie that sadly lacked the emotional angle that TOS and the later films usually had, it was a nice touch.

Thankfully, Nimoy's mixed feelings about Spock and about his experience on The Motion Picture didn't so taint him that he didn't reprise his character, because that makes me think of his death scene from Wrath of Khan, which again shows Nimoy's ability to bring deep feelings to a character that spent a good deal of time reminding everyone of how logical and dispassionate he was.

Comment Re:Legacy (Score 3, Interesting) 411

Yes. The character of Spock in so many ways represented Roddenberry's hope for the future; where reason and science would be used for the betterment of humanity.

What I liked about Nimoy's portrayal was that he always allowed Spock's fundamental humanity to peak out through the sides. It was always subtle, often little more than his famed raising of the eyebrow, but it somehow gave Spock so much depth.

One only has to look at Zachary Quinto's take on Spock to see Nimoy's deliberate and effective acting choices. I'm not saying Quinto's portrayal is bad, but it lacks the subtlety that Nimoy brought to the character.

Comment That's the problem with a sequel. (Score 1) 222

If you watch the original with the understanding that Deckard is a replicant then the unicorn origami and the ending have specific, complex, implications.

Now if the sequel shows Deckard as a human then they piss off everyone who prefers those implications. So, in effect, the sequel ruins the story for some people.

If the sequel shows Deckard as an aged replicant ... robots get old? So replicant Deckard is either killed or kills or runs away again at the end. ALREADY BEEN DONE IN THE FIRST MOVIE!

Comment Re:Good method for improving (Score 1) 347

If you don't have it, you'll make bad decisions. For example, answer the question, "should I use framework A, or should I write some code myself?" If you can't estimate how long it will take to use the framework and compare it to how long it will take to write the code yourself, then it is impossible to make a realistic decision.

That's a bad example because that's almost never my criteria. I could write my own framework almost as quickly as I could suss out the quirks of someone else's, and that's usually a teensy part of the overall project lifetime anyway. Instead, I judge on things like "do I want to spend the rest of my time here maintaining this thing?" and "who's going to own security updates?" and "will it be easier to hire people with experience on this one or on the one I haven't written yet?". Sometimes there's no good framework A to use, or maybe framework A exists and is popular but is unfit for this specific purpose, so we write something in-house. Either way, notice that "time to get started" is a trivial or nonexistent part of the equation.

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