Initially, Filmation was only going to use the voices of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan and Majel Barrett.

An adaptation of the song, named " Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Earth ", was written by Charles Randolph Grean, Fred Hertz and Leonard Nimoy ( Nimoy recites the text as Spock explaining how the star-people wish upon an earth and so forth ).

A very abridged spoken word reading of " There Will Come Soft Rains " and " Usher II " was made in 1975 with Leonard Nimoy as narrator.

For example, " The Great Paris " ( Leonard Nimoy ), Hand's replacement in the fourth and fifth seasons, was also an actor, make-up artist, magician and " master of disguise.

The neck pinch itself ( referred to in scripts as ' FSNP ', or ' Famous Spock Neck Pinch ') was created by Leonard Nimoy, who objected to a scene in one early episode that required Spock to knock a guard unconscious by hitting him over the head.

Nimoy thought that such overt violence was uncharacteristic of the strictly-logical Spock, and suggested the neck pinch as a less-emotional alternative.

Reportedly, Leonard Nimoy was asked to wear it and refused, so it was passed on to Shatner ; when he also refused, Nimoy reluctantly agreed to wear it.

Leonard Nimoy felt that the act was too reminiscent of a TV western ( some accounts say that he objected to a pacifistic Vulcan taking such overtly hostile action ), and thus introduced the famous non-lethal maneuver.

Nimoy was born in Boston, Massachusetts in the West End, to Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Soviet Union ( now Ukraine ).

His mother, Dora Nimoy ( née Spinner ), was a homemaker.

Their characters were from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, though with his saturnine looks, Nimoy was predictably the villain, with Shatner playing a reluctant U. N. C. L. E.

Nimoy was asked to read these verses as part of his narration for Civilization IV.

Following Star Trek in 1969, Nimoy immediately joined the cast of the spy series Mission: Impossible, which was seeking a replacement for Martin Landau.

Nimoy was cast in the role of Paris, an IMF agent who was an ex-magician and make-up expert ' The Great Paris '.

When a new Star Trek series was planned in the late 1970s, Nimoy was to be in only two out of eleven episodes, but when the show was elevated to a feature film, he agreed to reprise his role.

Nimoy was featured as the voice-over narrator for the CBS paranormal series Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories in 1991.

In an interview published on the official Star Trek website, Nimoy said that Alien Voices was discontinued because the series didn't sell well enough to recoup costs.

Nimoy was given casting approval over who would play the young Spock in the newest film.

He has interviewed singers Crystal Gayle, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Eric Burdon and Gordon Lightfoot, comedian George Carlin, writer Dean Koontz, hard science fiction writer Greg Bear, X-Files Writer / Creator Chris Carter, TV talk host Regis Philbin, Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy, actor Dan Aykroyd, former Luftwaffe pilot Bruno Stolle, actress Jane Seymour, actress Ellen Muth, actor and TV host Robert Stack, human rights lawyer John Loftus, legendary disc jockey Casey Kasem and frequent guests physicist Michio Kaku and SETI astronomers Seth Shostak and H. Paul Shuch.

In 2007, Wann interviewed Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame, about his work in photography of nude fat models.

It is included on his first 1967 album Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space.

Data is in many ways a successor to the original Star Treks Spock ( Leonard Nimoy ), in that the character offers an " outsider's " perspective on humanity.

The gesture actually emulates the initial Shin of the Shema ( Nimoy has also commented that the " sh " could also indicate Shaddai, or the Almighty ; more recently, on William Shatner's Raw Nerve, he associated it with Shekhinah.

On television Nimoy appeared as " Sonarman " in two episodes of the 1957 – 1958 syndicated military drama, The Silent Service, based on actual events of the submarine section of the United States Navy.

Nimoy appeared three times on NBC's Wagon Train, the No. 1 program of 1962.

Nimoy and William Shatner first worked together on an episode of The Man from U. N. C. L. E., " The Project Strigas Affair " ( 1964 ).

As the half-Vulcan, half-human Spock — a role he chose instead of one on the soap opera Peyton Place — Nimoy became a star, and the press predicted that he would " have his choice of movies or television series.

Nimoy earned three Emmy nominations for his work on the iconic program that has defined American television science fiction, both for fans of science fiction, and beyond.

Nimoy appeared in various made for television films such as Assault on the Wayne ( 1970 ), Baffled ( 1972 ), The Alpha Caper ( 1973 ), The Missing Are Deadly ( 1974 ), Seizure: The Story Of Kathy Morris ( 1980 ), and Marco Polo ( 1982 ).

Nimoy would go on to direct the second most successful film ( critically and financially ) in the franchise after the 2009 Star Trek film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ( 1986 ), and Three Men and a Baby, the highest grossing film of 1987, made him a star director.

In 1991, Nimoy teamed up with Robert B. Radnitz to produce a movie for TNT about a pro bono publico lawsuit brought by public interest attorney William John Cox on behalf of Mel Mermelstein, an Auschwitz survivor, against a group of organizations engaged in Holocaust denial.

From 1994 until 1998, Nimoy narrated the Ancient Mysteries series on A & E including " The Sacred Water of Lourdes " and " Secrets of the Romanovs ".

On the May 9, 2009 episode of Saturday Night Live, Nimoy appeared as a surprise guest on the skit " Weekend Update ".

On August 30, 2012, Mr. Nimoy narrated a satirical segment about Mitt Romney's life on Comedy Central's " The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The contents of this first autobiography also touched on a self-proclaimed " identity crisis " that seemed to haunt Nimoy throughout his career.

In the mid-1970s Nimoy wrote and starred in a one-man play called Vincent based on the play Van Gogh by Phillip Stephens.

During and following Star Trek, Nimoy also released five albums of vocal recordings on Dot Records, including Trek-related songs such as " Highly Illogical ", and cover versions of popular tunes, such as " Proud Mary ".

In a 2001 DVD, Nimoy revealed that he became an alcoholic while working on Star Trek and ended up in rehab.

Nimoy still has the last pair of Spock's ears he wore on the series, as a memento.

After DeForest Kelley in 1964 stated his non-interest in playing the role, Roddenberry cast Nimoy because he knew him from a guest appearance in his pilot The Lieutenant ; after Roddenberry saw Nimoy's thin face and sharp features, no other actors were considered-Kelley, on the other hand, would later be cast as Dr. McCoy, the highly emotional human who became Spock's frequent foil.

Nimoy has said that many of them, on meeting him, are eager to show him their work and discuss it with him as if he were a scientific peer, as opposed to an actor, photographer, and poet.

Even Nimoy got in on the act ; assuming the Spock character, Nimoy recorded a number of novelty songs, the first being " Highly Illogical ", in which Spock pointed out the foibles of human thought, such as relationships, automobiles, and greed.