One could argue that Spock is Star Trek. He’s the heart and soul of Star Trek. One could also argue that rare Spock in the Enterprise Crew in Star Trek Fleet Command is one of the most important PvP officers in the game.
(Author’s note, I know that the rare Spock officer is the also the Spock from reboot Star Trek movies… but I’ve already written about Zachary Quinto, and Leonard Nimoy is one of the most fascinating people in the history of the franchise, so I’m writing about him here. And yes, I know there are several more opportunities for Spocks to appear in the game… but I’m going with it now. And if they do add more Spocks to the game, that I’ll have plenty more to add, as I’ve only scratched the surface here.)
How to Get Spock
You can get rare Spock shards in Federation, Ultra, and Premium recruiting packs. During the Discovery arc, you can also get him in the Discovery recruiting packs.
And Spock is such a good officer that he makes it worth your while alone to choose the Federation as your first faction.
Spend every officer badge and every Federation credit you have to in order to max out your Spock.
Captain’s Ability
Logical – Spock increases the Accuracy of the ship by 15% at the beginning of each Round in combat.
This isn’t a bad captain’s maneuver if you’re going to be going against interceptors. It’s not great – but everyone knows that Spock gives up command every chance he can get, and makes his biggest difference supporting the captain, and the same is true here.
Spock Officer Ability
Illogical – While the ship has Morale, Spock restores Shield Health to an amount equal to (25% 50% 100% 400% 750% )of the Defense of the Officers on the ship.
This ability may not look like much when you’re first looking at it. But it’s one of the more impressive Officer Abilities when it’s fully upgraded. It goes from 25% to 750%. The key is making sure that you’ve got officers that activate Morale on your ship – specifically Kirk or Admiral Marcus.
Once you’ve got someone paired with Spock to set off his Shield Health ability, you’re going to need to load up the lower decks with officers who are going to power it up. So focus on the defense of your below decks officers, as that’s going to be the driver. Spock himself will give you a lot of defense, as will Kirk. The key will be to surround them with other officers to max that stat.
Again, 750% total defense of the officers on your ship going back to the health of your shields. In every turn in which you have morale. Given that the Kirk crew will give you morale really quite often, you’re going to wind up with shields that just don’t go down.
This ability works well on just about any ship, but is especially great on Explorers, like the B’Rel, that have a shield as their main defense. But it’s great on your Stella for Eclipse Armadas. Really, great on any ship with Kirk for armadas of any kind.
You won’t need to use it on the Enterprise. If you’ve got a maxed out Spock, you can put him below decks for the stats.
Leonard Nimoy Background
Since covered did Instructor Spock Trivia about Zachary Quinto, this one will be about the great and obviously, fascinating Leonard Nimoy.
Nimoy, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was born in the West End of Boston in 1931. It’s a neighborhood, that, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. (In case you’re curious, here’s what’s there now.)
He moved to California in the early 1950s, and did odd jobs to make money while studying at the Pasadena Playhouse.
During the 50s, he worked in B-movies and Westerns. He had the lead in a Boxing movie flop in 1952’s Kid Monk Baroni. (You know a movie did well when it’s available for free on YouTube.) In all, he appeared in more than 50 B-Movies.
He appeared as a martian in Zombies of the Stratosphere (also free on YouTube.) Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans will recognize just about everything from the Commander Cody serials, but the names were all changed, for some reason.
Nimoy appeared in the 1954 Sci-Fi classic THEM!, which my dad made me watch, which was about atomic bomb tests causing ants to grow giant. You can watch Nimoy’s small part here. Others with bit parts in THEM! were Richard Deacon from The Dick Van Dyke Show, Dick York from Bewitched. Fess Parker from Davy Crockett, and William Schallert, who was in everything (including guest appearances on Star Trek: The Original Series, and Deep Space Nine.)
From there, he made the rounds in TV Westerns, like Bonanza , The Rebel , Two Faces West , Rawhide ,, Daniel Boone and The Virginian where he first worked with DeForest Kelley.
In 1963, he appeared in an episode of The Lieutenant, where he caught the eye of the series creator… Gene Roddenberry. In the scene below you’ll notice Gene’s future wife (and First Lady of Star Trek) Majel Barrett, and Gary Lockwood (Gary Mitchell.)
He appeared on one of my favorite series, Get Smart. In 1964, he appeared opposite William Shatner in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
And then came Star Trek. He was the first one cast. The only actor to be carried over from the original pilot, The Cage. In the role, Nimoy came up with the Vulcan Salute and the Vulcan Neck Pinch.
And also, it was while working as Spock that Nimoy shot the magnetic video (I can’t stop watching it, can you?) for The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. It really needs to be seen, and once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.
Also, Nimoy does the video wearing his Spock hairstyle.
After Spock
After the cancellation of Star Trek, Nimoy immediately went over the Mission: Impossible.
He received an Emmy nomination for playing Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir‘s husband in the 1982 miniseries, A Woman Called Golda. Meir was played by the legendary Ingrid Bergman, so if you were wondering what the connection was between Star Trek and Casablanca, now you know.
Nimoy would return to Star Trek for The Animated Series, eight feature films, and a two-part episode of The Next Generation.
He also directed several films, included his debut with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Probably the most successful non-Trek film was Three Men and a Baby.
So you were wondering what the Star Trek connection was to Police Academy, Magnum, PI, and Cheers, now you know. (I mean, apart from Kim Cattrall in Police Academy, Marta DuBois on Magnum and Kirstie Alley on Cheers.)
Yet More Nimoy Trivia.
For the last 26 years of his life, Nimoy was married to actress Susan Bay. Bay played Admiral Rollman in two episodes of Deep Space Nine.
But that’s not the crazy trivia thing. The crazy trivia is that Bay’s first husband was actor John Schuck… who played the Klingon ambassador in Star Trek IV, directed by Nimoy.
For the Love of Spock
We lost Leonard Nimoy to complications from COPD on February 27th, 2015.
If you haven’t seen Adam Nimoy‘s amazing documentary about his late father’s life, then you owe it to yourself to do so. Now. It’s that good.
Not to be outdone, Nimoy’s daughter Julie also made a documentary about her father’s life, with more of a focus on his COPD. It’s also quite touching, and well-put-together.