Do we like Leonard Nimoy?
Our score: 9 out of 10. He pushed for equal pay for a co-star, backed body acceptance and has an LGBT ally tag in his obituaries; the Shatner falling-out is the only smudge.
Leonard Nimoy grew up in Boston, the son of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, in a mostly Italian-Catholic neighbourhood where he felt different. He decided at 17 to be an actor and worked through Yiddish theatre and bit parts before Star Trek made him Spock in the mid-1960s.
That outsider streak fed the character. He said Spock was an alien wherever he went, and tied it to knowing what it meant to belong to a minority. The Vulcan salute came from the hand gesture used in the priestly blessing in synagogue, which is a lovely bit of cultural smuggling.
On the harm test, the record is clean and then some. Nothing from Nimoy's own words or acts targets any group, and I found nothing on climate either way. The Advocate's obituary called him an LGBT ally, and Out noted Spock resonated with gay men and women, with Zachary Quinto describing a close friendship. That is the press's label, not an activism record, so we'll leave it there.
His best story is the pay one. Walter Koenig said he took a pay gap between himself, George Takei and Nichelle Nichols to Nimoy, who took it to the front office and had it corrected. Nimoy also said he refused to voice Spock in the animated series until Nichols and Takei were hired too. Doing that for colleagues is the real thing.
Off screen he turned his camera on women. His book The Full Body Project photographed plus-size women to challenge Hollywood's narrow image, and when his earlier book Shekhina drew mixed reactions he defended it. He was also a patron of the arts, and a Manhattan theatre was renamed in his honour in 2002.
The one smudge is the Shatner rift. It reportedly began in 2011 when Shatner used footage of Nimoy in a documentary without permission, and the pair weren't on speaking terms when Nimoy died. Shatner has called it heartbreaking and a regret, so it reads as two old mates who fell out rather than a pattern of bad behaviour.