Nimoy shares behind-the-scenes stories about the creation of the Vulcan mind meld during a filming session for the episode "Dagger of the Mind," and candidly discusses the emotional difficulty of filming Spock's death scene in The Wrath of Khan. He reveals that on the day of shooting, producer Harv Bennett asked him to leave a thread for a possible sequel, leading to the iconic "remember" moment. Nimoy also discusses his audio book productions with Alien Voices and his career in musical theater.
The remainder of the program features open lines where Art discusses the first artificial brain unveiled at Stanford's Genetic Programming Conference, a million-neuron machine capable of evolving its own neural networks. Art and callers debate the implications of creating a sentient artificial intelligence without human morality or emotion.
Key Moments
Why Spock landed in the Woodstock era: Nimoy explains that Spock - self-controlled, dignified, intelligent - became a hero precisely because the late-1960s audience was cynical about government, sick of Vietnam, and hungry for a figure who couldn't be hypocritical or duplicitous.
Origin of the Vulcan mind meld: Nimoy recalls that the mind meld was invented by Gene Roddenberry on the episode Dagger of the Mind because the scripted interrogation was too tedious - a 'Vulcan version of hypnosis' that became a permanent tool for the character.
The 'remember' meld and Spock's death: Nimoy admits he agreed to be killed off in Wrath of Khan thinking it would be the last Star Trek film, then on the day of the goodbye scene improvised the mind meld with McCoy and the single word 'remember' to leave a thread for any future movie.
'You have been chosen as a vessel': Nimoy recounts being approached during the first season of Star Trek by people who told him he had been chosen as a vessel to carry information that would prepare humanity for contact with another civilization - and that the Spock character was designed to teach the public there was nothing to fear.