For one iconic episode, Leonard Nimoy portrayed one of the most memorable villains on the original “Star Trek” — a powerful alien named Henoch who possesses the body of Spock. The “Star Trek” Season 2 episode “Return to Tomorrow” opens with the Enterprise crew responding to a distress call from a now-extinct planet called Arret, the former home to the mighty Arretan species. There, they discover the surviving consciousnesses of three Arretans — Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch — who ask to temporarily inhabit the respective bodies of Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr. Ann Mulhall (Diana Muldaur), and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in order to construct new forms for their incorporeal selves. Although the USS Enterprise agrees to this offer, Henoch soon finds Spock’s heightened Vulcan abilities too tempting to ignore, and he attempts to destroy Spock’s own consciousness so that he can permanently occupy his body.
After Henoch seemingly obliterates Spock’s mind, the episode culminates in a tense showdown on the USS Enterprise bridge, where Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett) eventually injects Spock’s body with a sedative and ends Henoch’s brief villainous reign. It transpires that, before Henoch could destroy it, Spock’s consciousness had fled to the body of Nurse Chapel, where he and the nurse waited for the right moment to strike. “Return to Tomorrow” ends with Spock’s successful return to his own body and Henoch’s destruction, putting an end to Nimoy’s first and only stab at a second “Star Trek” role.
Leonard Nimoy wanted to play the villain in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Leonard Nimoy apparently wasn’t done with playing “Star Trek” villains after Henoch. In a 2012 interview with the official “Star Trek” website, actor Laurence Luckinbill — who played Spock’s misguided half-brother Sybok in “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” — hinted that Nimoy had originally “really, really pushed hard” to once more play the “dual role” of hero and villain in the fifth “Star Trek” feature film. “That was the scuttlebutt and I got that from very high up … that Leonard wanted to play Sybok and play Spock,” explained Luckinbill. “That would have been a tremendous thing, to do that, but since they weren’t twins, they cast me.”
Luckinbill went on to say that while his casting caused awkwardness to persist “for quite a long time” between him and Nimoy, the tension steadily eased throughout the process of filming “The Final Frontier.” “[I]n the last scenes, 20 or 25 weeks later, Leonard looked at me and said, ‘You know, you’re terrific in this,'” Luckinbill reminisced. “I thought that was a great send-off.”
Throughout his career, Nimoy became synonymous with the legendary role of Spock. Since Nimoy’s death in 2015, Spock has been portrayed by Zachary Quinto in a reboot film franchise and by Ethan Peck in the television show “Star Trek: Discovery” and its spin-off series “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.” Episodes of “Strange New Worlds” Season 4 are currently being released on Paramount+, with an already-confirmed fifth season soon to follow.
