What We Still Need To Learn From Spock's Utopianism

Twenty-two years after his last television appearance as Spock on Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy returned to the role for a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. By that time, back in 1991, Nimoy had already donned the Starfleet tunic for several films. The next one, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, would hit theaters just one month after Spock's stint on The Next Generation, in fact. Think of 1991 as The Year Spock Broke.

Spock's return to television was a big deal. Make that a huge deal. Maybe the cameo's timing was commercially suspect, coming as it did on Star Trek's 25th anniversary and a month before the latest film, but more than 20 million viewers nevertheless tuned in for each of the episodes, marking "Unification" as one of the brightest points in the history of television, period. By comparison, 4.2 million people saw the recent series finale of NBC's Parks and Recreation. Both of those Next Generation episodes earned far higher Nielsen ratings than even Saturday Night Live's epic 40th-anniversary bash.