Free Leonard by William Shatner

wasn’t completely comfortable in two worlds. He actually wasn’t identified as a Vulcan until the fifth or sixth episode. But the real function of Spock was to serve as an observer of human behavior and to comment on human variables, tendencies, habits, and beliefs. He was to be unfettered by normal human emotions.
    Leonard learned he was being considered for a leading role in some new space show from his agent, who told him Roddenberry had liked his work on The Lieutenant and had him in mind for a character on a science-fiction series in development. I have no doubt how Leonard reacted; this was the kind of call agents make to clients to reassure them they are out there pounding the pavement on their behalf. While he must have been flattered, as apparently this was the first time he was considered for a leading role in a network series, he probably didn’t take it very seriously. Calls like this one, and today e-mails, happen quite often in the life of a working actor. No one gets excited about them. It wasn’t as if Leonard realized that this was going to be his big break and so fought to get the job. Sometimes these calls go a few steps further, but only rarely do they even progress to an audition, much less being cast in the role. I’m sure Leonard dismissed it before even hanging up the phone: a producer who was developing a pilot that might never get shot had him in mind for a role he might never get. Even if he got the role and the pilot was made, it had only a small chance of being picked up by the network.
    But several weeks later, Brewis informed him that Roddenberry wanted to see other work he’d done to get a sense of his range. Leonard sent him an episode of Dr. Kildare in which he’d played a shy, sensitive character who befriended a blind girl and read poetry to her. It was pretty much the exact opposite of the brash producer he’d played on The Lieutenant . It turned out Roddenberry actually had seen that episode of Kildare but hadn’t realized that was Leonard. Impressed, he invited Leonard to a meeting. “I went to that meeting expecting to audition for him,” Leonard remembered. “Instead, he suggested we take a walk. We went to the scenic design department, and he showed me the sets and introduced me to the designers. We walked over to the prop department, and I saw some of the props being made. We went to wardrobe, and I began to realize this is interesting; it’s like he’s selling me on doing this job. I thought, you know what, if I keep my mouth shut, I might have a job here.”
    Roddenberry hadn’t yet fully developed Spock in his own mind. As Leonard explained, “The best thing Gene Roddenberry gave to me when he offered me the part was to tell me that this character would have an internal struggle.” The one thing that Roddenberry was adamant about was that the crew of this gigantic spaceship roaming through the universe would be an example of diversity. At a time when television was pretty much lily-white and all-American, Gene created a crew consisting of both men and women, people of color, different ethnic groups, and even a Russian to suggest the Cold War had ended. So he insisted Spock be obviously extraterrestrial; he wanted to make it clear that Spock came from another world and that these voyages were taking place far in the future, when interplanetary travel was common. That was the importance of the large, pointed ears.
    What Leonard did not know until many years later was that Roddenberry already had decided that he wanted him to create the role of Mr. Spock. Dorothy C. Fontana, who had written the episode of The Tall Man in which Leonard appeared, was working as Roddenberry’s production assistant. As she recalled, “I asked Gene, ‘Who plays Spock?’ And in response he slid a picture of Leonard across his desk at me.”
    The question was, who was going to play Captain Christopher Pike opposite