Leonard Nimoy's Top 5 moments as Spock

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Friday, February 27, 2015, 3:19 PM

Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection Spock gives Kirk the Vulcan 'Live Long Prosper' salute in 'Wrath of Khan.'

“Star Trek” has existed in many incarnations since hitting the air in 1966. But the spirit of Leonard Nimoy’s Spock flowed through all of them, a reminder of how to bring the fullest humanity to this sci-fi world’s universal themes.

Here are his five best moments as the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer of Starfleet’s USS Enterprise:

“Star Trek II; The Wrath of Khan” (1982)

The 1982 adventure drama that brought the franchise back after a disastrous 1979 big-screen launch contains the ultimate Spock scenes. From his advice to Kirk about how a crew of newbies will handle stress (“As with all living things, each according to his gift”) to his self-sacrifice for his comrades and intonation to Kirk (“I have been, and always shall be, your friend”) “STII” has been and and always will be a pop-culture cornerstone.

“Amok Time”(1967)

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This episode from “Trek’s” second season found a very distracted Spock dealing with inner turmoil before returning to his home planet to take a mate. When Spock thinks he’s killed Kirk in a battle, Nimoy lets duty, shame and anguish play across his face.

“All Our Yesterdays” (1969)

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CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and Arlene Martel as T'Pring in the 'Star Trek' episode 'Amok Time.'

On a doomed planet, Kirk, Spock and McCoy encounter beings from thousands of years earlier, as Spock reverts to the barbaric nature of his alien past. Nimoy revels in the struggle between high and low evolutionary pulls.

“Highly Illogical,” song from “Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space” (1967)

CBS Leonard Nimoy as Spock and DeForest Kelley as McCoy in the 'Star Trek' episode 'All Our Yesterdays.'

Spock sings! With his distinctive, wry baritone, Nimoy cut this album in the midst of “Trek’s” TV run. The tracks include “Music to Watch Space Girls By,” “Spock Thoughts,” and the title track, a tale of modern love highlighted by Spock’s phrase “highly illogical.” The tune is silly and slinky, with a slide guitar and thumping drum: “I predict the future of this earthly human race/is that having made a mess of earth/they’ll move to outer space!” sings Nimoy. “Well, there goes the neighborhood!”

Old-vs.-new Spock in an Audi S7 commercial (2013)

As Zachary Quinto, the new movie Spock, heads to play golf with Nimoy, the elder actor curses as he shoves his clubs into a car, sings a made-up “Hobbit” song and kvetches that he feels like he’s stuck “in a black hole.’ Pulling his car up, Nimoy riffs on Spock’s death scene in “Star Trek II” — then knocks out Quinto by using the Vulcan Nerve Pinch.