Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space

The Star Trek prequel has me digging into those old albums Leonard Nimoy recorded as tie-ins to the original series. Why doesn't stuff like that happen these days? It'd sort of be the equivalent of Andy Bernard releasing an album of his 'A Cappella Favorites' (which, btw, he should totally do).

Even though the first album is titled Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space, the only persona on the album is Spock, and whether it's intentional or not, it's almost a creditable rock opera. From the back jacket:

LEONARD NIMOY...portrays Mr. Spock, the science officer and first officer on the U.S.S. "ENTERPRISE," seen traveling through the galaxies on "STAR TREK" Nimoy is an extremely versatile actor, having appeared in at least 100 TV shows, a number of major motion pictures and stage productions. He has long enjoyed music and his taste varies from Bach to Beatles. A year ago he made his singing debut in a stage production of "Irma La Douce" with Juliet Prowse - until that time his singing had been limited to the shower and to parties where he accompanied himself on folk guitar. When approached to do an album of songs and readings for Dot, Nimoy welcomed the opportunity of presenting Mr. Spock's debut in the world of music.

That doesn't quite prepare you for what ensues, which is mainly a couple of show tunes and spoken word pieces among loads of tacky instrumentals. After a rock version of the Star Trek theme, Spock delivers a monologue about being alien. A line like "so much like you, and yet...so unalike" is only the windup for this doozy:

Am I the you before,
the you you were
when your world was new?
Or am I the you
that you will be tomorrow

He goes on about his home planet and having "no heart or feelings", climaxing with the sentiment that "Some may envy me, but I pay a price to be from human feelings free." Not only does he get his Yoda on a decade before Empire with that line, but Spock also establishes his isolation, which is the main ingredient in any decent rock opera. Whether you're deaf, dumb, and blind, or half-Vulcan, you've gotta be plenty alienated to hold down an entire album's worth of material! A little self-pity helps too, which is probably why on the next track Spock sings "Where Is Love?" from Oliver!.

Spock is half-human, after all. Giving voice to his emotional side through song, and his logical side through spoken word makes complete sense. Plus, the lyrical connection is actually spot-on. The song reinforces the sense of distance from his home planet when he sings, "Must I travel far and wide? 'Til I am beside the someone who I can mean something to...Where is love?"

After two more musical interludes, Side A closes with another spoken word piece, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Earth". Spock asks us to think about aliens on other planets looking at Earth the way that we look at the stars and mocks the notion of stars falling on Alabama as 'most illogical'.

Side B kicks off somewhat inexplicably with the Mission: Impossible theme: Is humanity being less self-absorbed the impossibility? Is it impossible to think that Spock could ever be at home among Earthlings? The next track, Kurt Weill's "Lost In the Stars", brilliantly reinforces the confusion with its sublime lyrics about God forgetting about the Earth. Again, through song, Spock gets at a deeper truth which is reflected in the song's ambiguity. Whether God has truly forgotten about us or not, we all are essentially "lost out here in the stars". With God out of the picture, that leaves our fates up to us, and that's the dilemma Spock contemplates with his last two tracks.

He addresses the rest of the album squarely at Earthlings in the grand old sci-fi tradition of films like The Day The Earth Stood Still, which are basically just riffs on Scrooge being shown his own grave. Instead of a ghost, we get an alien, and there's no doubt that this is only a future that 'May' be, rather than 'Will' be. Our own annihilation hinges on the choices we make, as made explicit in the song "You Are Not Alone", which is about how humans will react to meeting aliens:

What will you do when you meet them?
Will you greet them or turn them away?
Will you show them how to run a world?
Will you teach them War?
Will you teach them Hate?

You've got to hear the swell on the word 'Hate' to believe it.

And if that song weren't obvious enough, the album concludes with a cautionary tale, "A Visit to a Sad Planet", in the form of an entry from Spock's journal as first mate. The Sad Planet is (what else?) Earth, and it's been ruined because humanity "were never satisfied...they wanted more...they wanted everything."

These spin-off albums are actually a lot like the original series, in that they are so easy to dismiss as campy, B-grade products. However, there's enough of a genuine conceptual backbone to the projects to make them interesting, and if listening to these old chestnuts again doesn't get you pumped for J.J. Abrams' take on 60's high kitsch, I don't know what will!

Well, except for maybe the trailer...