shipperx | Two Spoks for the Price of One

From TVGuide.com:

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, still more than a year away, Leonard Nimoy has officially passed the torch as Spock to cast mate Zachary Quinto. The rite of passage happened at Sunday's Grand Slam XVI Sci Fi Summit in Burbank, Calif., and came in the form of a T-shirt that said "No.1 Vulcan." "I think I'm going to have to grab a marker and change it to 'No. 2 Vulcan,'" a touched Quinto said to the audience. TV Guide later welcomed the opportunity to talk with the "two Spocks."

TV Guide: Zachary, what kind of questions did you have for Leonard?
Zachary Quinto: They came up as things evolved. The process that I went through to play this part was very internal and private, but in terms of what we're getting into today, I couldn't ask for a better introduction to the experience and to the fans than to engage in it with him here by my side. It's literally unbelievable.

TV Guide: Can the Star Trek life experience be described, Leonard?
Leonard Nimoy: Not in a word. It's been a long, long road for me. I first got involved in 1964, about 44 years ago, and it's had the ups and downs of a very long relationship. There were times when it was fantastic, and there were times when it was dismal, painful. There have been times of struggle, times of questioning — What are we into and what should we do next? Should we do anything about this and why don't we just stop? And then suddenly there's a revival and it gets exciting again. It's a long and very, very interesting ride and now I really feel that I can let it go personally and watch it go off in a very good direction.

TV Guide: When J.J. approached you, what were your thoughts about reviving the character? [Nimoy and Quinto both portray Spock in the new film.]
Nimoy: I was very flattered. I respect [Abrams] a lot. I respect his work. And he was very flattering with his thoughts about Star Trek and my involvement in it and what I might be able to contribute to the next film. We had a couple of exciting and very interesting meetings. He then sent me a script and it was unlike anything I had ever read before, Star Trek or otherwise. It was just so loaded with exciting ideas on a big scale and action and great characterizations. I said to him, "I think you've got the characters wonderfully, but I'd be lying to you if I said I understood everything I just read." We talked a little about my questions, about what was happening, and I signed on. Obviously I'm very glad I did, because I think it's going to be a great movie.

TV Guide: What do you think J.J. brings to Star Trek?
Quinto: Everything. He brings his ability to execute his vision — which is basically unparalleled — a really generous spirit, a lot of respect for the people he works with and the people who work with him, a sense of humor and some mad beat-boxing skills. In between takes, actually.

TV Guide: Is this a crazy movie to promote, because of all the secrecy?
Nimoy: There's always been an issue of trying to protect the secrecy of the next Star Trek movie, whichever one it was. There are people who make it their business to try to get their hands on the script and be able to say, "I got it and I can tell you what's happening." In this particular case it's been a very special effort on the part of those people to break through the security barrier, and as a result the security has been stronger than it ever has been before.
Quinto: I think the speed with which people get their information now makes it more of a problem. The first day I shot the movie, before it was over J.J. came to me with his phone and showed me a picture that he had downloaded from the internet of us standing in the room that we were still shooting in. It was already on the Internet! That's actually what instigated the heightened security. The next day I showed up and we had floor-length vinyl jackets with hoods [to cover costumes] and golf carts that were completely enclosed in black tarp. That persisted through the entire shoot, even when we were on the lot at Paramount. People were worried about camera phones and digital cameras and it's understandable because there were a couple of times that a background actor or someone who was working on the crew would snap a couple of photos and they would inadvertently end up on the Internet, and that's just a headache for the legal departments. People think they want to know, but they don't want to know. It's going to ruin the experience for them.

TV Guide: I hear there's a storyline about the way Spock deals with being half-Vulcan/half-human...?
Nimoy: We have dealt with aspects of that storyline before but never with quite the overview that this script has of the entire history of the character, the growth of the character, the beginnings of the character and the arrival of the character into the Enterprise crew. And there are wonderful people involved. Winona Ryder as Spock's mother is spectacular, Ben Cross as Spock's father is wonderful, and Zachary does great work as Spock. It's going to be a very exciting story overall.

TV Guide: Does it have more human interest aspects than the original TV series did? Are we digging deep into the characters?
Quinto: That's another thing J.J. brings to the table and it's the way he re-imagined Mission Impossible III, by bringing in sides of the character you hadn't necessarily seen before. [Screenwriters] Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman have really embraced that idea. Leonard was searching for the word to describe how it's handled in this movie, the Vulcan/human interaction and the complexity of it. I thought there was a tremendous amount of grace that was used in that exploration, especially between [parents] Sarek and Amanda. They bring such a dignity to their perspectives, to their points of view of their characters.

TV Guide: Lastly, Zachary, a question about Heroes. The finale left a sense that Sylar would be featured heavily in the new season. Did you get that sense?
Quinto: I really have no sense of what's happening with the show in terms of the creative direction they're going to take us in. I have a lot of excitement about going back to work and seeing my friends after such a long time, and getting back into a territory that's really familiar and comfortable — especially after coming out of an experience that was so epic and affected my life so deeply and in so many ways. I'm open to whatever they throw at me.

That actually sounds like a potentially interesting Trek movie (though I still find it about as impossible to think of Winona Ryder as Spok's mother as I do thinking of her as an android in Alien:Resurrection.