Why Leonard Nimoy Declined a Role in “Generations”

Watching “Generations,” one can likely sense that certain lines of dialogue were intended for different characters. Chekov, for instance, ends up curing people in sickbay, clearly an action that should have been taken by Dr. McCoy. The whole purpose of the 2293 sequence was to seemingly kill off Kirk and insert him into the Nexus, and the rest of the cast had nothing to contribute to that. As such, most of them turned down the gig.

Nimoy noted that there was no Spock role in the script, saying that his entire job would be dryly reciting a few lines of dialogue. It seemed so useless and tacky, especially after “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.” Nimoy felt it was a little disrespectful to offer him a “Star Trek” job and not treat his character with respect. The job was offered by “Star Trek” executive producer Rick Berman and Nimoy was blunt right to his face. As he recalled:

“There was not a Spock role. There were five or six lines attributed to Spock in a scene with Chekov and Uhura and Kirk and whoever else was there, but it had nothing to do with Spock. They were not Spock-like in any way. I said to Rick Berman, ‘You could distribute these lines to any one of the other characters and it wouldn’t make any difference.’ And that is exactly what he did. There was no Spock function in the script.”

Koenig and Doohan, it seems, didn’t much mind that they had small roles in “Generations,” although Koenig did find, in retrospect, that he could have done a lot more. He even wrote and shot a scene for himself, showing how Chekov felt about the “death” of Kirk … and it was cut.