He was more than just Spock

The late, great Leonard Nimoy, who once wrote a book called I Am Not Spock and a follow-up called I Am Spock, should have written a third autobiography called I Am More Than Just Spock. To me, a fan of Star Trek ever since watching the Nimoy-directed Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home when it first warped into theaters, as well as someone who often enjoyed seeing most of the original cast members in roles outside of Star Trek, Nimoy was more than just Spock. He was also Dr. William Bell, the king of Atlantis, the host of the creepy In Search Of (gah, that synthy and cheesy theme music still gives me the heebie jeebies!) and the director of likable but often disposable comedies like Three Men and a Baby and Holy Matrimony, which was hardly the success that Three Man and a Baby was but is noteworthy for featuring a funny performance by a young, pre-3rd Rock Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an Amish kid who's forced to marry trashy, True Romance-era Patricia Arquette.

But of course, Nimoy's work as the half-Vulcan, half-human Spock, the show's breakout character, featured a lot of his most sublime moments as an actor. Perhaps the biggest challenge in playing Spock--other than the makeup that was applied to the ears to make them pointy--was conveying empathy and inner conflict (and even some dry wit) in the role of an alien who was raised in a culture that suppresses its emotions, and Nimoy was more than up to the task. His work was one of several key dramatic elements of the original Star Trek that distinguished it from the mostly hackneyed and two-dimensional space operas that critics from Variety and TV Guide stupidly lumped it in with when it first aired in the '60s. Thanks mostly to Nimoy, Spock's experiences as an outsider and a misfit resonated with Star Trek fans, and they continue to do so with new generations of fans, whether they're mixed-race viewers or children of immigrants who relate to Spock being caught between two different cultures.

Nimoy's character was so badass on the '60s show that I dressed up as Spock on Halloween later on in that year when I first saw Star Trek IV. Just like how young Chris Rock's mom Rochelle sewed together her son's Prince costume in a classic '80s Halloween episode of Everybody Hates Chris, my mom, who was taught how to sew by her father, the town tailor back in the Philippines, sewed together my Spock costume. She based my uniform on both a 1974 Mego action figure of Dr. McCoy that my older brother used to play with (he didn't have a Spock action figure, but fortunately, Bones and Spock wore the same uniform color on the '60s show, so that made it easier to recreate the uniform) and Starfleet uniform blueprints I showed to her from the pages of either the 1987 Star Trek tie-in book Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise or some other Star Trek book (I can't remember which book it was). I still have the photos of myself as a kid cosplaying as Spock, complete with pointy ears and Vulcan eyebrows, but I'm not in the mood to post any of them right now. In fact, I don't think I'll ever be in the mood to post any of them right now. Aw, rats.

The people who run Sleuth have no Cloo

When NBCUniversal (now one word instead of two) added Sleuth to its stable of cable channels in 2006, it was an alright idea for a channel: Nick at Nite with guns. For its first couple of years, Sleuth's 24-hour lineup was comprised of reruns of NBCUniversal-owned cop or detective shows like Dragnet, Magnum, P.I., Miami Vice and the always-worth-revisiting Homicide: Life on the Street.

But like so many other channels, of course, Sleuth has strayed from its original purpose. These days, DirecTV channel 308 is an ill-defined dumping ground for reruns of current original shows from its sister station USA (Royal Pains, In Plain Sight)--and Walker, Texas Ranger. With content like a doctor show (Royal Pains), a cop show with very little detective work because of its focus on witness protection (In Plain Sight) and a cop show with no detective work that's only watchable when Conan O'Brien's around to butt in with snarky and appalled commentary (Walker), the name Sleuth doesn't make much sense anymore. Cloo--the new name that Sleuth will assume on a yet-to-be-confirmed future date a la the still-inane 2009 conversion of its other sister station Sci Fi to Syfy--makes even less sense. What's next? NBCUniversal rebranding USA as YouSA? (They also own Telemundo. Maybe they should rename it YouEse.)

Occasionally, Sleuth has done something nice like temporarily revive a show I've longed to see again (Keen Eddie, The Rockford Files) or air a 007 marathon or the surprisingly good 1973 made-for-TV caper movie/unsold anthology show pilot The Alpha Caper, which isn't on DVD and stars Henry Fonda as a forcibly retired parole officer who teams up with the ex-cons he used to watch over--two of whom are played by Leonard Nimoy and Larry Hagman--to hijack a shipment of gold. But otherwise, as a fan of the private eye and caper genres, I've found Sleuth to be a wasted opportunity, regurgitating too many of the same broadcast network procedural reruns that can already be found on USA (House, NCIS).

Unless it's airing a White Collar episode I've never seen before or a Burn Notice rerun with a useful spy tip I need to jot down, Sleuth isn't worth my time. The channel's so cheap it doesn't have any on-air hosts or any original programming that could have given Sleuth a distinctive personality, like how breezy procedurals have become USA's forte or how FX has become synonymous with edgy comedies and gritty and violent but intelligently written dramas (the only original show that Sleuth has produced is a 2006 I Love the '80s-style special about "America's Top Sleuths").

It's owned by NBCUniversal and it's called Sleuth (that is until the name change to Cloo takes place), so why isn't the channel diving into the NBCUniversal library, with its vast history of influential crime shows, and pulling out classic sleuthy properties like Columbo (R.I.P. Peter Falk) or the other NBC Mystery Movie shows? Shouldn't a channel called Sleuth be a little, uh, sleuthier?

Also, as someone who stopped finding Law & Order interesting after an ailing Jerry Orbach left the mothership (although the later pairing of Jesse L. Martin and Jeremy Sisto was a great and too-brief one during the mothership's Law half, as was the duo of Chris Noth and Annabella Sciorra on Criminal Intent), I don't think Sleuth needs to be another repository for Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit reruns (TNT has exclusive rights to reruns of the mothership, which explains its absence on the NBCUniversal channels' schedules). Okay, maybe Criminal Intent is tolerable once every weekday, but a five-hour Goren-thon like the ones Sleuth often does is overkill. Plus, Sleuth is the sixth channel on the dial that currently airs Criminal Intent reruns, after USA, Bravo, Oxygen, WGN and the local MyNetworkTV affiliate. Enough already, man.