10 Things That Wouldn't Exist Without Leonard Nimoy

6. Equal Pay For Walter Koenig And Nichelle Nichols

Star Trek was ground breaking in many ways. Creator Gene Roddenberry hoped to explore contemporary issues through the lens of science fiction, as so many had done before him, and the series included such momentous...moments as TV's first major inter-racial kiss, between William Shatner's Captain Kirk and Nichelle Nichols' Lieutenant Uhura in the episode Plato's Stepchildren. That was in Star Trek's third and final season. Early on, it didn't look like Nichols would bother returning past the first season, citing racial prejudice on the Paramount lot and beyond €“ along with a pretty crappy rate of pay compared to her white, male co-stars €“ as her reason for handing in her notice. No less than Martin Luther King asked her to reconsider. It also helped that Lenoard Nimoy, using his leverage as break-out character Dr Spock, to personally and successfully negotiate equal pay for both Nichols and Chekov actor Walter Koenig, both of whom got a heck of a lot less than the rest of the cast. Both actors have said it was Nimoy and Nimoy alone who did that, so perhaps he can share some of the credit for keeping both key characters on the Enterprise.