10 MORE Star Trek Moments You Never Knew Were Improvised

Don't believe everything you see on TV! The Vulcans are an emotional people. What they bury down deep inside, they make mildly manifest through their hands and the odd raised eyebrow or several. The salute and the nerve pinch were creations of the actor, Leonard Nimoy, as the previous incarnation of this list pointed out. There is another thing Vulcans do with their digits, however — the 'two-finger touching,' for want of a better term. It was improvised, too.

Nimoy recalled the origins of the gesture in his second autobiography I am Spock. On set for Journey to Babel, he had the opportunity to talk at length to the man playing his dad. As Nimoy noted, Mark Lenard "was very curious about Vulcans and wanted to know as much as he could about them". Nimoy obliged his interest, telling him,

I have this notion that Vulcan society emphasises tactile contact, and I'm always on the lookout for opportunities to use hands and fingers, as a symbol, a benchmark of the race.

The conversation then turned to "what public sign of affection, if any, Sarek and his human wife would display". As Nimoy added, "Handholding was clearly out, but perhaps finger-to-finger contact of a ceremonial, dignified nature might work". The finer detail of the gesture that made it to screen in Journey to Babel was then the handiwork of both Mark Lenard and Jane Wyatt. The rest is semiotics and a fair amount of sex.