From Dreamwatch Issue 50 (November 1998).

Leonard Nimoy talks to Paul Simpson about his audio sci-fi series Alien Voices...

How did the idea of Alien Voices come up?

About two years ago, I was contacted by some friends who were doing a revival of the original Orson Welles production of The War of the Worlds. They asked me to do the Welles role, which I did. It was directed by John de Lancie, who is a very good actor/director who played Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation. We had never worked together before and we got on very well. We decided to form this company and took the idea to Simon & Schuster’s audiobook division. They agreed to finance several productions. So we have so far done The Time Machine, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Lost World, and The Invisible Man.

Then last November we did a production for the Sci-Fi Channel where, onstage, we did a radio production of The First Men In The Moon, which was televised. What the audience saw was us in a legitimate theatre, with an audience of about a thousand people, doing this on-stage production: actors with scripts in hand, sound effects artists on stage, musicians on stage with us. It was televised live on the Sci-Fi Channel — and we did another production for them of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

What prompted the choice of these very well known tales?

We’re starting out with the classics for as long as we can stay with them. These are much loved pieces of science fiction. They were all written in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds; they are sort of the roots of all the great science fiction ideas: interplanetary travel, lost civilisations, time travel, all of that.

I don’t know how long we’ll be able to continue with the classics - we may move into something more contemporary in the future, but at least for the time being that was the mandate we gave ourselves.

Obviously, some changes have had to be made to the stories for the constraints of radio, but have you felt you’ve needed to make changes for 1990s sensibilities, as opposed to 1890s?

I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ve made a lot of changes. The one major casting change we made was in The Lost World where Conan Doyle had written a character called Summersby. We had it played by a woman, [Voyager’s] Roxann Biggs-Dawson. That was the one major departure that we’ve done. Otherwise I think we’ve stayed close to the original intentions of the writers.

How has it felt for you, as an actor who played one of the icons of television science fiction, to be working with these classics?

I‘m very comfortable with it. I’ve been involved with science fiction for many years. My first science fiction role was all the way back in 1950 or ‘51, when I portrayed an alien in one of these Republic Studios’ Saturday morning serials called Zombies of the Stratosphere. It was pretty primitive stuff. So I’m very comfortable, and I love this material.

I think these are great stories, particularly the stories of H.G. Wells. The Wells stories are so interesting to me because, the more you do them, the more you discover what he was thinking in social terms, not just in terms of science fiction. It’s a science fiction of ideas, which has always been attractive to me.

Have you found, when casting the parts, that you have been affected by the way people have been known, and tried to cast against type?

No - that’s an interesting question, because we’ve given the actors a licence to play characters other than those they would typically play. In some cases, they’re playing characters similar to what they have done before, but in many cases, they’re not, and I think that’s one of the attractions for them. On some of these tapes, some of us are doing more than one voice - those that have that sort of vocal range can change age, or ethnic origin, or whatever - and it’s fun for the actors because they do get to step outside the usual things they are identified with.

Has that created any sort of negative feedback from the audiences - they’ve seen familiar names, and found it’s not been what they expected?

No, not at all. On the contrary, I think that what the audiences are getting, which is very positive, is that the actors are enjoying themselves. There’s a sense of fun in the work, and audiences really respond to that.

How long did the studiobound stories take to produce?

Typically, a day and a half, perhaps two days. For The Invisible Man, I think we probably spent about 14 or 15 hours in the studio.

Were all the actors together, or recorded separately, as the animated Star Trek was?

A bit of both. We have some scenes with all the actors together working in ensemble; for some of the material, where only one or two of the actors were needed for a lengthy period of time, it was easier to do that before the other actors arrived, or after they had gone. There was no point having them all sitting around.

So it wasn’t recorded in order?

Not exactly.

Where would you like to see the project move on to? What other books would you like to tackle?

Well, we’ll probably move into some Edgar Allan Poe eventually. Maybe some H.P. Lovecraft material — those are some of the authors that we’ve been talking about. We haven’t quite made that move yet. For the Hallowe’en project for the Sci-Fi Channel, we’re considering some of those, as well as Dracula or Frankenstein.

The thing that we find so challenging, and so exciting, is when you go back to the roots, you discover what these authors were really thinking about, and what the social context is of some of these projects, which perhaps has been lost over the years when people have done derivative versions. To go back and rediscover what was the original intent of these was a lot of fun for us.

What other projects are you working on at the moment?

I pick and choose. I just had a performance in the NBC television movie version of Brave New World that aired in June. I acted in that, but I don't do a lot. I try to find some tasty morsels where I can enjoy myself. I’m trying to avoid long term commitments of any kind. At my time of life, I don’t have to be obsessive about working any more.

Prior to Brave New World, the last thing I did was in the Biblical story of King David, where I played the prophet Samuel. I got to anoint Jonathan Pryce as King Saul, and we filmed that in Morocco. But I’m not doing much. As I say, I’m trying to pick the spots.

You worked with your son Adam on the Outer Limits episode, I Robot. Did you enjoy working with him?

I had a wonderful time. I think he did a terrific job. I was a little trepidatious, because I knew that he had learned his craft, but we had not worked together. I wasn’t quite sure how that would go — but it went extremely well. I was extremely proud of him, and I was very pleased with the show.

Will there be any more from your comic book Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals?

Oh, that’s been put to bed for a long while now.

Would you consider returning to the Star Trek universe?

I don’t think it’s in the cards. I don’t see it happening. I’ve been away from there for several years now, and I have not heard any sound from the people who are making that product that they might be interested in having me back. So it’s very hypothetical, but it just seems unlikely.