The Best of the Century, With Nimoy as Guide

As the hourglass drains on the 20th century, the media are eager to wrap it up and sell it to our sentimental selves. While reams of magazine and chunks of prime time are being devoted to remembrances of the things past, the Internet proves once again to be a swell way to surf down memory lane, stopping only to smell the daisies that appeal to us most.

One exceptional spot to glean both new content and a hefty dose of intriguing archives is the Alternative Entertainment Network at https://www.AENTV.com. While the site launched three years ago with neat stuff like the original censored episodes of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” the network is churning out new programs all the time and has recently enlisted Leonard Nimoy as emissary in search of American history.

Nimoy hosts “Our Twentieth Century,” an interactive retrospective of the events--trivial and consequential--that marked this century.

Having forayed into the future and outer space, Spock now takes us back in time to revisit the ‘30s, ‘40s and forward through a streaming video collection of snippets of world news, sports, entertainment, movies and a smattering of frivolous trifles.

“I’ve been around for a lot of it, and I feel a part of it,” Nimoy said of our history. “Particularly the ‘60s and ‘70s and into the ‘80s with the ‘Star Trek’ stories. I feel that I was in touch with the zeitgeist of what was going on during those years and I care about it. I’m affected by it.”

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Admitting to being “addicted to history” and nostalgic, Nimoy was excited by this project, as it gave him a chance to riffle through history. “What it does for me so far is trigger memories. I remember when Joe Lewis became heavyweight champion of the world, I remember when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor--my brother and I were selling newspapers that day on the Boston Common. I remember D-Day, the invasion of Europe by the Allied Forces. I remember when the atomic bomb was dropped. I remember when the Beatles first arrived.”

The Web site allows you to click on individual years (from 1930 through 1975) and watch newsreels and footage of events in the realms of sports, entertainment and world news.

If you click on 1930, you might see a clip that shows a barber trading haircuts for vegetables during the Depression.

Another clip shows Gandhi leading the salt uprising march in India. In 1933, the jigsaw puzzle craze hits the country. In 1940, the rubber bathing suit is introduced and the U.S. Army begins the draft.

Nimoy, however, feels most connected to the 1960s “because ‘Star Trek’ did have a social overtone. The original series was very strongly oriented toward the headlines and current events, political events, racial issues, conservation issues, population issues that were in the headlines. The wars and what precipitated them, and which ones made sense and which ones didn’t. I think we were in close touch with all of that. We’d go to work each day sort of making a comment on what was happening to our world.”

(For a synopsis of each episode of the original “Star Trek,” check out https://www.thelogbook.com/log/tosmenu.html.)

Nimoy was also a good choice for hosting the project due to his big fan base on the Internet. Science fiction is one of the most popular subjects on the Internet, second only to pornography. There are countless “Star Trek” fan sites on the Web, with subject matter from role-playing games to German “Star Trek” clubs to Klingon dictionaries, and Nimoy has been known to do the occasional on-line chat.

While he cut his teeth on Chekhov and Odets, Nimoy admits that sci-fi has been very good to him. “For whatever reason, I projected some kind of quality people said, ‘OK, he’s a good alien,’ ” Nimoy says with a laugh.

Asked to comment on the staggering Web presence of “Star Trek” aficionados, Nimoy is cautious.

“If a TV crew goes to a ‘Star Trek’ convention where there are two or three thousand people, and six of them are dressed in outlandish costumes, guess who’s going to make the 6 o’clock news?” he argues. “There are enormous numbers of people who are living very rich and full lives and many of whom have very interesting careers which they attribute to their interest in ‘Star Trek’--I mean, astro physicists, astronauts, teachers. But on the other hand, Bill Shatner once said to some of these people, ‘Get a life.’ ”