Spock impersonation a new career

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/10/2016 (3297 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As you can see from some of the photographs Paul Forest is selling in the Cosplay Alley section of the Central Canada Comic Con, Forest stands almost a foot taller than did actor Leonard Nimoy, who played Vulcan science officer Mr. Spock on Star Trek.

Otherwise, the resemblance between Forest and Nimoy is striking, as long as you understand we’re talking an older Spock from, say, the Search for Spock epoch.

In the Cosplay section, Forest is very much an oddball given most of the other guests are attractive young women dressed and made up to look like iconic figures such as Harley Quinn or a blood-spattered Alice in Wonderland.

He appears under the monicker “Spock Vegas,” but Forest, like William Shatner, hails from Montreal. Once a house painter, he fell into the Spock-impersonator racket during a snowbird jaunt to Las Vegas “to go play roulette.”

“During that trip, I was talking to a guy at one in the morning, there was nobody in the street, and there he was dressed as Superman.

“He said, ‘We’re buskers, street entertainers. People take pictures with us.’

“What a strange thing,” Forest says. “Five minutes into the conversation, he said, ‘You look like Leonard Nimoy. You should dress up as Mr. Spock.’”

And thus a new career was born, once he gathered Spock accoutrements such as pointy ears.

“It took me about a week to get the stuff from eBay,” he says.

Forest says he has done 67 comic conventions in the past two years, and he got to meet Nimoy at least twice … and William Shatner about a dozen times.

It remains to be seen how long he’ll make this a living, but for now, evidently, Paul Forest is prospering.

— Randall King