Vulcan was a sad sight that night, slumped in a cage at the surgery, on a drip to keep his internal organs functioning, and surrounded by towels.
But it's going to take even more effort to persuade us all that a late-night slump in front of the telly should be taken into a third dimension.
Every night they slump for hours in front of a flickering box, having their brains rotted by a continuous diet of mindless pap.
Bruised and humiliated, Rath staggers off to his former place of work and past glory, sneaks into his classroom in the middle of the night, and slumps over, dead at his desk.
Along the way he has even showed his skill at comedy – rearing up as a hilarious emblem of alpha-male virility in (the otherwise idiotic) Date Night and slumped on the couch with a profane talking teddy-bear in Seth MacFarlane's Ted.
Your trouser legs rustle, as you walk, like blue ice, and a smile full of suffering and pride petrifies your face, and your forehead is white before the ripe desire of the frost; or else it bends down silently over the doze of the night watchman, slumped down in his wooden shack.
But in commercial terms, Pessl has already avoided a sophomore slump: "Night Film" enters the hardcover fiction list at No. 6.
And scattered all around the cabin is the entire Kirov orchestra and company, due to perform Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa that night in Glasgow, slumped insensate against headrests, sleeping off the heady, hectic regime of the previous week's performances.
It was a bad night for Uzbekistan, who slumped to third place after Iran beat Lebanon, a victory which ended Qatar's hopes of a trip to Brazil next year.
The last time I saw him that night, he was still slumped in his chair with his head against the table, the posture of a man engaged in a silent protest against the world.
