Treknobabble is a continuing series of columns written by uber-Trekkie Reed Farrington in anticipation of the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.

I met Greg aka McCoy when I was in Kindergarten. Greg was a younger brother of my brother’s best friend. (He’s not FilmJunk Greg.)

The next year, Greg introduced me to Dave aka Spock.

Star Trek came on sometime during this period of our lives.

We were three best friends. So I guess it was natural that we “played” Star Trek. I don’t think we had a problem deciding who played which character. I think I always wanted to be Captain Kirk. Dave liked Mr. Spock. And I think Greg was happy playing anyone. If there had been a casting director, I’m sure Dave with his leading-man appearance and boyish charm would have been assigned the role of Kirk while the vaguely Oriental Spock would have been given to me to play. Modesty aside, I was known for being a “brain.”

We grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada where the astronauts practiced in preparation for walking on the Moon. The Sudbury Basin was created from a meteor strike. I forget what year, but it was a long time ago. So it was the perfect landscape for imagining alien worlds. The sulfur from the mining smoke stacks even filtered the sunlight to give us our multi-coloured skies; though, I don’t recall ever getting to see a green sky.

Nearby Dave’s house, we had our own Vasquez Rocks. (Just outside of Hollywood, Vasquez Rocks is a recognizable landmark that was seen in the Original Series episode with the green lizard-like Gorn alien.) When I think back about how dangerous it was climbing those cliffs, it’s one of those miracles of childhood that no one ever took a tumble. I guess it was fortuitous that we never brought along any red shirts in our landing parties.

We never wore any clothes that resembled the uniforms. For phasers, we just shaped our hands like guns. I had a Kodak Instamatic camera case with a strap. This served as Spock’s tricorder. For communicators, we just flipped our hands and pretended we were holding communicators.

For the Enterprise interiors, we used Dave’s house. The recreation room served as the bridge. A white leather lounge chair was the captain’s chair. Off to the side was a liquor bar that served as the transporter room because it had separate ceiling lights. The transporter room also happened to serve as sickbay since the bar counter could be used as a bed. And down a short corridor was the furnace room, which served as engineering, of course.

So what happened to these idealistic young men who took inspiration from a show to boldly go where no man has gone before?

Greg and I grew apart during high school when he turned into a “bad” boy. Alcohol and weed. Slacking off. That sort of thing. There’s a story that’s probably apocryphal, but I heard that Greg and another guy once had a contest to see who could bed the most women in an apartment building. Supposedly, there were quite a few lonely housewives. I don’t know who won. The last time I was in Sudbury about fifteen years ago, I got together with both Greg and Dave. We didn’t “play” Star Trek. The last I heard, he’s still in Sudbury. I don’t think he ever entertained any thoughts about entering medical school.

Dave and I are still the best of friends. We’ve maintained the friendship over all these years. Although we haven’t lived in the same city for thirty or so years, we still keep in contact and visit with each other when the opportunity affords. He has a lovely daughter. He’s involved with grocery store management. He recently moved back to Sudbury. And we still “play” Star Trek. Sort of.

As for me, I’ve been programming computers for my entire life. The closest I ever got into space occurred when I flew in a Gulfstream jet with the first group of Canadian astronauts. We were simulating sunrises and sunsets in the jet. It was all part of a sun photometer experiment that Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space, conducted on the space shuttle. I was a university student lending a hand at the Atmospheric Environment Service where scientists had devised the experiment.

And now I have two new best friends: Sean and Jay. Unfortunately, we don’t “play” Star Trek.