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I got my kids to sit down to watch the new ‘Star Trek’ movies. We’d been watching ‘Sherlock’ with Bennedict Cumberbatch, so that was the gateway.

“Oh, that guy,” they said. Familiarity is how you provide motivation to try something new.

Imagine referring to Star Trek as something new. It was new for them.

“Why are they wearing red, blue and yellow?”

“Science, engineering, and command.”

My wife tried to remember the name of the Captain of the Enterprise. She got it wrong in a way that was almost perfectly right.

“Chris Pine?” my eldest said with some skepticism.

“Yeah, he’s Captain Dick,” my wife said.

“Really? His name is Captain Dick?”

“Kirk,” I replied. Then I thought for a moment. “But it might as well be Captain Dick.”

“Who’s that guy with the big ears?”

“That’s Cock,” said my wife.

“Spock!” I replied.

“I don’t understand old shows,” my youngest said.

The movie played on. Kirk did his thing. Every time a young woman walked by, he turned around and smiled.

“Come to think of it, Captain Dick would have been better,” I said.

“Right?”

At the end of the film, Spock screams, “Khaaan!” Then he gets energized down to the planet for a desperate footrace. Nobody asks why they didn’t just beam him directly to where he needed to go. Even in space you need a footrace. During the climactic scene, Spock and Khan engage in a fist fight on some sort of floating barge.

There’s a moment when Spock grabs Khan’s shoulder and Khan grimaces in pain. I looked over at my children and they didn’t register any reaction. I realized, they knew nothing about the Vulcan neck pinch. They didn’t know that Vulcans are stronger than humans, that’s why Spock was a fair match for Khan. All this lore had been assumed by the film, but without it, the scene played as kind of ridiculous.

I tried to explain the Vulcan neck pinch later on.

“Yeah, Vulcans have some cool powers like the mind meld and the neck pinch.”

“Uh-huh,” my teenage daughters replied. “It wasn’t that effective against Khan.”

“Well, that just shows that Khan is tough, not that Vulcans are weak.”

“Okay. Well what normally happens?”

“If Spock does it to a human, he collapses unconscious.”

“Wow.”

I left it at that.

The next day we watched the first Star Trek film. In the first few minutes, we get to meet Kirk’s father played by Chris Hemsworth.”

“Wait a minute,” my eldest said, “they could have had Chris Hemsworth and they went with Chris Pine?”

“Yeah...”

“That’s a downgrade.”

Later in the film, Spock grabs Kirk by the neck, rendering him unconscious. I looked over at my daughter, who gave me a delighted smirk.

“Vulcan neck pinch!” she cried with triumph. It was the most ridiculous and glorious thing in the world.

Later on a red shirt fell out a hole in the hull. He screamed and my daughter cried out, “Wilhelm!”

They know the Wilhelm scream, they know the Vulcan neck pinch, they know his name is Kirk and not Dick. They know what it means when somebody screams, “Khaaaaaan!” I showed them the version from the 1982 film on YouTube. My daughter laughed when I typed in a line of 20 A’s and got the exact result I wanted. It popped right up. Shatner is epic.

My kids are exploring new worlds and new civilizations. They’re still skeptical about the neck pinch, but they’ve learned to boldly go where no one has gone before. Or, in this case, where many have gone before.

What else is there for a father to teach?

That’s parenting done right.

“Khaaaaaaan!”

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