“It was my obsession with the series that got us on the set that day.” — Robbie Rox

The bridge set built for the convention still has stories to tell. I recently heard a couple more of those tales, two years after this site launched. 

Robbie Rox was a well-known Toronto musician in the 1970s, and he still performs today whenever a good gig comes along. On Sunday July 25, 1976, the manager of his group Robbie Rox and “The 70s Horn Band” talked the convention organizers into letting the band shoot promotional photos during the lunch break. Only one of those pics survives today.

Rox told me he has been a Star Trek fan since the early 1970s, and the manager knew that. “It was my obsession with the series that got us on the set that day.”

Rox, sitting in the captain’s chair, is ordering his crew to remove an intruder (the band’s manager) from the bridge. The photo was used on promotional posters.

I learned of this shoot when author Robert Dayton contacted me to do some fact checking for his upcoming book, Cold Glitter: The Untold Story Of Canadian Glam. He was tracking down information on a story another Toronto rocker, Frank Soda, told him about a music video shot for his album The Adventures of Sodaman. It used the Star Trek bridge set. 

I confirmed that the bridge built in 1976 was still around when this video was shot in 1983. The set was then at Mr. Gameways’ Ark on Yonge Street. (This article explains how it ended up there.)

And the good news is that 21-minute Sodaman video is on YouTube. It is peak 1980s budget-rock nostalgia. 

Postscript: Robbie Rox was also a background actor, and he met William Shatner when Rox appeared on his series TekWar, shot in Toronto. Rox was also good friends with John Colicos in Toronto and would often ask the actor to recite his lines from Errand of Mercy.