Lyrics to Star Trek theme song
Beyond the rim of the starlight,
my love is wand’ring in star flight.
I know he’ll find
In star clustered reaches
Love, strange love
A starwoman teaches.
I know his journey ends never.
His Star Trek will go on forever.
But tell him while
He wanders his starry sea,
Remember,
Remember me.
Wow. Don’t get me started on Roddenberry.
First of all, I loved Star Trek: The Original Series and I’m grateful to Roddenberry for creating it.
But he was a jerk.
He was a terrible researcher. He came up with the name “Spock” because he wanted a name that sounded other-worldly. He’d never heard of Dr. Benjamin Spock. Even I had heard of Dr. Spock.
Then there were the “lithium” crystals in Mudd’s Women. Apparently, Gene hadn’t consulted the Periodic Table, or he would have known that the element already existed. He must have found out later, because it was called dilithium in subsequent shows.
However, the worst example of Roddenberry’s jerkdom is in how he treated the composer Alexander Courage.
Courage composed the Star Trek theme music. Roddenberry then wrote lyrics to the music. He didn’t intend for them to be sung. He just wanted to be able to claim 50% of the royalties: “Hey, I have to get some money somewhere. I’m sure not gonna get it out of the profits of Star Trek.”
This, of course, soured the relationship between the two and Courage declined to compose any more music for Trek after the first season.
Then there was the fiasco of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Roddenberry’s constant rewrites helped cause the film to go over budget. And the script still sucked. ST:TMP was the first and worst of the Trek films.
When it came time for the sequel, the producers took Roddenberry off the production team. The result produced the far superior Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Roddenberry also nearly sunk Star Trek: The Next Generation during the first part of the first season. D. C. Fontana, David Gerrold and several other writers left the show because of Roddenberry’s policies.