The theme to the original Star Trek series has become iconic over the past half-century with its opening narration by William Shatner along with the instantly recognizable soprano vocalizations sung over sweeping orchestral movements. But it is a little-known fact that Gene Roddenberry actually wrote lyrics to go along with that piece of music, and even though they were never used, he received royalties.
Back at the time that Star Trek was first produced, composers for television series and movies received royalty payments each time their music aired with the original broadcast as well as in subsequent repeats (a much better deal than the actors on the shows received). Composer Alexander Courage had been brought onboard to score the theme to Trek, and Roddenberry had made a handshake deal with him that gave the show’s creator the right to pen lyrics to go along with the song. As the author of the lyrics, even though they were never actually sung with the theme, Roddenberry received half the royalties generated from the piece of music. Courage claimed that what Roddenberry did was unethical, but the Trek creator retorted saying that he “had to get money somewhere” because he was “not going to get it out of the profits of Star Trek.” I’m sure the regular actors from the series would have liked to have had a similar deal because they saw very little in the way of residuals from the show’s syndicated run as was typical with TV productions made at that time. And most had a hard time finding work after Trek because they were typecasted from their roles in the show
To my knowledge, the theme has never been officially released with Roddenberry’s lyrics sung alongside the music (and we can only be thankful that William Shatner never tackled this one with his “singing” career). Nichelle Nicols did a disco version of the Trek theme, but she used different lyrics.
You can read the lyrics that Roddenberry penned at the link below (no, I’m not posting them here because somebody might start knocking on my door looking for royalty payments!) And if you dare, you can imagine an alternate universe where the Shat-man “sang” those lyrics during the opening theme of the show.
Source: Snopes.com
