This is another Trump commentary. Sort of.
This Thursday, the new Patrick Stewart series Star Trek: Picard came out, and I still haven’t decided if I want to pay CBS All Access any money when I’m already paying too much for satellite. (I still haven’t seen Discovery Season 2.) But by coincidence, the next day (January 24), the Trump Administration officially unveiled the new symbol for Space Force (which earlier revealed its desert-camo colored uniforms, you know, to blend in to SPACE) and as many of us Trump haters pointed out, the arrowhead with ‘orbit arc’ streak bears more than a little bit of resemblance to the Star Trek Federation military logo. Well, of course this mockery brought out all the Trumpniks on Quora and elsewhere to point out that it’s really just as much the other way around, and that technically (as in, ‘that’s our story and we’re sticking to it’) the logo is actually based on the old Air Force space command logo, as explained in this article. The startrek.com site even says that Gene Roddenberry took the “delta” arrow design as “a direct descendant of the vector component of the old NASA (and later UESPA) logos in use during Earth’s space programs of the 20th and 21st Centuries.”
All quite true, but this is merely eliding the point that the reason the Trek comparison comes up more easily than the Space Command comparison is that the Trek logo is far more prominent in the public sphere, and in this most publicity-conscious of administrations, it is unlikely that the first thought that came to mind was “Hey! That looks just like the Air Force Space Command symbol!”
It’s like how Trumpniks know their boy bankrupted multiple casinos, stiffed his creditors and ended up in debt to shady characters, but they still think he’s a financial genius because he played a billionaire on TV.
But the whole thing indirectly reminded me of a very obscure bit of Star Trek trivia.
Did you know the Star Trek theme
has lyrics?
You probably didn’t know this, because they have never been used. As it turns out, there is a very, very good reason for that.
Alexander Courage had written the famous theme music as an instrumental. But midway through the show’s original run, creator Gene Roddenberry, as part of his increasingly desperate attempts to monetize something that wasn’t making much money for NBC, developed lyrics specifically for the purpose of sharing the songwriting credit. And naturally, this pissed off Courage, because this cut his royalties in half. Having contributed to background music for Star Trek’s first two years, Courage never worked with Roddenberry again. And in any event, the lyrics were not only never used, they were never really intended to be used. And if you’ve read them… you know why.
I mean, it’s fairly easy to look up “star trek theme lyrics” on the net, and I could give you the link I found… but I won’t. Gene Roddenberry was a great idea man and an inspiration to multitudes. A poet, he was not.
Really, finding these lyrics was like one of those H.P. Lovecraft stories where the protagonist searches for knowledge not meant for Man, and after discovering how horrible reality truly is, is left bereft and at the verge of insanity.
What this did was inspire me to create my own lyrics for the Original Series theme music, which I would like to present here. After all, every branch of the military has it’s own theme song, and if Trump’s Totally NOT A Ripoff Of Star Trek is going to be a real military service, somebody needs to give them ideas for a song and lyrics, since clearly the Administration has no ideas of its own.
We all know the tune, let’s sing along:
Star Trek – it’s a trek to the stars
Star Trek – we fight Klingons in bars
I can’t
Understand what it is Spock is saying
I hope
No one sees that my hairpiece is fraying
Star Trek – it’s an hour of fun
And then – something happens and somebody dies
Where
Do I go? Who knows-
UN-TIL
NEXT
SHOW!!!!