The power of many! Okay.
This is Star Wars now. It has been reduced to a group of witches singing badly in a hippie group. SW isn’t for me anymore, and I am glad I walked away from the franchise. For every Clone Wars or Rebels, we get this shit. I enjoyed The Force Awakens despite some of its flaws. However, things have been hit or miss.
Keep in mind, that I walked away from Star Trek Discovery after the first season as well. It is not written for me.
Sneaky Gene Roddenberry went behind composer Alexander Courage’s back and took hold of the copy of the master sheet music. Courage wrote the theme as just a melodic theme, with voices singing behind the main theme. Roddenberry hap-dashed a bunch of random words together and wrote a bunch of lyrics into the sheet music below the notes. Given that Gene was never a poet or a lyricist, the words and syllables don’t fit with the theme. Lyricists have to work with the composer and musicians for it all to make sense. Gene wasn’t interested in that, though.
Gene wanted to make money on the sideways. With him typing his name on the sheet music, legally, he helped “compose” the theme song to Star Trek The Original Series. Despite doing nothing to help write the music, Gene now shared the royalty rights with Courage. When Courage learned of this betrayal, he was upset about the manner Roddenberry stole some of his money from him. It is a slap in the face of every composer and lyricist. Courage didn’t take legal action against Gene, and some said he couldn’t because his contract allowed Gene to “add something”. That second part I can’t confirm.
Courage did confront Gene. Thanks to this site and Snopes, we have this famous answer back to the irate Courage. ((“Hey, I have to get some money somewhere. I’m sure not going to get it out of the profits of Star Trek.”)) Yeah, by taking away money on something you had no business stealing from, Gene. He would do these horrible things when confronted, sheepishly attempting to do it after the fact.
Courage would compose a few more tracks for the first season, which they would reuse throughout the rest of the season. However, he was upset with Gene’s behavior. He left Trek for the second season. He would return for the third season, which by that point wasn’t under Gene’s command. Getting bored and tired of the struggles of day-to-day work, Roddenberry checked out by the end of the second season.
Because this post is extremely long, I will probably do an epilogue.
Did you know that the theme song for Star Trek TOS has lyrics? I wrote about this years ago, but I wanted to bring up this interesting story again. After telling a younger coworker about the story, I thought about redoing the tale behind the TOS theme song controversy. Due to how interesting the story is, I will be breaking this up.
I need to talk about the sheer shitty behavior of Gene Roddenberry. Gene was an idealistic man who did believe in humanity, but Gene wasn’t that idealistic person in real life. He screwed over a lot of people in his lifetime. He was more like his creation, the Ferengi than he would admit. Gene, while loyal to his friends, wasn’t a good person. Back in the day, some people protected the image of Gene Roddenberry and didn’t bring up the darker sides of the man.
Alexander Courage, a pipe-chomping film and movie composer, wrote the theme for Trek. The song was inspired by the song Beyond the Blue Horizon by Richard Whiting, no not the abbot from the 1400s. When you listen to it, you can tell that through the fast-moving backing music. I can hear it now.
I should add that Gene wanted Jerry Goldsmith to compose the theme for Star Trek, but he was unavailable. Goldsmith suggested Courage.
There are different versions of the TOS theme song depending on the season and episode. Sometimes, there are vocals, without lyrics, that show up in the theme. Some early episodes don’t have it. They recorded the theme for the remastered version years later.
During the first pilot, Courage wrote the theme and provided the “shoosh” sound for the Enterprise zipping by the screen. Yep, that sound is of the composer just making up a sound for a warping starship. Anyway, Gene, who was mad he wasn’t getting as much money for creating Trek, got wind of Courage getting royalties for writing the theme. Like the Ferengi, he came up with a devious plan to screw over Courage and make some money.
Gene could smell the money in music rights…
The poor animation and bad lip-syncing are the best. I am not sure why Iceman is running around in his underwear. Someone give homeboy some pants. Why are they burying mannequins under a pillar of ice? What happens when it melts? Why is Iceman running like he has poop in his pants?
BTW, nothing moves the Blob!
I love these tiny cameos from other movies. Given that marketing for this movie gave away the cameo in TV ads and trailers, the joke doesn’t come across as a shocking surprise. What is even cooler, which someone noticed, Mr. Fusion is sitting on the side by the air vents of the DeLorean car. It is the 2015 model. If you want to get even nerdier, the setting of this movie happened a few years before 1885. So, an older Doc ran into some trouble and got stuck a few years before his 1985 self got stuck there in 1885. Or, this is just a funny cameo.
The BTTF theme playing at the end is a nice touch.
BTW, IMDB is reporting that the DeLorean in this scene is Seth MacFarlane’s custom-built car. He just brought it in for the movie. If I were a millionaire, I’d get one and Kitt and the A-Team van.
I swear the Al-G Rhythm for YouTube is unkind, trolling, and funny. I was doing a completely different search and an old video from Internet clown Nick Rekieta came up from two years ago. It is a video of a healthier version of his loving wife giving a healthy Nick a gift. Despite being awkward, you can tell his wife loves him. Flash forward to their pale and skinny appearances now.
Time is unkind to people.
By the way, look for my snarky comment.
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