Every Star Trek Opening Titles Ranked Worst To Best
7. Star Trek: The Original Series
The opening credits to the Original Series is instantly recognisable, with that female vocalist's tune running tingles down the audiences' collective spines. While the remastered version has cleaned up the footage of the Enterprise flying past several planets and zipping through space, the original introduction as shown on the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, was a rushed affair.
The Howard Anderson Company had been tasked with assembling the intro in the summer of 1966, however, producer Robert Justman and Gene Roddenberry were getting more and more anxious as time went by, with nothing to show. They eventually requested a viewing of the work that had been done, which left them aghast. Justman later recalled that the footage on-screen was so grainy, jumbled and all over the place that it was unusable.
Together, he and Roddenberry cut their own opening credits, using footage that had been shot for The Cage and the second pilot. Justman felt that his single biggest contribution was to convince Roddenberry to have the Enterprise 'deliver' the cast names, rather than having them just pop up on-screen. Composed Alexander Courage had already composed the iconic theme tune, though Roddenberry also composed lyrics which were never used, simply to get residuals from the piece. Unsurprisingly, Courage and Roddenberry had a massive falling out over this.
The opening narration would go on to inform the credits for the Next Generation as well.