The original theme music for Gene Roddenberry's 1966 sci-fi series "Star Trek" was composed by Alexander Courage, a long-time orchestrator who had worked on the scores for the film versions of "Show Boat," "Gigi," and "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." He also contributed incidental music to TV shows like "Daniel Boone," "Eight is Enough," "Lost in Space," and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." "Star Trek" is the only main theme that he composed.

In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Courage once noted that his main inspiration for "Star Trek" was a 1930 train-based pop song called "Beyond the Blue Horizon," as written by Richard Whiting and W. Frank Harling. Notably, however, his theme is more 1960s pop opera than croony jazz. The soprano that sang the "Star Trek" melody was named Loulie Jean Norman.

The first four notes of Courage's theme -- E, G, B, C...