Red alert is the highest shipboard alert condition in Star Trek, the franchise created by Gene Roddenberry that began as a television series in 1966. The klaxon became the audible signal for that order across later series and films from Paramount, heard whenever a Federation starship prepared for combat or faced a critical threat. Fans learned to recognise the sound without any visual cue, and it spread into parodies, games and online videos as a universal sci-fi shorthand for an emergency that demands immediate action from everyone nearby.