Editing Star Trek: The Animated Series (section)

=== Novelties in the series ===
In the original ''Star Trek'' series, the main character was given the name [[James T. Kirk]]. It was not until the animated series that writer [[David Gerrold]] expanded on the "T", establishing Kirk's middle name as Tiberius. By coincidence, on Gene Roddenberry's first series ''[[The Lieutenant]]'', the principal character was William Tiberius Rice. According to Gerrold, he had been influenced by ''[[I, Claudius]]'', and had approached Roddenberry with his choice of middle name, who agreed; Gerrold did not learn about the earlier use of the name until 2014.<ref>Silverman, D. S. (2015). Always bring phasers to an “animated” canon fight: Star Trek’s animated adventures on Saturday mornings. In D. Brode & S. Brode (Eds.) Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The original cast adventures. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow. {{ISBN|978-1-4422-4987-5}}</ref>

The animated series introduced a three-armed, three-legged alien member of the bridge crew with a long neck named Arex and a cat-like alien crew member named M'Ress. According to Roddenberry, budget limitations would have made it impossible for either alien species to appear in a live action series of the time.<ref name=RetFan1/>

The USS ''Enterprise'' in this series, while supposedly the same ship as from the original series, had a [[holodeck]] similar to the one later seen in ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', which was set about eighty years later. It only appeared once, in Chuck Menville's "The Practical Joker", and was known as the "Rec Room". This feature was originally proposed for the original series<ref>see, e.g., Gerrold, ''The World of Star Trek''</ref> but was never used.

A personal force field technology known as the life support belt was seen only in ''Star Trek: The Animated Series''. In addition to supplying the wearer with the appropriate atmosphere and environmental protection, it permitted the animators to simply draw the belt and yellow glow around the existing characters, instead of having to redraw them with an environmental suit. A version of the life support belt later appeared in an early ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' novel, ''[[The Peacekeepers]]'', where they were referred to as "field-effect suits".

The episode "[[The Lorelei Signal]]" provides a rare instance in early ''[[Star Trek]]'' in which a woman took temporary command of a starship. Due to the male crew members being incapacitated, [[Uhura]] assumes command of the ''Enterprise'' from Scotty. Other instances occurred on the first and last adventures filmed in the original series: 
* "[[The Cage (Star Trek: The Original Series)|The Cage]]", in which [[Number One (Star Trek)|Number One]] took command after the abduction of [[Captain Christopher Pike]], and
* "[[Turnabout Intruder]]", in which Dr. Janice Lester took over the body of Captain Kirk and assumed command.

"The Lorelei Signal" and "[[The Infinite Vulcan]]", the latter written by Walter Koenig, are rare occurrences where Captain Kirk comes close to actually saying, "[[Beam me up, Scotty]]" (long erroneously believed to be a ''Star Trek'' [[catchphrase]]), when he commands "Beam us up, Scotty". ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home]]'' arguably comes closer to it by having Kirk say "Scotty, beam me up".

An anti-pollution public service announcement was created for non-profit [[Keep America Beautiful]] featuring the ''ST: TAS'' characters and original cast voices. In the ad, the ''Enterprise'' encounters the "Rhombian Pollution Belt".<ref>{{cite AV media|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy5M5Xo4wcQ| archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211111/Vy5M5Xo4wcQ| archive-date=2021-11-11 | url-status=live|title=Lost PSA: Star Trek TAS for Keep America Beautiful!|date=June 14, 2010|work=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref> The ad ran during Saturday morning network programming during the series' run.