Character Insight No. 266: Arex

Welcome back to Character Insight!  This week, we review Lieutenant Arex, a recurring character from The Animated Series. 

https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp266 

Arex is a command division officer serving aboard Kirk's Enterprise on the latter stages of the five year mission.  Arex is typically seen at his primary role as a ship's navigator on the bridge.  He's a long time veteran of Starfleet who has a reputation as the best navigator in the fleet.  However, he often fills in for the senior staff when they are incapacitated or off ship, as happens frequently in The Animated Series. 

A couple of Arex's most memorable moments are as follows.  In the episode Mudd's Passion, he falls under the influence of Mudd's love potion and neglects his duties to play the lute on the bridge instead.  At least there's some music to set the mood!

In the episode The Practical Joker, Arex is in command and takes a lunch break with another regular TAS recurring character M'Ress.  The food dispensers begin malfunctioning after they get their lunch, and that causes Scotty to blame them for breaking the dispensers.

QUOTE (from The Practical Joker)

Arex: Officer Scott, won't you join us for lunch?
Scott: No thanks Arex, I'm just going to grab a sandwich.
Arex: Very good.
<Food dispenser malfunctions>
M'Ress: Excuse me for laughing, but
Scott: Go ahead and laugh. Big Joke. I'm sure you two are responsible for this.
Arex: Hey wait a minute, we didn't cause this to happen.

Arex also ages in reverse like a Benjamin Button in The Counter-Clock Incident.  Thus, even though he was added to the bridge staff as a regular to provide another alien presence on the ship, he is often affected by much of the same issues as the rest of the crew in this series.  He was also intended to be a replacement for the regular character Chekov, who was not included in TAS.  Perhaps this would be an interesting callback if another Abrams movie as made, as the CGI tech now exists to make such a character lifelike in today's movies.

Would you like to see Arex and M'Ress become characters in place of Chekov in the movies?  Send a letter to Quentin Tarantino with your requests.

Arex was one of many characters voiced by James Doohan in this series.  He was the most prolific recurring character and really more of a regular on TAS, with 19 appearances.  If you want more of Arex, he shows up a lot in the books. 

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