Exclusive: Star Trek Animated Series Characters Are Coming To Live-Action
The Star Trek animated universe is coming to life.
This article is more than 2 years old
The Star Trek franchise now has over half a century of material to draw from. That includes a number of animated shows now, including The Animated Series, Lower Decks, and the upcoming Prodigy. For the time being, the animated shows have somewhat existed in their own corner of the universe. But, with Lower Decks and Prodigy bringing in actors and characters from the live-action shows, there has started to be some significant crossover. And now, we have received information that tells us the same thing is going to happen but in reverse.
According to our trusted inside source – the same one that provided Giant Freakin Robot with confirmed exclusive scoops regarding Chloe Bennet returning as Quake for a new Marvel series and Don Cheadle appearing as War Machine in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – Paramount wants characters from the classic 70s Star Trek: The Animated Series to start showing up in their live-action Star Trek shows.
We don’t have info regarding exactly which characters would be making the jump to live-action, but we have a really solid guess. Fans of The Animated Series would love to see the characters of Arex and M’Ress finally make their live-action debuts. Those two characters were created for The Animated Series but have not been seen in live-action. Having them pop up in one of the live-action Star Trek shows would definitely cause some fan excitement. They also have the most cache in the fan community, so their appearances would likely mean the most.
M’Ress 
Arex
It would make sense to have Arex and/or M’Ress make their live-action debuts on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. That series is going to follow the very early adventures of the USS Enterprise and that is the ship that Arex and M’Ress were assigned to. It would definitely give that show some serious fan credibility if they showed up in even some brief cameo roles. And if they were actually established as recurring characters? You can bet that would cause a significant amount of online chatter which would help drum up interest in the new series.
This news also opens the door for Star Trek characters from Lower Decks and Prodigy to make appearances in some of the other shows. Lower Decks and Picard take place about fifteen years apart, so it would not be impossible to see some older versions of the Lower Decks crew pop up on Picard. We have to assume that Paramount’s reasoning for doing this is because they have seen how popular the character of Ahsoka Tano has been for Star Wars – she started as an animated character and is now established in the live-action canon as well – and are hoping to replicate that same kind of success with one of their own characters.
Paramount clearly wants to keep expanding the Star Trek franchise and give fans some gifts like seeing animated characters rendering in live-action. It would be great to see the property start tapping into every facet of its expansive universe and that includes the animated properties. And if it is Arex and M’Ress that end up on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, we can’t wait to see which actors will be bringing them to life.
