Star Trek Concepts Originating in TAS

[Shawnster]

I've been rewatching TAS and it's interesting the number of concepts that we now take for granted in Star Trek that seem to have their origin or initial debut in TAS. The things I've noticed so far:

WARP CORE: In Beyond the Farthest Star the hatch to the warp core collapses on Scotty. It seems that the warp core is a common feature on starships from TMP onward, but not TOS.

BONE KNITTING LASER: No doubt this concept was already being considered in reality. It's specifically mentioned in The Terratin Incident when Sulu breaks his leg. Bone knitting lasers are regularly featured from TNG onward.

KLINGON CLOAKING DEVICE: In The Time Trap, Spock mentions the Klingons having a cloaking device on their D-7 class ships. We first see the Klingon cloaking device in the live-action realm in Star Trek III. Klingons and cloaking technology go hand in hand from TNG onward.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Off the top of my head...

Vulcan's Forge and Spock's hometown of Shi'Kar are from "Yesteryear"

The USS Antaries seen in TOS-R: "Charlie X" is based on the cargo drone ships from "More Tribbles, More Troubles"

Kor's old ship, the Klothos, was seen in "The Time Trap" (although Kor called it a D-5, when in TAS we see that it's a D-7. But he was going senile, so...)

The first holodeck is seen (called a "rec room") in "The Practical Joker.

Kirk's middle name "Tiberius" is from "Bem"

Also Captain Robert April was first seen in "The Counter-Clock Incident"

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Amanda's last name as Grayson, also from Yesteryear.

 

[Christopher]

WARP CORE: In Beyond the Farthest Star the hatch to the warp core collapses on Scotty. It seems that the warp core is a common feature on starships from TMP onward, but not TOS.

Well, they actually called it the "engineering core," which probably meant the core section of the engineering complex. A better precedent might be "One of Our Planets is Missing," which showed a vast warp reactor with what seemed to be power transfer conduits pulsing with energy. Although that was supposed to be inside one of the nacelles.

And the engine shaft in TMP was called an intermix chamber. The term "warp core" is from TNG.


Let's see... later Trek shows made occasional references to "Edosian" plants and animals, a reference to Edos, Lt. Arex's homeworld (although the possessive/demonym used in the Alan Dean Foster novelizations was "Edoan"). And TVH featured felinoid aliens who were reportedly meant to be Caitians. It's been alleged that the tailed twins Kirk slept with in Star Trek Into Darkness were also meant to be Caitians, even though they had no feline attributes other than tails.

More a practice than a concept, but TAS was the first incarnation of Trek to depict female security guards ("The Survivor," "The Lorelei Signal"). Meanwhile, "The Time Trap" was the first depiction of a sane, intelligent Orion woman, a precedent followed by ENT: "Bound" and the 2009 movie as well as a number of novels and comics.

"Lorelei" showed the transporter as a means to reverse artificial aging, a technique also used in TNG: "Unnatural Selection."

"The Slaver Weapon" was the first Trek story to mention stasis fields, although of course the concept came from Larry Niven's Known Space universe.

 

[T'Girl]

The warp engines having "warp coils" comes (iirc) from One of Our Planets is Missing.

 

[Christopher]

^No, the term "warp coil" isn't used in that episode, or in any of TAS.

 

[Shawnster]

WARP CORE:

Well, they actually called it the "engineering core," which probably meant the core section of the engineering complex.

Ah, I twigged on "core" and made an assumption. Ah well.

I understand some of the references are intentional nods of the hat to TAS (The Antares design in TOS-R, for example), but some of these, like the intelligent Orion woman probably weren't intentional nods to TAS.

Probably.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, but there are some things that TAS should get credit for doing first, even if others did them independently later.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Oh my goodness, I'm certain I forgot half of the concepts, but I'll give it a try.

Christopher has already mentioned the "Engineering Core". Parts of the same animation cel were used in "Practical Joker" to show the entry to the "Computer Core". "Engineering Core" was at least mentioned in two different TAS episodes.

Then we have, of course, the holodeck from "Practical Joker".

TAS showed first that the "mouth" of the Klingon Battlecruiser could fire energy projectiles and I think the final design of the TMP intermix shaft was - as strange as this may sound - actually inspired by Klingon technology seen in "More Tribbles, More Troubles".

Bob

 

[Sector 7]

TAS was the first time a woman took command of a starship. Uhura was shown to be much more capable and respected in TAS. This was a far cry from the original idea that women could not become starship captains.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

TAS showed us the first look inside Spock's scanner.

 

[Galileo7]

Yeah, but there are some things that TAS should get credit for doing first, even if others did them independently later.

Agree.

 

[Christopher]

This was a far cry from the original idea that women could not become starship captains.

I don't know if "original idea" is the right description for that considering that it only showed up in the very last episode of the series -- and the very first episode, "The Cage," had shown a female Number One commanding the ship in the captain's absence. I'd call it more of an unfortunate afterthought that mercifully came too late to do any damage.

 

[Sector 7]

This was a far cry from the original idea that women could not become starship captains.

I don't know if "original idea" is the right description for that considering that it only showed up in the very last episode of the series -- and the very first episode, "The Cage," had shown a female Number One commanding the ship in the captain's absence. I'd call it more of an unfortunate afterthought that mercifully came too late to do any damage.

While I like "The Cage", it was an unsuccessful pilot for the series. In all of actual TOS, a woman never commanded a starship... even briefly.

 

[Christopher]

^But it was never said they couldn't except by one insane character in the very last episode. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So again, I don't think it's valid to call it "the original idea" when it was never asserted until the very end of the series.

 

[Shawnster]

This was a far cry from the original idea that women could not become starship captains.

I don't know if "original idea" is the right description for that considering that it only showed up in the very last episode of the series -- and the very first episode, "The Cage," had shown a female Number One commanding the ship in the captain's absence. I'd call it more of an unfortunate afterthought that mercifully came too late to do any damage.

While I like "The Cage", it was an unsuccessful pilot for the series. In all of actual TOS, a woman never commanded a starship... even briefly.

Slightly incorrect.

This woman commanded not only a starship, but a whole squadron.

However, we never saw a human woman in command of a starship.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The evidence is in "The Cage", when Pike says that he can't get used to having a woman on the bridge...then quickly apologizes to Number One, noting that she's "different".

 

[CorporalCaptain]

^But it was never said they couldn't except by one insane character in the very last episode. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So again, I don't think it's valid to call it "the original idea" when it was never asserted until the very end of the series.

Well, Kirk agreed with Janice that "it" wasn't fair, and his closing lines of the episode (yuck, of the series, and ending in, "If only") make sense only if we are to believe that women were denied opportunities that men had.

I agree with what you first said about it in this thread. The episode was an anomaly, contrary to the intent established in The Cage, and on air in The Menagerie.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The intent of "The Cage" was that it was unusual for women to even serve on the bridge....

 

[Christopher]

The point is, we're not talking about a uniform whole. We're talking about a show that was making up the rules of its universe as it went along -- not to mention a show made in the '60s when the aspiration for TV dramas was to be as much like anthologies as possible, so continuity was not a priority. So we should recognize that there are inconsistencies and mixed messages within it, rather than cherrypicking something from one episode and elevating it with language like "the original idea."