Arex
Lieutenant Arex was a male Edosian Starfleet officer who lived during the mid-23rd century. He served in the command division aboard the  under Captain James T. Kirk, during its historic five-year mission that starship undertook. From 2269 to 2270, Arex served as one of the ship's primary navigators.

While under the influence of Harry Mudd's love potion, Arex sat at the navigator's station playing a lute instead of attending to his duties. ()

Upon the Enterprises encounter with spiroid epsilon waves, he was momentarily blinded, but suffered no permanent vision damage. Later, he reported that he could no longer perform visual sweeps, as his eyes were too small for the opticals. ()

He was given the conn following Lieutenant Nyota Uhura's disappearance on the Shore Leave Planet. ()

When Commander Spock was incapacitated by choriocytosis, Arex assumed his duties at the Enterprises science station in 2270. ()

While the rest of the command crew was having a staff lunch, Arex was temporarily in command of the Enterprise. He later took his lunch break with M'Ress, asking Montgomery Scott if he wanted to join them. Shortly after, Scott blamed them for the malfunctioning food dispensers and threatened to report them to the captain, but Arex maintained their innocence. ()

When the Enterprise entered a negative universe in 2270, Arex began to grow younger, eventually becoming a child. His condition was reversed by Dr. McCoy using the ship's transporter. ()

In 2381, two photographs of Arex were among those displayed on the walls of an old bar at Starbase 25. ()

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Background information 
Including Arex in The Animated Series accomplished two goals: it provided variety with yet another "alien" crewmember that an animated series could afford, and it replaced Pavel Chekov without employing an additional actor. Arex is the first wholly non-human Starfleet officer to appear on screen.

Although Arex is clearly shown to be a navigator, production art sketches of Arex described him as the helmsman. (Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series, pp. 28, 46-47) Additionally, the final draft script of  refers to him as "the alternate helmsman". In the same script, Arex is also described as "male, but his voice has a soft, musical tone… on the tenor side."  was provided by James Doohan.

According to StarTrek.com,  Arex was Pavel Chekov's navigation instructor at Starfleet Academy. This information comes from a 1973 newsletter by Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana, which described the Animated Series in general, and gave detailed bios of Arex and M'Ress. It also states Arex is a veteran and known as the best navigator in Starfleet. He began his career as a technician serving on merchant vessels, and not going through Starfleet Academy, he became an officer via "field commission". "While Arex appears to be a quiet, efficient, junior officer, Captain Kirk knows the Lieutenant is entitled to wear three decorations for bravery and has a Starfleet Citation for Conspicuous Valor. Arex himself would never mention them."

Apocrypha 
Arex appeared briefly in the novels The Galactic Whirlpool, Time for Yesterday, The Fire and the Rose, and the graphic novel version of . He made several appearances in the first volume of DC's Star Trek comics, which were set after .

Arex became a minor character in the Star Trek: New Frontier series, where in 2305, he was aboard a shuttlecraft that fell through a wormhole and was thrown 71 years into the future to 2376. After spending a brief time with the Department of Temporal Investigations' Temporal Displacement Division, he later became a security officer aboard the USS Trident under the command of Captain Shelby. In these novels, his full name is given as "Arex Na Eth".

Arex's homeworld Edos was first mentioned in Lincoln Enterprises publicity material in 1974. Arex is referred to as an "Edoan" in Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek Log series of novelizations. According to the Star Trek: New Frontier novels, Arex is described as a Triexian, a species sometimes mistaken for Edosians. The Latter Fire also corroborates this. The Latter Fire also established that Arex joined the Enterprise crew in 2269 on Stardate 5371.3 after transferring over from the USS Arcadia just prior to the Enterprises mission to the Syhaari star system that year.

Arex's biography on StarTrek.com describes him as an only child, but the novel Cold Wars describes him as part of a very large family with eleven brothers and thirteen sisters.

In IDW Publishing's comics, Arex is telepathic.

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Edosians
Starfleet command personnel
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) personnel