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Star Trek Log series by Alan Dean Foster features the Novelization of Star Trek: The Animated Series in a set of ten books, log one to ten.The first six logs contain three episode novelizations each, but logs seven, eight, nine and ten feature a single episode each, expanded into a full length story. The novelizations tend to expand the half-hour animated episode, bringing in more complicated aspects of the issues involved (which can't be crammed into the actual episode's time constraints) as well as fill in quite a few of the Plot Hole problems in the actual episode script.

This series provides examples of:

  • Adaptation Expansion : Happens in most logs, but most noticeably in Logs Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten, each of which featured a single episode with added plot lines. The half-hour plots were added to, quite creatively, in addition to throwing in extra explanations.
  • Adaptational Badass: Lieutenant M'Ress, the Caitian Communications Officer. While the Animated Series itself only presents her as one of the Token aliens, the Logs with their expanded plots give her much more scope for action - includes a Back Story of saving her former shipmates practically single handedly from a Kzinti attack (thus earning her promotion) and taking on an entire armed security contingent and putting them in the Sickbay while temporarily deranged in The Slaver Weapon.
  • Back Story: Several characters were provided with detailed backgrounds - including Uhura's childhood experiences, and the reason M'Ress got promoted to the Flagship (Spoiler Alert: M'Ress is a Badass Adorable). Even the minor characters appearing in single episodes get enough of a background setting, most noticeably Ambassador Bem in Bem and Captain O'Shea in The Pirates of Orion.
  • Darker and Edgier : Not by much, but not being constrained by the animated series' censors, there are more detailed descriptions of injuries and consequences. For example, in 'Beyond The Furthest Star,' the hijacking entity's attack is not just the Agony Beam, but leaves visible, and apparently quite serious injuries. Also, in 'Jihad', the consequences of the possible war is discussed in considerably more detail.
  • Plot Hole: Due to time constraints , the actual Animated episodes are often guilty of leaving certain points confused. The Novelizations seek to rectify this error by providing explanations of varying believablity as to why Kirk and crew didn't take such-and-such an obvious step to resolve the whole mess.
  • Shiny-Looking Spaceships: In Log Ten the Klingon cruiser dispatched to a diplomatic conference looks "as if it had rested in a Starbase vacuum dock for months" with every part of its hull polished to mirror-brightness. To make matters worse, the Enterprise turns up for that conference looking rather the worse for wear, the result of an unfortunate run-in with a variable pulsar...which in turn was the direct result of that same Klingon cruiser sabotaging the navigational warning beacons that should have alerted Enterprise to the pulsar's presence.

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