Okay, okay, so TrekViz is super cool on its own, but what's even cooler? All the data is available as .csv files. Which means that it's easy to mess around with it and hunt for specific things and fun things like that. In particular, I noticed that it's really hard to tell a character's most common interactions if they don't have many interactions on the site, so a while later with some spreadsheets, and I have these. Since it's based on the data from TrekViz, the characters included are just whatever characters were included in that data, and total interactions only count from those with other characters in the data set. I didn't do the movies (at least not yet), even though that data's also there.
Actual stuff below cut because, as usual, data analysis across the series really adds up.
Starting with Enterprise, because it's the only one with no major character changes so was the simplest to start messing around with. It works that of all the interactions the character on the column had, __% was with the character on the column. So, of all the interactions Archer had, 31% were with T'Pol. And we can see that 47% of T'Pol's interactions with Archer.
Unsurprisingly, almost everyone interacts mostly with Archer, with the only exceptions being Archer himself, and Malik from the Augment arc, who instead spent most of his time talking with Soong. Archer's main interaction was Tucker, and Tucker and T'Pol had significant interactions with each other. No surprises there. A noticeable interaction gap among the main cast is Travis and Phlox, who are each each other's least interacted with main cast member (aside from self).
Next is TOS, which I made three charts for, to show the main character change of Chekov, who came in in the second season A few minor characters also appear/disappear.
Season 1:
Seasons 2 and 3:
And overall:
Once again, our captain is getting the majority of interactions, with the only exceptions being Chapel (who talks mostly to McCoy), Commander (I believe the Romulan Commander from "The Enterprise Incident", who talks to Spock), and Kirk himself (who talks to Spock mostly), none of which are surprising. Overall interactions with each other, by and large line up quite well with prominence of the respective characters (Kirk>Spock>McCoy>Scotty>etc.). One noticeable gap is apparently Sulu and Chapel never interacted.
I did also do season breakdowns to represent cast changes for TNG, but then got lazy and discontinued for DS9 and VOY and it adds up and this is already so long, so just an overall for TNG:
Once again, captain's the main interaction for pretty much everyone, and is his own exception (his most common interaction is Data). The other exceptions are all secondary characters except for one: Alexander (his main interaction is Worf), Barclay (who mostly talks to La Forge), K'Ehleyr (also mostly interacts with Worf), Lwaxana (who spends most of her time bugging Troi), and, the one main cast member, La Forge (who mostly interacts with Data). La Forge is, in turn, Data's main interaction after Picard. By and large, Picard, Riker, and Data dominate the main characters' time, and then it's just kinda consistent low numbers after that.
Then we get DS9 overall:
Sisko, as captain, is still the most common interaction for the majority of characters, but has a much less dominating presence compared to the other series. Major interaction spikes, more or less in order of significance, include Keiko and O'Brien, Zek and Quark, Rom and Quark, Martok and Worf, Jake and Sisko, Nog and Jake, and Damar and Weyoun. Unsurprising common interactions between main cast members (excusing any with Sisko since he is almost always the most or second most common interaction for them all) include Bashir and O'Brien, Worf and both of the Daxes, and Odo with Kira and Quark.
And to finish off, Voyager:
Once again, captain dominates interactions. There's really not too much that's so surprising. There's a greater percentage of secondary characters that only show up occasionally to interact with a few characters, and Shannon O'Donnell from "11:59" who never interacted with any other characters. The main cast exceptions to Janeway being the main interaction are Janeway herself (who spent of her interactions with Chakotay), Kes (who mostly talked to the EMH), Paris (who just barely spent more of his time talking to Torres), and Torres (who interacted mostly with Paris).
I'm absolutely going to be doing more digging around with this and seeing what pops up, and probably do some series by series (if not character by character) analysis.
Hello please reblog this if you’re okay with people sending you random asks to get to know you better
Star Trek is a show about how to trick some 1920s gangsters into instituting communism. Star Trek is a show about bisexuality. Star Trek is a show about learning to deal with the fact that you replaced your alternate dimension self and everyone you actually knew is dead and you're surrounded by exact copies. Star Trek is a show about space whales. Star Trek is a show about fucking your subordinate in lizard form. Star Trek is a show
Snw Spock needs more sass. We want judgy eyebrow raises and snarky comments poorly disguised by logic
Hot Take: the reason why 'Lower Decks' (and 'The Orville') "feel more like Star Trek" than do 'Discovery' or 'Picard' is because the baseline for American drama series has gotten so dark over the last twenty years that a tone matching 90s Star Trek can now only be achieved by marketing it as a comedy.
And yes, when you think about it, that's...kind of sad.
I've said all this before but I still love this pop culture liminal space star trek occupies where like.. It's iconic. It's massively influential. It's genre defining. It holds historical significance. Everybody knows about star trek. But it also takes a certain type of nerdass to actually actively participate in Liking Star Trek
some of my favorite funny spirk moments from the original series. subtitles included. enjoy!
Thinking of Deep Space Nine as "the Dark Star Trek" without digging into what made Deep Space Nine work is so reductive. Like when people discuss Star Trek being "dark" now people bring up "DS9 was Dark and you loved that! Trekkies would hate it now!"
Deep Space Nine didn't work bc it was Dark and it wasn't Dark out of nowhere. Deep Space Nine is intimately tied to TNG in a way no other series is with another (Voyager could've been just as rooted in DS9, but. Y'know. Wasn't). Not only in characters, but that the show is so devoted to exploring deep cuts from TNG: the Bajorans, but also the Ferengi, long dismissed as failed villains, and the Trill, one-off aliens-of-the-week who DS9's writers turned into one of Trek's major species. The central thesis of DS9 isn't that the Trek Universe Is Fucked Up Actually. It's that things get more messy and complicated when Starfleet has to stick around and not dash off to another planet at the end of the episode
DS9 is darker than other Treks, yes, but DS9 is also the warmest, with the most grounded, human characters, not in spite of the fact that two-thirds of the cast are aliens but because of it. The writers treat alien characters as not representatives, but individuals. They treat everyone as individuals, with foibles and flaws, not as perfect, straitlaced future people. DS9's dark episodes are darker than other Treks, but also it's more willing to get silly and emotional. Only DS9 could do the "Sisko confesses to a conspiracy to get the Romulans in the war" episode, but also only DS9 could do the "a holographic lounge singer tries to get Odo and Kira together" episode right after it. Boiling the entire series down to "Deep Space Nine was the Dark Star Trek! Grimdark!" is...just not it
some of you may've heard about that fancy "bionic reading" typefont thats supposed to be easier for neurodivergent people to read (if you're unfamiliar, it bolds the first few letters of each word to make it easier to follow)
well guess what, its locked behind a $500 a month API to write in because fuck you!
introducing, Not Bionic Reading! it is literally just the bionic reading typefont but for free. god bless neocities
anyone who can, pls reblog!
the least realistic thing about star trek is that starfleet uniforms don’t have pockets and nobody complains about it
i want to see some crazy old trek shit on strange new worlds like i want an episode where the crew is forced by an alien entity to perfectly reenact the events of some nineteenth century novel in full period dress or be vaporized or something. it’s not star trek until they start larping
Star Trek! The original series, the next generation, voyager, deep space 9, lower decks, and strange new worlds. Hopefully I'll get around to the others some day. Sometimes I'll post something else. Let's build a world we can be proud of!
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