En El Cual Estos Tres Weyes Son Regañados Y Estos Deciden Abrir La Boca + Janeway :)c

Being a DS9 fan is this constant search for little pieces of production knowledge that depress the fuck out of us.

“Did you know that Andy and Siddig ship Garak and Bashir???”

I know, it’s depressing because it’s not in the show.

“Did you know that Jadzia and Worf were originally intended to stay married till the end and have kids???”

I know. It’s depressing because it’s not in the show.

“Did you know they were going to make Garak a regular at one point?”

I know. It’s depressing because it’s not in the show.

“Did you know there was a less transphobic version of ‘Lace and Profit’ that was written and directed by Armin Shimmerman because he thought that Trans issues were important and wanted to take the idea of Quark transitioning seriously and not play it for laughs?”

I know. It’s depressing because it’s not in the show.

“Did you know there was a take where Quark and Odo kissed?”

I KNOW. AND ITS DEPRESSING BECAUSE ITS NOT IN THE SHOW!!!!

It’s just like, every day I see another post from an excited fan who finds out that something could have been different that would have made the show mind blowing.

And I think the fact that it’s still so damn good and so damn beloved really speaks to its quality, knowing full well the insurmountable amount of missed opportunities the show had.

DS9 my infinitely flawed and perfect gem. You make me feral.

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.

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.

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.

Lower Decks gets it:

“I’m sorry, I’ve gotta be honest, I didn’t join Starfleet to get in phaser fights. I signed up to explore, to be out in space making new discoveries, and peaceful, diplomatic solutions. That’s boldly going. And you know what? I’d love to be in a string quartet. I loved that when Riker was on the Enterprise he was out there jamming on the trombone, and catching love disease, and acting in plays, and meeting his identical transporter clone Thomas. That stuff may not seem as cool as what you guys do, but it’s Starfleet. All the way.”

-Boimler in Kayshon, His Eyes Open

Good food and good company

Im doing a proper ds9 rewatch for the first time since I was a teenager instead of picking favourite episodes at random like a complete hooligan. Anyway here's my submission of appreciation

Click for better quality

“Bird Planet”

Sorry the resolution for these are dumpster.

But I wanted to bust this out. Jim loves Spock and things that reminds him of Spock, but he also loves himself… and things that remind him of himself.

Bird Planet

-———

Kirk: Spock<3 Look! This one is my favorite!

Spock: Jim…

Spock: look

Kirk: Mr. Spah!

Kirk: No Mr. Spock<3 THAT one is my favorite

Spock (to bird): my apologies.

confessions in ten forward

Happy threshold day everybody!!! Happy 25th birthday lizard babies!!! It is 25 right? Times flies