Comments on: All Star Trek Movies and Episodes in Two Charts

By: Ripper777

Ripper777 — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:10:27 +0000

I would love a copy of the episode ratings spreadsheet you put together. Any chance I could have a copy forwarded?

By: » Rules for Writers Star Trek Magic

» Rules for Writers Star Trek Magic — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 04:42:18 +0000

[...] This point has been rolling around in my head. I loved The Original Series and Next Generation because they presented “teaching stories” and a future I’d like to live in: Roddenberry’s vision. To me, Star Trek lost steam after Roddenberry’s death, when the writers could take the lead characters into darker places. Did other people react that way? Was there data on this? I found the following chart on http://www.madmind.de: [...]

By: Michael C

Michael C — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:16:00 +0000

This article is fantastic – exactly what I was looking for. Seeing ratings data in a graph like this really makes it easy to see trends over time. I wonder if the decision to cancel a TV series usually takes place when the ratings are on a long decline and cross some threshold of profitability or opportunity cost.

Then again, as you point out, ratings week-to-week don’t tell the whole story. First of all, there is critical acclaim – maybe you could try plotting a scatterplot of ratings vs. fan reception (you could take the fans’ rating for each episode out of 5 stars from memory-alpha.org for example) and see if there is a positive correlation – my guess is the relationship would be only weakly positive.

For example: I loved the later seasons of Deep Space Nine and yet the ratings were in decline. Enterprise had some great season 4 episodes and yet the ratings were in decline.

Thanks again for your work on this!

By: Gunther Heinrich

Gunther Heinrich — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 22:00:21 +0000

Thanks for the praise and yes, of course you can keep in touch. Your project sounds interesting.

By: Flavia

Flavia — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:32:32 +0000

I can’t believe that you searched the internet number by number like this. It’s amazing! I have no words…

I’m a star treck fan too, though I can’t remember the begining of the big war in DS9 (maybe because this is the series I liked least, if you don’t count Enterprise after the attack on Earth)

I found you because I’m trying to write a project on sociology of the image (actually, I name it like this, because if ever I’m able to write a project on this, it will be something really marginalized, because loads of experts study cinema seriously but not tv, so i’ll study tv in a field called sociology of cinema… )

Well, I just wanted to tell you that your charts gave me a lot to think – really a lot… Although I’m having difficulties writing my project, if I ever succeed, I’ll make a point quoting your page.

Well, this is a lot to tell in a first hello, but I hope you don’t mind if I try and keep in touch once in a while…