Lines per Character

[Ryan8bit]

I'm not sure of the purpose of this exercise but maybe you'd just use TOS episodes.

I certainly could have. I just wanted to do it for all of Trek to get an idea of how characters stacked up. To see that Kirk has more words than Sisko, despite not having seven seasons (although several movies), was pretty interesting. There's not a huge difference between the original gang if you don't factor in the movies and cameos.

 

[MarsWeeps]

Shatner's cadence has been greatly exaggerated over the years. I think Maurice's approach would be the most useful -- assuming the coding could be done without any difficulty. I certainly don't have the skill set to do it.

Ugh. I HATE how everyone assumes Shatner talked in the series now. When you go back and watch he only rarely resembles the now famous parody.

I've been watching TOS episodes lately and it's obvious to me that he speaks that way a lot. Maybe it's because I'm aware of all the parodies that it seems that way but it's definitely there.

 

[Maurice]

I did one here for all series and movies that is based on word count. Further down I highlighted just the original gang.

I'm not sure of the purpose of this exercise but maybe you'd just use TOS episodes.
I also don't think its fair to compare TOS or ENT against TNG, VOY or DS9 unless you are doing %.
I mean I'm sure Picard spoke the most considering he had an extra 4 seasons on Kirk and 3 on Archer. But say Janeway vs Picard is a reasonable comparison.

I dunno about "fair" but this still isn't of much use. If counting lines/words it should be that number per character divided by the number of programs they appeared in to get a per-segment average.

 

[Harvey]

I did one here for all series and movies that is based on word count. Further down I highlighted just the original gang.

What kind of raw data do you have from this analysis? Could you break down the word count episode by episode or season by season?

 

[Ryan8bit]

Yeah. I can basically break it down any way I want. I could make graphs or fancy diagrams, but I just didn't make the effort.

 

[Harvey]

I'd take a crack at it, if you're willing to share the raw data.

 

[Ryan8bit]

The data is mostly just all the scripts from chakoteya.net, like the OP posted. The script I wrote basically just parses all of it and counts from there. I don't really want to repost Chrissie's work.

I didn't make a fancy XML or database or anything either. I just parsed the text.

 

[eyeresist]

Counting words would be a better indication of relative "weight" of character participation per episode.

I agree. It would also be interesting, though more difficult, so calculate amount of in-shot time, as characters can still have presence even if they're not speaking.