LogFAQs > #880659685

Welcome to the pre-season hype and discussion topic for the second [semi-]annual Star Trek character ranking project! With a brand new series on the horizon, this will be the last time the niche but vocal Trek-loving denizens of internet community Bordate can play the game of numerical thrones without an all-new cast to consider. In fact, with the official announcement that we'll formally begin on July 14th, we may be wrapping things up not long before Burnham's story begins! Whether you're excited or terrified at the prospect of Discovery, there's new televised Trek on the horizon for the first time since halfway through the George W. Bush administration, and that's something special.

"How does this work, anyway?"
Gawrsh, I sure am glad you asked, Mirror Me! So, everyone who participates in the project will compose ranking lists of the major characters they're familiar with (more on that shortly) and once the topic series premieres on July 14th I'll create a new thread and we'll all post our rankings gradually. Write-ups are strongly encouraged, but not expressly required. The goal here is to produce fun chatter between project members as we move through the project over the course of a few weeks time. If you're new to the Trek character rankings here on Board 8 but you're familiar with the Mass Effect character rankings, it's essentially the same deal.

Meanwhile, I'll be in control of a spreadsheet which charts the rankings per-character. At the end of the first phase, we'll move into the comparably shorter (but arguably more exciting) second phase where I'll slowly reveal the "official Board 8 hivemind" rankings for every included character. It's a matter of weighted averages. It's fun.

"Sounds cool, but I've only seen ___ so I guess I can't participate?"
Nah, you can. Here's the thing, lads and lassies. I'm a diehard Star Trek fan, but I get it -- only certain quarters of the franchise harbor genuine mainstream popularity. For everyone out there who can tell you his or her top five favorite Garak moments, there are twelve more people who have never heard of this "Garak" but they know who Kirk is and they understand the phrase "beam me up, Scotty" and they've seen some funny Picard memes. So this is how it works. In order to participate, the only requirement is that you can comfortably rank one of the five major casts. For instance, last time we ran this scene, pjbasis was only able to rank TOS. In fact, I believe this still applies to him -- and that's fine. The weighted averages on the spreadsheet will help to even things out per-character. So as a result, we can safely expect the most write-up representation surrounding TOS and TNG, and probably the least for ENT, and that's OK.

"So uh, what do you mean 'major characters'? Like, the people in the opening credits?"
Precisely. All main cast characters across all five shows are automatic locks for entry into the project. In order to qualify as a participant, you merely have to be able to rank the characters in one of these five, but the more the merrier, of course. We'll have a limited number of slots for recurring (and extremely memorable guest) characters the board feels deserve entry the most, and I'll discuss that further in the following posts.
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