August 2022 is Star Trek Month
We had a different draft in mind for this month’s #DataFamCon but when we saw the news about Nichelle Nichols’ passing yesterday (Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on Star Trek: The Original Series), we scratched it and started anew.
You can only begin to understand the impact Nichols had on women, especially women in engineering and science, when she pivoted to recruiting NASA’s female and minority astronaut candidates in the 1970s. Without Nichelle Nichols, we may not have seen Sally Ride, Mae Jemison, and many women work at Mission Control and the Jet Propulsion Labs in the decades following. Representation matters:
When Whoopi Goldberg saw Nichelle Nicholas on screen at age nine, she went running through her house calling “Come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!”
Star Trek is and always will be ahead of the curve and in many ways, we have to thank Gene Roddenberry’s stubborn vision of a future that included all at the table, not just WASP-y men.
With the expansion of the Star Trek Universe on Paramount Plus since 2017 with Star Trek Discovery, we now have a treasure trove of data to search through for this month’s challenge. Whether you like your tea >earl grey > hot or always wanted to hang out at Quark’s, this month is for you.
You can visualize:
- Star Trek series episode information from The Original Series to Prodigy
- Star Trek Original Series cast films (Motion Picture through Undiscovered Country. Don’t forget the one with the whales!)
- Star Trek themes (Voyager rulz!)
- Star Trek Episode dialogue
- And of course, you can BYOD!
To add to the fun, we are partnering with the dynamic #B2VB Duo for this month’s data where you have the option to create a treemap looking at the breakdown of episodes by series. Make sure to submit to both #B2VB tracker and ours for your submission so we can count all of your hard work!
We can’t wait to see what you all bring! The four data files can be found on our Data.World site. The data dictionary on the site has all the information on the data sources and columns. Once you’re done be sure to submit it to our tracker!
For some inspiration that you can’t get from a replicator coffee, here are some Star Trek vizzes to get your Data flowing:
Visualizing Star Trek by Alison Pitt
Star Trek visualizations depicted over time on the TV Shows and films — a deep dive by Paul Kalenjuk
Kelly Gilbert’s LCARS Display viz of all Star Trek episodes she has watched and reviewed
Richard Foreman’s DS9 Viewing Guide
Ann Jackson’s Star Trek TNG Every Episode Iron Viz 2017 Feeder Entry
Live Long and Prosper — The DataFamCon team
