I found this YouTube channel while bouncing around TOS episodes on Netflix and trying to figure out if I was right that Uhura got a lot more to do in Season 3 than she did in Season 1. (Yes, she did, though that isn't saying much.) They use facial recognition algorithms to count up how much screen time characters in various TV shows get -- by episode, season, and full series. Some of the results are unexpected, some just interesting. Star Trek (TOS): One thing you notice here is just how much TOS really was "the Kirk show." The Kirk/Spock/McCoy trio became so embedded in everyone's memory that it's easy to forget that De Kelley didn't even have costar billing at first. Star Trek: TNG The big disclaimer is that Geordi isn't included because his VISOR confused the software. Not surpisingly, you can watch Data become more prominent over time. Troi is consistently in fourth place, which surprised me until I remembered it's based on screen time, and because of the bridge layout she's always in the wide shots with Picard and Riker even when she's not doing much. It would be interesting to find out how the algorithm dealt with episodes where multiple versions of Picard, Riker and Data were on screen at the same time. (I assume Lore got flagged as Data, but did Soong? Or Miss Annie from the saloon?) Deep Space Nine The fun thing here is watching the single-episode column, where the top spot constantly changes, highlighting how much more of an ensemble show DS9 was than either of its predecessors. The big surprise here is how little Sisko appeared in Season 7 -- fifth place for screen time after Bashir, Ezri, Odo and Kira. (Presumably Odo is somewhat undercounted because the algorithm wouldn't recognize him in other forms. Interestingly, it looks like the algorithm can recognize Armin Shimerman and Rene Auberjonois out of makeup, because both Quark and Odo are in the top 8 for "Far Beyond the Stars" despite them only appearing as humans.) Voyager The surprise is that Paris got very little screen time in the beginning. In Seasons 2 and 3 he's completely off the season board most of the time, and he even gets pushed off the series total board for a while too. If you watch the positions under Janeway, you can see why people say it turned into the "Seven and the Doctor" show. By the end of the series, Seven is in fifth place overall, ahead of Kim, Paris and Torres despite all of them having seven seasons to her four. Battlestar Galactica I expected the top two to be Adama and Starbuck, with Roslin on the board but relatively far down. Turns out she was on screen a lot more than I realized. She has the most cumulative screen time for large chunks of Season 2, the most screen time in Season 4, and for part of Season 2 her cumulative screen time for the series is ahead of even Adama. They must not have taught the program to recognize Kat, because she doesn't even appear on the board in the episode that's completely about her. Six is a lot lower than I expected in the cumulative ranking for the series (ninth, behind the Chief). It would be interesting to see the two main Eights separated from each other.
The TOS part isn't really surprising. Harlan Ellison let the world know Shat was a line counter decades ago, and that if someone got more lines in an episode than Shatner, he'd have a fit about it.
