rtrek
The rtrek package provides datasets related to the Star Trek fictional
universe and functions for working with those datasets. It interfaces
with the Star Trek API (STAPI), Memory
Alpha and Memory
Beta to retrieve data,
metadata and other information relating to Star Trek.
The package also contains several local datasets covering a variety of
topics such as Star Trek timeline data, universe species data and
geopolitical data. Some of these are more information rich, while others
are toy examples useful for simple demonstrations. The bulk of Star Trek
data is accessed from external sources by API. A future version of
rtrek will also include summary datasets resulting from text mining
analyses of Star Trek novels.
Image: Example Leaflet map using non-geographic Star Trek map tiles.
Installation
Install the CRAN release of rtrek with
install.packages("rtrek")Install the development version from GitHub with
# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("leonawicz/rtrek")Examples
Time to be good detectives. Good thing Data has R installed.
These are just a few examples to help you jump right in. See the package articles for more.
STAPI
Use the Star Trek API (STAPI) to obtain information on the infamous character, Q. Specifically, retrieve data on his appearances and the stardates when he shows up.
The first API call does a lightweight, unobtrusive check to see how many pages of potential search results exist for characters in the database. There are a lot of characters.
The second call grabs only page two results. The third call uses the
universal/unique ID uid to retrieve data on Q. Think of these three
successive uses of stapi() as safe mode, search mode and extraction
mode.
library(rtrek)
library(dplyr)
stapi("character", page_count = TRUE)
#> Total pages to retrieve all results: 76
stapi("character", page = 1) |> select(uid, name)
#> # A tibble: 100 × 2
#> uid name
#> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 CHMA0000215045 0413 Theta
#> 2 CHMA0000174718 0718
#> 3 CHMA0000283851 10111
#> 4 CHMA0000278055 335
#> 5 CHMA0000282741 355
#> 6 CHMA0000026532 A'trom
#> 7 CHMA0000280385 A. Armaganian
#> 8 CHMA0000226457 A. Baiers
#> 9 CHMA0000232390 A. Baiers
#> 10 CHMA0000068580 A. Banda
#> # ℹ 90 more rows
Q <- "CHMA0000025118" #unique ID
Q <- stapi("character", uid = Q)
Q$episodes |> select(uid, title, stardateFrom, stardateTo)
#> uid title stardateFrom stardateTo
#> 1 EPMA0000259941 Veritas NA NA
#> 2 EPMA0000000651 Tapestry NA NA
#> 3 EPMA0000000500 Hide And Q 41590.5 41590.5
#> 4 EPMA0000277408 The Star Gazer NA NA
#> 5 EPMA0000280052 Farewell NA NA
#> 6 EPMA0000279099 Two of One NA NA
#> 7 EPMA0000278606 Watcher NA NA
#> 8 EPMA0000001510 The Q and the Grey 50384.2 50392.7
#> 9 EPMA0000001413 True Q 46192.3 46192.3
#> 10 EPMA0000000845 Q-Less 46531.2 46531.2
#> 11 EPMA0000001329 Q Who 42761.3 42761.3
#> 12 EPMA0000278900 Fly Me to the Moon NA NA
#> 13 EPMA0000000483 Encounter at Farpoint 41153.7 41153.7
#> 14 EPMA0000001458 All Good Things... 47988.0 47988.0
#> 15 EPMA0000162588 Death Wish 49301.2 49301.2
#> 16 EPMA0000289337 The Last Generation NA NA
#> 17 EPMA0000001347 Deja Q 43539.1 43539.1
#> 18 EPMA0000277535 Penance NA NA
#> 19 EPMA0000278226 Assimilation NA NA
#> 20 EPMA0000279450 Mercy NA NA
#> 21 EPMA0000001619 Q2 54704.5 54704.5
#> 22 EPMA0000001377 Qpid 44741.9 44741.9Memory Alpha
Obtain content and metadata from the article about Spock on Memory Alpha:
x <- ma_article("Spock")
x
#> # A tibble: 1 × 4
#> title content metadata categories
#> <chr> <list> <list> <list>
#> 1 Spock <xml_ndst> <tibble [1 × 18]> <tibble [15 × 2]>
x$metadata[[1]]$Born
#> [1] "January 6, 2230 (stardate 2230.06)|ShiKahr, Vulcan"Memory Beta
Spock was born in 2230. Obtain a subset of the Star Trek universe historical timeline for that year:
mb_timeline(2230)
#> 2230
#> $events
#> # A tibble: 8 × 2
#> period details
#> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 2230 Events
#> 2 2230 Argelius II and Betelgeuse become members of the Federation.
#> 3 2230 Births and Deaths
#> 4 2230 Spock is born deep within a cave in Vulcan's Forge on Vulcan.
#> 5 2230 T'Pring is born on Vulcan.
#> 6 2230 George Samuel Kirk, Jr. is born.
#> 7 2230 David Rabin is born.
#> 8 2230 Roy John Moss is born.
#>
#> $stories
#> # A tibble: 5 × 11
#> title title_url colleciton collection_url section context series date media
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 Burnin… Burning_… <NA> <NA> Chapte… <NA> The O… 2230 novel
#> 2 Star T… Star_Tre… <NA> <NA> Chapte… <NA> The O… 2230 movi…
#> 3 IDW St… IDW_Star… Star Trek… Star_Trek_(ID… 2230 f… <NA> The O… 2230 comic
#> 4 Star T… Star_Tre… <NA> <NA> Chapte… <NA> The O… 2230 movi…
#> 5 Sarek Sarek_(n… <NA> <NA> Chapte… <NA> The O… 12 N… novel
#> # ℹ 2 more variables: notes <chr>, image_url <chr>Live long and prosper.
Packages in the trekverse
rtrek: The core Star Trek package
Datasets related to Star Trek, API wrappers to external data sources, and more.
lcars: LCARS aesthetic for Shiny
Create Shiny apps based on the Library Computer Access/Retrieval System (LCARS).
trekcolors: A color palette package
Predefined and customizable Star Trek themed color palettes and related functions.
trekfont: A fonts package
True (Trek) type fonts to style your Star Trek themed graphics text.
Citation
Matthew Leonawicz (2025). rtrek: Data analysis relating to Star Trek. R package version 0.5.2. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rtrek
Contribute
Contributions are welcome. Contribute through GitHub via pull request. Please create an issue first if it is regarding any substantive feature add or change.
Please note that the rtrek project is released with a Contributor
Code of
Conduct.
By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.