favorite & least favorite star trek incarnations in order

There are certain characters who receive a lot of hatred from the fanbase for one reason or another. Most often, when their creators pick up on the hate, they have a couple options. They can ignore it, tweak the character into a more likable version, or even play it for laughs. Sometimes, however, the creator(s) have become so attached to this character for whatever reason, whether because they see something of themselves in the character or the character reminds them of someone they were close to or the character represents something they admire, that they decide to increasingly focus on him, magnifying the importance of his role, and having the other characters talk about how awesome he is, in painful ignorance of — or sometimes in spite of — the fans' obvious hatred.

That's the Creator's Pet in a nutshell.

The main characteristic of the Creator's Pet is that the writers' focus on him is detrimental to the show. It's not that the parts featuring this character necessarily suck more than the rest, but that so much effort is being directed to him that it detracts from the quality of the series as a whole. It's as if the writers think that there's nothing more important than browbeating the viewers into falling in love with this one character. And it never works. In fact, shilling a character excessively can cause other characters to be drawn into the hatred.