This function, based on `rvest`, extracts the Gender, Species, Affilation and Rank for a Star Trek character from the [Star Trek Wiki](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Portal:Main)

character_data.R

library(rvest)
library(magrittr)
library(tidyr)
library(dplyr)
library(stringr)

character_data <- function(chname){
  paste0("http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/", chname) %>%
    html %>% 
    html_nodes(".wiki-sidebar") %>%
    html_table(header = FALSE) %>%
    extract2(1) %>%
    set_colnames(c("trait", "value")) %>% 
    mutate(trait = gsub(":", "", trait)) %>%
    filter(trait %in% c("Gender","Species","Affiliation","Rank")) %>%
    mutate(name = chname) %>%
    spread(trait, value)
}

character_data("Kira_Nerys")
character_data("Odo")
character_data("Worf")
character_data("Wesley_Crusher")
character_data("Ro_Laren")
character_data("Julian_Bashir")