I'd say Scenes and Images are the most "fan-favorite" any DT album can ever get.
They're about as "fan-favorite" as
any album can get. Not only are they highly acclaimed by DT fans, but by people who have little to no regard for DT.
Yes, Awake also has a following, but it's not nearly as popular, nor are any of the other albums.
They could do their best work ever but they probably wouldn't sway that portion of the fanbase that likes the older shit and that's pretty much it. Same thing goes for a band like Maiden. Brave New World was one of the best albums of their career but all you hear about is the early stuff, and that sucks. Every band has that portion of the fanbase that wants to hear the stuff they "grew up with" and that's it and I think DT has been around long enough to have that happen. As probably one of the older posters here, I have witnessed that phenomenon from other fans in my age bracket.
I got into Maiden in 2005. Brave New World was the first full Maiden album I owned. While I love it and their other newer albums (except for Final Frontier, which I haven't gotten into yet), I can still tell you there's nothing like their 80's material. I'm about as "new" to Maiden as a fan can possibly be, and that's my opinion, free of nostalgia. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is my personal favorite, but really, everything they wrote in the 80's is a masterpiece, while their newer stuff has more mixed results for me.
Sometimes the fanbase is right.