pooh red shirt star trek

• View history

Lt. Leslie, killed by a dikironium cloud creature on Argus X in TOS: Obsession; he later recovered

Two redshirts in TOS: The Changeling, attack the hostile Nomad ...

...only to be killed for trying...

...before it kills two more

Redshirt is a term used by fans and staff of Star Trek to refer partially to the characters who wear red Starfleet uniforms , and mainly to refer to those characters who are expendable, and quite often killed, sometimes in great numbers, often security guards. They are the unlucky victims of attacks and sicknesses. Some redshirts could have referred to a lucky set of crew members with privileged jobs, such as a captain or a bridge crew member who never died.

In the era regularly depicted in Star Trek: The Original Series , red uniforms were worn by members of the operations division . The duties they normally performed were in security , engineering , or other Support Services (such as communications officers , administrators, and yeomen ) aboard starships and starbases .

Of these, the security personnel were quite expendable, because the Security And Tactical Division was an inherently high-risk assignment. TOS : " The Changeling " and " The Apple ", in TOS Season 2 , both featured four security redshirts dying in each episode. "The Changeling" has the most anonymity involved; all but one of the redshirts that die are unnamed ( 1 - 2 - 3 ), the other being Carlisle . (The Nomad probe, after its merger with the Tan Ru probe, also "killed" Montgomery Scott, but was kind enough to restore him at Kirk's request.)

In "The Apple," Kaplan , Marple , Hendorff , and Mallory were all on one security team , killed one-by-one by the dangers of Gamma Trianguli VI .

In " Obsession ", the dikironium cloud creature kills three security guards that are shown, all in red shirts, including Ensign Rizzo . One redshirt, however, is lucky enough to be transported to the Enterprise in critical condition. (The creature also kills one crewman aboard the ship, but the precise color of his shirt is never shown.) One of the vampire cloud's victims does not quite count – Lt. Leslie would have been a fourth redshirt killed in the outing, but a mention of him surviving was cut from the episode's final edit. He clearly appears in later episodes, so it is probable that he either has an identical twin brother, perhaps even two identical triplet brothers or three identical quadruplet brothers, or that he did indeed survive the attack.

In " By Any Other Name ", the first female redshirt to die was Yeoman Leslie Thompson . (The infamous "Get A Life" sketch from when William Shatner hosted Saturday Night Live makes her being reduced to a polyhedral shape, which then gets crushed, thereby killing her, one of its jokes.)

TOS : " Where No Man Has Gone Before " is the first to feature a redshirt and has the most associated deaths; twelve crew people were lost, nine of whom died instantly at the galactic barrier , and three more of the twelve victims perished in events at Delta Vega . We saw only the latter three die on screen, but we know that none of them were technically redshirts, as there were no red uniforms of the design they used in that episode, reused from TOS : " The Cage " (which, itself, featured three off-screen deaths). The operations division was wearing beige (probably described officially as "sand") at this point.

TOS : " The Tholian Web " showed the USS Defiant crew dead, with much being redshirts, making it the only non- Enterprise ship to showcase redshirts.

As portrayed in TNG: Genesis, Ensign Dern died in 2370

A DS9 crewman killed in 2371, as seen in DS9: Civil Defense

None of the officers were really killed in Star Trek: The Animated Series , but Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced a new twist to the "redshirt" lore, as the uniform colors switched and operations division wore the gold, or rather bronze, uniforms while the command division took on the red shirts. They also became likely to die; a theme of crew deaths was dominated by the continuous loss of their conn officer . Lieutenant Torres probably survived TNG : " Encounter at Farpoint ", but the TNG era lost Haskell , Monroe , Dern , Nell Chilton , Hawk , and Branson . Notably, Haskell, despite manning the conn officer position, wore command division red.

Non- Enterprise crew redshirts hardly fared any better, demonstrating an alarming propensity for being killed, possessed and/or otherwise coming to bad ends. Notable examples included Captain Tryla Scott , Commander Dexter Remmick , and the entire Senior Admiralty at Starfleet Command , who were taken over by alien parasites in " Conspiracy ". Admiral Mark Jameson was killed by a de-aging medicine overdose he administered to himself in " Too Short A Season ", Captain Donald Varley was blown up in the USS Yamato in " Contagion ", Calvin Hutchinson was killed by a renegade Arkarian in " Starship Mine ", Admiral Erik Pressman was arrested in disgrace for violating the Treaty of Algeron in " The Pegasus ", and Admiral Dougherty was murdered by his Son'a co-conspirators in Star Trek: Insurrection .

The only TNG episodes to feature death in large numbers had to do with the Borg . TNG : " Q Who ", " The Best of Both Worlds ", and " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II " noted eighteen off-screen deaths, although the latter probably totaled a few more in later scenes.

The Security And Tactical Division remained a high-risk assignment in TNG, despite their change to the gold/bronze color. Natasha Yar , the first Chief of Security of the USS Enterprise -D, was killed by Armus very early in the series (namely, in TNG : " Skin Of Evil ").

The Star Trek films kept the crew losses low for the most part, but the TOS era installments were dominated by redshirt deaths, as the dominant uniform style featured all personnel wearing red. Star Trek Generations noted that crew losses from the destruction of the 1701-D were low. However, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , Star Trek: First Contact , and Star Trek Nemesis all featured scores of battle-related crew deaths. As noted, the The Wrath of Khan losses were all redshirts, but the TNG losses were more varied, while continuing their pattern of conn officer attrition. It should also be noted that Spock and Kirk died in The Wrath of Khan and Generations , respectively – and in each movie, the officers wore red uniform shirts.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured many security personnel – such as Ensign Gordon in DS9 : " Rocks and Shoals " – and engineers dying, sometimes in large numbers. However, while this maintains the tradition of TOS's most dangerous areas to work, these officers wore yellow shirts by this era. There was no pattern of redshirted crew loss until command officers were noted as dying in the war story arcs that dominated the last half of the series. However, the first known redshirt death on DS9 came when an unnamed officer was killed in Ops by the Cardassian counter-insurgency program in " Civil Defense ". The redshirted conn officer of the USS Defiant also was killed during the ship's first battle with Dominion forces, in " The Search, Part I ". Another good example of typical redshirts on DS9 can be seen in " Empok Nor ". In the Dominion War especially, entire fleets of starships were biting the dust, indiscriminate of shirt color.

Lt. Stadi died at her post in VOY: Caretaker

In Star Trek: Voyager , the crew members who initially died on screen were wearing red uniforms, such as Stadi (who was another conn officer) and Cavit . However, over the seasons of Voyager , it became clear gold was a dangerous color in the Delta Quadrant , with most officer victims who died in the series doing so while clad in gold uniforms. Because USS Voyager had no way to replace crew, the only massive number of deaths took place in alternate timelines , with the two exceptions being the first episode, in which a large number of the senior staff were killed when the Caretaker's array displaced Voyager , and a situation in the second season episode " Deadlock " wherein both the crew and the ship were duplicated, with one of the Voyagers being destroyed not long after, along with its entire crew.

In Star Trek: Enterprise , more engineers and MACOs were lost than officers from any other division. In the case of the MACOs, this was consistent with their evolution into the Starfleet security forces. Both branches wore red as a department color (although MACOs seemed to wear splatter camouflage more than anything).

Engineer Olson falls to his death

Multiple redshirts killed by Manas

In the rebooted continuity beginning with the film Star Trek , all Starfleet Academy cadets wear red. However, Enterprise Chief Engineer Olson , prominently wearing a red space diving suit, became the first notable redshirt death in the alternate reality , as depicted in the aforementioned film.

In Star Trek Into Darkness , Kirk tells Hendorff and another security officer to "lose the red shirts" for their mission to Qo'noS to prevent them from being identified as Starfleet officers. Doing so apparently helps, as neither officer dies during the mission. At another point, Kirk tells Chekov to don a red shirt when he's replacing Montgomery Scott , which Chekov shows obvious reluctance to.

In Star Trek Beyond , multiple redshirts are killed in the Battle of Altamid . As swarm ships lodged in the Enterprise hull, boarding parties, led by Manas , were sent aboard and killed numerous crew members. Several crew members were also left " drained " of their life signs in attacks from Krall .

Appendices [ ]

See also [ ].

• Star Trek parodies and pop culture references

Background information [ ]

Writer David Gerrold

Writer/Producer Mike Sussman

David Gerrold has often joked that the character he played in DS9 : " Trials and Tribble-ations " must have been the luckiest redshirt ever, to have lived long enough for his hair to have turned gray. ( citation needed • edit )

Star Trek: Enterprise producer and writer Michael Sussman , a longtime fan himself, fulfilled a lifelong dream by putting on an original series red shirt to portray a dead crewman aboard the USS Defiant in " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II ". Sussman's trousers were the same ones worn by Gerrold during his DS9 cameo some eight years prior (Gerrold's name was stitched in them). Sussman's TOS -style boots had been worn previously by Avery Brooks .

"RedShirt" is the default player's name in the multi-player portion of the game Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force .

Issue #13 of IDW Publishing 's Star Trek: Ongoing comic series, " Hendorff ", explores how redshirts perceive themselves.

A recent talk at New York's Museum of Mathematics entitled "Star Trek: The Math of Khan" explored the probability that redshirts are more likely to die in TOS . By determining how many redshirts were aboard the ship at any one time, they were able to figure out though 58% of the dead were redshirts, only 10% of total redshirts died, as opposed to 18% of gold shirts and 6% of blue shirts. As for those in security positions, 20% died. [1]

In his review of Star Trek: First Contact , Star Trek author Keith R.A. DeCandido describes Lieutenant Hawk 's character as the film's "redshirt". [2]

Cultural references [ ]

The icon of the doomed redshirted crewman has to an extent nestled itself in the awareness of the general public and has been translated into a number of other pop culture and literary media and parodies .

Redshirt gingerbread cookies

One of the comics features Jason Fox offering his sister Paige gingerbread men decorated with Star Trek uniforms, all in red.

On Futurama , redshirted engineer Welshie was killed

Happy Tree Friends to be added

Further reading [ ]

• "Under the Microscope: He's dead, Jim", Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 1, Issue 11 , March 2000, pp. 42-43; A lighthearted analysis of just how many redshirts were killed in the making of the Original Series .

External links [ ]

• Redshirt at Wikipedia
• Redshirt at TV Tropes
• Redshirt at Lostpedia
• Star Trek Death - a pictoral analysis of TOS crewmen deaths
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• Backchannel
• Newsletters
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Star Trek "Red Shirts": the Harsh, Statistical Truth

Being a "Red Shirt" on the USS Enterprise is one of the most dangerous jobs in any (imaginary) military. Don't believe me? SiteLogic founder Matt Bailey crunched the numbers : 13.7% of Kirk's crew died during their three-year televised mission. 73% of the deaths were Red Shirts.

What might save Red Shirts' lives?

Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet's surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders. * Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the Red Shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and Captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirk's 24 "relationships" there were only three instances of Red-Shirt vaporization.

Kate O'Flaherty

Joel Khalili

Boone Ashworth

Justin Ling

Reece Rogers

Medea Giordano

Dell Cameron

Matt Burgess

Andy Greenberg

Stephen Clark, Ars Technica

Who Was Star Trek's First 'Redshirt' - And How Did They Die?

As long as "Star Trek" is around, redshirts will abound. Whether fans find it hilarious or macabre, it can't be denied that the iconic sci-fi franchise has a penchant for dooming its extra crew members — those who traditionally wore red Starfleet uniforms — to horrible deaths on a near-episodic basis. The trend is so apparent that the term "redshirt" has entered the greater pop culture lexicon as a catch-all phrase used to refer to any character whose ostensible purpose in a narrative is to die and raise the stakes. Suffice it to say, there have been a lot of redshirts in "Star Trek" history — but who was first in line?

Technically speaking, the core concept behind redshirts dates all the way back to the pilot episode of "Star Trek: The Original Series." The episode, titled "Where No Man Has Gone Before," introduces the classic Enterprise crew with a few extra members in tow, including Paul Carr's Lieutenant Lee Kelso and Gary Lockwood's Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell. After Mitchell is exposed to a bizarre energy field, he begins to develop telekinetic powers and quickly sheds his morality. Kelso is the first to face Mitchell's wrath, as he is telepathically strangled to death by his former friend — knighting him as arguably the first redshirt in the franchise.

There are other 'first' redshirts besides Kelso

While most accounts point to Paul Carr's Lee Kelso being the very first redshirt to ever appear in "Star Trek," a number of caveats have allowed others to make valid arguments for other characters being more deserving of the distinction. For one thing, Kelso doesn't even wear a red shirt at any point during his singular appearance, instead donning a tannish-brown Starfleet uniform. The first character to actually die in a red shirt is Vince Deadrick's Mathews from Season 1, Episode 9, titled "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Mere minutes into the episode, Mathews is pushed down a pit to his death by a rogue android named Ruk (Ted Cassidy).

Then, there's the matter of production order compared to release order. While "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the official pilot of "The Original Series" and was intended to be viewed as the first episode of the series, it was not the first episode to actually air on television. That distinction instead goes to Season 1, Episode 5, titled "The Man Trap." By this metric, Michael Zaslow's Darnell is the first on-screen crew member to fit the redshirt mold, getting killed early in the episode by an iconic "Star Trek" alien : the salt vampire. Of course, he's not technically wearing a red shirt at the time of his death either.

Suffice it to say, opinions on the identity of the actual first redshirt in "Star Trek" history vary slightly among fans. Nonetheless, it's easy to see that redshirts have been around for essentially as long as the franchise itself.

Trek Analysis: The Red-Shirt Phenomenon

By chris higgins | aug 6, 2007.

Here's one for the old-school Star Trek fans. Matt Bailey of SiteLogic has posted data and an in-depth analysis of red-shirt deaths on the original series. Bailey comes from a web analytics background -- a domain concerned with measuring web traffic and analyzing data to recognize and exploit trends. By applying these techniques to the Trek data, Bailey uncovers some surprising trends in the data. Here are some samples from the article:

Data Segmentation: However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need: Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%) Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %) Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4 Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)

Q: What causes a red-shirted crewman to die? On-board incident - 42.5% Beaming down to the planet - 57.5%

Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks' 24 "relationships" there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.

Read the full article for more, including advanced analysis showing the complex relationship between Kirk's conquests and red-shirt death. See also: Wikipedia on red-shirts .

• Jul 26, 2023

Red Shirts: The Unsung Heroes of Star Trek

In pop culture and fan memory, the Red Shirts are associated with being the expendable crew members who frequently meet untimely ends. Mostly, they die on landing parties, but sometimes they die on board the Starship Enterprise. Their deaths have been caused by hostile aliens, dangerous environments, and freak accidents or unexplained phenomenon. They are the brave crew members who don't stay on the show for long, but their impact on the Star Trek fans has been huge!

Of the 55 crew members killed in the original series, 24 were wearing red shirts (most of whom were security personnel), compared to 9 in gold shirts, 7 in blue shirts, and 15 who had unconfirmed shirt colors. Interestingly, only one woman wearing a red shirt was confirmed as killed.

The show's creators used the Red Shirts' unfortunate fate as a way to illustrate the risks involved in space exploration and to add tension and drama to the episodes. Their sacrifices highlighted the dangers faced by the crew of the starship Enterprise, making the show more engaging and impactful.

Red Shirts are loved by fans. They may be the "victims" of dangerous missions, but they are enduring symbols of the adventurous spirit that Star Trek represents. The Red Shirts will always be an important part of Star Trek's legacy, reminding us of the risks and sacrifices faced by those who boldly go where no one has gone before.

Subscribe for photos and articles

🖖😍 Star Trek Gigi

Recent Posts

Lieutenant Nyota Uhura

Vulcans: Logical Minds, Raised Eyebrows, and a Mysterious Sense of Humor

Tribbles: Furry Balls of Trouble on Star Trek

I love this writing

Thank you so much! 🖖😍 STGG

Thank you! 🖖😍 STGG

Screen Rant

Star trek: 10 red shirt memes that are too funny.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Disney+ Cancels Movie Adaptation Of Percy Jackson Author’s 2021 Fantasy Book

Chicago pd season 11 finale synopsis sets the stage for upton's exit, jensen ackles' new tv show is a great supernatural replacement while waiting for a revival.

It's been over 50 years since Kirk, Spock and the original crew of the USS Enterprise set out to 'boldly go where no [one] has gone before' . Since then, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek has inspired numerous spin-off shows, movies, and even reboots. In all this time, the series has made an unparalleled impact in pop-culture - but for all the serious love, there are also plenty of jokes.

RELATED: Star Trek: 10 Facts You Didn't Know About The Wrath Of Khan

One of the more famous examples pokes fun at the fact that characters who wear red shirts (usually designating engineering or security) were often the first - or only ones - to die when they beamed down on alien planets. This was such a frequent sight that it became a running gag in fandom. Basically, if you were a 'redshirt,' you weren't long for this (or any other) world.

Because misfortune can be hilarious, here are the best Star Trek redshirt memes from around the internet.

10. Over before it began

Any up and coming actor knows how exciting it can be to get a role in your favorite TV series or film. Of course, that special joy is often quashed when you discover that your character exists for the sole purpose of coming onscreen and dying two seconds later, as was often the case in the original Star Trek .

This poor redshirt was so glad to get his big break - but his dreams didn't stand a chance against the terrors of the universe.

9. You're safe, Scotty

Of the main named characters in Star Trek: The Original Series , two regularly wore red shirts - Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, and Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott. While both characters are beloved, it was the men of the 1960s Star Trek who typically had a higher mortality rate - putting Scotty in the 'firing line' with his bright red shirt.

Playing off of that, this meme imagines Kirk assuring Scotty that he is not going to die, as the late Gene Roddenberry - Star Trek 's creator - has deemed it so. Time to rest easy...right?

8. Or maybe not so safe...

This might seem like quite a bait and switch after the promises made by the last meme, but there was a time when Scotty was not invincible after all. In an episode called "The Changeling," a space probe that goes by the name 'Nomad' shoots Scotty dead after he tries to defend Lieutenant Uhura from its mind-altering ways.

As tragic and shocking as this moment was, it does seem to reaffirm the idea that no one who wears a red shirt on the USS Enterprise is safe from an untimely demise...not even our beloved main cast.

7. Just kidding - he's okay!

Thankfully, Scotty's so-called death in "The Changeling" didn't last too long. As one of the franchise's most iconic characters - and a very proud native of Scotland (who would have guessed, with that name?) - Scotty proved that it takes more than a laser or two to keep him down.

Referencing the character's genial but somewhat rugged nature, this funny meme shows us that Scotty is one of the few redshirts to actually survive throughout the original series.

6. I'm a doctor, not a...

One of the other lead characters in Star Trek 's original series was Doctor Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, a southern gentleman whose warmth and outward compassion often clashed with the seemingly cold calculations of First Officer Mr. Spock. However, like Mr. Spock, Bones had his own iconic catchphrases that fans are always happy to quote back at you.

The most famous usually went something along the lines of "Damn it, Jim - I'm a doctor, not a [blank]," popping up when Captain Kirk would ask something of him that he wasn't comfortable with or couldn't understand. Here, the joke references this famous line while also playing lip service to the redshirt trope.

5. It's scary for everyone

While in most episodes, Captain James T. Kirk would beam down with a couple lead characters (such as Spock and/or Bones), in this one he is seen with no less than five redshirts to accompany him.

RELATED: Star Trek: Ten Original Series Storylines That Were Never Resolved

The striking nature of this image makes it rife for jokes. In fact, you'll see images from this episode appear a few times on our list...

4. Just a feeling...

From the same episode, this meme continues the joke of Kirk having some idea that the redshirts under his command are unlikely to return to the USS Enterprise alive.

Still, it's really not the captain's fault - after all, red usually equals death in the Star Trek: TOS universe.

3. Suicide Squad - no, not that one

The 2016 DC superhero blockbuster Suicide Squad may have divided fans, but its snappy title really seems to suit this image of Kirk posed with six unsuspecting redshirts. These highly-trained officers, who most likely spent years at Starfleet Academy to make it where they are today, are now most likely waiting to beam down to some random alien planet, just to get shot by a phaser minutes later.

Being security personnel around Captain Kirk is a dangerous job - but we'd still like to thank them for their fine service.

2. Big surprise

Again, the dangers of being a redshirt are highlighted here, showing how - when you're a fan of the show - it gets to a point where you can pretty accurately guess who will live and who will die during a given mission every episode.

Even when the writers give names to the redshirts, it doesn't stop them from meeting an untimely fate. In fact, 73% of the total Enterprise crew deaths from TOS are redshirts. Interesting, but perhaps a little bit sad for all the security and engineering personnel.

1. Kirk's in on the joke

As the captain of the USS Enterprise, James Kirk is meant to be stoic and strong, always ready to take action and inspire his crew to succeed. With that said, what if he was really just as aware of the redshirt joke as the fans? And what if he went back to his chair and laughed about their unfortunate fate with the other lead characters?

It's a possibility that seems oddly likely when you think about the sheer number of deaths aboard the Enterprise. Yikes!

NEXT: Star Trek: The 10 Worst Things Data Has Ever Done

• Get Your Stuff Reviewed!
• The Doctor Who Archive
• Who Are the Writers?
• The Batman Archive
• The Archive of Things

Funk's House of Geekery

Notable red shirts of ‘star trek’.

When it comes to the division of labor Starfleet came up with an easy to remember color coding system. Those in gold are command and navigation. Those in blue are science and medical. The poor unfortunate souls in red….are cannon fodder. Or so says the joke as they fill out the roles of security, engineering, and miscellaneous. But a good number of those who donned red played key roles in the Star Trek franchise and here are some notable red shirts in Star Trek in no particular order.

Montgomery “Scotty” Scott: Perhaps the most popular Star Trek character to put on a red shirt. This Scotsman can hold his liquor and engineer a powerful starship better than anyone. No matter how dire a situation is Scotty never fails to work a miracle to keep the Enterprise flying. His character is such an icon even people who have never seen a Trek show or film know who to call when they need to beam up. The respect for Scotty is so extensive that actor James Doohan has even awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering.

Uhura: Breaking glass ceilings and being so very cool in the process is the Enterprise ‘s resident linguistics expert. Starting as a prodigy cadet under Captain Pike she soon became a mainstay on the bridge. Beyond being able to speak any language, Uhura is an expert on a number of different topics. Cementing her status as an undisputed badass, Lt. Uhura was the first black woman to serve as an important featured character on a television series.

Hemmer: The crusty but brilliant head engineer on the Enterprise may not have the ability to see but his instinct and limited telekinesis make him one of the best in the Federation. With his introduction to the audience during Captain Pike’s dinner party Lt. Hemmer has become an instant fan favorite. The brilliant Aenar may be a sarcastic curmudgeon does have soft spot for those he serves with and will always come through for them.

Lieutenant Stadi : Not only did this Betazoid have the honor of transporting fan favorite Tom Paris to the USS Voyager but is given the go-ahead from Captain Janeway to take the conn. Perhaps if she had worn a different color shirt on this day it would have been the beginning of a long and storied career. Despite this Stadi earned her place in Star Trek history by being the one at the helm when the displacement wave sent Voyager into the Delta Quadrant. Thrilling heroics were attempted but Stadi sadly perished in the event leaving her position for Paris to takeover.

Crewman Compton: Often red shirts are merely sent down to the dangerous alien planet to meet their maker. But in the third season episode “Wink of an Eye” Crewman Compton actually plays an integral role in the story. He begins the first to be exposed to the hyperacceleration caused by the Scalosian water. The effects causes him to join the evil Deela in her attempt to takeover the Enterprise . But when Captain Kirk is in danger he snaps back to his senses even if it does cost him in the end.

Yeoman Leslie Thompson: Usually when red shirts go to join the choir invisible James T. Kirk is mildly inconvenienced. But when Leslie Thompson meets a grizzly fate when Rojan of the Kelvan Empire makes an example out of her, it haunts the captain. The Yeoman is reduced to minerals before being crushed into dust. Despite only a brief time on the series Thompson became a fan favorite and was even given an incredible backstory in comic book form.

Marla McGivers: On a star ship in the far flung future a historian may not have much to as even Kirk himself alluded to. But in the classic episode “Space Seed” Marla McGivers gets the chance to finally put her skills to use when they encounter a true figure from history. Unfortunately for the crew of the Enterprise this is the cunning super soldier Khan . McGivens finds herself enamored by the charismatic warrior and even chooses to go with him to establish a new civilization…..which does not go well.

La’an Noonien Singh: Speaking of Khan, he was probably spinning in his suspended animation that one of his descendants would serve in Starfleet. But La’an Noonien Singh brings every bit of her ancestor’s brilliance, determination, and willpower to her role as Head of Security. After being rescued from the Gorn by the USS Martin Luthor King Jr. she started on her current career path. While she fulfills her duty with a strong stoicism La’an does share a special bond with Number One.

Chief Engineer Olson: Even in the earliest stages of his career Kirk knew when beaming down on a dangerous mission you needed one of the main cast members and a guy in a red shirt to take the brunt of what’s coming. With the Romulan crew of the Narada drilling into Vulcan and a precise skydive is the only way to stop it. Of course Olson pulls his too late getting himself obliterated in the process. While the current batch of Star Trek flicks are in a different timeline the rules of wearing a red shirt still apply.

Ensign Rizzo: One of the most famous red shirt of the original series mainly based on the horrible stupid fate he suffered. Beaming down along with Spock and Scotty to Argus X. It was here he was attacked by a vampiric cloud. Unlike many of his brothers in red, Rizzo was actually able to make it back to sick bay where Nurse Chapel revives him just long enough to tell Captain Kirk about how the creature smelled.

Ortegas: If you are going to take the helm of the greatest ship in Starfleet you got to have an earned sense of ego. Lt. Ortegas has definitely earned every bit of the confidence she has. The hot shot pilot lives to hear Captain Pike’s order of “Punch it!” so she can show how good she is. Cool in a crisis and always ready to crack a joke Ortegas has a certain roguish charm rarely seen in Trek .

Tom Paris: Mentioned in a previous entry Tom Paris has become a big time favorite among Trek fans. Stranded 70,000 light years from home the responsibility of flying Voyager home falls on the son of a Starfleet Admiral who was intended to be there only for a single mission. Despite not being particularly popular among the crew he eventually wins them over, forging a particularly close friendship with Ensign Harry Kim. Over the course of 7 seasons audiences watch as he evolved from a young arrogant troublemaker into an integral part of the crew.

Share this:

Post navigation, leave a comment cancel reply, find geekery, the most read posts today.

Find More Geekery

• 100 Must Read Comics
• 50 Years of Bond
• Around the Webs
• Casting Call
• Channel Geek
• Cheap Game Tuesday
• Classic Scene
• Food and Drink
• Gaming: A Legitimate Hobby
• Geek Fashion
• Geek Playlist
• Geek Travel
• Legends of Geekdom
• List ALL the Things!
• MCU Master List
• Movie Marathon!
• Movie Reviews
• Mysteries and Intrigue
• Obligatory Comics Section
• One Hit Wonder
• Original VS Remake
• Quick Bites of Geekness
• Random Geekness
• The Disney Marathon
• The Pull List
• Top 100 Women in Pop Culture
• Uncategorized

Be Awesome! Get Geekery Email!

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

We Like Being Liked

We Twitter!

A Community of Geeks!

Who Are We?

Our Visitors

• 3,770,154 Awesome Geeks

We Want to Be Liked

Follow me on Twitter

Follow blog via email.

I need my Geekery!

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

• More to Explore
• Series & Movies

Published Feb 16, 2023

Admiral Red Shirt: Patriarchy on Trial in Star Trek: The Next Generation

The critique of patriarchy at the heart of TNG makes this 35-year old show perpetually one of this fan's favorites.

StarTrek.com / Rob DeHart

If red shirts are the pitiable unnamed crew members likely to die in away missions during Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, Admiral Red Shirt is a similarly doomed character type examined throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Repeatedly, TNG uses an Admiral Red Shirt character to interrogate patriarchy for what the writers, directors, and creator Gene Roddenberry clearly considered its many failings, including dangerous arrogance, a predilection for paranoia, and a commitment to selfish rule breaking. Although TNG’s Admiral Red Shirts don’t die with the regularity of TOS red-shirted crewmen, their reputations and high-level careers in Starfleet are often destroyed by their own terrible decisions.

StarTrek.com

[ RELATED : A Guide to Star Trek’s Bad Admirals ]

As we meet these Admiral Red Shirt characters, it becomes clear they’re very much the type of humans whom omnipotent space pest Q labeled as members of “a dangerous, savage child race” in the first episode “ Encounter at Farpoint .” TNG’s pilot episode ends with Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the smart crew of the Enterprise-D demonstrating their non-violent problem-solving skills to Q. However, for the remainder of TNG, Patrick Stewart’s character has a special charge as leader of this galaxy-traveling starship to actively prove to John de Lancie’s Q — and to himself — that he can lead without resorting to the ugliness of violent, self-righteous patriarchy so ubiquitous in humanity.

The critique of patriarchy at the heart of TNG makes this 35-year old show perpetually one of my favorites. “We humans know our past,” Picard admits to Q in the trial scene, “even if we’re ashamed of it.” The shameful past to which Picard refers includes violent and destructive actions of powerful human leaders, such as selfish scientists, rogue military captains, and fanatical admirals, calling all the shots. Of course, human savagery does not completely exist in the past. Picard’s intellectualism, morality, and open mindedness serves as a foil to the very worst in stubborn patriarchy, which we encounter repeatedly in the 24th Century from flawed red-shirted Starfleet leaders like revenge-seeking Captain Benjamin Maxwell (“ The Wounded ”), authoritarian Captain Edward Jellico (“ Chain of Command ”), and inscrutable Admiral Alynna Nechayev (“ Journey’s End ”). When we include TNG’s critique of arrogant, selfish scientists like Kosinski (“ Where No One Has Gone Before ”), Bruce Maddox (“ Measure of a Man ”), and Kila Marr (“ Silcon Avatar ”), this show attacked patriarchal behavior hard, from start to finish.

The storm clouds of poor decision making by Admiral Red Shirt characters begin to gather in TNG’s first season. In “ Too Short a Season ,” 85-year old Admiral Mark Jameson consumes a reverse-aging drug to be at his “best” upon returning to the site of his worst decision decades before. He tried to “level the playing field,” by giving weapons to both sides of a conflict on Mordan IV which resulted in many bloody years of war. His return does not go well, but at least the governor allows Admiral Red Shirt Jameson to be buried on the planet of his greatest failure. In the extra weird Season 1 episode “ Conspiracy ,” Admirals Savar, Aaron, and Quinn are infected by a controlling alien parasite that wants to take over Starfleet. The conflict in these early episodes reflects the difficulty of challenging an admiral who’s been compromised. These Admiral Red Shirts don’t appear to answer to any superior officer except generalized Starfleet — they’re used to making and breaking the rules for their own ego and benefit. These episodes prepare us to distrust Admiral Red Shirts throughout TNG.

Vice Admiral Anthony Haftel

The patriarchy roast really gets cooking in Season 3’s “ The Offspring ,” where we see the deadly consequences of pushy Admiral Red Shirt behavior on a brand new positronic brain. Imperious cybernetic specialist Vice Admiral Anthony Haftel so traumatizes Data’s new daughter Lal with orders to leave Enterprise , her positronic brain trips, overloads, and requires deactivation. Everything had been developing naturally (for an android) until the admiral arrived. Causing synthetic Lal’s new positronic brain to initiate cascade failure was a terrible mistake on Admiral Red Shirt Haftel’s part. “Follow my orders!” is more important to him than, “What’s the right thing to do here?”

Rear Admiral Norah Satie

I enjoy Star Trek episodes that critique inadequate patriarchal leadership and offer a more positive and effective way to lead. Season 4’s “ The Drumhead ,” an exceptional TNG episode that remains chillingly relevant today, features a fanatical and paranoid Rear Admiral Norah Satie , the daughter of a famous Starfleet judge. Like a Senator Joe McCarthy-of-the-future, she imagines conspiracies everywhere on Enterprise , especially after Picard’s terrible experience with the Borg. Admiral Red Shirt Satie is a perfect example of a woman using patriarchy to further her own power; like so many women across human history, she’s a foot soldier for patriarchy and aggressively wields fear to preserve her own powerful position within this flawed system.

When the proceedings are finally aborted and Satie departs Enterprise , as Worf and Picard struggle to process the experience of the admiral putting the captain on trial, Picard’s observations remain relevant to our current day — “We think we've come so far. The torture of heretics, the burning of witches; it's all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, it suddenly threatens to start all over again.” When Worf wonders if people may approach her accusations with more skepticism in future, Picard replies, “Maybe. But she, or someone like her, will always be with us, waiting for the right climate in which to flourish, spreading fear in the name of righteousness.” Despite her polished outward appearance, Admiral Red Shirt Satie demonstrates that she is, at her core, one of Q’s nightmare humans in our sometimes “dangerous, savage child race.”

Admiral Erik Pressman

In the final season, TNG’s writers heightened the stakes of their Admiral Red Shirt patriarchy critique with a story that involves a power-play between the Romulans, Captain Picard, his first officer Commander Will Riker, and Riker’s first captain, who has since been promoted to Admiral Erik Pressman . Pressman, a manipulative officer who thinks he answers to no one, is searching for an illegal cloaking device that Starfleet Intelligence wants in order “to level the playing field” with the Romulans, despite the treaty violation.

At the end of “Encounter at Farpoint,” Riker tells Q that “Humanity is no longer a savage race.” “But you must still prove that,” purrs Q before disappearing in a flash. In fact, Riker’s difficult choice in “ The Pegasus ” serves as a type of “final exam” of Q’s assessment of latent human savagery. The choice? Follow the orders of a fanatical patriarchal bully figure who demands obedience to his dangerous ideas, or align with Captain Picard in pushing back against this unfit “leader” and promoting the values of Starfleet. We love this show because Riker chooses wisely. Hope you enjoyed your court-martial, Admiral Red Shirt Pressman.

Admiral Katrina Cornwell

Knowing that fans are conditioned to expect deeply flawed Admiral Red Shirt characters, Alex Kurtzman-era Star Trek deploys surprisingly noble admirals to flip this script. In Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery , desperate Admiral Katrina Cornwell almost becomes yet another human leader to make the most savage choice when she orders the destruction of Qo'noS per Emperor Georgiou’s plan to end the war with the Klingons. Our hero Michael Burnham helps remind Admiral Cornwell how to be a true Starfleet leader and to find another way than genocide.

By the end of Season 2, Admiral Cornwell sacrifices herself to save Enterprise from a massive explosion and secures her position as one of the best Starfleet admirals in any Star Trek .

Admiral Charles Vance

Despite the noble sacrifice of Admiral Cornwell, when Burnham and her starship travelled 930 years into the future and finally found Starfleet’s hidden headquarters, I wasn’t the only Star Trek fan who assumed prickly Admiral Charles Vance would be as terrible as those TNG Admiral Red Shirts. As intended, I immediately distrusted him for deciding to break up Discovery ’s crew and coming across as harsh and cold.

However, Kurtzman and showrunner Michelle Paradise gave Vance a redemption arc in Season 3 that helps us understand his initial defensive crouch and makes him the kind of leader capable of growth that Starfleet needs to rebuild in this damaged future. I respect TNG for its sustained attack on patriarchy but, after seeing the endless failures of all those Admiral Red Shirts, I’m grateful to Star Trek: Discovery for redeeming some decision-makers at the top of the Federation and showing us effective, empathetic, and selfless leadership worthy of Starfleet ideals.

Writer R. A. Duchak (she/her) was in utero when Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon, and she’s been a space nerd ever since. She has worked as a radio host and producer, university writing instructor, webmaster, editor, and Outward Bound instructor. You can find her on Twitter @ccfoodie.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are currently streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. Internationally, the series is available on Paramount+ in Australia, Italy, Latin America, the U.K. and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. It will also stream exclusively on Paramount+ in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria later this year. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave. STAR TREK: DISCOVERY is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Stay tuned to StarTrek.com for more details! And be sure to follow @StarTrek on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram .

Get Updates By Email

• Show Spoilers
• Night Vision
• Sticky Header
• Highlight Links

Follow TV Tropes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedShirt

Edit Locked

Kirk: All right, men, this is a dangerous mission. And it's likely one of us will be killed. The landing party will consist of myself, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy , and Ensign Ricky. Ensign Ricky: [Looking at his shirt] Aw, crap . — Family Guy

This is the Good Counterpart of Evil Minions and Mooks — set filler for our heroes' side. Their purpose is almost exclusively to give the writers someone to kill who isn't a main character , although they can also serve as Spear Carriers . In a series where The Main Characters Do Everything , if you suddenly see someone else who you've never seen before involved in the main story, they are probably Redshirts.

They are used to show how the monster works , and demonstrate that it is indeed a deadly menace, without having to lose anyone important . Expect someone to say " He's Dead, Jim ", lament this "valued crew member's senseless death ", and then promptly forget him . Security personnel in general fall victim to the worst shade of this trope, as most of the time their deaths aren't even acknowledged at all; according to Hollywood, you could walk into a bank and shoot a security guard right in the face without anyone making a fuss. If you shot anyone else afterward, the headline would just read "Bank Customers Killed", and rarely is their death even considered much of a karmic strike against their killers (i.e. if the protagonists of a story are bank robbers, they can often kill plenty of security guards in highly dubious "self-defense" and still be treated sympathetically by the plot).

In mass quantities, they make up the Red Shirt Army .

Finally, the problem with the Red Shirts is that they can be far too obvious. The death of an extra is used for a particular reason (see the choices just below) so it is shown with some emphasis; but background characters surviving isn't interesting at all, so when they do, it happens almost unnoticed, e.g. Star Trek S1 E8 "Miri" .

Compare to The Worf Effect (a strong character is defeated to show the enemy's strength), Sacrificial Lion (a strong and important character is killed to show the enemy's strength or seriousness), The World's Expert (on Getting Killed) , Retirony , Mauve Shirt , Sacrificial Lamb , Disposable Sex Worker , Anyone Can Die , Little Dead Riding Hood , C-List Fodder (who are pre-established named characters but are still much more disposable than main characters), A Million Is a Statistic , and Monster Munch .

Contrast Plot Armor and Red Herring Shirt . See also Bring My Red Jacket , which is literal "wearing red is just asking to get hurt".

For John Scalzi 's novel Redshirts , which deconstructs this trope, go to Literature.Redshirts , and for the sci-fi social networking simulator, go to VideoGame.Redshirt .

Example subpages

• Live-Action TV
• Video Games

Other examples:

• Attack on Titan utilizes this trope with many of the unnamed members of the military. However, that's not to say that named characters are exempt from death, either .
• In Bakuman。 , a non-fatal variant happens to certain manga series whose cancellation is announced whenever named characters get serialized, often with titles that would make one wonder whether anyone would want to read them. Arai, a minor character, is a recurring producer of "Red Shirt" series, although the fact that his series "Cheese Crackers" got canceled fairly soon after serialization in spite of Miura's confidence in it makes the main characters wonder if they're really safe.
• In Bleach , when Ichigo and friends invade the Soul Society, anyone without a rank is pretty much dog food.
• Interestingly, one of the Britannian Red Shirts ( or should that be Mooks ?) served as a Plot Point . One of them happened to be Shirley's father , who was killed by Lelouch, Shirley's crush, in a landslide in the battle of Narita. It starts Shirley's cutie-breaking which progresses throughout the series.
• As the series goes on, the Burai are more or less replaced by the faster, more powerful Gekka Knightmares that are modeled after Kallen Kozuki 's Guren . In R2 , the mass-produced 7th Generation Akatsuki later serves as the main rank-and-file for the Black Knights, being the next-generation version of the Gekka that can equip Air Glide Systems and fly.
• Oh, Matt of Death Note . 10 panels. He gets gunned down. Notable in a manga where Anyone Can Die because he wears a red striped shirt in the anime, and often gets fan-colored with red hair.
• One notable example of this is a random, cocky demon slayer boasting that he can kill Rui, a Twelve Kizuki demon, without breaking a sweat due to his size. He is instantly proven wrong when Rui slices him up with his signature move .
• In Dragon Ball Z , Nappa blows up a "news helicopter" which, upon closer inspection by a keen-eyed viewer, is actually a shuttlecraft from the Enterprise-A, identical to the ones from the films and even including the registry number (NCC-1701-A) — making this a possible instance of actual red shirts being killed.
• Gantz : Every single time the group is sent on a mission, at least 75% of them are Red Shirts.
• Yano in Ghost in the Shell . In the manga, one chapter starts off with Batou and Motoko sending their regards to his family since he was already killed in a training exercise . At least in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex , he's given a minuscule amount of screentime as one of two new recruits, but ultimately gets killed in battle later on.
• Jujutsu Kaisen : Junpei Yoshino only appears during a single story arc, and dies after being transformed by Mahito .
• In Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket , this extends to the GM Command Spacetype, which has a red torso and a tendency to die a lot. Similarly, Scarlet Team is described as a rapid response team and consists of a pair each of GM Command, GM Sniper II, and Guncannon-MP mobile suits, the latter of which are predominantly red; they are all unceremoniously killed off in their only scene by the lone MS-18E Kampfer.
• The Orb Union has the MBF-M1 Astray, a Mobile Suit notable for its Gundam-like appearance as they carry the same robotic eyes and V-Crest. It is also noted for its white and red coloration, and the fact that they are in no way as powerful as the GAT-X or ZGMF-X series Gundams that can easily take them out. They are later succeeded in Destiny by the MVF- M11C Murasame, which can transform into a fighter mode . Better specs, but still easily destroyed by the dozens.
• Subverted with the Alliance side; the GAT-01 Strike Dagger serves much the same purpose as the RGM-79 GM in the original (and also closely resembles the older mobile suit), but as the main cast goes against the Alliance as well as ZAFT, the Strike Daggers are better classified as Mooks .
• Lyrical Nanoha : The Soldiers of the Time-Space Administration Bureau are, on the surface, highly trained individuals capable of solving most inter-dimensional threats... it's a shame, then, that the show mostly shoves them in situations only girls half their age can properly handle.
• Mazinger Z : In the last Go Nagai manga arc, the Japanese army created the Mazinger army — a squad of mass-production Mazingers — to try and defeat Big Bad Dr. Hell once and for all. Since the robots needed trained pilots, several new characters were introduced, like the blonde twins Lori and Loru. However, as Kouji was performing test flights with the Jet Scrander , Dr. Hell threw a massive attack involving several mobile fortresses and several dozens of Mechanical Beasts . Main character, Love Interest and Battle Couple Sayaka Yumi and the Mazinger army flew to meet the Hell's army. Only one of them survived, and you will never guess who. Sayaka. Loru and Lori also showed up in Mazinkaiser , repeating their roles. They died in the first battle that they took active part in.
• In several scenes in Naruto , including Kabuto's attempted assassination of Sasuke , several ANBU Black Ops are easily killed. This is to show how powerful the invaders from the Sound and Sand villages actually were .
• There's also the samurai of the Land of Iron.
• The movies have many cases of Mooks being killed en masse, often by the heroes or the main villains.
• It's basically a rule that if you're a Konoha ninja who isn't named and you're shown on screen, you're probably going to die very soon. And even if they're not killed right away, they never get to kill any enemies besides mooks . Their jutsu almost always fail to damage any major villains.
• Absolutely any military vehicle that is not an Evangelion in Neon Genesis Evangelion . Their job is shoot ineffectually at the Angels so we can see just how invincible they are as they lazily annihilate the forces in their path.
• On the way to a battle with the forces of Marmo in Record of Lodoss War , protagonist Parn chats up a fellow soldier who is very optimistic about the whole thing. Naturally, as soon as the battle is over and the heroes lament the losses, they find the soldier's body. It was his fault — he really shouldn't have shown Parn that good-luck charm his child made for him .
• In Saki , there are often many opponents who are shown just after being defeated by the main characters or their rivals. Interestingly enough, Kyoutaro, when entering the males' individual tournament, goes up against some characters who would seem to be this type, and loses .
• In Sekirei , there are 108 alien beings forced to take part in a game of There Can Be Only One . The vast majority are there simply to be terminated, and never had a chance to begin with. Many are aware of this fact, and desperately attempt to flee the capital — the Discipline Squad hunts them down.
• This happens often in Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its adaptation Robotech . Destroids are common victims of battle for dramatic tension, but the series likes to kill off unnamed rookie pilots in brown-colored VF-1A's, known commonly among fans as 'Brownies' and playing much the same role as Gundam 's aforementioned GM. In-universe, it's been noted that Zentraedi aces bully and target the tan fighters because the know that color indicates a new, unskilled, or weak pilot. Somewhat Truth in Television : If a pilot has managed to survive 10 missions, their chances of survival in combat to the end of the war skyrocket. This is the reason why the United States Air Force invented the Red Flag exercises: To get its young pilots through those first 10 combat missions.
• All of Duel Academia in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX , save the main characters, especially in Season 3.
• Caballistics, Inc. : During the group's first mission to stop a zombie incursion in the London Underground, they're accompanied by a group of special forces who are clearly there to serve as cannon fodder.
• Empowered , being a superhero comic (albeit a parody) also has Mooks , but one supervillain ThugBoy worked for really took the cake when he made his Witless Minions wear shirts with an emblem looking like a bullseye. Wow. Now that is...
• Great Lakes Avengers : Mr. Immortal got a red shirt for his X-Mas present since he's a redshirt army all by himself .
• Green Lantern comics consistently depict unnamed (and occasionally, named) Green Lanterns getting slaughtered whenever a new bad guy shows up. Even though every one of them wields "the most powerful weapon in the universe," they inevitably suffer gruesome, meaningless deaths. This also highlights the completely arbitrary nature of combat between ring-wielders.
• The Rocket Red Brigade flip back and forth between this and Mooks , depending on the story. Generally, there's one Rocket Red at a given time who has a name and a personality , and all the others get wiped out en masse. Even the named one has a good chance of biting it. And yes, the name's indicative ; they wear red and white Powered Armor .
• Hunter's Hellcats would occasionally feature additional, previously unseen, members of the squad who would die during the opening scenes to show how dangerous the current mission was.
• MAD was one of the first to parody this. Though they did not use the term 'red shirts' they mocked this trope in their Star Trek: The Musical where Kirk, on the tune of Age of Aquarius , sings: As your ship goes through the galaxy To distant worlds way past Mars Make sure that your adventures Do not kill off your stars. And you can do it with a crew that's dispensible a crew that's dispensible Dispensible... Dispensible...''
• In a Taskmaster mini-series, the main villain is a former mook turned leader who actually calls himself Red Shirt. He's the only one that doesn't get the joke. He also doesn't get why it's funny that he calls his organization the Minions International Liberation Front .
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. who are not major characters could just as easily be called Blue Shirts with the number of times SHIELD agents are killed en masse.
• The same goes for former Marvel supervillain prison, The Vault which was not only a Cardboard Prison but was staffed by an army of men wearing armor based on Iron Man suits called The Guardsmen. Every time there was a breakout, several of them would be killed. In fact, Venom once killed a group of Guardsmen during one of his many escapes and the guards' friends and family became an armored Super Team intent on killing him.
• A Nodwick parody of the classic Dungeons & Dragons module "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" has Lloth's giant spider-ship done as a parody of the Enterprise, complete with the demon crewmembers wearing Starfleet uniforms. Once the heroes get on board, they tell the demons who come to attack them to go ahead and surrender because "you've made the tactical error of wearing red shirts! " Cue the demons face palming and lamenting their decision to not go into medical or engineering.
• Another IDW Star Trek comic told from the perspective of a security officer justified the trope by observing that more officers in Starfleet wore red uniforms (for engineering, security and ships operations) than both gold (command) and blue (sciences) combined. So statistically the Red Shirts are more likely to die during Starfleet missions.
• Star Wars: Invasion : Jedi Master Lar Le'Ung is killed a few issues after his introduction to establish the threat posed by the Vong.
• According to TFWiki.net , across all Transformers media, this happens with characters that don't have toys in the toyline, in order to keep selling toys of the characters that have . Though the Marvel series did subvert this once with the Seacons, the most recent combiner team , getting introduced and killed off in a span of four issues, even though they were still on the toy shelves.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers : The whole mini-series is basically a Transformers story told from the viewpoint of a bunch of Red Shirt second stringers. In fact a large part of the characters' portrayals are built around the fact that this trope applies. Pyro fears that he'll die a meaningless death so he's spent most of his life trying to plan the perfect death. Ironfist is basically in complete denial about his role as a Red Shirt until later in the story where he seems to almost quietly accept his perceived unavoidable death. It helps to mention the writers openly referenced the story as "Last Stand of the Wreckers is a story about redshirts." on one of the opening pages of the Hardback copy.
• The X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics started to display this later on. There were complaints after the first several arcs that, while people quit or transferred out, no-one ever died. Promptly someone who'd been there since the beginning and one who'd been around for an arc got killed in Requiem for a Rogue , and in the arc after that four new pilots were introduced. One instantly immersed himself in a subplot, another took equally little time to establish her status as part of a rather pragmatic Proud Warrior Race . The other two failed to do anything but sort of hang around in the background, and by the end of the book those two had been shot down and killed within two pages of each other.
• In one issue of Toyfare's Twisted Toyfare Theatre , Kirk returns from a mission in which "only a dozen redshirts died," to find himself in the Mirror Universe, where the meek and pragmatic Mirror Kirk is protected by the immortal Redshirts. TTT loves playing with these. There are usually Redshirts around to die in stories featuring Captain Kirk, and the title page of one of the trade paperbacks shows Kirk and Spock standing amidst a sea of Redshirts while Spock looks around uneasily.
• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon) : In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction; although he's one of the examples that has a name, Lieutenant Krupin is first introduced being part of the joint rescue mission between Team Mauzer and Monarch's G-Team into Artificial Zombie territory, and he dies in the same chapter that he's introduced.
• In the All Guardsmen Party , the guardsmen are typically grouped with several less combat-focused teammates. Most of them don't survive.
• Played with in the Star Trek Online fic Bait and Switch . Four bit part crew members beam down with three members of the command crew. Two are low-ranking officers (an ensign and a lieutenant junior grade), another is a senior chief petty officer, and the third a crewman. The officers peel off early and act as a sniper and spotter, the senior chief gets shot in the chest but survives and is beamed out, and the crewman survives until near the end of the chapter when an Orion matron breaks his neck. In general the fic leans more on Mauve Shirts : Regardless of whether they die, almost any Bajor crewman Eleya interacts with is given at least a name, if not some minor characterization.
• Foot soldiers in Farce of the Three Kingdoms are usually referred to as "redshirts." Their survival rate is... poor.
• I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again! : Invoked by Ko Hyuuga word for word in describing himself after he's sent to retrieve Hinata shortly after "The Hinata Massacre".
• The Pony POV Series parodies this trope in the Shining Armor Arc, with the Hooviet Commisars , none of whom go past a single scene without dying. It's suggested in-universe that Makarov , Genre Savvy Large Ham that he is, is using his abilities to deliberately invoke this trope for the sake of telling a better story.
• In Risk It All , one of Ren's prestige ranks invokes this trope, being the next step up from Minor Character and just below Named Character, indicating that Ren's super identity is starting to become well-known in Gotham after his viral video of him fighting a mobster who gets shot dead.
• Rocketship Voyager . The Space Marines assigned to Voyager used to have bright-red space armor "designed by the psychotechs to intimidate food rioters" which they've long since burnished down to bare metal and repainted in disruptive pattern camouflage. Also red coveralls are worn by Spacefleet crewmen who handle munitions or hazardous waste. In the final chapter a scratch team of UN space marines, Maquis rebels and Spacefleet ensigns are sent on a rescue mission that kills eight of them, most in a similar fashion to how their Mauve Shirt characters died in Star Trek: Voyager .
• Poked fun of in RWBY Thoughts . When the aircraft Weiss gets attacked, the pilot worries that they'll crash. Weiss knows she can't die as a main character, but the unnamed pilot isn't so lucky: Pilot: We're not gonna make it! Weiss: Uh, there's a main character on this ship and that's my character song playing, so I think I'm fine. But as for you...
• The Finnish Star Trek / Babylon 5 spoof Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning puts the Trek redshirts against the B5 security forces. The carnage was horrible. The redshirts throughout the Star Wreck series are also given names that reflect their expendable nature , such as "Lt. Suicide", "Sgt. Manshield", and "Lt. Cannonfodder".
• The same target gag is used in Star Trek: The Pepsi Generation . Ensign Expendable is killed during the transport to the planet's surface, so he doesn't even get a heroic death from a Monster of the Week .
• Notorious Star Trek: The Next Generation fanfic author Stephen Ratliff unironically(?) gave us Ensign Throwaway in his Marissa Picard stories.
• Things I Am Not Allowed to Do at the PPC : Attempting to invoke the phenomenon of expendable extras by having people go to the Star Trek continuum while wearing red shirts is banned, even as an April Fools' Day prank.
• Background ponies in Twillight Sparkle's awesome adventure are treated as this by everyone in the story. This includes the good guys sending them on missions which are too dangerous to risk someone important on. Admiral Awesome: No, you are a main character. It’s better to send in a unimportant background pony.
• Spoofed mercilessly in Sev Trek: Pus in Boots (an Australian CGI spoof of Star Trek: The Next Generation ). An alien asks the Enterforaprize to supply hosts for its young , as they're reputed to have "endless supplies of expendable ensigns". After the offer is curtly refused ("Each ensign is a valuable member of our crew!") the alien runs rampant on the ship causing the death of 47 ensigns, mainly due to Failsafe Failures and the lousy aim of the main characters . One dying ensign laments the fact that he would have been promoted to lieutenant in a few days, therefore becoming immune. Ensigns mentioned by name include Ens. Insignificant, Ens. Expendable, Ens. Cadaver, Ens. Bitpart, Ens. Anonymous, Ens. Disposable, Ens. Speakingpart, Ens. Deadmeat, Ens. Extra, Ens. Deathwish, Ens. Cannonfodder, Ens. Menial, Ens. Shortlived and Ens. Walkonpart. [Alien leaps on an ensign and starts to absorb him; Lt. Barf raises his phizzer rifle to destroy it] Cptn. Pinchard: Don't, Barf, you'll kill the ensign! [Pinchard knocks aside Barf's phizzer rifle. The stray blast disintegrates another ensign who's just entered the room] Lt. Barf: With all due respect , Captain, that man was dead from the moment he put on that ensign's uniform.
• A film that seriously plays with the concept is Aliens . Who can forget Hudson's " Four more weeks and out " tirade? The movie does kinda play it straight with Crowe and Wierzbowski; one line from Crowe (said when he's offscreen), and no lines from poor Ski except a scream.
• Alien vs. Predator : Several notable members of the expedition into the ancient pyramid become this once they get locked inside the sacrificial chamber with Facehugger eggs and are impregnated with Chest Bursters , dying to remind the audience of how the Xenomorphs reproduce and the threat they pose. It's even somewhat lampshaded by Adele, one of the named Red Shirts, having a red shirt which the Chestburster explodes out of.
• The countless native African servants and carriers in the Allan Quartermain movie adaptions exist only to be eaten by crocodiles or killed by traps so that the danger can be demonstrated without killing off a main character.
• Hilariously lampshaded in Austin Powers in Goldmember . British agent Nigel Powers knocks out a couple of Dr. Evil's henchmen, then when a third has the audacity to point his gun at him... Nigel Powers : Do you know who I am? ( terrified guard nods ) Nigel Powers : Do you know how many anonymous henchmen I've killed over the years? (guard nods again) Nigel Powers : And look at you, you don't even have a name tag! You've got no chance. Why don't you just fall down? Go on, son. (the guard obligingly does so )
• Cliffjumper in Bumblebee is a literal example, due to his red color. His only notable scene in the film is being killed at the hands of the movie's main villains, Shatter and Dropkick.
• Commando : When John Matrix is informed of the deaths of his former teammates, his former superior officer General Kirby leaves two soldiers with him to guard Matrix and his daughter. Within minutes of Kirby leaving, both soldiers are killed in a raid on Matrix's house.
• In Congo , all of the African porters fit this trope. Also Richard. He wasn't even in the novel.
• Beth Emhoff in Contagion (2011) is both this and a dead Living MacGuffin at the same time, being killed off within the first few minutes. Her recent interactions are then investigated throughout the rest of the film, and then the cause is revealed to be an infected pig being touched by a chef who then held her hand for a photograph .
• In World War I aerial combat film The Dawn Patrol , New Meat flight school graduate Donny exists, and is killed off, to be a source of conflict between his older brother Scott and squad commander Courtney. Donny arrives at the squad, has two scenes, and is shot down, thus rupturing the friendship between Scott and Courtney.
• This trope was parodied very effectively in Galaxy Quest in the character of Guy Fleegman, "Crewman Number Six" — who is the only cast member NOT shot or killed during the climactic final battle! (Although a bit of time travel makes everyone else better ). Lampshade Hanging at its finest (also see Plucky Comic Relief ). In the end, he gets a major role in the new Galaxy Quest series, in a reference to the fact that Star Trek: The Next Generation featured a Security officer as a main character throughout its entire run and in general saw far fewer redshirt deaths. Just to ensure his survival however, Guy's new character has an awesomely non-generic name.
• The most notable example in GI Joe The Riseof Cobra is the guard at The Pit who first witnesses the mole tunnelers arrive. He is not only visibly surprised but doesn't sound the alarm, just nervously levels his gun at them. Yep, G.I. Joe, only recruiting the A-list commandos.
• In G.I. Joe: Retaliation the ninja troops Snake Eyes and Jinx fight on the mountain cliffs are wearing red uniforms. True to this trope, many of them die by falling (having their grapple ropes cut, being pushed off by a small avalanche).
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) : In the movie, backgrounded G-Team member Master Sergeant Hendricks is there solely to establish the mentality of Ghidorah when Hendricks and several soldiers hail Ghidorah with gunfire to no effect, which prompts the three-headed monster to use his Breath Weapon to gleefully blast Hendricks and his compatriots into oblivion with a slasher smile ; and also to establish that people are gonna die to Ghidorah and his Titan army, in what has remained the MonsterVerse 's most apocalyptic and high-stakes movie so far as of 2023.
• In the Guillermo del Toro Hellboy movies the random B.P.R.D. agents who accompany the big red guy on his missions all but define redshirt.
• Also, if you're a Bond girl, billed after the main one, your days are numbered...
• Jurassic World has perhaps one of the most badass ones in film history. ACU Trooper Miller essentially flips off the Indominus rex by standing his ground and firing his shotgun repeatedly at it. He gets eaten, but by doing so, the last three soldiers — one of them severely injured — survive the attack and escape I. rex pursuit, thanks to his badassery. If you look closely, he's not just holding his ground; he's calmly striding toward the damn thing as it's charging right at him.
• Played with in Iron Man 2 : Right after Justin Hammer leaves Ivan Vanko alone with the two burly security guards, it becomes immediately obvious that they're not going to last very long. It's such a foregone conclusion that the film doesn't even bother showing their deaths—the next time we see Vanko, he's alone at his hacking workstation and the officers are nowhere to be seen. It's only when Natasha and the chauffeur arrive at the Hammer headquarters and enter the room itself that we see the two guards hung from the ceiling, just to confirm what happened to them.
• In Monty Python and the Holy Grail , this trope comes into play when King Arthur and his Knights fight the Killer Rabbit. Three Knights, who had only one appearance prior to this scene are killed. Arthur even sends one to originally kill the rabbit, despite the arguable fact that Sir Lancelot is the most aggressive knight Arthur has.
• The Mummy (1999) . In the end, the only people who make it out are the four protagonists . Jonathan even lampshades this when recruiting an admittedly death-seeking Winston: "Well, everyone else we've bumped into has died, why not you?"
• There are literal redshirts in Pirates of the Caribbean . Except Those Two Guys , although by the sequel they're wearing Company uniforms, which are a different color. They actually survive to the end of the original trilogy and join the crew of the Black Pearl . It's not clear what happens to them after that, especially given the fate of the Pearl in On Stranger Tides .
• In Planet of the Dinosaurs , the cast wears various colored uniforms, but those killed die in no particular order.
• During the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark , Indy is accompanied by two random native guides. They don't make it.
• A discreet spoof in The Running Man : Two contestants wore yellow jumpsuits while two wore red. Guess who died?
• Subverted in Smokin' Aces . Though many nameless cops bite it in the various shootouts, our hero is so distressed by the mass carnage that it sends him into a Heroic BSoD . He laments "So many people are dead!" even as his superiors try to get him to callously brush it off and do his job.
• The security guard that Payne stabs in the ear at the beginning of Speed exists only to show that Payne is a bad guy —as though bombing a packed elevator isn't enough— and he completely vanishes from the movie once he's killed. Fan Wank claims that Payne used the man's body to fake his own death, but this theory still requires that law enforcement and the poor guy's employers never even notice he went missing, making it as straight an example as can possibly be.
• Commander Branch and the crew of station Epsilon IX fell victim to V'Ger, after having earlier observed the Klingon encounter with the cloud. Branch was played by David Gautreaux, who was originally signed on to play the Vulcan Lt. Xon in the aborted Star Trek: Phase II series. Sonak was created to die in Xon's place as the concept of Xon (an emotionless alien looking to understand human feelings) seemed too good to waste (the concept was eventually evolved into Data ).
• Starting in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , for the rest of the original cast movies every Starfleet officer wears completely or predominantly red uniforms (with trainees and cadets wearing red turtlenecks), so maybe it wasn't surprising that Spock would die in the end .
• Ensign Lynch at least gets a name. He was assimilated by the Borg and ends up being one of the drones Picard guns down on the holodeck. Apparently, Picard attended his wedding. Something of a subversion, in that Captain Picard actually gets called out for how callously he dismisses Ensign Lynch's murder. The other Borg drone Picard kills along with Lynch isn't mentioned at all.
• There's also another guy named Hawke, who goes outside the Enterprise in a space suit along with Picard and Worf. Hawke gets more play in the Expanded Universe . In fact, there's a novel dedicated mostly to him and an attempt by a Section 31 operative to recruit him. The novel also reveals that he's gay, not that it makes a difference to any other character. Hawke's partner calls Picard out on letting Hawke die. When Picard points out that Hawke was already assimilated, the guy points out that so was Picard. Assimilated people can be restored. Hawke didn't even get a chance to do that.
• In Star Trek (2009) , Kirk (in blue) and Sulu (in gold) are accompanied on a drop mission to take out a planetary drill by gung-ho Olson (in red). Guess which one of the trio dies? At first it seems to be a subversion, as he survives what seems to be the obvious fate of missing the platform and falling to his death from the upper atmosphere of a planet . Unfortunately for the poor guy, it's a Double Subversion ; his final fate actually manages to be fairly spectacular. His parachute catches on the platform, swinging him right into the drill's beam, where he's immediately vaporized. Of course, it was his own fault . Plus as he was the Chief engineer, he had to die so Scotty could become the Chief Engineer. This was completely intentional, according to the commentary — Abrams and the writers called this their "red shirt moment".
• The sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness has Chekov moved to the position of chief engineer of the Enterprise due to Scotty's resignation prior to their mission. The look on his face and dramatic music when Kirk tells him to put on a red shirt is a priceless example of Leaning on the Fourth Wall . He doesn't die, but still . In fact, this trope was defied in this film, when Kirk ordered two nameless crewmen to take off their red shirts and change into casual gear for their mission to apprehend John Harrison on Qo'noS. Both survived an ensuing firefight with Klingons and successfully apprehended Harrison. Sadly, Anton Yelchin, the actor who played Chekov in the reboot films, died in a car crash a month before the release of Star Trek Beyond .
• Crewman Herndoff (aka "Cupcake") has survived all three movies thus far by virtue of his filmed death scenes being removed from the movie for pacing. The immortal Redshirt?
• The crew of the "Tantive IV" in the very first scene of the first film, whose only job was to die to make the Stormtroopers look good.
• Same goes for just about every fighter pilot in the rebel alliance other than, of course, Luke and Wedge.
• The captain and pilot of the Republic cruiser in The Phantom Menace . They're the first characters to appear in the movie, and also the first to die.
• While going to confront Darth Sidious, Mace Windu brings three nameless (to those unfamiliar with the Expanded Universe , anyway) Jedi who are easily carved up by the Dark Lord .
• Rogue One is basically told from the perspective of the Red Shirts who, in any other movie, would've been dead in the first ten minutes, if they appeared at all. Perhaps fittingly, it ends with the whole team dying . It's driven home that the protagonists were, ultimately, nothing more than glorified couriers whose narrative purpose was providing the MacGuffin for more important characters . All of this is very much Played for Drama .
• Utu : The enlisted British soldiers from Lt. Scott's unit are little more than cannon fodder for the rebel villain protagonist to kill. Although historically the British army wore red coats as full dress, in this film they wear the blue overseas campaign uniform.
• X-Men: The Last Stand : Most of the mutants in Magneto's army and the human soldiers deployed to Alcatraz Island were quickly obliterated by the Phoenix.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past : Warpath, Blink, Bishop, Sunspot and Colossus are glorified extras whose main purpose in the story is to serve as cannon fodder for the 2023-era Sentinels.
• Averted in the Fighting Fantasy book Starship Traveller . Your security personnel are much more competent in both phaser and close combat; this is reflected by having all non-security characters take a -3 Skill penalty in combat — presumably showing that a character's Skill stat is for their particular job, not their ability in general note  Backed up by the explanation for why your character, the ship's captain, is the exception to this rule: " Your combat skills are the equal of your professional skills , as befits a true hero." . But then played almost straight in the fact that it is indicated that there are a great number of faceless nameless redshirts available in your crew for horrible things to happen to (if you play well — in a way that won't get your identified personnel killed) and that you and your crew repeatedly, if such things happen, suffer a critical giving-a-shit failure.
• Played straight in the Lone Wolf series where the title character has the Aura of Death about him. Any companion or ally Lone Wolf picks up along his travels is extremely likely to die in horrible circumstances before the end of the current book. Any boat Lone Wolf is on will be attacked by pirates, sink, or both. And for Kai's sake, man, don't try to rescue a person in distress, of course it's a Helghast who murdered some random person and took their place just to have a shot at killing Lone Wolf.
• All Hands ! is a major subversion, as every named character dies, while a large number of unnamed crewmen survive .
• All Quiet on the Western Front spends some time justifying this. The training received by German soldiers at the time didn't even remotely prepare them for combat, and a hefty percentage of the New Meat died horribly through not knowing something a veteran would know. A few survived by blind luck, learned what would kill them through seeing what killed everyone else, and became the Fire-Forged Friends the story centers around. They're not very effective at communicating their newfound survival strategies, so the waves of New Meat that supplement their ranks continue to get mowed down (and continue to get replaced .)
• Barkwire junior editor Ron Christianson never returned after being sent to review an unusually large and unfriendly dog named Scar.
• Lampshaded by one Ciaphas Cain short story, where Adeptus Mechanus soldiers wear red uniforms. Ciaphas's narration even refers to them specifically as "redshirts" at one point, and predictably they're all slaughtered when the Necrons wake up .
• In The Cold Moons , named badgers are unlikely to be randomly killed off. Most badgers either die nameless or are only first mentioned after their death.
• The African porters of Congo , the movie or the Crichton novel, seemed to regenerate like clones. "Oh, look, there are three left. Oh, wait, the apes just killed them all. Hey, where did those other two porters come from?"
• Spoofed in The Light Fantastic with the barbarian heroine's gang of mercenary minions. The narration says they're all probably going to die so it won't bother naming them, but most of them actually live, despite some spirited attempts from the Luggage.
• Played seriously in Night Watch with Nancyball. He's the first of the Night Watch killed, when he's suddenly hit with a grappling hook in the stomach and dies. Unlike near every other character in the setting, he doesn't even get a visit from Death to flesh him out. Afterwards, the other coppers try talking about him, and they can't even think of anything about him, noting he never said much to anyone.
• Pratchett in the introduction of Guards! Guards! invokes the trope by saying that the guards' ungrateful role in fantasy stories is to always get slaughtered to show how dire the threat is, and he wrote Guards! Guards! as an homage to those fine men.
• A Terry Pratchett post in his fan newsgroup: DW is based on a slew of old myths, which reach their most "refined" form in Hindu mythology, which in turn of course derived from the original Star Trek episode "Planet of Wobbly Rocks where the Security Guard Got Shot".
• The Dragon Business : Sir Tremayne's fellow knights in the first book, the mercenary fishermen after the lake monster in the second book, and the castle guards in the second book all end up slaughtered after a few chapters of page time. This gets lampshaded with the fishermen when, right before they introduce themselves, Reeger complains that this is a waste of time due to how those people are about to get eaten.
• Parodied in The Dresden Files , when Molly is fighting a psychic battle . Her Headquarters for the fight is a copy of the classic Enterprise , complete with Kirk!Molly, Spock!Molly, Scotty!Molly, and a (construct) Redshirt!Molly who dies at the first real trouble. Harry is just miffed that she didn't use Star Wars .
• Duncan Idaho from the Dune series is a strange example. He dies early on in the first book, but thanks to the magic of cloning , he keeps popping up again and again (and getting killed again and again,) and actually manages to be an important character regardless of his obvious red shirt status.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl : Lampshaded by Tran, when he's being recruited for a highly dangerous trip into the ocean full of monsters. Tran actually survives, while Vadim doesn't . Tran: Do you own a red shirt? I feel as if I should put one on. Vadim: What does that mean?
• In the prologue of Eragon , Arya is accompanied by two guards who are killed in the ambush quite easily. It's eventually deconstructed (albeit a few books too late), as she was great friends with one and in love ( as much as elves can be anyway ) with the other. Their deaths, along with, y'know, being tortured , are the reason she became The Stoic .
• Late in The Fold our heroes call for military backup. They get sixteen Marines, all of whom are dead after the next fight.
• Their outfits never get described, but in Galaxy of Fear : Army of Terror the Millennium Falcon lands on Kiva carrying its usual famous crew and a number of Rebel grunts. They join the Arrandas and company, who have found a baby , and decide to help them evacuate. Guess what happens. The baby is actually a monster ; he doesn't strike when either of the Arrandas or Luke Skywalker are holding him, but when a random Rebel has him and is out of view for even a moment... Not all of them die, but all the ones whose names are mentioned.
• Chapter 3: Lucky Red Shirt, from Hell’s Children by Andrew Boland. The Shirt does not turn out to be lucky.
• Walter from The Host (2008) . Up until his death throes, the only real characterization he has is "Supports Wanderer." When his death scene rolls around, it just serves to illustrate how caring and sensitive Wanderer is.
• In The Land: Forging , a literal example is seen. A wood sprite joins Richter to fight at his side - with specific attention called to his red shirt - only to be killed moments later.
• In The Maze Runner Series , the Gladers that aren’t Thomas, Teresa, Minho and Newt are basically Cannon Fodder . It’s even lampshaded when the main characters are given special roles, whilst the unnamed Gladers are simply given the text ‘to be killed by lightning/cranks/other horrific ways to kill off nameless extras’.
• Averted in The Name of the Wind , where the Adem, a warrior race whose mercenaries wear all red outfits, and are pretty unlikely to even be wounded.
• Utterly spindled, folded and mutilated by Night of the Living Trekkies , where the hero encounters a terrified man in a red shirt at a Star Trek convention attacked by the living dead. Turns out that "Ensign Willy Makit" has lost the rest of his group, several trekkies who claim to be from the U.S.S. Expendible... who died in ways completely unrelated to the zombies . (Willy didn't even know about them until the hero showed up.) It gets better: Willy's real name is Kenny Dyes , and he ultimately dies... in a way completely unrelated to the zombie attacks .
• Parodied by John Scalzi in his book Redshirts , told from the point of view of an ensign on a space exploration vessel: The worms were in a frenzy. Somebody now was likely to die. It was likely to be Ensign Davis.
• Played for Laughs in The Red Tape War : "Under no circumstances are you to jeopardize your life or your ship. The life of your companion, however, is absolutely and thoroughly expendable."
• Played with in the Day of Honor TOS novel. A redshirt got himself good and toasted... but it was in an honorable way to the Klingons. They decided to give this guy an annual holiday.
• Played for Laughs in the Star Trek: Enterprise novel By the Book , in which several minor characters play an RPG in the mess hall between shifts. One character, Crewman James Anderson, sees his characters repeatedly killed in the adventure, much to the amusement of everyone else. Once its status as a Running Gag is established, he decides to have fun with it and name his characters in alphabetical order.
• In the Christopher Moore novel The Stupidest Angel , one character decides to wear a Starfleet command shirt because it's a festive, Christmas-y red colour. Another character even comments on how the redshirts always died in that series. Guess who gets shot in the head when the lead zombie walk's through the door? Here's a hint. He's wearing a red shirt, and it ain't the guy in the Santa suit.
• In Super Minion , defied with Hellion's minions, especially unpowered ones. Everyone who goes on missions gets bulletproof clothing, and regular minions are generally expected to just surrender if confronted by a hero without boneheads or villains to protect them. Because of Fortress City's weird laws, it's almost impossible to make any charges stick against regular minions, and HH has very good lawyers who represent even regular minions.
• There are pairs of minor backup agents in Thursday Next who tend to only show up to get killed and have punny names like Khanon and Fodder, or Deadman and Walken.
• Type 1 Caravan Guards, who exist to get killed by bandits. Though they do have names and even personalities, it's said the protagonists shouldn't bother to learn them because of this.
• The Serious Soldier, who lacks personality and whose role in the story consists mainly of helping out in the fight scenes and inevitably dying at a dramatically appropriate moment.
• In Tress of the Emerald Sea , Hoid announces that he's going to call all the crew of the Crow's Song except the half-dozen or so with plot-relevant roles "Doug", to avoid the reader having to keep track of all their names. Surprisingly, only one Doug gets killed over the course of the story.
• Villains by Necessity : Kimi is introduced shortly before the first Test and dies attempting it, in order to hammer home to the party that the Tests are potentially lethal.
• Even though the Warrior Cats series has a strict Anyone Can Die policy (and how), the seldom seen Tribe of Rushing Water is made up of about 75% Red Shirts, who get killed off in bunches pretty much anytime the Tribe is featured in a book.
• David Weber hands out "Redshirt Awards" to fans who spot errors in his books. In the next book, he names a character after the fan , and kills him. Some of the later Honor Harrington books have had entire ships crewed by Redshirts, which then get blown up.
• The Rebel/Republic pilots all wear orange flight suits, not quite playing it straight, but not quite not.
• Yeoman , a short story by Charles Yu , parodies/deconstructs the trope. Everyone on the ship knows that the Yeoman is going to die, because they do every week. It's literally in the job description: "Yeoman, Second class: be prepared to die for no good reason". So the ship gives our protagonist a mental health counselor (if not a very good one ), and he has a candid talk with his pregnant wife about what to do with the life insurance money. At the same time, the poor doomed soul can't help but feel excited he's finally going down with a landing crew . In the end, he survives, but only because his wife was not going to stand by and let it happen like everybody else (including the Yeoman).
• Parodied many times over in filk , from Leslie Fish's "Landing Party Blues" to "Redshirt's Lament": Tis a gift to wear a gold shirt or a blue, you see But look, my dear, what they have done to me Even Engineering would a blessing be But no, they've made me Security Whe-en the landing party's gone I'll be there with my red shirt on I'll make sure my estate's all orderly Because that is the last that you'll see of me
• Jonathan Coulton wrote the song "Red Shirt" as a theme to Redshirts, a book by John Scalzi They said this air would be breathable Get in, get out again and no one gets hurt Something is pulling me up the hill I look down in my red shirt I look down in my red shirt
• Voltaire 's "Expendable" from BiTrektual features a duet by a Redshirt and an Imperial Stormtrooper .
• Despite it being their job, security guards in Professional Wrestling are only good at restraining audience members. When called in to restrain or subdue an out of control Monster Heel , they are usually outmatched and knocked out within seconds despite having the numerical advantage. The WWE in particular seems to like using their poor security guards as cannon fodder for heels.
• Armageddon 2000, Hell in a Cell. The Undertaker vs. The Rock vs. Kurt Angle vs. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. Triple H vs… Rikishi . Guess who gets chucked off the cell into a flatbed truck?
• TNA used the fire dancers who performed in Samoa Joe 's entrances whenever they were unfortunate enough to or brave enough to try and help him during wrestling matches or when fights broke out. None of them died, though, just got anticlimactically beaten up and thrown aside.
• The Boys who wait on Dalton Castle in Ring of Honor . However, the main two who serve as his personal mooks got upgraded to just that, serving as Tag Team Twins who eventually helped him win the World Six Man belts from The Briscoes and Bully Ray . Yes, the latter team imploded on their route to winning the belts from them, but Castle and The Boys retained. That said, the large majority of Boys remained what amounted to red shirts.
• Before the Ministry of Darkness ’ abduction of Stephanie McMahon , her father Vince stationed a bunch of security guards outside the room where Stephanie and Shane were staying and left to face the Ministry (who had taken Sable hostage). When Vince returns, he finds the corpses of two security guards and an empty room. Turns out Shane had left the room when Vince specifically told him not to, and the security guards were taken out with ease.
• A related concept in Professional Wrestling is the Jobber , who exists as a disposable wrestler that a promotion can use to help establish a new wrestler. These are often used when creating an indestructible Wrestling Monster , who proceeds to beat up the Jobber very badly. A promotion will often hire a local independent wrestler for a one-time appearance to fill this role, so they are often never seen again in the promotion afterwards.
• Ever notice how in snooker it's the red balls that have the lowest value and don't get put back on the table after they've been potted?
• In a way, American football averts this. When practicing, quarterbacks will wear red shirts so defenders will know not to hit them and thus not risk injuring them. This is because quarterbacks are the most important player on the offense and at the pro level, they're worth the most amount of money, so the quarterback is actually in the least amount of danger. However, it's played straight with college freshmen and rookie pros, who traditionally go through a "redshirt" year where they only play during practice.
• Suzy Eddie Izzard has a routine poking fun at this, in which Steve from the accounts department beams down alongside Captain Kirk.
• For a long time in the BattleTech universe, anyone who was in the military but wasn't a Mechwarrior or Aerospace pilot was regarded as this trope, with the exception of a few factions that were noted for having high regard for ground armor or infantry. This has become less prevalent in later time settings as combined arms has become more and more popular (in universe) though there are still a few factions that are noted as considering infantry units as little more than cannon fodder.
• Brik Wars gives Hero units the explicit ability to make other units Redshirt .
• The Captain Is Dead includes The Crewman, a character who can protect other characters at his location from being injured by dying himself. At the beginning of his next turn, The Crewman (or a Suspiciously Similar Substitute ) reappears on the Bridge.
• Champions . In the "Legions of Hell" adventure from one of the old Adventurers' Club newsletters, the heroes are tasked by a witch to journey to Hell itself and rescue her daughter, and are accompanied by some NPC villains to help out. In reality, the villains are there to be periodically picked off to remind the players they're in a very unfriendly place.
• Dungeons & Dragons , Dungeon magazine #49 adventure "The Dark Place". The adventure recommends that the Dungeon Master have the gacholoth fiend kill off one of the NPC crewmen to demonstrate to the PCs how dangerous it is.
• The Grave Robbers from Outer Space series of B-movie games has a character in at least two who is meant to represent some minor character who's killed early on in the movie to make the danger seem real. They're accordingly weak but their special ability is any attacks against your characters have to be directed at them before anyone else, acting as a kind of meat shield.
• In Star Munchkin , there is a hireling called a red shirt. Their only use is to die when you lose a battle, thus preventing the "Bad Stuff" from happening to you. However, they have, on a success, a one in six chance of getting overexcited and sacrificing themselves anyway.
• The Good, the Bad and the Munchkin has the greenhorn, whose only purpose is to be fed to a monster so you can steal its stuff and run away while it's busy chewing.
• Paranoia has the players taking the roles of Troubleshooters tasked with the job of shooting trouble wherever it should arise in Alpha Complex. The starting rank is "Red". As each character is part of a six-pack of clones, the body count can rack up astronomically quickly....
• Which it inherited in their entirety from its papa-game, Exalted . The Exalted community has long referenced Extras as 'Mooks', and the game encourages them to be considered little more than ambulatory scenery for the awesome epic melodrama that is the Player Characters' lives.
• Spirit of the Century has minions. In a bit of a switch these are mostly for the villains, but they go down right quick, and, if they are attached to a character, must quite literally die before the character can even be hurt.
• Star Fluxx includes an Expendable Crewman card, and its artwork features a crewman wearing a red uniform. When a player is required to discard another card, he or she can discard the Expendable Crewman instead.
• For the Star Trek CCG made by Decipher, one character was specifically designed for this: Lt. Grant, who had an ability to sacrifice himself in place of other personnel in certain situations (and yes, he wore a very prominent red shirt, and the strategy article on the official site hung a big lampshade on his role). Additionally, there was the card "Security Sacrifice," which allows you to make your gold-shirts pay the ultimate price. (Oddly enough, the picture on the card is of Tasha Yar, who was a major character in the first season before succumbing to her fate .)
• The Star Wreck Roleplaying Game literally has Redshirts instead of hit points.
• There is an obscure German rpg based on this trope Die unglaubliche Robert Redshirt RPG Show (translated: The Incredible Robert Redshirt RPG Show). In it, the players play the production crew of a TV station producing a show (pure fiction or scripted reality) featuring an actor called Robert Redshirt. The crew tries to create dangerous situations for RR and then save hin from mortal danger, all in order to increase their viewer ratings.
• Warhammer makes the trope a game mechanic : in any unit with a Hero or Lord-level character, when the unit takes wounds, the "Look Out, Sir!" rule allows you to sacrifice rank-and-file members of the unit if the named character would take a hit. This doesn't always apply; for example, Thorgrim Grudgebearer, king of the Dwarfs, is carried into battle on a Cool Chair (the Throne of Power, which the king is required by dwarfen law to protect at all times), but because he's so high above his men they can't get in the way of oncoming attacks, so he can't benefit from "Look Out, Sir!".
• Acolytes in the 3rd edition Inquisition codexes were essentially extra Wounds for your Inquisitor. Similarly Shield Drones for the Tau Commander exist purely to give him an extra body to take excessive wounds (a Shield Drone only has 1 wound, but it can have any number allocated to it, and any extras that it suffer will simply be discarded). You can tell that the Tau are an unusually nice faction because they use nonsapient robots as shields rather than living underlings like everyone else.
• Most Space Marine Devastator squads can only carry 4 heavy weapons, and come as a base squad of 5 with an upgrade that can boost their squad numbers to 10. While some have special rules attached to the extra members (and even if they don't, they have the same stats and loadout as a Tactical Marine, so they're hardly negligible), they are largely seen as padded wounds to protect the actual weapon gunners. This also applies to many of the other choices, such as taking a command squad/retinue for your commander, or the Scout Neophytes for the Space Marine Initiates, for Black Templars, or the three Guardsmen in the Imperial Guard six-man special weapon squad who aren't carrying special weapons.
• A in the Spin-Off Kill Team , where a squad of highly trained specialists go up against countless enemies, and they can purchase upgrades. The most useful: Red Shirt, a minor character who, according to the other Kill Team members, is probably going to get killed in a variety of gory ways. Can be averted in that if the Red Shirt survives, he becomes a member of the Team , and upgraded accordingly.
• In the Only War RPG each player character has an NPC comrade accompanying them. While comrades can help out with basic actions, their primary purpose is to flesh out the squad and die horribly.
• The Commissar's memetic execution ability (shooting a Guardsman for showing cowardice in front of the enemy, refusing to carry out a suicidal order, or commenting that their battle plan suck grox bal-*BLAM*) is used on any member of the squad, targeting Guardsmen without special weapons first, officers and specialists second, and himself never despite the undeniable boost in morale this would cause.
• The soldiers of Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson in Opera Olav Engelbrektsson are all dressed in red uniforms, and dead by the end of the play.
• Parodied with the Tortuga Twins live show "Tortuga Spies" where the show's villain has two minions in pink shirts. During the second act, a third minion wearing a red shirt is added and immediately shot and killed. It's then lampshaded in that the villain comments about getting the joke as the minion is dragged off stage.
• Early on in Bearmageddon , Ethan sold cameo appearances in the comic to interested readers, for crowd shots of people getting mauled by bears. More expensive cameos involved appearing in the foreground and saying one or two lines before they went out.
• In Captain Ufo , Ufo sometimes treats low-rank crewmembers in the military division as this. They do wear a red uniform too.
• Dragon Ball Multiverse : The poor vargas who woke up Broly. And things don't seem to be going any better for the ones who tried to send Buu back to Universe 4 .
• Played deliberately straight by the crew of the Enterprise in the Star Trek DeviantArt web comic, Ensign Sue Must Die . The crew quickly find out that Ensign Mary Sue is EXTREMELY annoying. Virtually all attempts to get rid of her fail. Including shooting her! She's spent the past few years building up an immunity to phaser blasts. So the crew turn to the one guaranteed way of killing off a crew member. They give her a promotion which changes her shirt colour from blue to red. They waste no time and go on an away mission, where she is killed almost immediately.
• Officers Gets killed and Oneshot in Girly . Amusingly, neither of them die, and Getskilled goes on to become a minor part of the ensemble until at last he meets his eventual fate . It's pretty cool. Oneshot, on the other hand, just never shows up again after not dying.
• Intragalactic has its Enstant Ensigns, who are apparently mass-produced disposable clones in stylish red outfits. They work hard and die with great efficiency, some even climbing into their disposal Ensacks before the ship crashes, to save time. Then, when the ship docks, they are taken off to the Ensignerator.
• Parodied in Legostar Galactica where one of the main characters is Ensign Redshirt and is continually being killed yet is always brought back to life. It's to the point that a laser shot in the opposite direction will actually bend just to hit him. It is subverted later, however, when a series of accidents fall on another character while sparing Ensign Redshirt, who's the first surprised.
• Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-Commander) Der Trihs (Red Shirt spelled backwards ) is one of these officers. He is repeatedly injured in various grievous ways, including being reduced to a head-in-a-jar several times, but never actually dies. Instead, he eventually retires from the mercenary business to live with a pretty girl on a paradisaical vacation-planet. It is revealed at one point that his skull is quite nearly impervious to harm.
• During "Oceans Unmoving", Quartermaster Flipp complains about not getting any characterization... and is knocked overboard to certain death in the very next strip. Of course, it's subverted when, after the whole plot and the deaths of many major and minor characters, it's revealed that he didn't die, but instead is sent through time.
• The main characters are viewed as this by their employers. After all, the employers in question are not going on that expedition into the Forbidden Zone themselves because they don't want to die. This makes the fact that Emil is said employer's own nephew an element of the story's Fridge Horror . And let's not get started on the two other members of Mission Control who roped in two of their distant cousins and a woman to whom they're a Honorary Uncle respectively.
• The recruitment poster for the Cleansers has fine print mentioning that joining them voids all life insurance.
• Completely subverted in Starslip Crisis with the introduction of Quine, a "Protocol Officer" who's in charge of building relationships with new species. While he has a tendency to die on every "away mission", upon death, a clone is awakened on ship with all of his memories up to the time of death intact. The trope is outright inverted by the fact that he's the only member on the ship with this privilege (due to the rarity and importance of the protocol officer).
• In Survivor: Fan Characters , Orwell in Season 13 was a Star Trek fan character who wore a red shirt and barely avoided dying from freak accidents multiple times. Ironically, he actually ended up being one of the season's luckiest characters as not only did he never actually die, but the comic's creator changed his elimination to occur much later in the season than initially planned.
• Subverted in Tower of God : You'd think the bunch of Regulars that got killed off or beaten up in some way would be nameless extras, but as their unique character designs might hint, a lot of the get names. Weird names, but still.
• The character of Parker only exists to spout exposition about the branch of Lobotomy Corporation the story takes place in. After that, they are killed to demonstrate Dingle Dangle's powers and Catt's badassery.
• Narae is pretty much Cannon Fodder in the form of a character. They exist to demonstrate that Abnormalities are capable of killing employees even if they do the right thing. While Attachment work was the right thing to use on My Sweet Home, they spent an unnecessarily long amount of time in the Containment Unit. As a result, they gave into My Sweet Home's temptations and fused with it , resulting in Narae's death.
• And his death is later retconned away when he gains another bunch of levels and more-or-less ascends to godhood .
• The Double Subversion comes a few in-story years later with Morgoth's space program: The ship gets a lot of soldiers "named in homage to a friend of the Emperor's", and those die in troves without anybody caring.
• Cheat Commandos parodies this with its Green Helmets. "We've got, like, fifty of them!" Taken further as Green Helmet action figures come in packs of three, and are advertised as being "extra melty".
• The Codeless Code has the abbots. If they mismanage a project, they probably won't survive to the end of the story. Lampshaded in Case 125, where the head abbot is looking for replacements. A footnote notes that "abbots of the Spider Clan have life expectancy of a dolphin in the Gobi desert."
• Averted, however, in the book, where he has a larger role and survived . Actually, there really aren't any redshirts there other than the mostly-unseen staff, due to The Law of Conservation of Detail .
• Most of the guards in COPS: Skyrim . Especially when facing things like dragons, trolls, or giants.
• In the podcast series Crogan Adventures episode Island Lost To Time a background character volunteers to go with the leads on an expedition to find dinosaurs. The captain scathingly points out that he's new, they don't know anything about him except his name and while in her experience it has been useful the way guys like that get killed right off to tell the others how dangerous things are she'd rather skip that step and just assume this will be dangerous from the start. Once on the island they immediately meet a new guy though and...
• Despite being an Advertised Extra , Andrea Brooks fills this role in the first season of Escape the Night . She lacks any real characterisation and is barely given any screentime or dialogue. Her main role in the story is to show to the viewer how characters will be killed off. Even Sacrificial Lamb Shane is given more focus then Andrea. Her death does kick off a chain of events that continues for half the season, making her a case of Small Role, Big Impact .
• To celebrate Star Trek's 46th anniversary, Google converted the letters in its logo into Star Trek characters, with the "e" wearing a red shirt and looking nervous. If you click on the turbo-lift, he and an "o" (Kirk) beam down to a planet to fight Gorn, but the "e" keeps getting caught in the cross-fire. He doesn't die, but he goes back to the bridge unhappy.
• Finding creative ways to kill off redshirts was part of the fun for some of the writers of the League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions (other writers thought they were sick).
• SFDebris theorizes the goldshirts are so incompetent because they're all algae scientists or astronomers, unwittingly enlisted into combat once Starfleet re-militarizes during TNG. They're trained to measure soil toxicity, not kick-box with Borg.
• All D-class personnel of the Foundation are this. Class D is the designation given to those who handle the more dangerous SCP items, and they tend to be brutally killed en masse. And if they survive to the end of the month, they're supposedly executed anyway note  Though since this is unusually wasteful for the Foundation, it's possible researchers are just told this so that they treat them as expendable . Some of the potential guilt over sacrificing so many people is mitigated by the fact that D-class personnel are either death-row convicts (meaning they are marked for death anyway and probably deserve it) or personnel who screwed up so badly that they got demoted to Class D (meaning a massive breach of ethics and/or causing a containment breach). Needless to say, it gets lampshaded a lot . One of the things that Dr. Bright is no longer allowed to do at the Foundation is swap out D-Class uniforms with red leotards.
• One of the SCP s is a Portal Pool that cycles through its destinations whenever someone goes through it. Unfortunately, several of those destinations are near-instantly fatal (several of them are in space ), so several D-Class personnel are deliberately sacrificed to send people where they need to go (although they do give the D-Class poison so they won't have to wait too long).
• It's also played with in the episode Star Trekkin just about everyone but Kirkstone, Sprock, and RcKoy dies, though Sprock is transformed into one of the creepy jellyfish (his head on their tentacles).
• Or to explain it in another way, he's simultaneously running on the Original Series rules (this trope) and Next Generation rules (he's important to the plot). Which was also lampshaded.
• It gets lampshaded/parodied like crazy later on, with the methods of killing Phelous getting more and more ridiculous . And then he just dodges everything trying to kill him.
• We're Alive had The Tower with about 30 unvoiced survivors. They all got killed off in the Second Season finale "The Harder They Fall"
• Lampshaded in Worms Trek Rhapsody . One gets hit by a Klingon missile (Scotty's line "Hit by Klingon missiles, no!"), another gets fired out of a torpedo bay ("Photon torpedooooooos!").
• Averted in Star Trek: The Animated Series ; where nobody on the Enterprise died in two seasons. In fact, nobody at all died (except in backstories of abandoned civilizations and such) except in "The Slaver Weapon", where three Kzinti are exploded onscreen by Self-Destructing Security .
• Surprisingly enough, this is one aspect of the franchise that does not get played straight and is barely parodied by Star Trek: Lower Decks . The only member of Cerritos crew who is killed during the first season is Lieutenant Shaxs, Cerritos security chief and a fairly significant character . note  Excluding everyone killed during Mariner's holodeck fantasy. And this despite the show not wasting time in having a transporter or holodeck malfunction episode. And he comes Back from the Dead in season 2, although we're never told how — with good reason , apparently . Hilariously, Boimler does die three times and is revived in the series', as of this writing, four seasons — he drowns at the end of Season 2, suffers from heat stroke and dehydration in Season 3, and is blown up in Season 4. He comes back after each incident, his status as a Butt-Monkey being the only reason .
• That said, the term "Red Shirts" gets used in-universe, by a group of ensigns who are hoping to progress up the command ladder and take Boimler under their wing. He ends up telling off their leader for trying too hard to copy other famous captains, as all they did during a crisis was make simultaneous speeches , while Boimler weaponized his own clumsy nature to calm down the angry mutant scorpion form of Tendi ( long story ). The Dramatic Irony is intentional.
• Adventure Time : The titular character of "James," who wears a red radiation suit, is sacrificed by Bubblegum to the zombies of the crater, and then subverts the trope because he's an Expendable Clone like most of the candy people. And then further subverts the trope when his original body becomes undead and leads the zombies out of the crater.
• Parodied in an episode of Bojack Horseman when they're planning to break into a museum and after Bojack says one of them might die, the camera pans to Alan the cable guy (who happened to be wearing a red shirt), who they then forced to come along. After being told repeatedly that he's definitely going to die, he's then shot by the police when Margo Martindale uses him as a human shield but his phone blocked the bullet.
• Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys : The holo-boons, Hard Light baboons in red jumpsuits.
• Duckman did a full-blown parody of Star Trek: The Original Series ("Where No Duckman Has Gone Before"), with the various characters playing Kirk's crew. Fittingly, the red shirts were Fluffy and Uranus . Duckman: [doing the captain's log] As purely extraneous cast members, Fluffy and Uranus's sole purpose is to be killed upon arrival, thus allowing the rest of us to get on with the damn story. [beat] Aw, the hell with it. [shoots them himself]
• Family Guy : Parodied in the same episode that the quote at the top of this article comes from: when Peter is running in the road with William Shatner , the latter gets hit and killed by a car. The camera then pans to Ensign Ricky, who declares: "I did not see that coming."
• Parodied in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", in which the entire Star Trek: The Original Series cast is threatened by a jealous energy being, but only Welshy (a parody of a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Scotty), who's dressed in the classic red shirt, gets killed. Three times over.
• In the same episode, a flashback of the so-called Star Trek Wars is shown where some officials are throwing redshirted Star Trek devotees into a volcano while chanting "He's dead Jim."
• Additionally, Zapp Brannigan's entire brigade all wear red which accurately shows how he often sacrifices them freely and considers all missions suicide missions.
• Parodied again in "Murder on the Planet Express," where the regular crew and Scruffy the Janitor's heretofore-unseen apprentice, Jackie Jr., go on a team-building retreat that turns deadly. Subverted in that the entire situation was staged and everyone "eaten" by the monster is alive and well. Farnsworth: Oh my, adrift in deepest space with a vicious alien killer aboard! Any one of us could be next. Fry, Bender, Jackie Jr., Leela— ( Monster descends from the ceiling and snarfs up Jackie Jr. in one gulp .) Bender: (aside to Fry) That took longer than I expected.
• Naturally this rule doesn't apply to any Providence Soldier who's seen Without A Helmet , they're all Mauve Shirts and generally fair pretty well, though the rules of Family-Friendly Firearms seem to dictate that they can never accomplish anything meaningful with their rifle-err, "Blasters".
• "Basic" did provide some justification, however. The purpose of the grunts being more to distract the EVO s and keep them away from civilians while stalling them long enough for Rex or another main character to actually take said EVO s down. Granted they tend to take insane casualties, with a few exceptions, such as "Leader of the Pack" (where the redshirts respond to an ineffective Five Rounds Rapid against a giant worm by calling in a gunship and ripping the EVO apart) and most notably "The Forgotten" in which a team of redshirts (and a Mauve Shirt ) survive being trapped inside a city of hostile EVOS .
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero : The Joes had "Greenshirts" as they would come to be called. Their look was based on Grunt who was the most generic looking character of all the Joes, probably hence the name "Grunt". They weren't used as cannon fodder per se in the cartoon, for obvious reasons. But they did make animating large battle scenes easier because all the main characters had unique appearances and animating a large number of them onscreen at the same time often proved laborious. Typically, one or two main characters would be fully animated in the foreground while several Greenshirts served as background employing more limited animation. Also, the addition of generic soldiers solved the problem of Cobra troops outnumbering the Joes. They're all males throughout the series. But a few female Greenshirts are seen, especially in "Spell of the Siren".
• Pretty much any GL Corps member seen in Green Lantern: The Animated Series that doesn't come from the comics . For instance, the pilot introduces us to a GL named M'ten, just to have him violently killed off in order to establish the Red Lanterns as a threat.
• Kaeloo : If you're one of the talking flowers, there's a ninety-nine percent chance you won't survive till the end of the episode.
• Parodied in the Trapped in TV Land episode called "Dimension Twist", when Kim is temporarily sent to a Star Trek -esque TV show and appears in a red uniform: Wade: This is the part of the show where they pick series regulars to go on a mission. Just make sure you're not the one wearing... Kim: ... A red shirt? Pseudo-Kirk: And... [to Kim] you! You're expendable.
• And parodied again in another episode with a cheese tour guide wearing a red dress and a logo that resembles Starfleet's. She is last seen swept away in molten cheddar, no sign of Kim rescuing her or anything.
• Also, Drakken's rank-and-file henchmen wear red uniforms. They don't get killed because it's not that kind of show , but they are generally easily defeated by Kim .
• The Klokateers in Metalocalypse Facebones: And most important, remember — death is an everyday part of the workplace ! So, when you see a dead body, don't freak out! Toki: [is taking out the trash and comes across a rotting corpse] Wowee! Facebones: Just... ring your Deth-bell! Toki: [rings his Deth-bell]
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic : The Princesses' Royal Guard has, to put it nicely, a disastrous track record in about anything. They never actually get killed (this is My Little Pony we're talking about, after all), but anything they can recover from is fair game. Arrest someone? They get zapped. Find a stolen bird? They get bluffed by the culprits. National Emergency? They're not even there. Guard the Archives? They unlock the doors for the intruders (though in this case, the intruder, being Celestia's personal student, had every right to be in there anyway). Monitor wedding preparations? They get infiltrated. Capital under attack? They get overrun without effort. Neighbouring state in peril? They play messenger. Seeing how they're Bodyguarding a Badass , one has to wonder what their purpose is beyond projecting authority.
• Played straight in The Simpsons episode "Trouble with Trillions", where Homer is trying to get someone to confess to a crime and his rarely seen co-worker Charlie is arrested for admitting to being part of a militia which plans to beat up US government officials. Lampshaded in the DVD Commentary .
• Perfectly parodied in the South Park episode "City on the Edge of Forever". The school bus is trapped teetering on the edge of a cliff and the bus driver leaves to find help, ordering the kids to remain on the bus or else a big black monster will eat them. After a long time of waiting, the children grow nervous and antsy. One of the kids — a child wearing an actual Star Trek Redshirt outfit — can't take the waiting and leaves the bus to find help. No black monster appears and the kid even waves back to the other kids, causing remarks from the main characters about how the bus driver must have lied... only for the big black monster to immediately appear and eat the red-shirted kid.
• The episode " Lair of Grievous " makes use of this trope; Jedi Master Kit Fisto is accompanied on his mission by his never-before-mentioned Padawan Nahdar Vebb and a group of clone troopers. Predictably enough, each of them had died a horrible death by the end of the episode. The writers were aware of this convention and gave the clones red-striped body armour.
• Any clone that bears completely white armor would be dead by the end of the episode.
• Any clone that doesn't have a name in any episode.
• Many clones who DO have names also die. Their death is just more noticeable and sudden , and gives a name for the main characters to scream out in sorrow. Matchstiiiiiiick!!!
• Interestingly, the season finale of Season 2 introduced a new Inquisitor, the Jedi Hunters that served as main antagonists for the first two seasons, called the Eighth Brother who wears a full-faced helmet. Guess who dies in his first appearance.
• This is also somewhat true of Mandalorian characters. If a Mandalorian is shown without their helmet at any point, they’re safe for at least one episode. Anyone else might as well be wearing wet tissue paper instead of Beskar.
• Steven Universe : Rubies are part of the Hive Caste System that the Gem Homeworld has for every type of Gem, and their role is common, disposable soldiers that can be shattered and replaced on a whim. They're even literally red (as are their shirts).
• Lampshaded in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Duck Trek". Plucky (as Captain Quirk), Hamton (as Mr. Spork), Furrball (as Dr. Furr), and three Red Shirts (Shirley the Loon, Sweetie Pie, and Saul Sheepdog) are on a planet covered in hair. Plucky: Spork, Doc, you come with me. (To the Red Shirts) You extras wander off that way and disappear. (And they do)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) mocked this in an episode of its first Show Within a Show , Space Heroes . The captain specifically brings two crewman along when he beams down to a dangerous planet so they'll get shot instead of him.
• The interns in Total Drama and its Spin-Off Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race are most definitely this as they're used to set up and test the extremely dangerous challenges before the contestants get to them. Many don't make it out alive or are horribly injured at the very least.
• Parodied and averted with Red Five in Transformers: Cyberverse . He has the same design as the generic Autobot soldier, but with a bright red paint job. He's introduced suddenly in "Escape From Earth" with no build up and his starfighter is destroyed shortly after the mission begins. As the mission continues, named character's fighters are destroyed and it's revealed that the starships were unmanned. The whole operation being a distraction and everyone is fine.
• Lampshaded endlessly in an episode of The Venture Bros. , where Mauve Shirt Henchmen #21 and #24 repeatedly taunt the previously unseen Henchman #1 for his red shirt status. By the end of the episode, #1 is seemingly beaten to death by Brock Samson, as the Genre Savvy #21 and #24 miraculously escape harm. He's shown to have survived, and tries to make it as a villain on his own under the name Zero, but fails to escape his red shirt status as his neck is snapped by Brock on Gargantua-2 three seasons after their previous encounter .

Video Example(s):

Olson the red shirt.

In the 2009 reboot of Star Trek, one of the crew members assigned to disabling the Romulan drill, Olson, wanting to show up the rookies and thinking the drop is all fun and games, waits until the absolute last moment before popping his parachute. Kirk (who normally is reckless but makes the smart decision here) and Sulu pull their chutes at a safe distance above the platform, but Olson turns out to have waited too long, and winds up bouncing off the platform of the drill and dropping right into the path of the mining laser beam, completely vaporizing him and the explosive charges he was carrying for destroying the drill.

Example of: Too Dumb to Live

UNIT Turnover

Alternative Title(s): Red Shirts

• Recurring Extra
• Cast Filler Tropes
• Red Shirt Army
• Pt/Índice de Tradução
• Repair, Don't Respond
• Mauve Shirt
• Character Calculus
• Living Prop
• Quirky Doctor
• QuoteSource/Family Guy
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense
• Nominal Importance
• This Index Is Expendable
• One-Scene Wonder
• One-Shot Character
• Spear Carrier
• Recovery Attack
• Combat Tropes
• Refrigerator Ambush
• WeAreNotAlone/Tropes Q to Z
• Red String of Fate
• Red Is Heroic
• Hero Tropes
• Redshirt Army
• Proud Scholar Race
• ImageSource/Star Trek
• Redheads Are Uncool
• Characters as Device
• Redemption Quest
• JustForFun/Tropes of Legend
• Refuge in Audacity
• TimeImmemorial/Tropes O to S
• Redemption Equals Death
• Death Tropes
• Red Is Violent
• Stock Ominous Signs
• Room Full of Crazy
• NoRealLife/Tropes P to S

Important Links

• Action Adventure
• Commercials
• Crime & Punishment
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• Animation (Western)
• Music And Sound Effects
• Print Media
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters As Device
• Narrative Devices
• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Derivative Works
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Fate And Prophecy
• Edit Reasons
• Isolated Pages
• Images List
• Recent Videos
• Crowner Activity
• Un-typed Pages
• Recent Page Type Changes
• Trope Entry
• Character Sheet
• Playing With
• Creating New Redirects
• Cross Wicking
• Tips for Editing
• Text Formatting Rules
• Handling Spoilers
• Administrivia
• Trope Repair Shop
• Image Pickin'

Advertisement:

How well does it match the trope?

Example of:

Media sources:

11,241--> Report

Olson the Red S...

TV Legends Revealed: Did 'Star Trek's' Red Shirts Really Have a Higher Casualty Rate?

Discover which color of shirt was truly the most dangerous to wear for the original crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

TV URBAN LEGEND : The most dangerous shirt to wear on "Star Trek" was a red one.

A television series can become so established in popular culture that some of its catchphrases and tropes seep into the national vocabulary. "Star Trek" is a prime example, as phrases like "Live long and prosper," "Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor not a _____" and "Beam me up, Scotty" have long been part of the collective consciousness. However, that consciousness doesn’t always remember things correctly.

We previously pointed out that Gracie Allen never actually said, "Good night, Gracie" on the "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.” Similarly, Mr. T never actually said "I pity the fool" on "The A-Team.” Heck, even within the world of "Star Trek," Captain Kirk never said the explicit phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty" (although it was close enough not to quibble about). With all of that in in mind, can you really trust the collective consciousness on anything? For instance, do red shirts even die more frequently on "Star Trek"?

That's the question posed by reader Bob S., who said he had read an article that stated red shirts didn't actually die the most on "Star Trek," and he wanted to know whether that was true. Well, Bob (and everyone else), read on for the answer!

As it turns out, it's really all in how you look at the question.

There were roughly 56 crew members killed on the original "Star Trek.” A number of them died off-screen, so there is a bit of a dispute over the precise figure, 55 or 56. It really doesn't matter that much for the purposes of this discussion, but I certainly couldn't profess to know the precise answer.

Of the crew members killed, 24 of them wore red shirts, 7 of them wore blue shirts and 9 of them wore gold. So, if the question is a simple "who dies the most?" the answer is, indeed, red shirts. Heck, counting the ones who died off-camera, the numbers could be even higher.

However, Matthew Barsalou wrote an interesting article a few years ago arguing that’s not the best way to look at matter. Presumably this is the article Bob remembered.

Barsalou argued the Enterprise crew consisted of 55 command and helm personnel, 136 science and medical personnel and 239 engineering, operations and security personnel. The latter 239 all wore red shirts.

Therefore, when you look at the deaths as a percentage of the total population, it works out as:

Blue shirts - 5.1%

Gold shirts - 13.4%

Red shirts - 10.0%

Thus, on a percentage basis, it was more dangerous to be a gold shirt crew member than a red shirt.

Honestly, the real issue is the red shirts who work in security. The security department had a 20 percent casualty rate, which, of course, is logical: Security should be the most dangerous job. In addition, being on away missions doesn’t exactly help your odds of survival. The reason why the engineering and operations personnel have such high survival rates is that they don't go on away missions, so they weren't there when the alien of the week decided to off a few members during an away mission. And who went on the most away missions? You guessed it, red shirts.

In any event, the legend is ...

STATUS : True on a pure numbers standpoint while False on a rate basis.

Thanks, of course, to Matthew Barsalou for his awesome statistical work!

Be sure to check out my archive of TV Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of television. And click here for more legends just about "Star Trek"!

.

.

, .