Redshirt

Template:Realworld

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

File:Nomad redshirts 1.jpg

Nomad kills two redshirts...

File:Nomad redshirts 2.jpg

... and then he 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 off, sometimes in great numbers.

Please see the List of Starfleet casualties for a complete summary of crew losses.

In the Original Series era, red uniforms were worn by members of the operations division. They normally performed security, engineering or support services (such as communications officers, administrators and yeomen) aboard starships and starbases.

Of these, the security personnel were quite expendable. 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, the other being Carlisle (Nomad also "killed" Mr. 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 we see, 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 we didn't get to see what color his shirt was.)

One of the vampire cloud's victims doesn't quite count – Mr. Leslie would have been a fourth redshirted fellow killed in the outing, but a mention of him surviving was cut from the shoot of the episode. He clearly appears in later episodes, so either he has a twin, or he survived the attack.

In terms of pure expendability, TOS: "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the first and best in terms of sheer numbers: twelve crewpeople were lost; nine of them died instantly at the galactic barrier, and three more perished in the events at Delta Vega.

We only saw those 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 at this point.

Ensign Dern died in 2370

File:Counter-insurgency redshirt.jpg

DS9 crewman killed in 2371

Nobody was really lost 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 uniforms and 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 flight controller. Lieutenant Torres probably survived TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint", but the TNG era lost Haskell, Monroe, Dern, Nell Chilton, Hawk and Branson.

Even the survivors usually got roughed up; the longest people to hold the position, Wesley Crusher and Ro Laren, both ended up leaving Starfleet.

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. (TNG: "Conspiracy").

Admiral Mark Jameson was killed by a de-aging medicine overdose. (TNG: "Too Short a Season") Admiral Erik Pressman was arrested in disgrace for violating the Treaty of Algeron (TNG: "The Pegasus"), and Admiral Matthew Dougherty was murdered by his Son'a co-conspirators. (Star Trek: Insurrection)

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

There was still danger in the Security division in TNG, despite their change to the gold color. Natasha Yar, the first Chief of Security of the USS Enterprise-D, was killed by Armus very early in the series. (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 Wrath of Khan losses were all redshirts, but the TNG losses were more varied, but continued their pattern of conn officer attrition.

It should also be noted that Spock and Kirk died in "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 Paul 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. (DS9: "Civil Defense")

The redshirted conn officer of the USS Defiant also was killed during the ship's first battle with Dominion forces. (DS9: "The Search, Part I") In the Dominion War especially, entire fleets of starships were biting the dust, indiscriminate of shirt color.

Lt. Stadi died at her post in 2371

In Star Trek: Voyager, the initial crew deaths, on screen, were in red, such as Cavit and Stadi (who was another flight controller). However, over the years it became clear gold was a dangerous color in the Delta Quadrant, as it became the most deadly.

Since 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, that killed off a large number of the senior staff when the Caretaker's array displaced Voyager and the situation in the second season episode 'Deadlock' where both the crew and the ship has been duplicated with one of the Voyagers being destroyed not long after, with its whole crew.

Star Trek: Enterprise lost more engineers and MACOs than anyone else, consistent with their evolution into the Starfleet security forces. Both wear red as a department color (although MACOs seemed to wear splatter camouflage more than anything).

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

Background Information

File:David Gerrold cameo, DS9.jpg David Gerrold as a redshirt

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.
• Star Trek: Enterprise producer and writer Mike Sussman, a longtime fan himself, fulfilled a lifelong dream by putting on an original series red shirt to portray a dead crewman aboard the starship 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.

Cultural references

On Futurama, redshirted engineer Welshie was killed

The icon of the doomed redshirted crewman has translated to a number of other pop culture and literary media and parodies.

Futurama

In a Star Trek parody episode, "Where No Fan Has Gone Before", a character created to replace James Doohan as Montgomery Scott in the cast was named Welshie. He (or more specifically, the actor who played him) was killed, dismembered, and vaporized by three separate blasts from a cloud creature named Melllvar. In addition, the Democratic Order of Planets (D.O.O.P.) has a military force composed of men in red uniforms, who are often utilized as cannon fodder.

24

During Season 5 when the Los Angeles headquarters for the Counter Terrorist Unit LA Domestic Unit is attacked with nerve gas, CTU security guards wearing red uniforms are among the dead.

Captain Simian & the Space Monkeys

Throughout the series red shirt wearing Holographic baboons called Holo-Boons are sent out ahead of the crew and usually end up destroyed.

Family Guy

An red-shirted ensign named Ricky was understandably frustrated at being assigned to the landing party for a "dangerous mission", which will likely result in the death of a member, along with Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy - but he ended up surviving long enough to announce "I did not see that coming!" from out of a crowd gathered around for the death of William Shatner.

Galaxy Quest

Guy Fleegman (the actor who portrayed "Crewman Number 6" in one episode of the first television series) lamented in the middle of a crisis "I'm expendable! I'm the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is!"

At another point Gwen DeMarco (Lt. Tawny Madison) comments upon seeing a group of innocent-looking aliens turn into savage monsters "We'd better get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!"

Guy survived the real-life adventure (in fact, he took the least amount of damage compared to the rest of his crewmates, such as being the only person on the bridge NOT shot by Sarris before the activation of the Omega 13), and became a regular cast member on the second incarnation of the show, portraying "Security Chief Roc Ingersol".

Genki Wear

Has a fragrance for men entitled Red Shirt. It' tag line: because tomorrow may never come.

South Park

One of the children on a trapped school bus, on the edge of a cliff, waiting overnight for the bus driver to return with help, wore a red commander uniform, with an Enterprise assignment patch. He went outside the bus to scout around and was promptly eaten by a monster while TOS background music played. These elements of the episode tied into its being named for the TOS episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever".

Lost

Boone told Locke that redshirts always get killed and Locke commented that Kirk "must have been a piss-poor captain." Ironically, Boone was the first cast member to die later that season.

Robot Chicken

In a twist on the standard, when the ship loses power to life support, Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Dr. McCoy, and Toby The Redshirt beam onto the nearest planet. The redshirt is the only member of a landing party to bring a phaser, and the only one to survive.

Space Quest

Several references are made, since the series is a spoof on science fiction with strong Star Trek roots. In Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, nearly all people killed (including the player) are wearing red, though the good guys are more purple than red. In the VGA remake, it is humorous to note the Sariens are heavily armored... and the armor is red. In Space Quest V: The Next Mutation, Roger's security officer refuses to follow him into danger because his shirt is red and it's bad luck. Again, almost all people who die (or mutate) wear red.

Star Wars prequels

In the three prequel films, the battle droids who comprise the armies of the Trade Federation sport various colors on their shoulders (including gold for command), and on the common infantry droids, who are destroyed by the millions, and frequently amount to little more than target practice even for civilians - much less the highly skilled clone troopers and Jedi they meet on the battlefield - that color is red.

Stargate SG-1

In an episode two characters hide in a cargo bay and one of them, played by Star Trek: Enterprise actor John Billingsley, becomes skeptical, saying, "We're all gonna die, we might as well wear red shirts..."

Warhammer 40,000

In the kill teams game, one of the wargear is named a redshirt. He has very low stats and the player will be rewarded if he lives until the end of the game.

MythBusters

In the December 28, 2009 episode one of the myths taken on was the effectiveness (completely non-existent, as it turned out) of the makeshift cannon used by Kirk which would prove decisive during the battle with the Gorn in "Arena" - the crew outfitted the dummy (who would in fact be "injured" far more than his Gorn target) in a red shirt, since bad things usually happened to Trek characters who wore them.

Think Geek

The website Think Geek, has a red shirt for sale. It is a normal star trek design, save for the word "EXPENDABLE" writen in star trek font on the front.

The Enterprise Blues Band led by Vaughn Armstrong, Casey Biggs, Richard Herd, William Jones, Ronald Moore and Steve Rankin pay tribute with their song "Redshirt Boogie Blues". [1]

Eek the Cat

has a parody of Star Trek Star TrEek in which a "Red Shirt" Security Guard is killed after landing on a Alien Planet

Criminal Minds

In an episode, analyst Penelope Garcia says "Oh my God, she was doomed. Like Emily Brontë doomed. Like Shakespeare doomed. Like red-shirted ensign in Star Trek doomed."

Gears of War

In Gears of War, wearing a helmet is equivalent to wearing a red shirt in Star Trek.

Warehouse 13

"To him we are just..."

"Redshirts ?"

(unbaffled) "Yeah."

"First, he doesn't think w're redshirts, and second, it's so cool that you knew what I meant."

Discussion between main characters Myka Bering and Pete Lattimer about their direct superior's propensity to keep them in the dark in first season's episode Implosion.

Bones

In the episode The Princess and the Pear, psychologist Dr. Lance Sweets, dresses like a Red Shirt to infiltrate a convention and find out who the murderer is.

See also

• Star Trek parodies

External links

• Redshirt at Lostpedia