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File:Lesliedead.jpg

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 first to the characters who wear red Starfleet uniforms, and secondly to refer to those characters which 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", "The Apple", and "Obsession" in TOS Season 2 all 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 four security guards that we see, all in red shirts, including Ensign Rizzo. (It also kills a few crewmen aboard the ship, but we didn't get to see what color their shirts were.)

One of the vampire cloud's victims doesn't quite count – Mr. Leslie would have been a fifth red-shirted 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.

Dern corpse

Ensign Dern died in 2370

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 faired 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 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 Part II" both noted eighteen off screen deaths (although the latter probably totalled up a few more in later scenes).

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, 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.

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 red-shirted 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 was also 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.

File:Stadi2371.jpg

Lt. Stadi died at her post in 2371

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

Since Voyager had no way to replace crew, the only massive deaths took place in alternate timelines, with the sole exception being the massive deaths that killed off a large number of the senior staff when the Array displaced Voyager.

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).


Background Information

File:David Gerrold cameo, DS9.jpg

David Gerrold as a redshirt

File:Sussmanredshirt.jpg

Writer/Producer Mike Sussman

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

Cultural references

File:Welshie dead.jpg

On Futurama, redshirted engineer Welshie was killed

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

Futurama
A character created to replace James Doohan as Scotty 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.
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.
Family Guy
An ensign named Ricky was frustrated at being the only redshirt assigned to a landing party uniform, but ended up surviving long enough to comment on William Shatner's death.
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, the redshirt is the only member of a landing party to bring a phaser, and the only one to survive.
Stargate SG1
In an episode two characters hide in a cargo bay and one of them 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.

See also

  • Star Trek parodies
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