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The Redshirts

The " Redshirts " was a club of ensign -ranked command division officers aboard the USS Cerritos , active in 2381 , who practiced helping one another get promotions to ultimately achieve their own captaincy . Their mentality was that " we work in Starfleet ", and that everyone else "work[s] for Starfleet". They spent much of their days "playing captain", by practicing the recital of inspirational speeches , emulating how successful captains act and carry themselves, and jockeying for acting captain's duty .

Notable members included Ensigns Casey , Jennifer Sh'reyan , Castro , P'jok , and Taylor . Following the transfer of P'jok to the USS Ventura , the group had an opening, they temporarily filled the position with Brad Boimler , due to his previous assignment aboard the USS Titan under Captain William T. Riker .

However, while Boimler enjoyed having such support for his career ambitions and learned some useful things about being in command, he was responsible for disbanding the club. This occurred when they, especially Casey, denigrated Boimler's friends as they were performing some unpleasant duties, dismissing them as not being real Starfleet officers. Boimler immediately objected to such haughtiness and defended them.

Furthermore, when D'Vana Tendi found herself transformed into an aggressive monster that went on the rampage, the Redshirts did nothing practical to deal with the situation except stand around trying to be inspirational. Boilmler, on the other hand, took action by initiating an unorthodox plan to deliberately overloading the mess hall replicators to create a publicly humiliatingy incident so funny to Tendi that she changed back to normal.

At that undignified display, the Redshirts moved to reject Boimler, who then criticized their useless emulating of senior officers when they should prove their command potential themselves. The point being made was reinforced when Casey, who derided Boimler's action, earning an Acting Captain period by a most dismissive Commander Ransom , who was then far more interested at that moment in commending Boimler for his clever and courageous solution to the earlier problem. ( LD : " The Spy Humongous ")

• 3 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Star Trek: 7 Most Iconic Red Shirt Characters In The Franchise

Red Shirts in the Star Trek franchise have a reputation for being expendable. However, a few notable personalities stand out from the crowd.

Red is a beautiful color, that's something many people would agree on. Yet wearing it in the world of Star Trek presents a significant health risk. Especially in Star Trek: The Original Series , characters who wear red uniforms are much more likely to die than their fellow crew members dressed in other colors, such as blue.

RELATED: Most Iconic Ships In The Star Trek Franchise

This trend became so known that it spawned multiple parodies, and led to the creation of many memes. Despite that, the good news is that there were plenty of iconic Star Trek characters who wore more or less red uniforms - and while some of them perished in their service, other notable red-clothed heroes were luckier and survived despite their unfortunate uniform color!

Nyota Uhura was the only female officer who actively served on the bridge in Star Trek: The Original Series . Uhura worked as a communication officer and was a capable linguist. Even though Uhura faced the same dangers as her fellow crew members, she survived the entire three seasons as well as the subsequent six movies and retired from active service almost 70 years after she served on the Enterprise commanded by Captain Kirk.

Uhura managed to survive in the rebooted movie franchise as well. And in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , she was in danger of dying but her friend and colleague Hemmer saved her life even if it meant trading his life for hers. As such, Uhura is one of the luckiest Enterprise crew members who wore a red uniform.

Unlike Uhura, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott was mostly working from the engineering section. He didn't attend the landing parties as often as other crew members. That saved him from a lot of dangers. However, his nephew Peter wasn't so lucky and died in the movies, something Scotty blamed Captain Kirk for.

RELATED: Best Star Trek Captains

Scotty had a long and successful career in Starfleet as well. He was born in 2222 and still lived in 2369 when he was over 140 years old. He survived in the rebooted trilogy as well but has yet to make an appearance in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , even though his presence was hinted at by a voice cameo in the first season's final episode.

5 Captain Picard

It was brave for Captain Picard to take on the captain rank, especially since it included wearing a red shirt. Picard was a more careful captain than his predecessor James T. Kirk and didn't attend landing parties as often. Instead, he preferred to send his first officer, Will Riker (who also wore a red shirt) to the landing parties.

This strategy, as well as a frequent consummation of Earl Grey, worked out well for Picard, and by the time Star Trek: Picard 's first season premiered, Picard was already in his 90s. Of course, his luck ran out in the first season, as all fans of the show will know, but the good news is that it wasn't the end of Picard's journey thanks to advanced Star Trek technology .

4 Kira Nerys

Major Kira Nerys wasn't a member of Starfleet. Instead, she served as the Bajoran liaison on the formerly Cardassian space station Deep Space Nine. Despite that, Kira had an affinity for the color red and her usual uniform was entirely in this color. Unlike her less fortunate colleague Jadzia Dax, who wore the science blues, Kira survived the entire seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .

That was a success for someone who used to be a member of the Bajoran resistance against the Cardassians and faced danger regularly. Of course, Commander and later Captain Benjamin Sisko also wore a red uniform but his partially red shirt pales in comparison to Kira's wholly red outfit.

3 Crewman Thompson

Star Trek: The Original Series killed many redshirts, so much so that it became a popular material for memes . Crewman Leslie Thompson stands out from the rest because she has the doubtful privilege of being the only female red shirt crew member who died on a landing party in the series.

RELATED: Best Star Trek Characters Fans Forgot About

It happens during the episode "By Any Other Name" and the death seems especially brutal in comparison to others. First, Thompson is transformed into a mineral cube and subsequently crushed by the enemies to dust. Unlike other injuries in the series, this is something even Doctor McCoy wouldn't be able to deal with, let alone reverse.

2 Crewman Herndorf

The episode "The Apple" is known for killing one of the largest numbers of red shirts in a single episode. The most notable death happens when crewman Herndorf is hit by thorns from an alien flower and dies. The reason why it's notable is that he isn't the only one.

A similar thing happens to Spock when he steps in the way to protect Captain Kirk. Unlike Herndorf, Spock has the luck that his heart resides in his side, not his chest, thanks to his Vulcan physiology , so he survives the encounter with the murderous plant.

1 Ensign Boimler

Despite his effort to go down in history as one of the best Starfleet officers, ensign Brad Boimler became known as the laziest Starfleet officer. Still, he survived long enough to experience multiple missions, so he's one of the luckier Starfleet officers.

Star Trek: Lower Decks isn't afraid to make fun of established phenomena of the universe, and that includes red shirts as well. Boimler isn't the only crew member wearing a red shirt in the series but considering his bad luck (such as the time he was almost swallowed by a huge alien creature), he still deserves an honorable mention.

MORE: The Best Star Trek Movies, Ranked

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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.

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Why This Redshirt Was Fine and the Redshirt Myth Is a Lie

Redshirts have come along way since the original Star Trek. But they were never really what people claimed, thanks in part to one prominent character.

The infamous redshirts -- doomed to die solely because of their uniform color -- have long been an indescribably essential part of Star Trek culture. What started as a joke turned into a celebration to the point where an entire series -- Star Trek: Lower Decks -- centers around them. The concept isn't going anywhere, and by now, red shirts become a part of the fun.

But while the joke remains an essential part of Star Trek culture, its basis in reality is much less clear. Indeed, one of the most celebrated characters in the franchise -- Montgomery Scott -- is himself a redshirt. He and his lesser-known compatriots have far more muddled beginnings than modern Star Trek fans may think.

RELATED: Star Trek Theory: Why the Borg Queen Didn't Appear in The Next Generation

Redshirt Jokes Arose From a Natural Assumption

Star Trek 's tricolors denote the wearer's department onboard ship. In The Original Series , red meant someone from either engineering or security. (Lt. Uhura, who ran communications, was technically part of the engineering department.) It made sense, therefore, for more security crewmen to die than any other department, since they put themselves in harm's way the most often. Accordingly, any character who suddenly appeared on the show with no previous screen time was bound to be killed by the first commercial break and invariably wore a red shirt.

The series took a little time to reach that point, however. The first official redshirt -- that is, the first disposable crew member who existed more or less to be killed by the threat du jour -- was Crewman Darnell in Season 1, Episode 5, "The Man Trap." He wore medical blue rather than red. In fact, of the 15 "disposable" crew members in the first season, only four wore the red shirts.

That changed in the second season, as the writers' realized that security teams were more likely to be killed. Twenty-two redshirts died in Seasons 2 and 3 of The Original Series , as compared to 14 combined for blue and gold uniforms. Fans took notice, and the show did itself no favors with its sometimes obvious signaling. If a previously unknown crew member beamed down with the regular cast, it wasn't hard to guess what would happen. Eventually, it became a joke, though quite a beloved one.

Scotty and Uhura Both Defied the Redshirt Trope

Yet amid all of that, Scotty remained a series stalwart. He appeared in 65 of the show's 79 episodes and often took command of the ship when Kirk and Spock beamed down to the planet's surface. His very presence ran against the redshirt premise. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds picked up on the notion and ran with it when it introduced a much younger Montgomery Scott in Season 2, Episode 10, "Hegemony." He was presented essentially as a redshirt: a random crewman rescued on a planet overrun with hostile aliens. Yet while the episode ended on a cliffhanger -- with its resolution uncertain as of this writing -- canon demands that he will survive.

Similarly, women redshirts almost always lived to see the final credits: most notably Lt. Uhura, but also Janice Rand and a bevy of supporting characters. The big exception was Leslie Thompson in Season 2, Episode 22, "By Any Other Name," who got turned into a desiccated cube and crushed in the first act. She was a notable rarity, however, and while the tendency arose largely from patriarchal tropes, it also blunted the notion that wearing red automatically constituted a death threat.

RELATED: Star Trek Theory: The Final Frontier's Villain Could Be This Powerful Alien Species

Star Trek Has Always Pushed Back Against Redshirt Jokes

As the redshirt notion gained traction among the fan base, Star Trek began to push back. Here, too, Scotty stepped up in defense of his fellows, most notably in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . The film depicted a cadet in the engineering department who gets killed in Khan's first attack on the Enterprise . Cut scenes developed his story further: he was Scotty's nephew. It explained the chief engineer's grief, but also hammered home the point that even the canon fodder had people who loved them. He arrived alongside the Star Trek movies' switch to "the monster maroon" uniforms, effectively making every crew member (or at least the officers) a redshirt.

Star Trek: The Next Generation went a step further when bringing back the traditional tricolor uniforms from The Original Series , with a twist. This time, the command officers wore red, while security wore yellow: neatly reversing the previous configuration and removing the visual stigma. Among its other benefits, it made a pointed statement about the disposability of redshirts. If Captain Picard and Commander Riker wore red, it couldn't possibly be a death sentence.

Even so, the redshirt notion kept cropping up in canon, though admittedly, it became much more playful and self-referential. For instance, the doomed Lt. Hawk in Star Trek: First Contact was a redshirt, which gained prominence as actor Neal McDonough went on to a high-profile career. 2009's Star Trek movie made a far sharper dig when the previously unknown Chief Engineer Olson joined Kirk and Sulu on a dangerous mission. Naturally, he didn't survive, leaving the door open -- once again -- for Scotty to stop in.

Two Versions of Lower Decks Made Redshirts the Heroes at Last

The first semi-official "redshirts" story arrived with The Next Generation Season 7, Episode 15, "Lower Decks." The main crew faded into the background for the episode, replaced by a quartet of young officers working far less glamorous posts in the bowels of the Enterprise-D . Though it took itself far more seriously than the later animated series -- it ended with the death of one of its central characters -- "Lower Decks" firmly established that even the background characters on a starship have stories to tell.

That, in turn, resulted in Lower Decks : a full-bore satire that nevertheless strove to honor Starfleets' forgotten underlings. Ensigns Boimler and Mariner both wore red, ostensibly because they're in command division, but implicitly because they're the kind of characters who stood a very good chance of being killed back in The Original Series . Instead, they're the ones saving the day: usually in a thoroughly ridiculous manner and often without credit from their (equally ridiculous) bridge crew. The show finally found the sweet spot where the redshirt concept to call home.

But the idea was never the joke it was sometimes made out to be, and while Star Trek learned to laugh at them , they always held redshirts in surprisingly high regard. The rise of the concept had some very clear rationale, but it was never the instant in-joke it sometimes appeared to be. Scotty had a great deal to do with that, and his response -- like the notion itself -- evolved along with the franchise. Small wonder it all became an ingrained part of Star Trek 's fabric.

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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

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Alternative Title(s): Red Shirts

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The Real Math Behind Star Trek's Redshirts Theory

Being a "Red Shirt" on the USS Enterprise has long been considered a kiss of death in the Star Trek universe. Security personnel and engineer characters seemingly died so frequently in the original Star Trek series that the term Redshirt was coined for stock characters introduced into an episode or film simply to have someone to kill off and heighten the drama. While popular, if the math behind a recent theory is to be believed, our boys in red may not have the riskiest job in Star Trek after all.

Enter mathematician James Grime, who has been exposing the legit science behind Star Trek with his lecture "Star Trek: The Math Of Khan." Via Space.com , we now have facts from an actual mathematician that prove wrong everyone who thought the original series' crimson-clothed security personnel and engineering were the most doomed. Avid Star Trek fans may jump to the episodes for evidence, since there are technically more redshirt deaths shown, but Grime points out that we're only seeing half the story from that perspective, and we have to look at the total crew numbers of each profession to get an accurate reading of the ship's actual mortality rates.

239 redshirts were employed on the Enterprise , and 25 died in the original series, which only nets them a 10% mortality rate. Gold shirts, on the other hand, had 55 members on the ship, and with 10 deaths, they earned a mortality rate of 18%, making command and helm personnel the deadliest profession to hold on the USS Enterprise . But even though the odds are higher overall for gold shirts, Grime adds that there is still a way to declare the Redshirt theory objectively true if you take the engineers out of the equation:

There is some truth in the old Star Trek myth if you look at security officers ... 20 percent of security officers died. So I think the moral of the story is, if you're on the Starship Enterprise and you want to survive, be a scientist.

That makes sense, and not just because we know only 6% of Star Trek 's blue-shirted scientists died. You won't often send a scientist with zero combat training on a mission where confrontation and violence will be a factor. It also makes sense that gold-shirted crew, who are often in ranks of command, will find themselves in the line of fire more often than not. Essentially, we just need to change the Redshirt theory to specify that the combat type of Red Shirt has a higher mortality rate, and then everything can return to normal in the Star Trek universe.

So how will this groundbreaking revelation change the world of Star Trek ? Most likely it will be ignored until you find the perfect opportunity to whip it out in a geeky conversation. Make sure to place a large bet on it, so it's really worth everyone wondering exactly how much time you spend watching and reading about science fiction. Rather than judging you, we encourage you to find more! Check out our midseason premiere guide and summer premiere schedule to see what all is on the horizon.

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Mick Joest is a Content Producer for CinemaBlend with his hand in an eclectic mix of television goodness. Star Trek is his main jam, but he also regularly reports on happenings in the world of Star Trek, WWE, Doctor Who, 90 Day Fiancé, Quantum Leap, and Big Brother. He graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Radio and Television. He's great at hosting panels and appearing on podcasts if given the chance as well.

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A Guide to the Different Uniform Colors the Characters Wear in ‘Star Trek’

Star Trek: The Original Series premiered in 1966. And in the year 2022, the franchise doesn’t seem to be slowing down soon. Currently, there are several ongoing television series with a new film and series recently announced.

I was a toddler when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out in 1987, making Picard’s Enterprise crew one of my earliest memories. I still love the series (as I sip out of my Chateau Picard wine tumbler). But the meaning of their uniform shirts eluded me for the longest time. Honestly, I thought you just picked your favorite color outfit when you joined a crew. After the “redshirt” trope (where a redshirt team member was more likely to die on a Star Trek away mission) became known, I thought there might be more to it. Apparently, there is a whole color-coded system in place. And the meaning of the colors changed slightly through the various shows.

The Original Series

For the original Star Trek series and the Enterprise prequel that came later, the uniform color breakdowns are:

Red – Engineering, Security, and Communications

Blue – Science and Medical Staff

Gold – Command Staff

Green – Command Staff Formal

The original series is where the redshirt trope comes from. It always seemed like if a random character in a red shirt went on an away mission, then they were not making it back to the ship. The largest group of people wore red uniform shirts, which would make it more likely that a person who died or got injured would have a red shirt on.

The Next Generation

When The Next Generation arrived, the series changed several things from the original, including the uniform colors:

Red – Command Staff

Gold – Operations and Security Staff

TNG , more so than the original series, set the template for most future shows. Even though the uniform styles changed, the color classifications stayed the same in Deep Space Nine , Voyager , Discovery , Picard , and the animated show Below Decks .

However, every season contained at least one character who wore their own take on the uniform that did not line up with the standard Starfleet look. Examples being: Deanna Troi from TNG (to relate to her patients better), Odo and Kira Nerys from Deep Space Nine (because of their connection to the Bajoran military), and Seven of Nine in Voyager (because of her cyborg physiology).

Now that we are clear on which uniform color means what, which color would you pick?

(feature image: Paramount)

Star Trek: Every Redshirt Death Ranked From Worst To Best

Remembering Star Trek's forgettable fallen heroes.

Redshirt. One word, not two. Because while a red shirt is merely a warmly colored garment a member of Starfleet may wear on their trunk, a Redshirt (purposefully capitalized) describes a very specific person. An instantly forgettable, often nameless, doomed person. They die, so that our main characters may live.

Now I’m sure at this point all you fellow Trekkers out there are thinking “They don't all die.” or “Plenty of other crewmen wearing gold or blue have perished in service to Starfleet.”

Well, you’re not wrong. Regarding the latter, it just seems more special when a Redshirt dies, because red pops. Regarding the former, sure, there’s main characters like Uhura and Scotty who wear the color red, and they’re obviously safe. But even when an actual Redshirt crewman escapes with his life, you have to admit, you feared for them. And that’s what separates them from the other members of the crew: Inherent peril.

And so, in celebration of Star Trek’s forgotten heroes, let's take a moment to take a look back at the Enterprise’s fallen heroes, relieving their pain through a definitive ranking of their deaths.

18. Crewman Matthews

Red comes before the fall.

Episode: What Are Little Girls Made Of? (S1E7)

Cause Of Death: Shoved off a cliff by Ruk, the big bald android.

Despite being the first Redshirt to perish on screen, Crewman Matthews earns the lowest ranking on this list because he unfortunately dies offscreen .

We don’t even get to see the surprised look on his face as he plummets to a bottomless chasm, after being shoved off of said cliff by a giant android in a muumuu. More on him later.

And judging by the long duration of his “AHHHHHHHHHHH” we can pretty safely assume that the chasm in question is indeed bottomless.

David Bailey is a creative advertising professional who moonlights as a Private Investigative Journalist. He currently resides in Los Angeles and enjoys receiving haircuts and eating sandwiches. You may find him on twitter @TheRingaDingKid.

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 .

What Do The Star Trek Uniform Colors Mean & Why Are They So Important?

"Star Trek" is definitely a technicolor wonderland of a show. That sense of eye-catching brilliance trickles down from the background scenery to the props used by each cast member, all the way to the uniforms the show's central crew wears as a part of their duties. 

It's easy to notice that the crew of the Starship Enterprise wear tunics in varying shades. Those colors are quite important — they denote which job class each crew member belongs to. Those classes were devised by series creator Gene Roddenberry and costume designer William Ware Theiss, and are intended to resemble the classifications used by the United States Military on noise-heavy aircraft carriers. 

Sometimes there are differences allowed for dress uniforms; the command staff, for instance, will wear green uniforms during formal occasions. And these rules aren't hard and fast ones; across the whole universe of "Star Trek" series, films, and other ephemera, the colors various officers wear on the show and the meanings behind them change depending on when the scene takes place in the show's general timeline. But these are the color codes that most often denote each character's job on the ship, and the ones used during the original "Star Trek" series to explain who is who and what they do.

The term 'red shirt' gained a negative connotation

Even if you're not a "Star Trek" fan, you've probably heard jokes about how often red-shirted officers are introduced to the show, only for them to quickly die during away missions. For a period of time, the term "red shirt" became a dirty word in the "Star Trek" world; it's gone on to take on a larger cultural significance, indicating that a person is a disposable background element easy to get rid of. And yet many of the show's red-toting characters are the franchise's longest-lasting individuals. The class encompasses the engineering, security, and communication staff positions on the Enterprise. Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan) are among the most prominent crew members who wear scarlet hues. To wear red on the bridge is definitely a high honor.

Are 'red shirts' more doomed than their counterparts? Mathematician James Grime weighed in on the subject during a talk at New York's Museum of Mathematics in 2017. A simple statistical calculation revealed that 10% of the show's red-shirted denizens die during the original show's run — compared to 18 percent of golden-shirted characters. "There is some truth in the old 'Star Trek' myth if you look at security officers ... 20 percent of security officers died. So I think the moral of the story is, if you're on the starship Enterprise and you want to survive, be a scientist," he said.

Ironically, crimson red was eventually used to denote a position of authority on the ship; the uniforms that debuted in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" place the crew in scarlet togs, with no color divisions to mark them.

Blue denotes a scientific mind

If you're feeling blue during your time on the Enterprise, then you're probably logically-minded. Throughout much of the original "Star Trek" series, blue uniforms were given to the show's science and medical officers. That's why Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Nurse Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) can be seen sporting blue tunics throughout the series' run. The designation of blue uniforms hasn't changed much during the course of various "Star Trek" series; blue and purple shades are used to indicate ship medics in such continuations of the universe as "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Blue was also the chosen shade for the crew uniforms in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," with splashes of brown, oatmeal and white. This change didn't go over well with the cast. Their rebellion against the baggy uniforms went beyond their alleged unsightliness; costume designer Robert Fletcher sewed shoes into the bottom of each uniform, forcing the actors to ask their assistants for help in completing simple tasks such as going to the bathroom. A change was promptly made for the next film, and the red Navy-style uniforms stuck with the whole movie franchise until "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was launched.

Golden shirts denote power

Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), meanwhile, sports a gold-colored shirt. These are the outfits worn by those in command: largely, captains and other figures of authority. In other iterations of the show, gold tunics are worn by members of the ship's security staff. In any event, it's a uniform that denotes power.

But those shirts weren't actually intended to be golden at all; in reality, they were pale green tunics that were filmed as golden or orange-looking thanks to the sort of film the show used. According to an interview conducted with Bill Thiess in 1988 for Star Trek Prop Authority , it wasn't the show's intent to present Kirk and other captains as wearing gold at all. "It was one of those film stock things; it photographed one way – burnt orange or a gold. But in reality was another; the command shirts were definitely green." Unfortunately, thanks to that mistake the look has stuck, and Kirk's uniform is more often remembered as golden instead of green.

Whether they're sporting green or dodging danger in red, there's one thing officers on the Enterprise definitely know how to do – look stylish in a timelessly classical way.

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Star trek changes what 'red shirts' means (but it's still a joke).

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Q’s Son Has an Awesome New Role in the Star Trek Universe

After 31 years, star trek confirms a deep space 9 in-joke in the most hilarious way, do star trek's uniforms change for different environments.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Lower Decks  season 2, episode 6, "The Spy Humongous".

Star Trek ' s infamous Red Shirts have been a franchise joke for decades, and Star Trek: Lower Decks not only acknowledged it in canon, but the animated series changed what 'Red Shirts' means, although it's still a joke. In Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2, episode 6, "The Spy Humongous," Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), who also has a transporter clone like Captain Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), is recruited by the Red Shirts, a club of Ensigns aboard the USS Cerritos focused on career advancement.

'Red Shirts' is derived from the crimson uniforms worn by security officers on Star Trek: The Original Series and they're traditionally the show's sacrificial lambs to whatever alien menace Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the Starship  Enterprise faced each week. In numerous TO S episodes, Kirk, Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and the main characters would beam onto a planet accompanied by a contingent of red shirt-wearing security personnel. The Red Shirts would typically get killed off. It happened so often that it became a classic Star Trek trope. However, this ended with the advent of the Star Trek movies and Star Trek: The Next Generation because the colors of Star Trek uniforms changed and red became the signature of Starfleet Officers on the Command track. This meant that Kirk and Spock in the Star Trek movies and Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Commander Riker in TNG were now the 'red shirts' and, as main characters, they were unlikely to randomly die at alien hands.

Related: Star Trek Remade A Classic TOS Tribbles Episode (But Even Weirder)

Star Trek: Lower Decks slyly winked at the legacy of the Red Shirts when Boimler, an expert in Starfleet history, was surprised that the ambitious club of Ensigns who approached him to join called themselves 'Red Shirts,' apparently oblivious to the legacy of that nickname. Regardless, Bradward briefly joined the Cerritos ' Red Shirts since he also dreams of one day becoming Captain Boimler. But Brad soon learned the Red Shirts only wanted to emulate great leaders like Captains Riker and Picard without actually making their hard choices and performing heroic deeds. As such, the Cerritos' Red Shirts are a different kind of joke; they may not get killed off randomly like the original TOS Red Shirts, but they're every bit the ineffectual laughingstocks who are useless in a real crisis.

Even though from TNG onward, Red Shirts are now the Starfleet heroes like Picard, Riker, and Captains Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), there have been variations of Red Shirts still being problematic in Star Trek, especially within Starfleet Academy. In TNG , Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) got involved with an ambitious group of cadets called Nova Squadron who caused the death of one of their classmates and covered it up. Then, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) and Nog (Aron Eisenberg) encountered Red Squad , another elite club of cadets who had their own Defiant -class starship and fought in the Dominion War. But in an effort to prove themselves, Red Squad got nearly everyone killed, which made them worthy of the legacy of the 'Red Shirts.'

Star Trek: Lower Decks also subtly wove in a reference to how TNG 's Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) continued the legacy of Red Shirts as sacrificial lambs by including Armus in a cameo. The oily alien monster killed Tasha in TNG season 1; even though Lt. Yar now wore a gold uniform as the USS Enterprise-D 's Security Chief, she died unceremoniously like a TOS Red Shirt. Amusingly, Star Trek: Lower Decks ' Ensigns Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), D'Vana Tendi (Noel Wells), Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), and Boimler pranked Armus and scored a form of revenge for the 'Skin of Evil' killing Tasha Yar about 15 years prior in the Star Trek timeline.

Next: Star Trek Reveals The Fate Of Riker's TNG Rival

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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 .

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