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We all know the common image of the red shirts, the guys who end up beaming down with the rest of the team only to beam back up in a body bag, if at all. So how unlucky are they, and how did they end up this way?

I mean, granted, the entire idea of having colored shirts aboard a ship comes from the Navy, where you can at a glance tell someone's job. Aboard an aircraft carrier, yellows guide the aircraft, red handles ordinance, purple handles fuel, etc. So it's easy to tell, but in Star Trek they limited it to three colors: Red, Yellow and Blue. Why? I mean, if it's purely a budget thing, you'd think that over time, a few new colors would come along. Maybe toss a few reds and blues in the wash together to get purple, something. And multiple departments get the same colors, making it nearly impossible to tell who works where.

An example would be if, in an emergency down in Engineering, you yell at a red shirt, "SHUT OFF THE PLASMA RELAY!" and he shrugs his shoulders, "Dude, I'm security wtf." You're going to die because this guy happened to be slacking off in the wrong part of the ship. Or is it that Starfleet is so pressed for people that it has to cross-train every security officer to also handle engineering, moping the floors, cooking, blowing shit up, and getting shot? Seems like a major problem. Maybe if they didn't have so many guys wearing red and dying they wouldn't have this problem...

Speaking of which, back to the original topic, why did they decide only the red-shirts die? I mean, yeah there's lots of them, and both blue and gold are kinda more important, but still. Don't tell me some blue shirted zoologist wasn't down on a planet somewhere trying to get close to a fluffy bunny only to get his head bitten off while everyone else runs away. How come we never see one of Dr. McCoy's doctors getting shot in the ass with a phaser and delivered home in a body bag? If you work anything other than a highly specialized science field or in a command position, you're fucked. Seriously.

Mostly, it was because the red shirts hide the blood better.

Seriously, like you said, it was probably a budget issue. It could also be that Starfleet has a long following of the philosophy or 'Jack of all trades, master of none.' In fact, this seems to be encouraged in Starfleet, as they have them studying Art history for pete's sake. So yeah, every time they lose a red shirt down on the planet, its okay, they have plenty to spare.

Speaking of which:

Destructionator XIII wrote:Plenty of redshirts survived going into bad situations. Plenty of blue and gold shirts also get killed:

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Starfleet_ ... d_century)


The redshirts always die is a bit of an exaggeration.

I tabulated the deaths (Only the true deaths, not revivals), and it becomes clear where the trend comes from.

2265:

• Blue: 1
• White: 2

2266:

• Red: 2
• Yellow: 2
• Blue: 3
• Other: 2

2267:

• Red: 10
• Yellow: 4
• Blue: 2
• Other: 1

2268:

• Red: 11
• Blue: 1

IIRc my star trek encyclopedia reading from years ago, they had a lot more colours during STII - V, where the collar colour determined job

White was Command, Green was Medical, Orange was Engineering I think, Red was trainee, and so on

And, of corse, the trend fails completely in TNg and later, when suddenly Redshirts are Command/Operations officers, not Security

Could it be that the old Redshirts were some sort of general hands like on old sailing ships? Jack of all trade trainee characters that get called upon to do minor tasks where ever there is a need but the job is not complex enough for a specialist.

They're the ST equivalent of ordinary seamen? Interesting theory, but I think it falls down when we have various security guards, engineers and bridge officers wearing red. Including the ships technical 3rd in command, Mr Scott

It could be that any enlisted (non officer) personnel are in red? I mean, is Scott not also refereed to as Mr rather than by some rank?

Commander Kyle was apparently the Comms officer on Reliant, he might have been at Starfleet Command, I can't remember exactly

Kyle was on the Reliant in ST II.

Chapel and Rand were at Starfleet Command in ST IV.

As far as Red Shirt deaths go, keep in mind there are some episodes that are veritable blood-baths for them. "Obsession" and "The Changeling" come to mind. Hence the spike in season 2. I can't figure out what episodes from season 3 saw lots of Red Shirt deaths.

Oh, and on a side note, Scotty is a true red shirt in that he did die....he just got better by the end of the episode.

"The Apple" was another brutal one for redshirts--4 or 5
deaths in a single episode, including one of the best
explosion deaths in the series. I forgot how Leslie returned
from the dead--he was damn close to a regular character.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:IIRc my star trek encyclopedia reading from years ago, they had a lot more colours during STII - V, where the collar colour determined job

White was Command, Green was Medical, Orange was Engineering I think, Red was trainee, and so on

And, of corse, the trend fails completely in TNg and later, when suddenly Redshirts are Command/Operations officers, not Security

Some of the colors got murky because of stage lighting. The original colors were lime green for command, beige for operations, and blue for science (and white for medical). The lime green, because of the fabric used, appeared gold on film, and was easily confused for the beige of operations. Kirk's wraparound jacket from Charlie X was the same color, but a different fabric that looked green on film. Once they realized the confusion, operations was changed to red to make them visually distinctive on film from the command crew. DS9 established that operations had switched from red to gold in Trials and Tribble-ations, but I don't believe it establishes a reason. The first movie has those atrocious pajamasuits, and division was shown by the color of the circle on the badge. After the first movie, it was the undershirt color that was by division, with the collar of the shirt visible over the jacket. Somewhat amusingly, there were times Scotty would switch between a white command shirt and a gold operations shirt in the same movie.

LtCmdr Giotto appeared only in "Devil In The Dark". That same actor, though, appeared as Commodore Bob Wesley in "The Ultimate Computer".

should be noted that the redshirts we see tend to be at the more dangerous tasks (like security or engineering) so they're more likely to die if things go wrong.

Of all the assaults, none were more deadly to him[Leslie] than the attack of the dikironium cloud creature on stardate 3619.2. He was declared dead on Argus X after the creature drained all the red blood corpuscles from his body. However, by stardate 3620.7, he recovered and began walking the corridors of the Enterprise. By stardate 3715.3, he returned to active duty.

Given the above comment about the multi-talented zombie Leslie at MA, perhaps it's just a case of the same couple of redshirts being trapped in an insane purgatory of continual death?

More seriously, I've always been under the impression that the nameless redshirts that were usually beamed down along with an away team were security guys. It's their job to stop the others getting killed, if only by demonstrating what not to do for the senior officers.

EDIT: Balls, I've totally forgotten how to attribute a quote to something. Nevermind, it's from Memory Alpha.

Red shirts die. It's the way of the Universe. Don't question it. Either man up and don a redshirt and take your chances or slink off in a blue one.

Baffalo wrote: So it's easy to tell, but in Star Trek they limited it to three colors: Red, Yellow and Blue. Why?

I think a lot of 60's shows were celebrating the introduction of full color television and they were often shown in primary colors. batman series is a good example. but a lot of people would have still had b&w, and i'm sure it's hard to tell some colors when you've only got shades of gray.

aussiemuscle308 wrote:

Baffalo wrote: So it's easy to tell, but in Star Trek they limited it to three colors: Red, Yellow and Blue. Why?

I think a lot of 60's shows were celebrating the introduction of full color television and they were often shown in primary colors. batman series is a good example. but a lot of people would have still had b&w, and i'm sure it's hard to tell some colors when you've only got shades of gray.

An interesting theory, though that doesn't explain why these are the only damned colors they ever show throughout the other series. Hell, even ENTERPRISE had the three colors! Whereas on modern aircraft carriers, the colors are as follows:

[i]Uniforms of the United States Navy[/i]: Naval Aviation Personnel wrote:Purple – Aviation Fuel Handlers (also known as "grapes")
Blue – Plane Handlers, Tractor Drivers, Elevator Operators
Yellow – Flight Deck Officers and Plane Directors
Green – Operations Personnel, Catapult and Arresting Gear Personnel, Ground Support Equipment Maintenance Personnel, Squadron Maintenance Personnel, Cargo handling personnel, Hook runners, Landing Signalmen Enlisted (LSE), and Photographers
White – Safety Observers, Squadron Final Checkers (F/C), Landing Signal Officers (LSO), Corpsmen, LOX Handlers, Air Transfer Officers, and visitors
Red – Ordnance Handlers, EOD Personnel, Crash and Salvage Crews
Brown – Plane Captains (Crew Chiefs and Mechanics)

So are the three colors there only as a nod to the TOS version? Are they afraid of change so much they won't do it for fear of upsetting the audience? I just don't understand. I'm not saying that they need a bunch of rainbow colored sailors running around, but it'd be nice to see some sort of specialization rather than just lumping people together under one of three primary colors. Of course, that would mean you actually have to specify the real difference between enlisted and officers, and we can't have that on an officer-focused show.

Remember, if they have six colors, people have to keep track of six colors. It's easy enough to learn to do that when you're in the navy, but when you're watching it on TV... not so much. I suspect most of the shows' casual viewers don't really bother to distinguish even between the three uniform colors they already have, and if you started throwing in purple and green and orange shirts it would just get worse.

And make the crew look like they'd just visited the Explosion in a Paint Factory Planet.

There's a certain logic to having several colors of uniform, but remember that only naval aviation crews do this in real life, not the entire navy. The flight deck crew operate under unusual conditions (extremely loud noise, long sightlines compared to people working inside the ship) that make color-coded uniforms more useful. In Star Trek, they're useful but not cruical, I'd say.

Well, the TOS films did break down into a lot more colors...something like seven. But even the filmmakers started to get confused about what was what.

Red shirts were there to show just how dangerous enemy is without killing anyone important. Worf also fulfilled that role in TNG, although he wasn't killed, but just beaten (Best of Both Worlds comes to mind).

Rommel123 wrote:Red shirts were there to show just how dangerous enemy is without killing anyone important. Worf also fulfilled that role in TNG, although he wasn't killed, but just beaten (Best of Both Worlds comes to mind).

Contrasting TNG with TOS, Yar's death was absolutely brilliant- By killing a bridge crew member early on, the whole series was given a true sense of danger. And she died just like a Redshirt.

Darth Tedious wrote:

Rommel123 wrote:Red shirts were there to show just how dangerous enemy is without killing anyone important. Worf also fulfilled that role in TNG, although he wasn't killed, but just beaten (Best of Both Worlds comes to mind).

Contrasting TNG with TOS, Yar's death was absolutely brilliant- By killing a bridge crew member early on, the whole series was given a true sense of danger. And she died just like a Redshirt.

Yar's death does sort of break the whole 'immortal bridge crew' image. And TMP lost two bridge members, though they never did make much of an impact beyond that. I think it's the times when the bridge crew's image of infallibility is shattered, it makes for a great round of tension. After Chekov got the brain slug in Wrath of Khan, I thought, "Damn, he's being forced to betray Captain Kirk!"

I think if that image had been shattered a few times in the TNG movies, it would've made it so much better. Generations didn't use Kirk's death as anything more than "Let's take him from this timeline and put him somewhere else." Seriously, if Kirk had been able to go anywhere, why would he go back with another captain like that? Why not just go back to the Enterprise B and be standing out in the hall as if nothing happened? He's no older, chronologically speaking. Or what if he'd decided to go back in time and, as a younger man, maybe pick up his career at a point and shift his priorities? What would Kirk have done differently, if he knew what would happen at the end of his career?

Generations was a clusterfuck. Nowhere near as bad as Star Trek V, but close enough to earn it a bronze. Only Nemesis gets anywhere near that bad. There was so much wasted potential for character growth, both by Picard and Kirk. I swear, after I get done rewriting the Star Wars Prequel, my digital ink pen is going to work cleaning up the shit from Star Trek.

Baffalo wrote:I swear, after I get done rewriting the Star Wars Prequel, my digital ink pen is going to work cleaning up the shit from Star Trek.

I'll be looking forward to it, given the quality of your TPM.

Skylon wrote:As far as Red Shirt deaths go, keep in mind there are some episodes that are veritable blood-baths for them. "Obsession" and "The Changeling" come to mind. Hence the spike in season 2. I can't figure out what episodes from season 3 saw lots of Red Shirt deaths.

Oh, and on a side note, Scotty is a true red shirt in that he did die....he just got better by the end of the episode.

In "Obsession", six guards and an engineer bought it. "The Changeling" had four guards and around 4-6 engineers, not counting Scotty (who got better), winding up in redshirt Valhalla. There was poor Ensign Harper, who got turned into a little pink cloud when he was unfortunate enough to be "in the way" of M5's power-tap beam in "The Ultimate Computer". Four redshirts ended up taking a dirt nap on Gamma Trianguli VI in "The Apple". And of course, there was the unfortunate Lt. Thompson, who got turned into a cube and then crushed into powder by Rojan in "By Any Other Name". If you want to count them, three of Security Chief Sulu's guards on the ISS Enterprise got zapped by the Tantalus Field in "Mirror-Mirror".

By contrast, there were a grand total of six redshirt deaths for the whole of season 3: two guards Kirk unwittingly spaced by transporter in "And The Children Shall Lead", Engineer Watson who got his neck snapped by Kryton in "Elaan Of Troyus", Ensign Wyatt and Engineer Watkins who both got the touch of death from Losira in "That Which Survives", and Ensign Compton in "Wink Of An Eye". I suppose by that time, natural selection had finished its brutal work upon the redshirt contingent of the Enterprise, leaving only the smartest and strongest to survive and procreate —including zombie-Leslie.

Whoops —forgot about Lt. Galloway, who gets phasered by Capt. Tracy in "The Omega Glory". David L. Ross, the actor who played him, would reappear as Lt. Johnson in season three's "Day Of The Dove" and "Turnabout Intruder".