Redshirt (character)

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A redshirt is a stock character, used frequently in science fiction but also other genres, whose sole purpose is to die violently soon after being introduced. Redshirts are a plot device used to indicate the dangerous circumstances faced by the main characters at the start of a narrative without having to kill any of the vital main characters. The term comes from the popular American science fiction television series Star Trek, in which security officers wore red shirts, and were often killed on missions under the aforementioned circumstances.

Contents 1 Star Trek origins 2 Occurrences 2.1 First season 2.2 Second season 2.3 Third season 3 Subsequent uses 3.1 Appearances of redshirt characters 3.2 References to redshirts 4 References 5 See also

[edit] Star Trek origins

In the original 1966 Star Trek series, characters wore tunic colors defining their station and/or area of expertise. A person wearing a red shirt was a member of the Engineering or Security department. Security officers had a habit of meeting tragic ends in many episodes.

Typically, a landing party would consist of several main characters - often Kirk, Spock, McCoy - and one or two never-before-seen red-shirted ensigns, who would be dead by the end of the mission, usually within minutes. It is notable, however, that the first person to be killed in such a manner (in the order in which the episodes were originally broadcast) was Crewman Darnell (in The Man Trap) who wore a blue shirt. The redshirt distinction was made more prominent by the fact that the only main characters who wore red were Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott and Communications Officer Lt. Uhura; since there were no regular characters in the security department, the appearance of any such character in an episode was strongly suggestive.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation and later spinoffs (with the exception of Star Trek: Enterprise, which was a prequel to the original series), security officers wore gold/yellow shirts while command officers wore red; the term "yellowshirt" is sometimes used in these cases, with "blueshirt" occasionally used to refer to expendable Science or Medical personnel. Such expendable characters often continued to be called "redshirts" by fans, despite not actually wearing that color; a joke among fans is that unlucky characters must have been wearing a red undershirt that day. However, the episode Where Silence Has Lease featured a previously unseen red-shirted character was killed off violently, even though not in the security department. It is notable, however, that death in this manner was far less frequent in the spin-offs than in the original series. This was probably due, in part, to the fact that each spin-off had at least one character dedicated to security (such as Worf and Odo). These characters would typically be the ones taken on away missions instead of a never-before-seen character. On Star Trek: Enterprise not a single crewman was lost until the second episode of the third season.

Fans often dub redshirt characters with humorous, generic nicknames, such as "Ensign Expendable" or "Ensign Anonymous". They're also known as the "Fifth member of the away team" due to the other members often being recognizable characters. Often also referred to as "Lieutenant Kleenex" in reference to their disposable nature.

In the Pocket Books Star Trek novel Killing Time, a time-tampering plot twist turns Captain Kirk into an ensign. While he is dressing for duty, a fellow crew member says, "Let's just say that on this ship—or probably any other—you don't want to wear a red shirt on landing-party duty."

Robert W. Bly wrote a book, published in November 1996, called Why You Should Never Beam Down in a Red Shirt: And 749 More Answers to Questions About Star Trek (ISBN 0062733842).

A commonly accepted opposite of a redshirt is a Wedge-type character, referring to Wedge Antilles of the Star Wars universe, who was the only extra to appear and survive all three movies. Also referred to as a "token survivor".

[edit] Occurrences

Below is a list of occurrences from the original Star Trek series.

[edit] First season

The Man Trap (4)

Darnell, Sturgeon, Green and Barnhart have the salt sucked from their bodies. None of the four wore red. Darnell and Sturgeon wore blue, Green wore yellow, and Barnhart wore a silvery white environmental suit.

Where No Man Has Gone Before (12)

Spock reports that nine crewmen die when the Enterprise crosses the galactic barrier. Gary Mitchell kills Lt. Lee Kelso by strangling him via telekinesis. Capt. Kirk kills Mitchell by entombing him under a giant rock. Dr. Elizabeth Dehner dies after exhausting herself trying to destroy Mitchell. In this second pilot, Dehner wears a blue shirt; Kelso and Mitchell wear tan shirts that may be the predecessor to the regular series red.

The Naked Time (1)

Lt. (j.g.) Joe Tormolen dies on McCoy's operating table after impaling himself on a knife. He wore a blue shirt.

What Are Little Girls Made Of? (2)

Security guards Matthews and Rayburn are killed by Ruk.

Balance of Terror (1)

Lt. Tomlinson dies when he suffocates on escaped phaser coolant. He wears a yellow shirt.

Arena (2)

Lt. O'Herlihy sees something and is zapped by Gorns on planet Cestus III. When Kelowitz returns from scouting the area, he tells Capt. Kirk that "They got Lang," who wore a yellow shirt.

The Devil In The Dark (1)

An unnamed security guard gets cooked by the Horta.

The Galileo Seven (3)

Lt. Latimer is impaled by a giant spear on Taurus II. One of the giant creatures murders Lt. Gaetano with its bare hands. Both wore yellow shirts. In a landing party report to Capt. Kirk, Lt. Kelowitz reports that Ensign O'Neill was also killed by a spear. (As this occurs offscreen, his shirt color is unknown.)

[edit] Second season

Catspaw (1)

Lt. Jackson is killed in the teaser by Korob and Sylvia and beamed aboard the Enterprise as a warning. He wears a yellow shirt.

The Apple (4)

Lt. Mallory steps on an exploding rock; Lt. Kaplan is hit by a lightning bolt; security guard Marple is clubbed over the head; ensign Hendorf meets a poisonous plant.

The Changeling (6)

Four unnamed security guards are zapped by Nomad. When Kirk and Spock enter Engineering in Act IV to destroy Nomad, Kirk discovers a technician in a red jumpsuit slumped dead at the control console. Technically, Scotty also counts as a red shirt death as well, as Nomad kills him while he is trying to save Lt. Uhura. But Nomad repairs him after Kirk orders him to do so.

Obsession (5)

Ensign Rizzo and three unnamed security guards have blood sucked out of them (note: Mr. Leslie (Eddie Paskey) was one of the three security guards who died in the first attack, but he's shown recovering in sickbay after the second attack and was never pronounced dead). Later, when the cloud creature invades the ship, McCoy reports that of the two crewmen it attacked, one has a chance for survival and the other is dead.

Wolf in the Fold (1)

Lt Karen Tracey is killed by a possessed Scotty. She was a medical officer in blue uniform.

Mirror, Mirror (5)

One of Chekov's henchmen switches sides and dematerializes two of Kirk's would-be assassins with his phaser. Both are in green command jumpsuits. All three of Sulu's unnamed security guard accomplices are killed by Marlena via the Tantalus field.

By Any Other Name (1)

After being reduced to her basic elements, Yeoman Thompson is crushed into dust. Notably, the red shirt security guard with the team is also reduced to his basic elements, but is later restructured and survives the episode.

Friday's Child (1)

Security guard Grant threatens a Klingon and gets a Capellan kligat in the chest for his trouble.

The Deadly Years (1)

Lt. Galway dies of extreme old age. She wears a blue uniform.

The Omega Glory (1)

Capt. Ron Tracy kills Lt. Galloway (notable for being the only recurring character to be killed in the TOS).

The Ultimate Computer (1)

Ensign Harper simply gets in the way of M-5's new power source.

[edit] Third season

And The Children Shall Lead (2)

A pair of security guards are beamed into open space.

Elaan of Troyius (1)

Engineer Watson wonders what Kryton is doing, and is killed for his trouble.

That Which Survives (3)

Transporter operator ensign Wyatt and Engineer Watkins are killed from a touch by Losira. She also kills Lt. D'Amato (who wears a blue shirt) on the planet's surface.

Wink Of An Eye (1)

Crewman Compton, accelerated, is killed when he takes cell damage from a Scalosian, causing rapid aging.

Requiem for Methuselah (3)

Three unnamed crewmen die from an outbreak of Rigelian fever aboard the ship.

[edit] Subsequent uses

Fans of the original Star Trek have come to use the term redshirt to describe any nameless and expendable character. Usually these appear to satirize how unrealistically repetitive, formulaic and expectable this cliché has been.

[edit] Appearances of redshirt characters

• In Star Trek II, while investigating Ceti Alpha V, Captain Terrel is wearing a reddish space suit while Chekhov is wearing a white space suit. Captain Terrel subsequently kills himself while under the influence of a ceti eel.

• In Futurama, on an occasion when the actual Star Trek cast were trapped on a planet with "Welshie," a redshirt replacement for Scotty (in real life, James Doohan declined to participate in the episode), he was quickly killed—and then the corpse was repeatedly blasted each time they angered their captor. On a further note all of Zapp Brannigan's subordinates wear red (as does Brannigan himself) and he considers them all expendable.

• Family Guy featured a parody of Star Trek in which "Ensign Ricky" (a redshirt) is selected to go on a dangerous mission with the three most important characters from the Enterprise. Kirk says "This is a very dangerous mission and it is certain that one of us will be killed. The away team will consist of myself, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Ensign Ricky." Ricky responds with "Aw, crap." Later that episode, William Shatner (the actor who played Kirk), is struck and killed by a car, followed by a camera pan to Ensign Ricky, who declares "I did not see that coming."

• In the video game Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire that takes place in an alternative Ancient Greece (Silmaria), a non-player character called Kokeeno Pookameeso is the first to be killed. Kokkino poukamiso is Greek for red shirt.

• In the film Galaxy Quest, bit player Guy Fleegman (played by Sam Rockwell), having once played a "redshirt" in an episode of a Star Trek-like TV series called Galaxy Quest, says at one point, "I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm just 'Crewman Number Six.' I'm expendable. I'm the guy in the episode who dies to show the situation is serious. I've gotta get outta here." Minutes later, when the situation does indeed turn serious, a fellow crewmember yells "Let's get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!" Resigned to his fate as "a glorified extra", he offers to sacrifice himself as a distraction to help some good aliens escape. However, fellow crewmember Fred Kwan (played by Tony Shalhoub) stops him from doing so by suggesting that perhaps he's not the expendable bit part, but rather the "plucky comic relief". In the end, he survives and gets a major role as one of the principal players in the Galaxy Quest revival, which is incidentally when he finally gets named Guy Fleegman; the crew admits early on that they have no idea who he is in real life, much to Guy's chagrin. Ironically enough, close to the end of the movie, when the main villain Sarris begins shooting everyone right before the activation of the Omega 13 device, Guy is the only character who isn't hit or "killed" during that sequence.

• In the South Park episode "City on the Edge of Forever", a child on a stranded schoolbus wore a redshirt uniform with the Star Trek symbol. He tries to flee the safety of the bus and is promptly eaten by a monster while Star Trek background music is played.

• The Red Shirt concept was addressed in the Movies.com shorts From the Balcony starring Muppet stars Statler & Waldorf. In their "Balconisms" section of the show they give the characters the name Expenda-Bill.^[1]

• In the card game and role-playing game Star Munchkin, there are many references to redshirts. In the role-playing game, they can be hired as highly expendable sidekicks.

• On the television show 24, Jack Bauer and other main characters are frequently accompanied by extra CTU security or technical personnel, who are immediately picked off by the enemy once the situation turns dangerous. Beginning in the fourth season of the show, many such characters in fact wear red shirts.

• The volunteer security services at Toronto Trek, a Canadian sci-fi convention, wear red shirts with a bullseye on the back. Some people working security have utilized the humor potential in this and have posed for photos depicting their demise, [1]

• In the animation series The Secret Files of the Spy Dogs, where all dogs are part of a secret organisation to help humanity, the main character is sent out to prevent a blundering child from accidentally hurting himself. He gets assigned a team of his friends, plus a dog who is referred to as "You there with the red shirt", who incidentally is the only one wearing an article of clothing. During the mission, the dog with the red shirt is the first to bite the dust and as the rest of the team rush along to follow the child, the main character's parting words are, "Thanks, um ... whatever your name is."

• In the animated series Kim Possible episode "Dimension Twist", when several characters are pulled into an interdimensional vortex that dumps them into television shows, Kim lands on a Star Trek parody entitled Space Passage. Kim is able to regain communications with her technical expert, Wade, who is a huge fan of Space Passage. When Kim is picked for a dangerous mission by the ship's commander, Wade starts to say, "I hope you're not wearing--"; Kim finishes the line by saying, "A red shirt?", showing Wade that she is, indeed, in a red shirt. Kim is nearly killed on the mission before being pulled into another television show.

• In the sci-fi tabletop game Warhammer 40,000, in the special forces minigame "Kill Team", the attacking team has a 10 point upgrade called the "Red Shirt" where the team gets an extra character who is a very poor fighter. If, however, he should survive the mission (unlikely, because the controlling player can choose what models to remove when someone is killed and the redshirt is basically useless in combat) the Kill-team get a free upgrade next game.

• The webcomic Schlock Mercenary has a character named John Der Trihs ("Der Trihs" is "red shirt" spelled backwards). He wears a red uniform (typical of officers lower than Commander in his company) and often ends up severely wounded, losing limbs or even being reduced to a disembodied head (which is still sufficient to fully revive him). Ironically, he is the least killable fully-human character owing to his armoured skull.

• In the Sev Trek movie and the Star Wreck series, many ensigns are killed and bear names like "Ensign Anonymous," "Ensign Insignificant," and "Ensign Cannonfodder."

• In the webtoon series Stone Trek, each episode maintains a running tally of Redshirt deaths, for comedic effect. Fans of the show are invited to send photographs of themselves to the show's producers in order to be caricatured and killed off in an episode as a guest Redshirt.

• In the popular video game series Halo, Master Chief is accompanied by Marine solders who have skills that are lacking compared to the player. Some of these solders include non-combat crew who wear red clothing and are usually mowed down by enemies first.

• In the Stargate: Atlantis episode "The Siege: Part 2", all three characters doing repairs on an Ancient satellite are wearing red shirts. On the audio commentary for this episode, the director, Martin Wood, said this was an in-joke since they were planning to kill one of these characters later in the episode.

• In the television series, "Harvey Birdman - Attorney At Law", during the episode "Beyond the Valley of the Dinosaurs", Phil Ken Sebben and Peanut follow Harvey and Potamus through a portal in a jaccuzi into the stone age. Before they depart, Phil recruits a previously unseen Sebben & Sebben employee who is wearing what appears to be a Star Trek uniform with a red shirt. Instead of following Phil and Peanut into the portal in the jaccuzi, the redshirt "beams" into the stone age (appearing with the upper half of his body sticking out of a boulder). He survives to the end of the episode only to be eaten by a T-Rex.

• The computer game Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment, a parody of the Space Quest games among others by Ben Croshaw, deployed the redshirt as an actual commodity and resource. The Redshirts in question are sold for use as cannon-fodder and expendable manpower in situations too dangerous for your average crew member. On occasion they're kidnapped and shanghaied humans, but most are ad hoc clones with the looks and brawn of an action hero and little brains. They come in packs of five and die in a great number of interesting ways.

• In Sluggy Freelance dated August 13, 2006, Torg is subjected to a battle to the death with the Mauradite galactic warlord Chief Kulspat. In the tradition of their homeworld, they exchange gifts before the battle, and Torg gives Kulspat his red shirt, after which Kulspat dies without Torg having to make a single move. The Mauradites hail this as a fulfillment of prophecy, and they leave Torg and his crew to depart in peace.

• In an episode of Robot Chicken, one skit involves a parody of Star Trek: The Original Series. In the skit, a problem with the ships leaves enough power for five people to beam away before it explodes. One redshirt security officer argues that every team needs a redshirt and beams down with four of the main characters. Since there's no food, the main characters suggest eating the redshirt. In an ironic twist, the redshirt distinguishes himself from "all the redshirts that fell before [him]" (as he puts it) by being a security officer, and thus the only one carrying a weapon. He then kills and eats all four main characters.

• The webcomic Legostar Galactica has a character called Ensign Red Shirt who repeatedly suffers horrific but not quite lethal injuries.

[edit] References to redshirts

• For much of the run of the television series Babylon 5, the eponymous space station's chief of security is Michael Garibaldi (a reference to the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose followers were called Redshirts). The most likely crewmembers to die on the station were members of the security staff.

• In the first level of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the main character is aided by an ensign wearing a red shirt named Trask Ulgo. Ens. Ulgo later confronts a dark Jedi alone, giving the main character a chance to escape. Note that all Galactic Republic soldiers of that era wear red uniforms.

• A direct reference: in the Star Wreck series of Finnish Star Trek spoofs, the red shirt officers all have names like Lieutenant Suicide, Ensign Manshield, Lieutenant Cannonfodder and such.

• In the episode of Stargate SG-1, "The Other Guys", two scientists are aboard an enemy vessel with the main characters when they come under attack. One turns to the other and says, "We're dead! We might as well be wearing red shirts!" (coincidentally, this character was played by John Billingsley, who portrayed Dr. Phlox on Star Trek: Enterprise. His character in this episode was a particularly avid Star Trek fan).

• In another Family Guy episode named There's Something About Paulie, a red-shirted hotel employee is killed by a car bomb. Just after this, Peter Griffin says, "And best of all, nobody important got hurt".

• In Space Quest V, another crew member does not wish to stay near the captain Roger Wilco who's wearing a red shirt, saying it's "bad luck."

• In the film Spy Game, a Laotian general targeted for assassination by the U.S. during the Vietnam War is codenamed "Red Shirt."

• In his book Ranting Again, comedian Dennis Miller comments that his status in movies mirrors the Redshirts ("Every movie I'm in, I get killed halfway through. I'm like the guy on Star Trek in the red shirt.")

• In the Game Boy Advance game Sigma Star Saga, protagonist Ian Recker comments "Just call me Ensign Expendable" when sent on a dangerous mission.

• In the movie Spy Kids, the Tumb Thumbs are portrayed as utterly useless because they are "all thumbs". They are also curiously dressed in red clothing.

• In the original Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force (a popular computer game), the default multiplayer name for the player is "RedShirt." In multi-player matches, the player who dies the most is given the "Red Shirt Award." In the single player campaign, if the player dies in a firefight, the message "What color shirt were you wearing?" appears. The player's character is always wearing a red shirt.

• The "canary in a mineshaft" simile is expressly addressed in Red Dwarf, where a military unit assigned to Redshirt-like missions are actually called "The Canaries". Their uniform is not red, however; it is black and canary yellow.

• Kenny McCormick, the perennial orange-suited victim of South Park, often turns up red in various depictions, such as on the cover of the February 1998 issue of Rolling Stone.

• Author David Weber has made a habit of introducing minor characters based on real people and killing them off. In one book, the entire (somewhat disreputable) crew of a small ship (the Cutthroat) were based on participants in a card game. They did not survive their first engagement. Joe Buckley, a fan of Baen publishing (website) was "redshirted" on that occasion, an action mirrored in books by Eric Flint and John Ringo. Since then killing off "Joe Buckley" has become almost an obsession with various Baen authors, although some have been known to torture him a bit, first. Weber has executed characters moments after their first appearances, made them major supporting characters for a book or two and then slain them, given them a few quiet appearances over a few books before a fairly random bumping off, and had them as major characters for most of the series before killing them off-screen. An attempted coup occurs in Ashes of Victory between chapters, with devastating effects, although a later short story provided more detail.

• In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, ZAFT elites wear red jumpsuits during field missions and red uniforms while not on active duty; one such elite, Rusty MacKenzie, was killed by gunfire from an Earth Alliance trooper disguised as a Morgenroete, Inc. employee. Though Rusty did not have a red shirt per se, his red jumpsuit in general is arguably an homage to the concept of the Redshirt. Ironically, only a few other ZAFT Redshirts (most notably Nicol Amarfi, Rey Za Burrel, and Heine Westenfluss) die throughout the course of Gundam SEED and its sequel, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny; ZAFT's closest equivalents to traditional Star Trek Redshirts wear green uniforms instead.

• A special encounter in the PC game Fallout 2 involves the player stumbling across a crashed Star Trek shuttle, complete with three dead Redshirts.

• In the popular webcomic Sluggy Freelance, during the "Stick Figures in Spaaaaace" story arc, Torg and Riff are assigned uniforms on board a starship. Torg runs away, shouting "I WANT TO LIVVVVVE!" when he sees his uniform, a red shirt.

• On the television show Lost, Boone and Locke are tying red cloths to trees. Boone makes a comment about Redshirts and explains how Captain Kirk always allowed a redshirt to die, to which Locke responds, "Sounds like a piss-poor captain." This may also be a reference to Terry O'Quinn having guest starred on Star Trek: The Next Generation (as Admiral Erik Pressman in "The Pegasus"). Ironically (or deliberately) Boone is the first main character to die in season one.^[2]

• During Comedy Central's roast of William Shatner, Shatner calls Greg Giraldo a faceless drone, and says that: "If this were an episode of Star Trek, you'd be wearing a red shirt, and would have been killed by now."

• The card game Star Munchkin has a sidekick card called 'Red Shirt'. Its only power is to leap to its death in place of the player.^[3]

• In a Christmas special of the comic Great Lakes Avengers, one character gives a red Star Trek uniform to the character Mr. Immortal, whose only superpower is to come back from the dead and who dies at least once in every one of his fights.

• In the online webcomic Schlock Mercenary, on April 14 2002, as Captain Tagon is handing out promotions, he finishes by saying, "Chief Warrant Officer Thurl will see to your hover tabs, your red shirts, and yes, your pay raises." In the same panel, the narrator comments, "I dunno. . Would you take a red shirt for a pay raise?"

• Death Wore a Fabulous New Fragrance (ISBN 0425161978), by Orland Outland:

"Like the security guards on the old Star Trek}" Doan enthused. "You always knew when they beamed down to a planet and it was Kirk and Spock and Sulu and and Bones and some nobody in a red shirt, that the nobody was going to get killed, so Bones could say, 'He's dead, Jim,' right before the crescendo!"

^[4]

[edit] References

1. ^ Episode 2 of From the Balcony, released July 6, 2005.
2. ^ http://lost.about.com/od/losttermsfaq/f/RedShirts.htm
3. ^ www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/halflife2
4. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=ux7S4Utbo0wC&vid=ISBN0425161978&dq=redshirt+star+trek&q=sulu&pgis=1#search

[edit] See also

• Cannon fodder, an expression used to denote the treatment of armed forces as a worthless commodity that can easily be expended.
• Character shield, the metaphorical shield that protects "important" characters
• Greenshirts (G.I. Joe)
• MacGuffin, a plot device in a work of fiction that motivates the characters and advances the story, but has little other relevance to the story.
• Sacrificial lamb, a metaphorical reference for a person who has no chance of surviving the challenge ahead, but is placed there for the common good.
• Stormtrooper effect