'' episode " Obsession ".]]
The term comes from the popular American , 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 Kirk , Spock , McCoy (all main characters who stood zero chance of dying) and one never-before-seen red-shirted Ensign , who would be dead by the end of the mission, usually within minutes. However, the first person to be killed in such a manner (in the order in which the episodes were originally broadcast), Crewman Darnell in The Man Trap wore a blue shirt.
The two exceptions to this rule were , yet lived through the film era. In a few episodes, Scotty did indeed get killed, but was revived by the end of the episode.
In the '''' and later series, security officers wore 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 a red shirt; a joke among fans is that unlucky characters must have been wearing a red undershirt that day.
Redshirt/yellowshirt death occurred much more rarely in '''' not a single crewman was lost until the second episode of the third season (Crewman Daniels was apparently killed in the first season but, being a time-traveller, was later seen alive).
Below is a list of occurrences from the original ''Star Trek'' series.
; What Are Little Girls Made Of? (2): Security guards Matthews and Rayburn are killed by Ruk.
; Arena (1): Lt. O'Herlihy sees something and is zapped by Gorns on planet Cestus III.
; The Devil In The Dark (1): Unnamed security guard gets cooked by Horta.
; 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 (4): All unnamed security guards are zapped by Nomad.
; Obsession (4): Ensign Rizzo and three unnamed security guards have blood sucked out of them (note: Mr. Leslie 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).
; Mirror, Mirror (3): All unnamed security guards are killed by Marlena via the Tantalus field.
; By Any Other Name (1): Yeoman Thompson is crushed to a handful of dust.
; Friday's Child (1): Security guard Grant sees a Klingon and is shot by a Capellan weapon in the chest.
; The Omega Glory (1): Lt. Galloway is killed by Captain Ron Tracy.
; The Ultimate Computer (1): Ensign Harper simply gets in the way of M-5's new power source.
; 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 (1): Transporter operator ensign Wyatt is killed by a touch from Losira.
; Wink Of An Eye (1): Crewman Compton finds death an accelerating experience.
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.
- On '''' crew were trapped on a planet with "Welshie," a redshirt stand-in 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, rather than a "key" character dying.
- '' Family Guy '' featured a scene in which "Ensign Ricky" is selected to go on a dangerous mission with the three most important characters from the ''Enterprise''. Kirk says with typical, exaggerated speech and gesticulations, "The away team will consist of myself, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Ensign Ricky." Foreseeing his demise, Ricky responds with "Aw, crap." Ironically, later that episode, Shatner is struck and killed by a car driven by Meg, who was unable to see in the rain, right in front of Ensign Ricky, who declares "I did ''not'' see that coming."
- In the video game 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 prove how serious the situation is. 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 they kill 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 his name of Guy Fleegman is finally revealed; 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 bad guy 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 an episode of '' South Park '', 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.
- 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 .
- 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, such as this
- 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.
- The Webcomic '' Legostar Galactica '' has a character called Ensign Redshirt who repeatedly suffers horrific but not quite lethal injuries.
- The first mate in the movie '' King Kong '' wears a red shirt and is subsequently crushed by Kong.
- 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, many Ensigns are killed and are named with 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 thes solders include non-combat crew who wear red clothing and are usually mowed down by enemies first.
- In the '''', 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.
- In one episode of '' Stargate SG-1 '', 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''.)''
- In '' Space Quest 5 ,'' another crew member does not wish to stay near the captain Roger Wilco who's wearing a red shirt, saying it's "bad luck."
- On the television show ''''('' The Pegasus ''), who was critical of Picard 's methods.
- 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 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 '''' (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."
- 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, the perennial orange suited victim of '' South Park '', often turns up red in various depictions, such as on the cover of February 1998 ''Rolling Stone''.
- Author and John Ringo . 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 one ''Star Trek'' novel, Ensign Kirk is assigned to the away team. While he is getting ready, his "Quarters-Mate" enters and asks what he is doing. Finding out about Kirk's assignment, his friend (who is assigned to Sciences), hands Kirk a Blue-colored tunic, stating that it's "Bad luck" to beam down in a Red Shirt.
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