Star Trek's Redshirt Death Trope Explained

When braving the farthest reaches of space, you'd hope that something as simple as your outfit wouldn't impact your likelihood of survival. We're not talking about spacesuits that keep your eyeballs getting sucked from their sockets. We mean the color scheme. Unfortunately, that was precisely the case in the early days of "Star Trek," when wearing a red shirt aboard the Enterprise meant a sealed fate for some. As part of the security or engineering departments, cracking out the crimson threads really was like having a bullseye on your back, just waiting to be hit by the phaser blast or alien threat that Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and crew were dealing with that week.

Their deaths weren't in vain, though. These red-wearing crew members who went down in the line of duty were thrown into the crossfire to demonstrate the severity of the situation. How would audiences find out how lethal the creature of the week was or how evil the newest foe of Starfleet could be without someone getting iced? What's the alternative? Kill one of the core cast, like the captain or Spock (Leonard Nimoy)? Are you out of your Vulcan mind? These walking warning signs had to take the hit. But while these casualties of space exploration may have become synonymous with being killed off on one of the most iconic entries in science fiction, it turns out that redshirts weren't as cursed as fans might think.

While redshirts were seen as guaranteed casualties in the original "Star Trek" series, some clever calculations reveal that these officers were luckier than the higher-ups in Starfleet. According to one study from mathematician James Grime, who gave a talk at the Museum of Mathematics in 2017 (via Space.com), wearing gold came with a more considerable risk than wearing red. During the event, which was brilliantly titled "Star Trek: The Math of Khan," Grime revealed that after going off "The Star Trek Technical Manual," which logs 239 redshirts who appear on the show, only 25 die — a pretty minimal 10% of that division. However, when it comes to the 55 goldshirts that appear on the series, 10 never make it through an episode, which equates to 18%.

By Grime's calculations, then, redshirts, while high in casualties on the show, have a lower loss rate from their group in comparison to goldshirts. Even so, it did very little to shake the stigma that had, by that time, stuck with "Star Trek" for about 50 years. Now, "redshirt" remains a pillar in pop culture terminology. If there's a keen crew member of a sci-fi or fantasy series waiting to get in on the action, it won't matter who they're fighting for. In the eyes of a "Star Trek" fan, they're wearing only red.