Why the red shirt guy never survived

[Nevilledog]

[Wounded Bear]

1. I see what you did there...

[TheBlackAdder]

18. I have that image as a refrigerator magnet, with 'FAIL ⬇️' above the red shirt guy.

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I just today noticed Kirk, Spock & McCoy had masks on.

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[ProfessorGAC]

2. Funny!

Thing that's also amusing is that the "red shirt" thing was around 20+ years. Then, when Next Generation hit the air, the entire command staff wore red!
Star Trek blew up one of their own themes!

[FakeNoose]

3. Expendables. We grew up watching Star Trek

... and even then we understood how some characters never made it back to the ship.

[marked50]

5. There is a deviation on this theme.

I am a pretty non-confrontational person and had done really well in my jobs and moved up the ranks in a corporation pretty much based on my competence in my field and other subtleties of my abilities. But I wasn't one of those who sought fame or recognition to get ahead.

In a "one-on-one" with a new boss, who replaced the previous boss- who had at some level recognized my skills, he said something that confused me. He said-without context- "Mark, you don't want to be the guy on the landing party without a name."

I had to ask him what he meant. He referred to the same meme that I have seen mentioned so many times since-the Red shirt landing meme . That the it means my end.

Now, I was and still am a Star Trek fan from way back- into the 70's, but that one flew by me in recognition when he said it. Looking back, I think I would have "grocked it " if he had just said "the red shirt guy".

Learning about these things is important in our every-day existence. Much to my chagrin. He moved me out of my position and put me into something that was really a potential dead-end.

But, that really wasn't the end to the story, because he ended up doing me a tremendous favor- not of his intent- but one that I have not regretted 20 years later.

[Wounded Bear]

19. Yeah, he was known in the credits as "Crewman #1...2...3"

[Ms. Toad]

6. The things you never know when your TV is black and white. n/t

[ChazII]

9. True. Our household television was black and white during

the Star Trek years.

[Liberal In Texas]

7. That is very funny. And reminds me ...

of a TV station I worked for in Nebraska. They decided to give everyone picture badges we had to wear around while working.

The background was different for each level your status.
Gold = Management
Blue = Supervisory
Red = Everybody else

At the time we were airing reruns of "Star Trek." I never twigged to the fact that that's maybe where the General Manager got the idea.

[Kid Berwyn]

8. Like the time Ruk threw a couple down a chasm...

Until the Captain started a round of hide the pickle, it almost took the party out of landing party.

[Nevilledog]

11. *snort*

[TheBlackAdder]

10. OK, I saw an analysis last year, more Green/Gold Shirts died than Red Shirts as percentage of crew.

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Originally, the shirts were Red, Green & Blue to advertise the new RCA color televisions.

Distortions in the filming made the shirts sometimes appear gold, then it was changed to gold.

That’s according to Matthew Barsalou, who debunked the red shirt curse for Significance Magazine by mathematically breaking down the death rates, by uniform color, of characters on the original Star Trek. A simple pie chart reveals 55 total deaths and, yes, red shirts perished in frightening numbers. A whopping 24 died, compared to 9 in yellow/gold command and 7 in blue, with 15 crossing into the final frontier in unidentified colors. However, it’s all a matter of perspective and percentages. There were 430 crewmen aboard the Enterprise, 239 of them in engineering, security or operations, and all wore red. So, in reality, they had a decent survival rate, and it was, statistically speaking – courtesy of a little something called Bayes’ theorem -- the folks in gold who were more likely to meet their maker.

Here is Barsalou’s concluding statement: “Although Enterprise crew members in redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek. This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.”

https://www.startrek.com/article/did-redshirts-really-die-more-often-on-tos

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[Rincewind]

16. All I know is,

if Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Ensign Kenny beam down to a planet, Ensign Kenny isn't coming back.

[TheBlackAdder]

17. Same here. 🤣

[AllaN01Bear]

12. i had a black and white tv set that i got as a graduation present.

redshirts were and are always expendable .but i get your meaning .

[iluvtennis]

13. LOL :-) nt

[mcar]

14. ...

[Marcuse]

15. The burden of command.

[fescuerescue]

20. That's good. Better to not caption it though

and let the viewer find the joke himself!