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"He stayed at his post!"

According to Wikipedia (Celebrating 750 Years of American Independence!) there were 74 Redshirt deaths in the original Star Trek.

The deadliest episode for for the fifth member of the landing party? Where No Man Has Gone Before, which claimed a staggering twelve Ensign Rickys. The second deadliest episode was The Changling, which sent six wads of Ensign Kleenex to the Great Gig in the Sky.

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Only 74 throughout the entire series? Not a bad number actually! I wonder what the body count ends up being for TNG, or for DSN for that matter. DSN had a lot more battle scenes with the Dominion war.

It's because of Star Trek I have this fear of red shirts..j/k :) It's good to read off the wall trivia like that.
~~TARA~~

That's so funny- every Wednesday, myself, my hubby, and 4 friends have "Trek night." After Voyager & then Enterprise were cancelled, we watched all of TNG and now we're just finishing up TOS. Which is my longwinded way of saying that my hubby has been keeping track of:
1) How many females Kirk kisses
2)How many times Spock says, "Fascinating"
and
3)How many redshirts die per episode
And I thought we were the only crazy ones... Ha ha!
-Alicia
P.S. If I haven't said it recently, Wil, I dig you! :) You remind me a lot of one of my fellow Trek night friends.
allywag67@aol.com
www.thewagband.com

It's sort of like being named "Nick" in a Stephen King story.

Interesting that the deadliest episode is also the first one that WS showed his face in.

Cool beans. Wiki strikes again.

Exactly!

http://www.amazon.com/Should-Never-Beam-Down-Shirt/dp/0062733842

The "redshirt" post makes me want to watch Galaxy Quest again for the sole purpose of seeing Sam Rockwell as Guy Fleegman.

"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 just to prove how serious the situation is. I've gotta get out of here."

Wow, that's about an average of 1.0541 redshirts per episode. Not much of a body count at all when you think about it. Go fig.

Ouch, that's 17% of the crew.

I remember watching the original series as a child and wondering, geez, when are they going to run out of these guys...

Creepy that you mention redshirts Wil, 'cause while I was watching the Space Network yesterday(Canadian version of Sc-Fi) there was a little mini-program thing on redshirts and how it was guaranteed that a redshirt or redshirts would die.

"The second deadliest episode was The Changling, which sent six wads of Ensign Kleenex to the Great Gig in the Sky."

That's what I call it when I masturbate! What odds.

One of the things I always notice when watching Star Trek and other action TV/movies is the body count among the "Red Shirts" and other unamed characters. There's a lot of unsung bravery there. Someday I'd like to see a tribute on sci fi or some other show about them.

This might be considered a lame way to promote my rarely-read personal blog, but an entry from a few weeks back:

http://www.mitchcohen.com/2007/06/10/one-more-mitch-cohen-that-im-not/

had an potentially amusing reference to red-shirts, including a link to the same Wikipedia entry.

Speaking of redshirts, redshirt humor:

http://www.tvscifi.com/content/view/30/28/

I work for the Canadian military-industrial complex, and one of the support-the-troops events we have at work is "Red Shirt Fridays." I think it's hilarious, but I've learned not to make Star Trek jokes to my co-workers, because they totally won't get it.

SP

That is interesting, not to mention an unintentional 47 reference!

I'm sure I missed the meaning in an earlier post (or the answer is really obvious and I'm going to feel like an idiot), but what is the history to the term "Ensign Ricky". I know what they are, but why ricky?

My husband and I have always called them "Ensign Toast"

Ah, the "Disposable Ensigns"...

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