Monthly Archives: July 2010

I’ve been watching the original Star Trek, and have been thinking about the “redshirt” phenomenon. It has become a recurring pop culture joke that crewmen wearing a red top tend to die. They even played with it in the recent reboot movie. But I don’t get why this is a joke. It is true that 75% of all Enterprise crewmen who died in the original Star Trek wore red uniforms. However, that’s because red is the color of security officers, the people you would expect to get killed. They are the ones patrolling areas, holding positions, guarding prisoners and doing other dangerous stuff. You would hope for an even higher percentage of red. Continue reading →