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Part 1 of an essay about Star Trek security officers.
© 2009 G.N. Jacobs
When my good friend got me to watch Star Trek for the first time, I wondered briefly how it would feel to be a Starfleet Security Officer. But, that kind of foolishness ends with the first utterance of the immortal last words of the redshirt – “Captain! Over Here! Arrrrrrgh!” It sucks to be a redshirt.
The word redshirt has spread into the English language from Trek to denote any character designed to die at the earliest possible moment to demonstrate the dramatic problem for the episode. Usually, this problem involves some hungry monster out for survival so cue the redshirts to take the bullet for the Captain and the rest of the crew with script immunity can save the day. If these guys are graduates of Starfleet Academy, a fine institution, then how come they can’t learn from past mistakes?
The redshirt phenomenon begins with a bang in the first episode aired “The Man Trap.” Ensign Brown, or whatever generic Anglo-Saxon name the writers gave him, stumbles upon a woman he thought he’d kissed goodbye months before and light years away. The creature is a shapechanger and eats salt. The creature sucks the salt out of the man’s body.
You’d think that after Captain Kirk prevails on Dr. McCoy to see past the fact that the salt sucker has replaced an old girlfriend and the beast is promptly fried with phasers that a memo would go out. The memo would probably read: “Some creatures seem to be telepathic and may read your thoughts and use familiar images and people against you. It is recommended and ordered that all Starfleet personnel immediately attend classes in telepathic defense given by your nearest Vulcan colleague. To whit all personnel must be reminded that the girl you left behind is still at home.”
Now, I’m sure such a memo did go out after Captain Christopher Pike survived beaming down to Talos Four during the unaired first pilot “The Cage,” which footage was also cut into both halves of “The Menagerie.” Yet, the redshirt that thought he saw his sweetie on the planet didn’t seem to have read that memo.
Redshirts continue dying by the small handfuls throughout the show. They do their job by scouting ahead, dangerous work in any army. But, they never seem to take any precautions on the show. In episodes where spore-shooting plants are recycled because the production is running low on money, the redshirt gets a full chest of deadly spines and dies. But, no one thinks to send out a memo about the uniforms.
The redshirt uniform was simply a red pullover shirt, pants, boots, phaser and tricorder. True, everybody’s uniform was like that, but the Security guys typically wore the red issued for all the support functions of which Security was one. But, you’ve been ordered to beam down to an unknown planet where most of the dangers are good old fashioned deaths like rocks, sticks, plant poisons and no one thinks to bring down a Starfleet issue leather jacket? If I hadn’t learned that from watching Star Trek, I certainly would’ve learned from periodically thumbing through The Darwin Awards.
PART 2 – DUE 4/16/11
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