Quick geek question — which color do you least want to wear if you’re part of the landing party on classic Star Trek?
For most of us, the answer is red.
But a new statistical study shows that maybe being a redshirt isn’t as hazardous to your health as we originally thought.
Significance Magazine broke down the numbers and found some things that challenge some of our assumptions about being a security officer on board the original Enterprise.
Based on blueprints sanctioned as canon by Paramount itself, there are a sum total of 430 crewmen on board the Enterprise, 239 of whom are red-shirted engineering, operations and security personnel. With 24 of those having died, that’s about a 10 percent mortality rate.
Now to the analysis that may come as a surprise to many of us. There are 55 gold-shirted command and helm personnel members on the Enterprise — nine of whom died over the course of three seasons. That’s a mortality rate of 13.4 percent.
The other color of shirt on classic Trek was blue of medical and science. That section of the command structure is the safer one with a mortality rate of 5.1 percent with seven casualties over the course of three seasons.
So, does this change your view on classic Trek?
The problem with this analyses is that it does not take into account the fact that the risk of death for the average crewman is significantly lower than those that participate in away missions.
Agreed, the mortality rate of red vs gold vs blue is much higher if you only count away crews.
It’s just simple math by Numbers. The greater the specific number of a group, the higher it is likely they will be involved with something. Being a Red shirt still gave you more than a 2:1 average of dying compared to the next most killed off crew member. Compared to Blue Shirts that number is more than 4:1. Either way, My happy butt wouldn’t be standing too close to one on a Landing Party.
I think the safest way to go is to call in sick when your turn in the Landing Party rotation comes up… 🙂