Fan-made Parody Webseries ‘Red Shirts’ To Debut In Spring – Watch First Trailer

The unfortunate fate that was met by many of Star Trek’s red-shirted personnel has been joke fodder for comedians and fans alike for decades. Now, a pair of fans wants to tell their "heroic" story, in a new web series. Learn more and watch the trailer below.  

 

 

Red Shirts – The Series

Fans R. Benjamin Warren and Ryan Gowland are creating what they call a "loose" parody of Star Trek: The Original Series that will shine a spotlight on all those poor souls who have the misfortune of being assigned to landing parties and other potentially hazardous duties. The idea is not to portray them as heroes, but, owing to the parody nature of the series, as "idiots in space" who "travel to distant planets, fight through boredom, fall in love, and, most of all, find a way to survive."

Warren and Gowland have already shot three episodes, which are typically 3-5 minutes in length, and once they complete post production, they plan to start releasing them in April or May (on YouTube and/or Vimeo). They have just released their first trailer for the series which itself a bit of a parody of the Star Trek Into Darkness teaser trailer. Watch that below.


Red Shirts Trailer

They are using crowd funding site indiegogo.com to raise funds to help finance the remainder of the planned 10-episode season. Their fundraising page, which features a video proposal as well as a detailed breakdown of what the series is about along with "perks" for investing, can be found here : http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/red-shirts.

Learn more and track of Red Shirts The Series on their Facebook page:  facebook.com/ShirtsofRed.

Are red shirts really the most at risk? – Crew deaths, by the numbers

For many years, the notion that red-shirted crewmen were most likely to meet a grisly end was commonly accepted. However, new data suggests that this might not be the case after all. Significance Magazine, a magazine and site which aims to use statistics in "an entertaining and thought-provoking way", makes a case that the most endangered crewmembers on the Enterprise wear another color entirely. It turns out that while red shirts were the most frequent casualties, by percentage those in gold were more at risk (see chart below).

 

For the full analysis along with more charts and graphs, visit SignificanceMagazine.org.

Red Shirts: A Tribute


We leave you with a great compilation of the various creative ways Red Shirts were dispatched during TOS, courtesy of (friend of the site) Clinton from Comedy4Cast.com.

17 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

may be funny

I’ll give it a shot, but for me the classic “Red Shirt Blues” is the ultimate paradoy on the subject. Pretty much says it all perfectly.

Someone needs to introduce them to “audio limiting” so the sound will not be so low in some spots, then blaring in others…

We are all nothing more than a redshirt on the trek through life…

Sounds vaguely familiar. Oh, yeah: http://www.amazon.com/Redshirts-Novel-Three-John-Scalzi/dp/0765334798

– Harry

“Red Shirt Blues” is great! Thanks for sharing it Harry Seldom.

This one looks fun but the production values could use a shot of quality … takes money, I know ….

This is a copy of a copy of a copy.

Been there done that.

Ha, Ha! (snort..)

Wow! Love that gold shirt at the end!

did they take into account that gold shirt deaths in TNG+ are the same as redshirt deaths in TOS?

@11. Allen Williams

If you read the article (which is linked to in the main article above, just beneath the bar chart) you will see that this is for TOS only. Also, note the bar char is referring to deaths as a percentage of crew which wear that colour shirt; not deaths in absolute terms. The article itself has more tables and charts, as well as detailing their methodology.

looks fun, I’ll give it a shot

That blonde had better figure prominently in all the episodes if they expect me to watch.

I laughed out loud at the “coordinates set to random” line. And if the gold shirt is a regular I won’t miss an ep! WOW!!!

OMG! The gold shirt is the captain!! So I’m in! They need donations so everybody get your wallet out and give until it hurts. Um, I’m tapped out at the moment but umm, Come on folks!! Make this a reality! It’s up to US! (YOU!!)

Looks to me like a perfect red shirt fundraising outcome!

:-DDD