The standard Star Trek trope, the sacrificial Redshirt, has getting a new life with some new products. For those not familiar, in The Original Series, being a red shirt (for security) was a guarantee that characters was going to bite it at some point in the episode. The now pop culture joke was used in the last Trek movie when the red shirted engineer died while attempting to jump on the laser platform. Now you can (unofficially) celebrate the Redshirt with a new card game from ThinkGeek, an actual redshirt, and a new spook book that takes place on an Enterprise analog as the red shirted crewman start to get suspicious of the frequent deaths that occur on away missions.ThinkGeek is selling "Redshirts Card Game" for $19.99 where your goal is to kill all your redshirts. The more dead, the happier the captain. They also are selling a redshirt that says "Expendable." Another red shirt comes from FSC Tees called "He's Dead Jim" that has a skull with Federation symbol for a nose and "NCC-1701" along the forehead.
If interested in a good read, John Scalzi's "Redshirts" might be worth checking out. It is an unofficial novel so instead of taking place on the Enterprise, it takes place on Universal Union ship Intrepid with bridge captains that might you of certain famous characters. From Amazon:
Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.A review of the book can be found here that includes a small snippet from the novel. If interested in ordering click here. It will be released on June 5th.
Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.
Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.
This book is yet another fantastic read from John Scalzi and in many ways is a return to his roots. This novel,much like his first Agent to the Stars, is a well written work of science fiction mixed with a healthy dose of humor and an eye for the absurdities of life and in this case hackneyed SF tv shows and their seemingly endless tropes.
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