I get the joke. However, I just want to point out that in the later series, red signified command and someone important. When I wear my Commandar Riker costume, I don’t appreciate the comments about the red shirt and being expendable.
The joke about red shirts makes no effing sense any more. It hasn’t made sense in over thirty years. I’ve never watched TOS, I started with TNG a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking during the first season (as a new arrival to the fandom giving it an overdue watch) that the jokes I’d always heard about red shirts were confusing, because random deaths were not that common on the show. People died occasionally, but the trope of unnamed crew members being killed unceremoniously to convey stakes did not appear in TNG, and I couldn’t help but notice that captain Picard himself was wearing this supposedly cursed color.
It makes me so frustrated to see this lazy, lazy, lazy zombie joke that just won’t go away.
The red shirt part of the joke is referring to TOS exclusively because it was so prevalent. But really it’s a larger trope found across lots of different shows and genres. They may not wear red shirts but you’ll know them when you see them.
I think it’s a great joke and has stood the test of time. You should try watching TOS before proclaiming that the joke doesn’t work.
I don’t even care about the people who don’t know which series is which. The whole joke is a fallacy to begin with, and I wish people didn’t actually think it was true.
It always seemed like red shirts were most likely to die, but that’s only because the majority of crew members wore red. Statistically, gold shirts have a much higher fatality rate.
