Redshirts
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In the recent past, this widely-acknowledged trope has become a key tenet of Trek-based humor and a real boon for the crappy merchandise industry. But the truth is, redshirts aren't suspiciously fatally doomed like Spinal Tap drummers or Kevin Spacey accusers. Star Trek fan and mathematician James Grime actually crunched the numbers and, statistically, being a redshirt on the Enterprise wasn't such a bad gig after all. Yes, we saw more redshirts die on screen, but that's because there were just way more officers in red uniforms.
According to Grime's research, 25 redshirts died, but that's out of a population of 239 crew members in red uniforms, which is around 10%. On the other hand, just 10 goldshirts died over the course of the show, but there were only 55 on board, which is about 18%. So, if we go by the numbers, it was actually safer to be a redshirt than to wear a gold uniform. Although arguably no one was super-safe while hurtling through the black void of space in a ship commanded by a drunken sex fiend in a bad toupee.
