They died with their boots on. Live young, die red. Better red than dead (actually both). Gotta be a boomer on this one. They were expendable, “Its just a flesh wound” – not with this bunch, they were not only merely dead, they were really most sincerely dead. Hell they could take Spock’s brain out and he’d be fine, he had the right color shirt. Redshirts must have had a sign on their back, “Shoot me!” Dead man walking. I bet they couldn’t get a Life Insurance policy for shit. A long-term lease was out of the question. “We’re gonna need another redshirt!” The double whammy was a black guy with a redshirt, they were living on borrowed time. Live long and prosper Redshirt! (“Long” being the operational phrase here. They were like the Fruit Fly of the space world.) These guys were Security Detail, couldn’t they have given them some phaser proof vests?

Fighting soldiers from the sky
Fearless men who jump and die
Men who mean just what they say
The brave men of the Red Beret

Trained to live off nature’s land
Trained in combat hand to hand
Men who fight by night and day
Courage take from the Red Beret

Silver wings upon their chest,
These are men America’s best.
One hundred men will test today,
But only three win the Red Beret

Back at home a young wife waits
Her Red Beret has met his fate
He had died for those oppressed
Leaving her this last request

“A redshirt and a stormtrooper get into a fight, the stormtrooper misses every shot and the redshirt dies anyway.”