Red Shirt Phenomenon

I have always been a fan of Star Trek, for as long as I can remember, and being a night owl I can usually catch re-runs on one of the late-night cable programs. Growing up, I always wondered, "Why would any crew member on the Enterprise want to wear a red shirt? They're just going to end up dead."

As a child, there was little I could do to satisfy this morbid curiosity I had about the ill-fated red shirts aboard the USS Enterprise, but in the age of the world wide web, I just KNEW there had to be others who wondered the same thing. Of course, I turned to Google to give me the answer:

Analytics according to Captain Kirk by Matt Bailey

It's amazing! It's wonderful! It has statistics and graphs and charts. Now I am confident there is at least one other human being walking the planet who has a curiosity as rabid as my own (actually, maybe even more so, since I probably would not have gone to the lengths necessary to create such a detailed analysis).

I know, of course, not all members of the crew who perish wear a red shirt. In fact, some blue shirts and gold shirts have also met an untimely death, but....

I also found a wealth of information about the "Red Shirt Phenomenon" at Wikipedia, which has a collection of great information and trivia about red shirts.

I knew it wasn't my imagination but have to chuckle over the fact that so many others have put as much or more thought into the issue as I have. I guess I need to "get out more" and I would have had this curiosity satisfied years ago.