15 Comments

1. 

   I guess if the kid can find nine other boys that are 1/8th Jewish, they can form a mini-yan.

   (Kids, if you’re going to make a pitch that you’re Jewish don’t blow it for crappy Hanukkah presents. Do it for Purim so you can score some underage booze.)

2. 

   Geezer confession: the Foxtrot entry is a C that I DU.

3. 

   @Ooten, I don’t know if it was official part of the writers’ “bible” or just a well-established fan observation, but: When they had crew characters whom the plot required killing off, they would be dressed in red shirts. This also could become a noun, “there were several redshirts in that scene”.

4. 

   Although later rigorous statistical analysis showed that Red Shirts were no more likely to die than Yellow Shirts or Blue Shirts (though I don’t know if that is collectively, or individually…) Anyway, I think that a statistical analysis excludes the egregiousness of the callousness of the expendability of Red Shirts: when a Yellow Shirt dies, it is a serious plot point and remembered; when a Red Shirt dies, it’s just Tuesday (or whatever — stardate 2/7). (I have no evidence to back up any of my assertions.)

   While we’re being picky, a grandfather who is Jewish doesn’t make you anything…

5. 

   (wouldn’t the Beavers “go Chewish”? try the roast beef…)

6. 

   Nice roundup, thanks

7. 

   John Scalzi even wrote a book called Redshirts that’s sort of a parody of the situation.

8. 

   Redshirts were security personnel (in the original series – they changed up the colors for later series, I believe entirely to short-circuit that meme). So they were the ones who went first into any dangerous situation, and yes, if someone died (or was severely injured) it was very likely to be a redshirt.

9. 

   
   Berber (5): 🤪👏😄
   

10. 

    One of the notable actual Red Shirts was Yeoman Thompson, played by the gorgeous Julie Cobb. First female one to suffer the legendary fate.

    

11. 

    Brian, there’s a nice short comic story in Star Trek: Waypoint #2 (2016) called “Legacy”, and it’s about Yeoman Thompson’s legacy, told in first person as she dies. Beautiful story, and it shows her as having been instrumental in some other pivotal Enterprise events even if Julie Cobb didn’t actually appear on screen in those episodes.

12. 

    It would have been interesting to have characters like Thompson appear in multiple episodes over time before meeting their fates. That would have been a lot more shocking. That’s something a TV series could pull off these days, although probably a really hard sell in the 60s.

13. 

    Is 1/8 of a bris a brisket?

14. 

    Da Bar!

15. 

    Andrew Millar – Never got any wine for Purim – only Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur.