Sorry to be callous, but it was with some pleasure as well as amusement that I watched the short-lived red-shirt 'Olson' dive to his absolutely inevitable doom at the preview screening of scenes from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek last week. It was a moment put in specifically to give diehard TOS fans a warm glow of nostalgia, if a rather ghoulish one.

TV drama is hard to maintain without fear of death cropping up now and again, but who could you kill in a series like the original Star Trek, or in any series with contracted actors? Guests, for sure - Kirk's uncle, McCoy's ex-girlfriend, Spock's mum's neighbour's plumber…but the principals were safe; unlike the red-shirted security guards who beamed down on 'away' details, whose lifespan was in the territory of a mayfly.

Since the networks had to rifle-shuffle their episodes, any regular 'background talent' on Trek was safe week-to-week, but three days' work on the series in the 'red shirt of death' was a sure sign that something awful was destined to happen to your [undefined] character down on the planet.

YouTuber comedy4cast has paid a glorious editing tribute to these hapless hunks of phaser-fodder…

Number cruncher Matt Bailey worked out that 72% of fatalities on the Enterprise's original five-year mission were red-shirts (assuming the original three seasons covered that particular time span), and the Star Trek media wiki commemorates the fallen in the complete Trek canon death-count.

So I'd just like to thank J.J. for wasting poor Olson in Star Trek, since it brought back a lot of happy memories, and remind the anxious starfleet WAGs and mums that it is possible to reach a grand dotage in the dreaded colour…

Will Chris Pine be merrily slapping yeomen's asses in Summer of 2009?
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