An obsessive investigation into "Star Trek" redshirt deaths

Since we’re dealing with obtuse math today, here’s a “Star Trek” geek/wonk analyzing the death rate of redshirts on the original starship Enterprise:

“The Enterprise has a crew of 430 (startrek.com) in its five-year mission. (Now, I know that the show was only on the air for 3 years, but bear with me. 80 episodes were produced, which gives us the data to build from.) 59 crewmembers were killed during the mission, which comes out to 13.7% of the crew. So, that will be our overall conversion rate, 13.7%. …

“However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need:
* Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)
* Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)
* Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4
* Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%) …

“Another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks' 24 "relationships" there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.

“The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts). …

“Probability of a red-shirt casualty= 53%

14% of fights ended in a fatality (with a 72% chance the fatality wore a red shirt)

Probability of a red-shirt "incident" when Kirk has a "conquest" = 12% …

“The red-shirt survival rate is slightly higher when Kirk meets women than when a fight breaks out. This trend necessitates the question: How often did Captain Kirk "meet" women? In 30% of the missions. …

“Unless we dug into Kirk's personal life, we may never have spotted the contrast of Kirk's attraction to alien females as it related to saving red-shirt crewmen's lives. … Depending upon your approach, you could either doom the project, and future red-shirted crewmen, or you could be visiting planets full of peaceful alien women.”

What all this means, I guess, is that “Star Trek’s” redshirts were about as safe as our nation’s bridges, regardless of whether Captain Kirk was scoring with some alien pulchritude.