Star Trek’s dumbest redshirt death award goes to a forgotten character from JJ Abrams’ 2009 film

The average Star Trek Redshirt is known for having a nonexistent sense of danger and the physical fortitude of a wet Oreo, but that’s nothing compared to Olsen from JJ Abrams’ 2009 film reboot. While the term is now widely used in film and TV, “redshirt” originated entirely because of Star Trek. The original 1960s series faced a dilemma: characters needed to die to make the bad guys look bad, but Star TrekThe main cast members were dressed head to toe in plot armor.

To navigate this issue, people like Captain Kirk and Spock would normally be accompanied by Enterprise security personnel during their adventures. Said security officers would routinely be killed in short order and usually wore red shirts in accordance with Starfleet uniform regulations. Thus the “redshirt” was born, and the term can now refer to any fictional character introduced primarily for the purpose of dying. Redshirts exist in Star TrekThe Kelvin timeline too, and if Olsen is any indication, are even more unfortunate than their Prime Universe counterparts.

Olsen, from the 2009 Star Trek film, must have the death of the franchise’s dumbest redshirt

As far as Redshirt kills go, Olson was nothing to be proud of

Most of the time, a Star Trek redshirt dies simply because he is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes they might wander too close to a hidden enemy or get a little overzealous with their phaser. On many occasions, the redshirt will simply have the misfortune of being sent to an unexplored area ahead of Captain Kirk and the Enterprise’s high-ranking officers.

Olson’s Star TrekThe 2009 film was a breed apart. Not only was his death completely preventable, Olson himself was the singular cause. The doomed redshirt somehow managed to die without interference from alien enemies, deadly flowers, exploding rocks, or rogue bubbles.

An easily forgettable character, Olsen was the third member of the Enterprise’s diving group on Vulcan. He joined Chris Pine’s Kirk and John Cho’s Sulu by parachuting down to a platform around Nero’s drill. Olson, of course, never made it to that platform, as the tragic engineer chose not to release his parachute until the final few meters. Inevitably, Olson hit the metal structure very hard and was quickly incinerated. by the drill motor.

Why Olson isn’t your average Star Trek redshirt

The more you think about Olsen’s death, the more ridiculous it gets

A few other factors must be considered before Olson receives the title of Star TrekThe dumbest redshirt. Firstly, Olson’s parachute did not fail – the redshirt deliberately avoided deploying it because he was having so much fun during the fall. Secondly, Olson was, at the time of his jump, carrying the explosive charges that his group was to use as a means of blowing up the drill, meaning that a rough landing could have been a fiery, fatal disaster for everyone.

Finally, Olson didn’t deploy the parachute just a fraction after Kirk and Sulu – he waited so long that a safe landing became almost a mathematical impossibility. Kirk himself is a renowned risk taker in Star Trek‘s several movies and TV shows, and famously loves to have fun, but even he knew better than to take any chances with parachutes and gravity.

It can be argued that Olson, seeking excitement, made his choice, knew the risks and had the right to gamble with his own life, like any other extreme sports enthusiast. Of course, this argument ignores how the entire population of Vulcan depended on the Enterprise to disable Nero’s planet-destroying machine. Star Trekredshirts are traditionally unreliable and slow-witted, sure, but Olson endangered an entire race simply because he did something that carried a very obvious and very high chance of death – and then he died.

How Star Trek 2009 Subtly Subverted the Redshirt Trope

You might not have realized Olson was a redshirt right away

An act of stunning stupidity isn’t the only thing that separates Olson from the norm Star Trek red shirt. When the character first appeared as a member of the jumping group, the sight of an unfamiliar face rubbing shoulders with Chris Pine and John Cho gave an immediate signal that the newcomer would soon die. Star Trek then dropped another big clue by having Olson boldly proclaim in one of his precious lines of dialogue: “I can’t wait to kick some Romulan ass.”Nothing screams”red shirt“as a character expressing enthusiasm for combat with racially charged connotations.

Cleverly, however, Olson wasn’t actually wearing a red shirtas the nature of the mission meant that Kirk’s team was dressed in futuristic spacesuits during the jump. In a twist that kept the original trope alive but in a new way, these metallic outfits were still colored with each officer’s corresponding Starfleet colors. Olson may not have been a redshirt in the literal sense, therefore, but he was a “red costume”, playfully playing with the audience’s expectations.

The other subversion was Olson’s surprisingly elevated position. Instead of a regular security guard sent to protect Kirk and Sulu, the character was technically the Enterprise’s chief engineer – the same rank as Montgomery Scott. Maintain such a high position within Star TrekThe fictional hierarchy of may have convinced some viewers that the Olson character would survive. Unfortunately, his astonishing capacity for recklessness ensured otherwise.