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Most gruesome/gratuitous Red Shirt death?

Ragitsu

Commodore
Commodore
Good afternoon.

Movies aside (because The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan will probably take first place), which Red Shirt death in any Star Trek series (or other products, for that matter) have you felt was a bit much?
 
And who could forget Ensign Ricky?

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How about those two poor saps who were beamed into empty space? Don't remember the episode offhand.

"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD", and all because they didn't confirm there was a place for them to transport to.

Should be a safety feature inside the device that at least warns the operator that it is not a planet or solid surface.
 
And the Anti-Wesley crowd says again and again, their words echoing through the next two years until "Final Mission" solves the problem... "why did Wesley have to be off the bridge just then?"
 
Yeoman Thompson got turned into a cube and crushed!

I know that was probably half-meant as a joke, but I maintain that her death really doesn't fit at all with the tone of the rest of the episode. Scotty gets one of the Kelvans drunk, and Kirk and the others confuse them with human emotions, until they are bested, at which point Kirk suggests they can be friends. This wasn't some misunderstanding that gets resolved (or potentially resolved) at thend like with the Gorn or the Horta, nor does it end with an uneasy truce like with the Hirogen at the end of "The Killing Game". You can't have the Kelvans knowingly commit cold-blooded murder and then just be buddies with them at the end.

I've heard that there was an earlier draft with much darker tone. It's possibly this may have just been a holdover from that. Pity no one seemed to realize it.
 
I agree to Remmick. That scene was so over the top (and cheesy) that it became comical and I don't think that was the intention.
 
The most pointless one, that always jumps out at me, is "Civil Defense" when the Cardassian anti-insurrection device materializes in ops and starts shooting people. There is one shot of a red shirt running for cover and getting vaporized. It's literally the only shot we even see this guy in. They didn't even establish him in the wide! Just one insert of some guy we've never seen before dying and that's it, lets just move right along. It really rubs me the wrong way.

For most gruesome, my mind immediately went to the already-cited Yeoman Thompson from "By Any Other Name" and the Ensign in "Where Silence Has Lease." God, the latter is particularly terrifying. The way he gets so child-like as he dies... nightmarish.

One of the IDW Waypoint comics anthology collections had a story that was the life story of Yeoman Thompson, narrating from beyond the grave as she reflects on her historical legacy being "only female crewmember killed during Kirk's 5-year mission." It was great.
 
Icheb's death would beat out even the poor saps in Star Trek II.

Indeed. Especially when you consider that the only reason Icheb's death was that bloody (possibly the very reason Icheb was killed off in the first place), was as a backhanded insult to Manu Intiraymi.

It's like "Manu isn't a nice person, so we're not only going to cancel him, we're going to kill off the character he spent years playing, and we're going to do it in the most over-the-top graphic manner we can get away with. Nanny nanny boo boo."

Oh, and if you're going to bring up what Manu said about Anthony Rapp: Manu apologized for what he said, and Rapp accepted the apology like a gentleman. Linky
 
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Yes, that was "In Theory". The dark matter clearly went through the deck while she was walking, fell between decks, and got stuck and killed because those dark matter pieces were constantly moving.

That one always stuck with me. Proof that you don't need gore to have things be unsettling.
 
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