Star Trek Redshirts get eaten in this classic FoxTrot Christmas comic
By Chad Porto
Star Trek redshirts get no respect in this classic FoxTrot Christmas comic.
It’s a hard life for redshirts. Even in holiday-themed cartoon-ery, redshirts are in danger. In his classic FoxTrot comic strip, we see the youngest son Jason engaging in some Christmas pastimes, namely baking holiday-themed cookies. Only his cookies aren’t trees or ornaments like you’d typically see this time of year.
No, they’re gingerbread men, redshirted gingerbread men. A wicked twist on a holiday tradition, and like with any other holiday that involves Star Trek, it’s likely to head towards a sweet, sweet end.
The comic probably wouldn’t resonate with non-Star Trek fans as much, as the term “red shirt” is pretty obscure and isn’t so acknowledged anymore outside of the fandom. Luckily for those reading the comment section on the post they’re going to be pretty well informed why the joke still holds up.
Redshirts continue to be an iconic Star Trek reference
The term “redshirts”, for those new to the fandom, references a recurring joke about the original series. In the 1960s, anyone wearing a “red shirt” was part of the security and engineering portion of the ship.
That means that if you went down to some new planet, you’d take a bunch of them with you. What better way to ramp up tensions for the main characters than to kill off a bunch of underlings. It helps set the tension and the mood for the episode at hand.
It became far more of a meme and a franchise joke after a while, and with the launch of Star Trek: The Next Generation, red became the command color, while gold became the color for engineering and security, effectively ending the gag.
Still, jokes about redshirts still exist, even to this day. It’s why our website is named what it is.
As for FoxTrot the comic, while comic strips have gone the way of the newspaper, social media websites like Instagram have become a bit of a new home for them. FoxTrot is a comic that follows Jason Fox and his family as they deal with their families’ zaniness. Bill Amend is using Instagram to post his comic, with he’s still creating new scenes for. Only now, he’s focusing on the social media age, as opposed to just a comic strip in a newspaper.