7. The redshirt with a hole in him
This is the ranking’s most brutal entry and, somehow, one of its funniest. The unnamed redshirt, who gets shot by the Orion captain, does not have the advantage of a famous hairstyle, an established character arc, or a major place in the Strange New Worlds ensemble. What he has is a perfect bit of Star Trek black comedy.
The Orion captain blasts a hole directly through the puppet’s chest! The result is a grim reminder of Trek’s redshirt tradition filtered through puppet-show logic: a fabric body with an actual hole in it. That is the joke. It is blunt, absurd, and entirely suited to the episode. The scene also reflects how deliberately the production designed the puppet action.
The Orion confrontations include characters being thrown, sliced, singed, and otherwise subjected to the sort of exaggerated violence that becomes playful rather than horrifying when the victims are visibly stuffed creations.
The redshirt’s ranking is not about character depth. It is about execution. He has a single, instantly memorable visual punch line that most of the named officers cannot match. In an episode full of gags, he may be the purest example of the writers and production team understanding exactly how far they can push the premise.
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