Magic: The Gathering’s Star Trek Set Perfectly Captures the Sci-Fi Series’ Most Brutal Running Joke

Creature tokens let Magic: The Gathering players stretch their resources. They can be sacrificed for valuable effects, thrown in front of attackers as chump blockers, or gathered into a force large enough to overwhelm an opponent. Most token-makers produce creatures that match their card’s color: Secure the Wastes creates white Warriors, Deranged Hermit makes green Squirrels, and Ghoulish Procession produces black Zombies. The Magic: The Gathering Star Trek set takes a different approach: cards across several colors create 1/1 red Officer tokens. That includes white’s Captain Benjamin Sisko and green’s MACO Strike Team. The unusual choice references one of the franchise’s most enduring—and grim—jokes.

In Star Trek: The Original Series, the color of a Starfleet officer’s uniform signaled their role. Captain James T. Kirk wore gold, while Spock and Dr. Leonard McCoy wore blue, the color associated with science and medicine. Red uniforms marked operations and security, and were worn by characters such as chief engineer Montgomery Scott and communications officer Nyota Uhura.

The U.S.S. Enterprise’s five-year mission took its crew to unfamiliar worlds in search of new life and civilizations. When the ship sent a landing party to investigate, senior officers were often accompanied by extra security or operations staff. Those unnamed red-uniformed crew members frequently died, giving the story a sense of danger without putting a central character at risk. They became known as “redshirts.” The card art for the removal spell He’s Dead, Jim captures the joke: McCoy examines a fallen redshirt on an alien world before delivering the bad news to Kirk.

Redshirts left a lasting mark on pop culture

Star Trek: The Next Generation reassigned the uniform colors: red became the color of command, worn by Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Commander William T. Riker. The show found other ways to signal danger, often by putting Chief of Security Worf through the wringer. Still, “redshirt” had already become a familiar name for a doomed extra, and the term endured.

The trope has since inspired plenty of playful nods. John Scalzi’s Hugo Award-winning novel Redshirts follows an ensign aboard a starship where the crew fears away missions—and even spending time near senior officers—because of the alarming death rate. In the Star Trek spoof Galaxy Quest, Sam Rockwell plays Guy Fleegman, an actor whose nameless character is killed almost immediately in a single episode. When aliens abduct the cast, Guy expects to meet the same fate. Instead, he survives and eventually becomes the reboot’s chief of security.

The red Officer tokens in Magic’s Star Trek set bring the redshirt gag straight to the battlefield. These expendable 1/1 creatures can block attacks or be sacrificed to effects such as General Chang, Cold Warrior, helping keep more valuable cards safe. They may also fall victim to the Borg, who create 1/1 tokens of their own. Officers aren’t only cannon fodder, though: they can help Station Spacecraft, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard can use them to find a Spacecraft in your deck and put it onto the battlefield.

Assigning characters and concepts from other franchises to Magic’s five colors can be a challenge for Universes Beyond sets. In Magic’s Star Trek release, characters are generally sorted by personality rather than uniform color, though the two sometimes line up—as with Will Riker, First in the Field and Mr. Spock, Science Officer. Token-making is most often associated with white, which commonly creates 1/1 creatures such as the Soldiers from Resolute Reinforcements or the Monks from Monastery Mentor. Making the Starfleet Officers red, whatever a card’s main color, is a clear tribute to the franchise’s famously expendable crew members.

Source: Polygon