This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
The quote at the top is attributed to Red Dwarf. I didn't know the Red Dwarf was capable of speaking. Its computer can speak, but not the ship. Nor can stars speak, unless we're in the wrong universe. If it's attributed to a show, I didn't know a show could speak, either.
Rothul: Quote attribution fixed (the episode is "Dimension Jump" incidentally). No need to be passive-aggressive here.
KJMackley: I took out a lot of stuff because people were listing minor characters as a Mauve Shirt even though they didn't die. The whole point of the Mauve shirt is "A Red Shirt with more personality." I only left in the Galaxy Quest example because it parodies the whole Red Shirt, Plucky Comic Relief and main character evolution of a character. To see what I took out, just look below.
- This troper feels dirty mentioning Star Wars in a Star Trek inspired trope, but Wedge Antilles fits the bill, since he is the only X-Wing pilot to survive both assaults on the Death Star. He's George Lucas's "dedicated survivor."
- Wedge qualifies for full Ascended Extra status in the Expanded Universe: he and Rogue Squadron star in a series of books, comics, AND video games. He will likely be one of the next long-established characters to be killed to show that the next threat is Even Bigger And Seriouser than all the ones before it, but he's managed not only to last a long time but also to recurr, unlike many characters of his stripe who get phased out or outright forgotten.
- It's doubtful that the Expanded Universe authors will kill off Wedge. By this point he's got enough Plot Armor to wade through anything and he's a big enough draw for the fans that killing him off would be a bad idea. More likely, he's going to get hit with the Heroic BSoD when they kill off Janson, Hobbie, or Tycho.
- Wedge qualifies for full Ascended Extra status in the Expanded Universe: he and Rogue Squadron star in a series of books, comics, AND video games. He will likely be one of the next long-established characters to be killed to show that the next threat is Even Bigger And Seriouser than all the ones before it, but he's managed not only to last a long time but also to recurr, unlike many characters of his stripe who get phased out or outright forgotten.
- In Star Trek The Next Generation, Chief O'Brien started off at the beginning of the series as an unnamed CONN Officer (incidentally in a red shirt) and over the course of the series became the Transporter Chief with a wife and eventually a child (and a new gold uniform). This all led to him even becoming a main cast member of the next Star Trek spin-off series, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, earning himself even more screen time (and another child!). A word on color, however: in TNG, the gold shirt was worn by security personnel, and the red was worn by command staff, in a direct inversion of TOS.
- In fact, the original Red Shirts from Star Trek got this treatment at first, usually getting a name and some Backstory before being either horribly killed by the Monster of the Week or driven to insanity by the Negative Space Wedgie. They stopped doing this around the end of the first season, when they realized they weren't fooling anyone. Yeoman Rand is arguably a special case, since her job description appears to be the two words "get kidnapped," yet she's always safe in her bunk by the end of the episode.
- And Ensign Harry Kim from Star Trek Voyager, who's probably worse off than a Red Shirt, since he dies multiple times, a la Daniel Jackson.
- Steven Caldwell, captain of the Daedalus in Stargate Atlantis also seems to be bucking the trend, still being alive and kicking after the better part of three seasons and numerous appearance as well as more ship-to-ship combat and encounters with freaky alien technology then most of the rest of the SGC fleet combined (Hell, he was even host of a Goa'uld at one point, which is usually a death sentence, or at least a Put on a Bus sentence), but never quite graduating into the ranks of the main cast.
- Don't forget Major Lorne. He has been around for forever and is still hanging on.
- In fact, the original Red Shirts from Star Trek got this treatment at first, usually getting a name and some Backstory before being either horribly killed by the Monster of the Week or driven to insanity by the Negative Space Wedgie. They stopped doing this around the end of the first season, when they realized they weren't fooling anyone. Yeoman Rand is arguably a special case, since her job description appears to be the two words "get kidnapped," yet she's always safe in her bunk by the end of the episode.
- Star Trek, in addition to being the Trope Namer for the Red Shirt concept, also gave us what could be considered the original Mauve Shirt in the form of Montgomery "Scotty" Scott. His shirt is just as red as the random expendable nobodies, but he survives the entire series plus all six movies, and even goes on to guest star in a The Next Generation episode a century after the end of The Original Series.
- He did die once. He got better.
- Well, it is a side-effect of the engineering personnel having red shirts just like the security personnel. What it comes down to is that it was the security personnel who were always getting killed because they went on the away teams as protection. Their shirts just so happened to be red. Scotty was chief of engineering rather than security, so he had fewer opportunities to die. He was also part of the main cast. If anything, he's an example of why the concept of Red Shirt is more about a set of characters who always get killed off than the color of their shirts. So Scotty obviously isn't part of the Red Shirt Army and since he's pretty much part of the main cast, he's arguably more gold shirt than mauve.
- A better example might be Mister Leslie, a red-shirted security guard who appeared in almost 60 episodes (including several where he spoke) without dying.
- Leslie did die. He got better thanks to the continuity editor not being particularly careful.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise has its Red Coats, the nameless hordes of collateral Navy damage, from which — over the course of three movies — Murtogg and Mullroy defect into the ranks of the pirates, and Lieutenant Groves (recognizable by his increasingly dreamy-eyed admiration for Jack Sparrow) manages to survive the dual-sinking of the Endeavour.
- The stuttering soldier in Pans Labyrinth is one of the only members of La Résistance with any memorable charcteristics (namely, his stuttering). Later in the movie, he's taken prisoner and tortured by the Captain Vidal.
- Zack, from Babylon 5, more or less starts as a Mauve Shirt, then moves up to main cast around season four.
- Don't forget about David Corwin!
- Johnny Sasaki (and his father as a Russian soldier in MGS 3) has made an appearance in all 4 MGS games. He is recognized as the mook that always has diarrhea. In MGS 4, where he actually becomes a main character, the explanation given was that because of his fear of needles, he refused to have the nanomachines implanted that are standardly given to the supersoldier units. The nanomachines have antiviral and antibacterial powers, so the implanted never get sick. Based on how many times he's contracted the rotovirus, one might be surprised that he never naturally developed an immunity.
