Funny / Redshirts

Tropes Applied to the novel by John Scalzi:

• The newly enrolled junior officers of the Intrepid are first hit with a serious Wham Line: their reality is being warped to follow the 'continuity' of a 21st-century TV show. And then the second, funny Wham Line:
  Jenkins: But that's not the worst thing about it.
  Finn: Jesus Christ. If that's not the worst thing, what is?
  Jenkins: It's not actually a very good show.
• There is a Box of unknown origin that only the lower-ranking members of the Intrepid's science crew know about. It can deduce anything, but only when it's an emergency, and always takes until the last minute. It goes ding when there's stuff, and, needless to say, whatever you put inside it spins.
• The only physical description we get of Jenkins is that he is a Yeti. It isn't immediately clear if we are supposed to picture an irate furry hominid or just a dude with really shaggy hair. When we meet his actor later on, it's noted that he's better groomed than Jenkins, and the actor notes that this is the first time anyone's described him as relatively well-groomed.
• More than a few of the ensigns seem more annoyed than horrified at their impending horrific deaths.
• What happens when Kerensky meets Mark Corey, the actor who plays him. They end up spending the night just talking to each other. Kerensky even denounces the others for thinking he was doing "some sort of time-traveling incestuous masturbation thing". Duvall implies that she would have gone for the time-traveling incestuous masturbation thing. When Dahl notes that he didn't and nobody questioned that, she points out that he's a prude.
• The ensigns get bogged down - much in the way geeks would - arguing over the concept of "ice sharks", trying to figure out if they are sharks living in ice or if they're sharks made of ice.
• People (both the fictional characters and real life ones) keep complaining to Weinstein about the worms from the prologue. The worms weren't his idea, he was on vacation at the time and couldn't veto them, and the studio got sued by the Herbert estate for it. He seems to be more upset about the worm thing than he is about the discovery that he has been unintentionally killing people with his writing.
• Hester tries to rib Duvall about sleeping with Kerensky once that comes to light. She manages to take him down a peg and remind him of their overall predicament in a single retort.
  Hester: Your boyfriend has an action figure!
  Duvall: And you don't! In this universe, that's a problem.

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