Red Shirt

Kirk: All right, men, this is a dangerous mission. And it's likely one of us will be killed. The landing party will consist of myself, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Ensign Ricky.
Ensign Ricky: Aw, crap.
      ~Family Guy

This is the Good Counterpart of Evil Minions and Mooks — set filler for our heroes' side. Their purpose is almost exclusively to give the writers someone to kill who isn't a main character, although they can also serve as Spear Carriers. In a series where The Main Characters Do Everything, if you suddenly see someone else who you've never seen before involved in the main story, they are probably Redshirts.

They are used to show how the monster works, and demonstrate that it is indeed a deadly menace, without having to lose anyone important. Expect someone to say "He's Dead, Jim", lament this "valued crew member's senseless death", and then promptly forget him. Security personnel in general fall victim to the worst shade of this trope, as most of the time their deaths aren't even acknowledged at all; according to Hollywood, you could walk into a bank and shoot a security guard right in the face without anyone making a fuss. If you shot anyone else afterward, the headline would just read "Bank Customers Killed".

Please note: this Trope is actually very inaccurate when you compare it to Real Life. If you were to watch every episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, count the number of casualties that the Enterprise had, and then compare that to an actual military, you'd see that Kirk's record as a leader in this regard is excellent, far better than any general in U.S. history. Even war heroes like George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower had proportionately more casualties among their troops.

Also note that while this trope was true in a strictly numerical sense for the original Star Trek series (25 crew member died with red shirts on, 10 with gold, and 8 with blue), it is not true in terms of the percentage of red shirts shown. In percentages to total crew, 10 percent of red shirts died, against 18 percent of gold shirts.

In mass quantities, they make up the Red Shirt Army. Frequently overlaps with Men Are the Expendable Gender and Black Dude Dies First.

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Image: Star Trek: A Red Shirt in his natural state.

[ed. We're all red shirts in this crazy reality show.]