Nice, Irony. I had originally meant for the cannon to fire actual red shirts, not the people who wear them. This might be better, though.
This just gave me an idea. The central personnel of a spaceship, The Enervation, gained their strength/smarts/importance by draining the rookie recruits of their metaphysical significance. Bound to the captains, the Redshirts would always be the ones to die when Fate designated their captain to die. Only the captains knew this, and seemingly nothing could change this. That is, until a warp speed accident causes them to encounter a metaphysical entity that punishes them by returning the Crew's significance and letting Fate finally kill the captains. However, the ship is now left in unidentified space with no particularly capable crew members to save them. Thankfully, the accident has left huge amounts of Signifigance in the fabric of space, which lets the crew develop and grow at astonishing rates!
Players would be the Redshirts, and while they would start off with no actual skills, they would have Preferences that make it easier to learn certain types of skills. Preferences could be for things like Biology, Arms, Navigation, or even Loving, Seriousness, and the Obvious! These Preferences and their gained skills then lead to Roles that one would find in Space Drama and other media, such as the Incompetent Assistant, Attractive Scientist, and even the Overprotective Father or Risk-Taking Youth, each with their own benefits! Would the crew be able to become The Next Next Generation? Do they even still want to? Either way, can they change their fate and survive the cold, lonely void of space?