When the Enterprise gets back from its five year mission exploring the Universe and getting into all kinds of scrapes and tight spots what must the debriefing look like? One thing that Starfleet High Command might want to question is why there seems to be a much lower roll call of Redshirted crew members than those wearing other colours. They left with a full load and now they seem to be down by some twenty five percent? Any reasons why?
This is where a bit of fast talk from the Captain will not be enough. What he needs to provide is hard statistical evidence that it isn’t true that your chances of surviving an away mission on some god forsaken planet in the armpit of the Galaxy are greatly reduced if you are wearing Red. He has prepared for this by taking the notes he’s written down on PDF and used a PDF to Excel firm so that Starfleet Command can read it via Federation Email and get a pictorial diagram.
He could argue that, yes the Red shirts are in the majority but he and his fellow Yellow shirts are not far behind. He could also argue that statistically there are more red shirts on board so the ratio to meeting your demise if you are wearing gold is actually pretty bad.