In the fictional Star Trek universe enlisted personnel and officers in the United Earth Starfleet and, later, the United Federation of Planets' Starfleet wear a variety of uniforms.
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Throughout The Original Series, male officers on the USS Enterprise wear a colored shirt with a delta on the right breast, dark gray pants which appeared black on camera,[1] and black boots; female officers wear a uniform skirt, black tights and boots, although they occasionally wear the "male" uniform. The skirts' shortness is commented upon in "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9); Nichelle Nichols, however, did not believe that the miniskirts were unusually short or revealing:
I was wearing them on the street. What's wrong with wearing them in the air? I wore 'em on airplanes. It was the era of the miniskirt. Everybody wore miniskirts.[2]
Rank is indicated by gold solid or dotted braids on the sleeves. The shirt color indicates crew members' branch. In the pilot episodes, command personnel wear chartreuse (which tended to look gold or yellow on film)[3][4], science and medical personnel wear blue, security wears red and operations wear beige, each with a matching colored collar and undershirt (TOS: "The Cage", "Where No Man Has Gone Before"). When Star Trek went into regular production, the department colors were altered: command and helm personnel wear the green/gold shirts, operations, engineering and security personnel wear red, and science and medical personnel wear blue, all with black collars and undershirts (TOS: "The Man Trap"). Certain operations and engineering personnel wore red jumpsuits with white undershirts. The frequent death of red-uniformed security officers led to the coining of the popular term redshirt.
Insignia within the delta logo also indicate the wearer's branch: a star indicates command, a circle crossed by an oval indicates science and medical, and an angular spiral indicates operations and engineering. However, in the second pilot only, the science/medical and engineering/operations symbols were reversed ("Where No Man Has Gone Before").
In the first pilot, "The Cage", the uniforms also include gray coats with silver rank stripes on the sleeves, worn on away missions, and an optional gray cap. On occasion, Captain James T. Kirk wears a green shirt (TOS: "The Trouble With Tribbles"). Such tunics are shown both with the rank stripes on the sleeves and on the shoulders (TOS: "The Enemy Within"), and always feature the assignment patch near the waist as a belt fastener.
Officers assigned to other starships or starbases wear the same uniforms, but with the arrowhead replaced by different logos or "assignment patches" representing the ship or base on which they are stationed (TOS: "Court Martial", "The Doomsday Machine", et al.).
On certain occasions, the characters wear dress uniforms (TOS: "Journey to Babel", "Court Martial") that are made of a shinier fabric and are decorated with gold piping and colored badges that vary depending on rank. (TOS: "Court Martial"). The command uniform's true chartreuse color is most easily identified from these fabrics which were less affected by the lighting.
The original shirt & skirt material itself was velour. Used in the first and second seasons, it shrank after it was dry-cleaned and tore easily, so it was replaced in the third season by a nylon fabric used in professional baseball uniforms.
The uniforms on Star Trek were designed by staff costume designer William Ware Theiss.
Based on the success and increasing popularity of Star Trek in syndication, an animated version of the series was produced from 1973 to 1974. The uniforms depicted in this series matched the general parameters and appearance of those used in the live action series. However, the perception by fans of the command uniforms being yellow/gold instead of green, thanks to set lighting and other factors, resulted in the producers committing to a definitive gold-color for animation purposes. However, the command dress uniforms remained green to match the perceived colors represented by the live action series, though the uniform pants were gray as they were in the live action series.
The original plans for the aborted Star Trek: Phase Two television series involved retaining TOS uniforms, but when the project became Star Trek: The Motion Picture, they were replaced by a new design.[5] The film has multiple uniform styles, including one-piece jumpsuits, matching shirt and pants, and tunics either with buttons or a sash around the waist. All uniform variants include shoes built into the pantlegs. Some uniforms have short sleeves, while others are long-sleeved, with either standing, v-neck, or turnover collars. Uniforms come in gray, white, gray and white, blue, brown, and beige.
Most all the uniforms in the first movie also included a noticeable "perscan" medical monitoring device, mentioned in the Gene Roddenberry's novelization of "The Motion Picture", which appears on the uniforms in the position where one would expect to see a belt buckle.
Rank is indicated by braids on long sleeves or on shoulder boards, identical to TOS.
Security guards wear white uniforms with brown helmets and breastplates. Engineers wear thick white spacesuits with large, black, ribbed collars.
In "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture," Susan Sackett and Gene Roddenberry wrote that the uniforms were redesigned because the bright colors of the 1960s original, so vibrant on television, would distract viewer attention on the big screen. But the designs proved unpopular with their wearers, and when he took over as producer of the motion pictures, Harve Bennett ordered the uniforms redesigned because he did not want "an all-gray crew on an all-gray ship."
The uniforms were redesigned for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The second movie-era uniform consists of a burgundy single-breasted jacket with a black stripe along a sealing mechanism (admirals also had smaller gold stripes below, the number depending on rank), with a colored strip, used to close the tunic, over the right shoulder designating division, attached to which is a rank pin. A white, gold, grey, dark green, light green, dark blue, light blue or red colored turtle-neck under the jacket indicates division. All officer uniforms have a division colored stripe on the outside of the legs on the trousers or skirt that matches the shoulder strap and service bar, except for command branch, whose leg stripes are red and not white. This costume was nicknamed the "Monster Maroons."
An alternate "bomber" jacket was worn by Kirk and Scott, as well as Admiral Morrow (Star Trek III: The Search For Spock,Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). In later years Scotty would often remove the jacket all together, simply wearing a black vest, with numerous pockets useful for an engineer, with his undershirt. Scotty's undershirt itself was inconsistent - wearing a white shirt (consistent with his rank of Captain) with the vest or bomber, but a gold one (used by Engineering crew) with his formal duty tunic.
All uniforms include the arrowhead insignia from TOS, now adopted as the Starfleet emblem, on the left chest. Characters also wear a black belt with a buckle shaped like the Starfleet arrowhead.
Security and engineering personnel wear armor and radiation suits, respectively, similar to those worn in The Motion Picture, although security guards wear a red, turtle-necked uniform underneath (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country). The engineering radiation suits have a colored collar ("Star Trek II"): black indicates officer, red indicates cadet. There is also a field jacket for away missions with several large pockets, arm patches, white ribbing and a large white turnover collar. Starfleet cadets in The Wrath of Khan wear the same uniforms as officers, but with bright red undershirts and a red shoulder strap instead of one indicating department.
Enlisted personnel wear a one-piece red jumpsuit (similar color as the officer uniform) with tan shoulders and upper chest and black undershirts. Enlisted trainees wore the same uniform, substituting the black undershirt for a red one. (Star Trek II).
Uniforms similar to this style are still in use at least as late as the 2340s, although without the turtle-neck or belt (TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Dark Page", "Family, "Violations"). The TNG episode "Cause and Effect" shows that they were in use as early as 2278.
The Starfleet officers and crewmembers seen in The Next Generation wear a jumpsuit with a Starfleet communicator badge (or 'commbadge' as it was sometimes called) on the left chest and rank insignia on the right side of the collar. The uniforms' sleeves and abdominal area are colored to indicate the individual's branch, with red indicating command and helm; gold for engineering, security, and operations; and blue for science and medical (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"). The division colors for command and operations switched from those used in Enterprise and TOS as Benjamin Sisko tells Julian Bashir in the DS9 episode: "Trials and Tribble-ations". In early episodes some crew members, male and female, can be seen wearing a tunic version of the uniform with bare legs and boots,an homage to the women's uniforms in TOS.
Beverly Crusher sometimes wears a blue labcoat above her standard uniform (TNG: "The Naked Now"). The blue tended to appear teal under certain lighting conditions in the later seasons and subsequent spinoffs. In some episodes of the later seasons, Jean-Luc Picard would sometimes wear a different uniform that consisted of a grey shirt with ribbed black shoulders and collar with a "bomber jacket" that was red overall with black ribbed shoulders, often worn open or very loosely fastened. The uniforms could be fitted with pouches for carrying tricorders and Type 2 phasers on the waist, and the early versions had a small pocket built in on the left side of the waist for carrying a smaller Type 1 phaser when appearing openly armed was not desired. The removable gear pouches were also incorporated into the uniforms used in DS9 and the TNG-era films from First Contact onward.
| “ | We hated our space suits. There were no pockets in them. As much as they call it a stretch fabric, spandex in that configuration doesn't give all that much. It hid nothing. | ” |
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—LeVar Burton, on the first two seasons' uniforms[6] |
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In the show's early seasons, the uniforms were one-piece jumpsuits made of Spandex, and sized slightly too small so that they would be stretched when worn and provide a smooth appearance. The cast disliked the uniforms' painfully tight fit and lack of pockets,[6] and after Patrick Stewart's chiropractor warned that they risked permanent injury, the actors persuaded the costumers to gradually replace them with wool uniforms.[7] The wool uniforms, which most main cast members wear from the third season onward, are two-piece (shirt and pants) designs that lack colored piping on the shoulders and edges of the pant leg cuffs and have a raised collar. The collar of the shirt has a colored edge of a width similar to that of the original diamond-shaped shoulder piping. The spandex uniforms continued to make appearances throughout TNG, usually worn by extras in various scenes. These were later altered to lack the piping on the shoulders and trouser hems and include a raised collar as a cost-cutting measure.
Admirals wore numerous different uniform variations in the early years of TNG - beginning in the sixth season, a final design was settled on, featuring an untucked jacket with gold piping along a centered enclosure on the front, and rank pips (indicating the number of "stars"), encased in a gold square, on both sides of the collar.
The TNG dress uniform, which continued to be used in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, is a colored wraparound robe-like coat of a solid division color, save for black shoulders. The edges of the robe-like coats are piped in silver for field officers and in gold for flag officers.
Other uniform designs appeared briefly in individual episodes - always following the theme of a coloured or differentiated shoulder yoke. Examples include cadet uniforms in several episodes (including "The First Duty"). Wesley Crusher's 'Acting Ensign' grey costume was never specifically identified as a uniform, but it also exhibited a shoulder yoke design.
Theiss, the costume designer from the original series, returned to design the initial TNG uniforms. The costumes adopted from season 3 onwards and later series' costumes were designed by Robert Blackman.
Deep Space Nine introduced a new style of uniform that appeared to run in parallel to the one seen on TNG. The new uniform comprised a single-piece open-necked jumpsuit with the colored and black areas reversed (in other words, black torso and colored shoulders). A grey turtleneck was added (though the lighting tended to give the grey a slightly purple appearance), to which rank pips are affixed. The character of Major Kira wore an orange (the Bajoran command colour) jumpsuit over a white undershirt/blouse with Bajoran symbols that indicated her rank. This was because she was not a member of Starfleet but rather the Bajoran liaison to Deep Space 9. She retained this uniform (and a blue dress version) until she took command of the station at the end of the series, when she switched to the gray over-all over traditional uniform that had become standard by that time. Security Chief Odo also 'wore' (his clothes were actually part of the current form he had shape shifted into) a brown Bajoran security uniform , as he was also not a member of Starfleet.
The station's crew still wear TNG style dress uniforms (DS9: "Move Along Home"), and both TNG- and DS9-style uniforms appear side by side in TNG's "Birthright, Part I" and DS9's "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost", as well as the series' pilot, "Emissary".
Throughout the run of DS9, ship-based Starfleet personnel continue to wear the old TNG uniform design. The new design may therefore have been intended as an alternate 'class' of uniform for the different environment of the space station, as in a scene in "The Maquis, Part I" Commander Sisko can be seen wearing the new style uniform while Commander Hudson can be seen wearing the old style. Sisko also wore the TNG uniform on certain formal occasions and during his first arrival at DS9. He would revert to this uniform again when he was temporarily given the duties of "Head of Security" for Starfleet Headquarters. Admirals also retained the TNG style.
Following the release of Star Trek: First Contact, the new grey movie uniform design also appeared in DS9's fifth season and for the remainder of the series.
New uniforms were designed and made for the movie Star Trek Generations, but were abandoned at the last minute. Nonetheless, Playmates launched a number of action figures, wearing these planned uniforms.[8] Generations has the crew wearing both TNG and DS9/VOY uniforms, sometimes in the same scene (for instance, Worf and Riker in the battle against the Duras Sisters' Bird of Prey or Data and Geordi scanning the Amargosa Observatory for trilithium).
As the movie progresses, some characters change from old to new uniform designs but also back again (such as Captain Picard in the film's final scene). This would act as an introduction of the new design as standard shipboard wear for Star Trek: Voyager.
The new style combadge (with the gold oval background of the TNG combage replaced by a rectangular gold background with a cutout in the center) was also introduced for all uniform types, and subsequently adopted for DS9 at the beginning of its third season.
The crew in Star Trek: Voyager use the same uniforms seen in the early episodes of Deep Space Nine throughout the show's run. Stuck in the Delta Quadrant and out of contact with Starfleet, Unlike the Deep Space Nine crew, the Voyager crew never makes the switch to the updated uniform seen in later DS9 episodes, Although in the episode ""Message in a bottle"" in season 4 of the series the EMH mark II is wearing the updated "DS9" uniform. Starfleet personnel back in the Alpha Quadrant are seen wearing this uniform in later seasons of the show as well, when Voyager manages to reestablish contact with home. The crew also wears the TNG style dress uniforms (VOY: "Course: Oblivion", "Someone to Watch Over Me", "One Small Step", "Ashes to Ashes").[9]
B'Elanna Torres is sometimes seen wearing an overcoat over her normal uniform which matches the colors of her normal uniform, but has a pocket on the right breast for carrying small tools. The jacket was used in an attempt to hide actress Roxann Dawson's pregnancy. She wore it again when her character became pregnant, beginning in the episode "Q2".
Voyager also uses the new style combadge, and introduces a new 'provisional' rank insignia which consisted of a solid strip with varying markings to signify rank instead of the traditional pips, and were worn by the Maquis members of Voyager's crew, since they were ineligible to wear official Starfleet ranks (see Starfleet provisional ranks and insignia for more information).
Star Trek: First Contact introduces a new uniform style later adopted in DS9 (DS9: "Rapture"). This uniform features a colored turtleneck undertunic (with the same departmental color scheme as in earlier shows) covered by a black jacket with colored bands on the lower sleeves near the cuffs showing the wearer's division, the shoulders and upper chest of which are ribbed and made of thick, blue-grey material. The communicator badge is worn on the jacket, while rank pins are worn on the undertunic's collar. The pants are black. Star Trek: Insurrection also introduced a new dress uniform; It consisted of a white coat and black pants both with gold trim, a gray ribbed tunic (white tunic for flag officers and captains), and rank insignia on the collar of the tunic with the combadge worn in the customary location on the coat. Unlike the previous uniform, it was the same color regardless of the wearer's division, save for colored bands on the lower sleeves like the standard uniform. It also appeared in the DS9 episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges". Captains also had the option of a more casual uniform vest of the same basic design, though the blue-grey yoke extended much lower.
Starfleet personnel fighting in ground battles appear in the DS9 episodes "...Nor the Battle to the Strong" and "The Siege of AR-558". They wear one-piece black uniforms with divisional stripes across the chest.
In the TNG episode "All Good Things...", an alternate timeline showed a uniform with the full color shirt (including shoulders). The same colors were used and the rank insignia would be shown above the right breast over a black line which cut off the shoulder area. These uniforms would also make an appearance in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Visitor" and the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Endgame". These episodes also included a new combadge design where the starfleet arrow was just an outline. This badge was also worn by Geordi La Forge in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Timeless" but on the gray shoulder uniform used in the TNG movies and later DS9 (this episode is not as far in the future as the others).[10]
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Parallels" used an alternate combadge design where rank was denoted by the number of bars behind the arrowhead.
In Enterprise, field officers and crewmembers wear duty uniforms consisting of a dark long-sleeved undershirt and blue jumpsuit with colored piping around the shoulders and, often, baseball caps. There is also a desert uniform with khaki pants and white shirt. Both uniforms have a United Earth Starfleet patch (featuring the stylized arrowhead emblem) on the right upper arm, and a patch left upper arm denoting the ship one is serving on.
Division colors follow the TOS scheme, with command and flight control officers wearing gold piping, engineering and security officers wearing red piping, and science, medical and communication officers wearing blue piping. Throughout the series, men and women wear the same type of uniform. Unlike the other series' uniforms, standard uniforms on Enterprise include zip-up pockets, and the undershirt is buttoned at the neck - while Gene Roddenberry had explicitly forbidden such devices as buttons and zippers on Starfleet uniforms, believing they would be obsolete in the future, designer Bob Blackman consciously used them as a way of dating the series, implying that closures Roddenberry envisioned had not been invented yet. Blackman described the jumpsuits as "more like a NASA flight suit" than the previous Starfleet costumes,[11] and actors from other Star Trek shows envied the Enterprise actors' much more comfortable and conventional outfits.[12][13]
On certain occasions, Enterprise characters wear dress uniforms similar to the blue jumpsuit, decorated with the same pattern of colored piping, but lacking the zip-up pockets and combined with a white long-sleeved undershirt and, in some cases depending on rank, a white tie.
Rank insignia on duty uniforms are worn on right side of shoulders only, but rank insignia on dress uniforms are worn on both sides.
Also, there are two different kinds of field jackets worn on away missions. They have zippered pockets and the same colored pipings as the jumpsuits, as well as cold weather gear, pressure suits, spacesuits, an EV undersuit, and a royal blue undergarment with slight differences on male and female garments.
During the series, T'Pol is almost never seen wearing the standard uniform although she is a commissioned officer in Starfleet, and often considered to be the first officer. The only times she wears the uniform is in the episode "Twilight" (featuring an alternate timeline) and briefly (as a disguise) in "Hatchery".
The 2009 Star Trek film features uniforms reminiscent of the original television series but with some cosmetic changes. The badge (already the logo of the full Starfleet instead of specific to the Enterprise), which represents the department divisions; engineering, life sciences, and communications is now a pin rather than sewn on, and is also silver instead of gold. The tops are now in two layers: a wide-collared colored over-shirt (gold, blue, or red just as in TOS) with a quilted pattern and a colored hem-line from the neck to the armpit, and a black undershirt, visually imitating the black collar of the TOS design. The over-shirt has the arrowhead pin-shape woven into the fabric. As in the original series, female officers wear skirts, some with short sleeves (seen on Lt. Uhura), others with long sleeves (as seen on some of the background extras). Many, if not all, female crew wear either black nail polish (worn by Uhura) or red nail polish, by other extras; Something not seen in any other series by uniformed officers, nor explained. Also, a number of females onboard can be seen wearing the long sleeve top and pants uniform similar to those worn in "The Cage". Unlike other Trek, this uniform is worn only aboard starships - other personnel wear black one-piece uniforms of a much more "military" appearance, while dress uniforms are red, and admirals use a design similar to that in The Motion Picture, stated by designer Michael Kaplan in the book Star Trek: The Art of the Film to be a deliberate homage.
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