Why do engineering and security have the same color uniform?

[C.E. Evans]

^^^
It could be that during the TNG era, admirals (and perhaps some captains) in gold or blue don't get out much.

[The Wormhole]

Admiral Toddman is the only officer above Commander to wear anything other than red in the 24th century. I never understood why they bothered, they would have had to spend money on maikng a new costume when a perfectly good Admiral's uniform was hanging in the closet.

[Nerys Myk]

t_smitts wrote:

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This goes back to the original series and doesn't make much sense. Supposedly "operations" officers wear the same color (red or gold, depending on what century we're in), but it seems to me it would've made more sense to make security and engineering distinct from one another. What exactly keeps an engineer from being mistaken for a security officer and vice versa?

What keeps a geologist from being mistaken for a doctor?

[CaptainDave1701]

t_smitts wrote:

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This goes back to the original series and doesn't make much sense. Supposedly "operations" officers wear the same color (red or gold, depending on what century we're in), but it seems to me it would've made more sense to make security and engineering distinct from one another. What exactly keeps an engineer from being mistaken for a security officer and vice versa?

On TOS they had no budget and reused or redressed everything. Pretty much this is where it started and it was carried on in later renditions of "Star Trek".

[Nerys Myk]

CaptainDave1701 wrote:

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On TOS they had no budget and reused or redressed everything. Pretty much this is where it started and it was carried on in later renditions of "Star Trek".

I doubt that budget was the reason they used only three colors.

[CorporalCaptain]

When it came to extras, wouldn't there be a greater advantage in reusing costumes, the fewer colors there were? If the color scheme was too specific, then they couldn't, say, reuse a security extra's costume on an engineer extra in another episode.

By the way, if the idea really was to sell color TV's, as I've heard, then three colors, one for each primary, or at least spread out in color space, is the bare minimum you need to show off color.

Both those considerations together would imply a three color scheme as the optimum number.

[Nerys Myk]

They had the three color scheme in both pilots (using different less intense colors) so that was part of the plan prior to the color tv push. I think they wanted certain amount of variety in the look of the crew, otherwise they probably would have gone with a single color for everyone.

[Metryq]

Actually, security wore a dark purple. But like the command green which showed up gold, the purple security shirts also produced strange color shifts under the studio lights. It's a little known fact that Bugs Bunny commented on these guys who'd sign up to be cannon fodder: "What a maroon!"

[jayrath]

'Twas the exigencies of early color TV. The TOS cast wore primary colors: red, blue, yellow (okay, a sort of yellow-green that's termed "heather"). Nothing to get hung up upon, and for all we know most non-human crew were color blind, or read both "red" uniforms in different ways. For example, maybe engineering red looked very different from security red in ultra-violet.

Human eyes are not the only eyes in Starfleet.

[Dale Sams]

Security are goons who wear useless helmets. Engineers are geeky guys who get dragged to the bridge when mortally injured.

[plynch]

I've heard the rgb color tv explanation before.

Of course in WNMHGB and maybe Cage, you had greenish/gold and a tan/buff, and blue. Was there red then? Can't remember.

[CorporalCaptain]

plynch wrote:

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I've heard the rgb color tv explanation before.

Of course in WNMHGB and maybe Cage, you had greenish/gold and a tan/buff, and blue. Was there red then? Can't remember.

You're remembering correctly, they didn't have the colors spread out in color space yet. It makes me suspect that RGB color TV's hadn't been taken into consideration to pin down the color choices, by that point in the development.

Or, maybe they had taken it into consideration, and the color choices were provisional, pending the results of the pilots, to see how well they photographed.

I'm just speculating here.

[milo bloom]

jayrath wrote:

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'Twas the exigencies of early color TV. The TOS cast wore primary colors: red, blue, yellow (okay, a sort of yellow-green that's termed "heather"). Nothing to get hung up upon, and for all we know most non-human crew were color blind, or read both "red" uniforms in different ways. For example, maybe engineering red looked very different from security red in ultra-violet.

Human eyes are not the only eyes in Starfleet.

Reminds me of a TOS novel where it's said that Klingons can't see red. They think the engineers wear black pants and shirt.

[JirinPanthosa]

jayrath wrote:

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'Twas the exigencies of early color TV. The TOS cast wore primary colors: red, blue, yellow (okay, a sort of yellow-green that's termed "heather"). Nothing to get hung up upon, and for all we know most non-human crew were color blind, or read both "red" uniforms in different ways. For example, maybe engineering red looked very different from security red in ultra-violet.

Human eyes are not the only eyes in Starfleet.

No, but we can safely assume any eyes that can see higher frequency colors are much smaller and any eyes that can see lower frequency colors are much larger.