It just occured to me on board the Kelvin that command (George Kirk, Robau) are wearing blue. Was this discussed before? It must have been... but looks like Starfleet did the old color switcheroo for departments in that time period.
Well, let's be fair here. Was there any piping of a different color on Robau's/Kirk's uniforms to show the command department colors of 2233? Which...since they were gold during the time of ENTERPRISE 70-80 years before and were also gold during both classic TOS and the new timeline...was probably gold? I could never make out any piping on the blue Kelvin uniforms what with all the lens flare, bright explosions and rapid camera movements during the opening battle sequence.
There was a thread months ago, before the movie hit the theaters (try a search for "The Kelvin's uniforms" if you want to check it out.) I think most people just figured that 25 years was long enough that a couple of changes in uniform design and departmental color scheme could have taken place between then and the time of the episodes of the original series.
Blue was used by Kirk and other high-ranking senior staff in TMP, too: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/St1-cast_publicity_shot.png No idea why Decker is in gold, but the film never really established much anyway.
Ah yes, the uniforms from Star Trek, the Camel Toe generation. back to the OP, I think the Kelvin uniforms were to be an outgrowth/development of the Enterprise blue jumpsuits.
Imagine what Trip Tucker would have looked like in those Kelvin uniforms had he lived another 70-odd years. I think I just gave some of the ENT forum regulars multiple orgasms.
Decker wore the beige in pre-publicity shots because he was the last person cast and his uniforms weren't ready yet. The beige appears rather gold in that series of pics due to lighting, and it was a prototype of the grey jumpsuit version he used in the movie. In those same shots, Chapel is also in blue/grey, but wears beige in the movie. Spock is missing his black Vulcan collar, and Kirk's uniform has both sleeve stripes and epaulets! The production notes for TMP say that all crewmembers could have their choice of uniform colour. It's not indicitive of senior vs junior. (Division was shown by the circled circle behind the insignia and, on some styles, epaulets, and rank shown on sleeve stripes or epaulet stripes.) Note that Lieutenant Ilia and the Rhaandarite bridge ensign wear blue/grey, and they are both outranked by Uhura, Sulu and Chapel.
They've already had their orgasms in the recent ENT fiction from Pocket Books. Yep, I believe that was stated in several interviews with the production team.
Kirk's also wearing blue in your collar. Precedent! Ahem, anyway, maybe the Kelvin crew got to choose what colors to wear as well.
The piping was black on the uniforms. The colors were: Blue: Command Goldish Green Grey White: Medical
Because there is no ryhm or reason to the costumes in this movie outside of the Enterprise uniforms! All the other starfleet uniforms make no sense at all! The admirals costume look like some monks costumes from robinhood! The art directiom as a whole is off mark!
^ Actually, the uniforms in this movie are fairly easy to understand: Red suit: Cadet TOS uniform: Starfleet crew Black uniform: Starfleet Admiral (normal) Pike's uniform in the end scene which is the same as Kirk's admiral uniform from TMP: Starfleet Admiral (alternate, probably the full-dress variant) As for the Kelvin, we know that Blue = command, White = medical. There are two others - greenish/gray, and gold - so one of those is probably sciences and the other would be operations. Not that big of a deal, really.
Haven't read all the replies, but the thought hit me right away that the Command uniforms on the Kelvin were based on the fact ALL of Archer's crew (and the crew of its sister ship, late in the ENT series) were BLUE. Notice that during the TOS film period, the uniforms were all red, and nearly a century later (TNG) when Starfleet went back to a tri-color system, red became the Command color, apparently left over from the earlier (TOS movie) red uniforms. Makes sense that on the Kelvin, the Archer-era uniform color became the color for Command. Twenty years later, the three colors used on the Archer-era stripes were used as the basis for the uniform colors on starships, and maybe elsewhere.
I don't think that's quite correct. Pike was wearing the black uniform while he was still just a captain, and Spock was also wearing the black uniform as a lieutenant commander. I think the black uniform is for all officers assigned to Starfleet Academy as instructors and/or recruits and/or whatever else.
May it be possible that even though Robau was the commander of the ship (so traditionally the colour would be gold) that instead that since the ship may of been a science vessel, he was wearing the colours of the science department (also indicating a speciality on his part)?