What if the shirt colors from TOS never changed for TNG+, and only the way certain departments were categorized? The system below actually made sense across the generations, with certain unusual cases explained. What does everyone else think? Silver/White-Fleet Control Olive-Command Gold-Services Orange-Technical, R&D Red-Support Purple-Astrometrics Blue-Sciences *Note: Command Officers may either wear Fleet Control, Command, or their former department color. Pike, #1, Jose Tyler, Kirk all wear the Command Olive. Spock does not because he chose to represent the Science Department. He does wear green in the 2nd pilot. In TMP, Chekov and security officers now wear gold for services, rather than red for support. Chekov still has a blue patch since he’s trained in sciences. Spock is one of few wearing and orange patch in TMP as his role is technical assistant. Kirk’s Admiral uniform in TMP is actually dark olive and white. In the TOS movies, Engineering falls back under services gold like it did in the pilots and stays there. Cadets wear red as they are seen to “support” the fleet. Uhura has a purple sweater in ST II-VI, because communications is now part of Astrometrics, also why Seven wears purple sometimes. Picard, Sisko, Riker and Chakotay wear Support color, their choice. Tasha, Tores and others now wear gold in engineering because it is part of services like in the TOS pilots and TOS movies. Janeway, a female science officer, wears red like biological engineer Anne Muhall in TOS.
Hm. I don't think so, but it's thought-provoking. I always did love it that Janeway had been a science officer. The fact that Scotty wore gold with the maroons, and gold later became the operations color for TNG, never occurred to me.
Scotty wore both Gold and White shirts/collars with the Monster Maroon uniforms over the run of the 6 TOS feature films.
Yes, Scotty wore gold except with his toolbelt after he became a captain. Then he wore white, which works with this system. By the way, I specifically avoided the sue of the term "operations" in the list above. I prefer the terms "Support" and "Services" from the FJSTM and this is why: O'brien is "Chief of Operations," and Harry Kim is called an "Operations Officer" in "Caretaker". This makes it sound like Operations is more of a Position or Department that can be part of a Division, like services, rather than its own division.
I don't think it is its own division, it is the organizational parent of engineering, communications, security and any other support functions. Data was the Operations Manager, which meant people like LaForge and Worf reported to him.
I'm having trouble with just one part of this system being consistent enough for me to at least believe it. How could Kirk and Scotty wearing blue Shirts in TMP be justified? Kirk took command last minute and grabbed whatever was available? Some Tactical crew wear blue in TOS and Scotty added Tactical to his skills? He was good with battle decisions in TOS?
While we're giving the divisions finer granularity, I'd separate medical out of sciences. It's quite important during shipboard emergencies, not to mention battle, to be able to easily and quickly locate medical personnel. I'd also separate security out into its own division. Again, the rationale for fine grain division colors should be to allow crew members to quickly and easily identify other key crew members to help them orient efficiently during emergencies.
Technical and Maintence (including Armory): Red Security and Services (including Yeomen): Yellow Command (CO, XO, COB, DO/OODs): White Navigation and Space Sciences: Cyan Medical and Staff Corps: Green.
This system is not meant to change the color of what any character wore, but explain that it was all one system for all the years shown on Star Trek. I noted Picard still wore red while a captain, since he was in support earlier in his career, the same way Krasnovsky in TOS wore blue as a science officer even though he was a captain.
To clarify my original post, I'm speculating that, based on what characters wear, the colors always meant the same things from the TOS Pilots or before through Voyager. A big example of this is that, instead of saying that gold is command in TOS but operations in TNG, I'm saying that gold was always ship's services. We know now that the Comand uniforms in TOS were lime colored, and gold was a paler color from the pilots onward. Scotty wore gold for services in the pilot and movies, just as Data, Geordi, Kim, Torres and others do. I'm saying Scotty wore red in TOS because at that time, he was displaying that fact and that he was part of Support. I'm saying that some departments may have moved divisions, and some extra colors displayed at times, but that the divisions remained the same: Green for Command, Gold for Services, Red for Support, Blue for sciences. Always. I like this interpretation because it keeps things simple and keeps things tied to in-universe Star Fleet Traditions. However, I'm curious to hear what others think. Would this be a better way to interpret what we see onscreen than what has been said before? In universe, why wouldn't this be the case?
At least one episode explicitly refers to the color scheme change between TOS and TNG. That's DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations" [http://www.chakoteya.net/DS9/503.htm]: BASHIR: Captain. SISKO: Lieutenant, actually. I didn't want to push my luck. O'BRIEN: (Engineering red, of course) Looks good on you, sir. SISKO: Thank you, Ensign. BASHIR: Wait a minute, aren't you two wearing the wrong colour? O'BRIEN: Don't you know anything about this period in time? BASHIR: I'm a doctor, not an historian. SISKO: In the old days, operations officers wore red, command officers wore gold. DAX: And women wore less. (Dax pirouettes. The red skort suits her legs.) BASHIR: I think I'm going to like history.
Right. But if Operations Officer is a position and not a division, does this really conflict with my interpretation? Kim is Operations officer on Voyager, the job Lee Kelso has in the pilot, and his post would have once been down by Tom's. Both wore gold. Maybe in TOS that same position would have reported to Scotty?