Medical officers in PIC: White or blue?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Obviously, PIC keeps to the basic 24th-century color scheme: red=command, blue=sciences, gold=operations.

My question is, if any medical personnel turn up on the show, what color will they wear? On TNG, DS9 and VOY, doctors wore blue, but in DSC, they wear white. Will PIC retcon things so white is now the Starfleet uniform color for medical officers?

 

[fireproof78]

Blue with white highlights like on Lower Decks.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Blue with white highlights like on Lower Decks.

All of the uniform colors have white highlights on LD.

Although I agree, if doctors on LD wear blue, then PIC will probably keep to that. I just thought that since PIC is a streaming live-action show like DSC, they'd adopt DSC's white. Which wouldn't look half bad, really...

 

[fireproof78]

All of the uniform colors have white highlights on LD.

Although I agree, if doctors on LD wear blue, then PIC will probably keep to that. I just thought that since PIC is a streaming live-action show like DSC, they'd adopt DSC's white. Which wouldn't look half bad, really...

The medicals have white boots on LD, I believe. So they have one additional white highlight.

But, regardless, I figure they are going with blue and that's that.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yes, on LDS, medical is blue with white boots.

 

[NCC-73515]

They could also use a more teal kinda blue

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I like the DSC white, but blue for Picard please.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I know I'm in the minority, but I really prefer that they keep things simple with just three branch colors. I just kind of think things should be less specialized and more consolidated in the future.

 

[fireproof78]

I see the point but I think at least variation in subdivisions is fine.

 

[Takeru]

I know I'm in the minority, but I really prefer that they keep things simple with just three branch colors. I just kind of think things should be less specialized and more consolidated in the future.

But three division colors is pointless, if you throw engineers and security guards into the same division and also medics and geologists then what's the point?
If you can't tell what job someone has then what's the point of division colors. You either have enough to make sense or none at all. At least give security and medical personnel their own colors because they are emergency services and recognizing them can be essential in a critical situation.

 

[C.E. Evans]

But three division colors is pointless, if you throw engineers and security guards into the same division and also medics and geologists then what's the point?

Nope, it's just a case of simplicity. Command, Operations, and Sciences is really enough. I also think there's enough cross-training and cooperation between the divisions where the need for heavy specialization with the subdivisions becomes less rather than more. Heck, we've even seen medical doctors working with photon torpedoes and science officers fixing warp drives.

 

[Skywalker]

I feel like command, medical and security personnel should all be in their own specific colors. Those are the three groups who should really stand out and be easily identifiable by other members of the crew.

 

[Markonian]

But three division colors is pointless, if you throw engineers and security guards into the same division and also medics and geologists then what's the point?
If you can't tell what job someone has then what's the point of division colors. You either have enough to make sense or none at all. At least give security and medical personnel their own colors because they are emergency services and recognizing them can be essential in a critical situation.

I feel like command, medical and security personnel should all be in their own specific colors. Those are the three groups who should really stand out and be easily identifiable by other members of the crew.

Agreed.
Looking at the expanded universe, STO's 2409 uniform did not have a dedicated command division (though captains wore red), tactical was red, engineering gold (yellow), and science blue.

What would be your preferred, 24th-century style department colors if additional departments had their own colors?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

But three division colors is pointless, if you throw engineers and security guards into the same division and also medics and geologists then what's the point?
If you can't tell what job someone has then what's the point of division colors. You either have enough to make sense or none at all. At least give security and medical personnel their own colors because they are emergency services and recognizing them can be essential in a critical situation.

All of this.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

But three division colors is pointless, if you throw engineers and security guards into the same division and also medics and geologists then what's the point?
If you can't tell what job someone has then what's the point of division colors. You either have enough to make sense or none at all. At least give security and medical personnel their own colors because they are emergency services and recognizing them can be essential in a critical situation.

Blame TOS.

The only reason Starfleet uniforms even HAD colors back then, was to sell color televisions.

 

[fireproof78]

But three division colors is pointless, if you throw engineers and security guards into the same division and also medics and geologists then what's the point?
If you can't tell what job someone has then what's the point of division colors. You either have enough to make sense or none at all. At least give security and medical personnel their own colors because they are emergency services and recognizing them can be essential in a critical situation.

At least different insignia.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Blame TOS.

The only reason Starfleet uniforms even HAD colors back then, was to sell color televisions.

Trek has not canonically remained beholden to the three division/color scheme, nor does it need to.

See the TOS films.

 

[Blue Squadron]

I postulated something like this over in the Disco threads...

I was playing with a kind of mash-up of the DSC "future" uniforms and the Picard "flashback" uniforms, just to see what might be possible. I deliberately wanted to make Security/Tactical and Medical more readily identifiable but also wanted to try to do it without getting into the myriad rainbow of branches and colours that Robert Fletcher had for the undershirts of the maroon TWOK uniforms!

Standard uniforms -- Command / Sciences / Operations:

Flag Officers: (Admiral of the Fleet / C-in-C on the left)

Using some variations on the basic colour scheme:
- Security/Tactical reverses the standard Operations colours to have black with yellow details;
- Medical has white in place of black for the standard uniform and then a white with grey and teal details for the clinical working uniform.

Both sub-branches' uniforms still have the visual links to their broader "parent" divisions but are also immediately recognisable as specialist roles.

For what it's worth, the collar ranks are smaller and elliptical instead of circular -- and are worn vertically, thus deliberately a much closer match to the format of the rank markings as they appear on the TriComBadges:

The current design team do seem to have a thing about white, which does have links right back to the clinical uniforms worn by McCoy (and others) in TMP and then again (in adapted form) with the TWoK uniforms. That kinda made sense but white as the main division colour can be a bit visually jarring. To me, it looks very odd in the S4 Disco preview when worn with the black front stripe and black trousers -- it's just a bit too stark and monochromatic relative to the other uniforms.

I kinda like the idea of maintaining a link to the other Sciences disciplines but I see nothing wrong with having some form of identifiable clinical uniform for medical department staff on duty and something similar for security staff on duty.

 

[fireproof78]

I kinda like the idea of maintaining a link to the other Sciences disciplines but I see nothing wrong with having some form of identifiable clinical uniform for medical department staff on duty and something similar for security staff on duty.

This is part of the reason why I like the Lower Decks design with the white highlights, to make sure the science officer you are grabbing can help you with a medical problem.

Same with security. Even a change in the insignia would be helpful. I appreciated Discovery and TOS for that reason is having the signifiers on the uniform insignia.

 

[Timo]

In TOS/TAS, nobody really says the colors are for divisions, or anything else for that matter. For all we know, they denote duty shifts, and Kirk likes to mix some of his gold-clad Alpha team with the colors of the hour whenever initiating an adventure.

But being able to tell somebody's area of expertise is indeed likely to be relatively unimportant, except when you really, really want a Doctor of Cardiology and not a Doctor of Cardassiology. So, white medics. Any redshirt or indeed blueshirt can gun down Klingons, training not being mandatory there. And not every redshirt you manage to flag down can fix the warp core leak for you anyway, even if being from Engineering. But white vs. blue is clear-cut.

Timo Saloniemi