Thoughts on Discovery Starfleet Uniforms (Trailer Edition)

Since the metallic elements, including the deltas, are departmentally color coded in Discovery, that might be their idea of bridging Enterprise era blue uniforms with (updated) TOS colored overshirts with deltas pattern.

 

Still prefer the 09/ID version, but both look good.

 

For me the beyond was an improvement. There's a nice sense of formality and seriousness about it; that opening scene wouldn't have looked right with the more sporty/action shirt from the first two movies.

The 2009 version feels like action wear, the Beyond one seems like a formal uniform. I like that about the Disco uniform too - shamelessly sci fi, but also clearly for a formal orginisation.

 

I preferred the Beyond uniforms as better-fitting.

 

THe only hing that bothered me about 09 was the boots.

 

I liked them, but they're the type of boots I'd normally wear (well, maybe cheaper ones ) so my opinions a little biased.

 

I like them just fine, but I don't think they go with the pants.

 

Yeah no one would ever attempt this costume, it's so hard! Impossible even! Oh wait someone already had done it. https://www.instagram.com/p/BV-yyT1Hs7O/

 

Yep. Next they'll say "Yeah, but it's not screen accurate!"

....for what little we've seen on 'screen accurate', I'm almost done. Even got two options for the side panels (one a basic print on silky fabric, the other metallic printing from a t-shirt shop I'm visiting next week), a set of 3D printed pins and perfected the gold stripes.

Colour might be a bit off (opted fo cobalt as I could get that in two different fabrics) and planning on wearing my Disco uniform in London at the end of the month and upsetting everyone

Drives me mental. All it takes is a bit of effort (and this effort is minimal compared to some stuff I've done!)

 

Can't wait to see the final result

 

Honestly I've been to a ton of cons in my life and even built a few monster maroons myself (3), and I can say MOST costumes out there are NOT screen accurate (including mine), even when the patterns and source references have been well researched and available for decades. A lot of them are made by fans who want to look the part and go out and have a good time. Very few are OCD cosplay fanatics (we call those "stitch nazis" in the reenactment community) and are not terribly enjoyable company to be around when they point out all the micro-flaws on something that someone spent hundreds of hours to make.

 

I think I would call them a holes

 

That works too, yes.

 

I'll make an effort to post it here for scrutiny when I'm done! I'll likely shift colours though - right now I'm working from silver fabric I had in stock, but I've got command pins printed so I'll need to consider this a tester and do a proper one.

YES!

I'm an incredibly picky person - incredibly picky - but mostly on myself. I like to make sure my outfits are 'right', but they're not. My DS9/FC style is one of my favourites to wear, but even if they grey fabric was expensive, it's not screen accurate. And I don't care. It's good enough for me!

I've had a few people make baffling comments on my outfits. One emailed me in the guise of asking for a commission of a TNG shirt. Instead the conversation descended into a critique of them pointing out my attention to detail can't be that great if I've put the zip the wrong way. apparently 'screen accuracy' demands I have the zip start at the top of the neck and go downwards. To me, thats just absolutely ridiculous - how are you supposed to dress yourself?! It's hard enough with a rear-zip, but one starting from the neck?!

Plus the idea of screen accuracy is absolute nonsense. Shades of red change from season to season (even character to character - Worf has a weird bright orangey shirt at some point in TNG), Worf's grey shoulders were different than Bashir's, Sisko and Picard had completely different jackets - it's all nonsense.

One person moaned at my wife for me not lining her BSG jacket 'properly' as if all the on-screen outfits were filled hemmed and lined.

I'm aiming to make the Disco outfit as closely as possible. It's a brilliant challenge getting all those measurements right - but... I'm dressing like a complete tit pretending to be from outer space. I take the challenge seriously, but I'm still just an idiot playing dress up!

 

100% agree with everything you said and this statement in particular. The one thing that most cosplayers fail to take into account when it comes to the insipid "screen accurate" argument is studio lighting. Take, for example, TOS "command gold", where the original costume was green in natural light, but appeared gold on-screen. Not only, like you say, do base colors in the fabric vary from season to season do to different dye batches, but lighting can drastically change the look of the same outfit from episode to episode, depending on how the directors want their scenes to look. Modelers run into the same problem - the Romulan Warbird looks green on-screen, but the studio filming miniature looks almost neutral gray in natural light. What color do you paint the replica? Any color you damn well like!

Whenever I run into some self-important asshat who thinks they know the "correct" way of doing things like that, I just smile and nod and shine them on. There is also a "correct" way to present an opinion which, in this day and age of social media egalitarianism, seems to have gone the way of the 8-track tape and leg warmers.

 

The studio lighting element is a headache to work around. The Beyond outfits I make are one of the most painful for that. I've got accurate (cheaper, but accurate) fabric and shades, but colour matching them is hell. The command colours look different under each lighting element - and obviously look different in regular photos than on film due to the filters they use. And then there's two shades in the film as principal characters have more expensive fabric than background characters, which look different.... and I've still not been able to nail down science.

In the Discoverse (to stay reasonably on topic) you see the same thing. On the Shenzhou bridge they look almost air force blue - but on the Discovery, Isaacs has a more brighter cobalt. so I just picked what I could get hold of without spending a fortune on samples.

I've always went with the "Good enough" philosophy. My Voyager/DS9 jumpsuit has a great colour match (possibly the right shade), but for all the shades and variations, I only cared that it matched Data's uniform in Generations with the harder lighting.

Generally I hate when costumes end up too bright (like cheaper retailers giving a bright yellow instead of mustard) but.... it's a costume. As long as the person wearing it (or buying it from someone like me ) is happy, then whats the issue?

Oh yes. I do think it's a weird symptom of how social media has adapted and changed how we think and communicate. It's almost like this idea that's been prominent where Star Trek fans have to prove who's the biggest fan or knows the most trivia.

Gone are the days when we can just enjoy being geeks :/

 

The color really changes depending on light to seems!

And how a fabric looks under real light with your eyes and what it looks like on camera through TV often looks very different. I always go for "What will LOOK like what people expect" as opposed to "The is the exact fabric they used in X series on season Y." For example on TOS do you want command 'sorta greenish' or command gold?

I wish people would just have fun sometimes and like you said we're just playing dress up anyhow. My grandparents would have found it MORE disturbing that we argued over details than just dressing up in the first place because "It's just a silly TV show!" (Yes, this was a real conversation I had!)

 

L

LOL I guess I started writing my comment and didn't post it until after you did. So yes--what you said!