A matter of Color.
- Thread starter Thanos007
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This debate can be settled with a review few basic canon points, to at least become a draw:
-The pilots actually had 3 colors-green, khaki, and blue. Fact is, even though green and khaki are two distinct colors, either one could be called "gold" fairly.
-The color used for command in TOS was the "green" from the pilots, not the khaki, but it still could be called "gold," compared with anything else.
-The "green" gold seems to start to go away once command personnel start wearing white in TMP, but the "khaki" stayed in service TMP with characters like Uhura and Sulu, and in TWOK with Scotty and the breat on the jumpsuit.
-In TMP, TWOK, and continuing on through Voyager, support personnel still wear a yellow that is more khaki than green.
Thus, I propose that canonically, Yellow or Khaki has ALWAYS been the support crew color, (TNG and TOS are NOT actually flipped in this regard) and the specifically greenish command color from TOS simply is not seen much after.
In short, it is fair to call it Gold or Green, but the important thing is that it has a specific meaning separate from the yellower/browner/khaki-ish colored uniforms.
But the "support" (Ship's Services) color in TOS was red, and red did flip to Command in TNG, as you know. If there were four colors, that's just in the TOS pilot episodes.
The question that's specific to TOS was, which one of these images is more true:
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x10/corbomitemanuever060.jpg
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10hd/thecorbomitemaneuverhd101.jpg
They're both true in a sense, but I think the original is accurate, while the remaster is an electronic portrayal. The first-edition DVD shows the yellow that came out under bright studio lights or sunlight. The Bluray "TOS-R" image has been electronically biased to show the green that came out under ordinary indoor lighting.
I saw it as a khakis vs olive drab sort of thing, cf Army Khaki Cotton Uniform vs Army Green Uniform.
Yeah, I get it. Reality is how it shot and appeared on a perfectly calibrated RCA console in 1966. Do we know (Know!) that the DVDs are accurate to how things appeared in 1966-7?
I've heard that the darker look to the remasters was closer to how it would have looked broadcast. If the tunics were artificially made greener, maybe that is closer to how they would 've looked.
This strikes me like the debates about how to make Handel or Bach sound: can we take a good guess how they would have sounded in the 1700s with gut strings and lower tunings, etc?
DS9 decrees they were gold. Fine. They looked green in normal light, or even studio light in person.Do we know how they looked on the telly in 1966?
I've heard that the darker look to the remasters was closer to how it would have looked broadcast. If the tunics were artificially made greener, maybe that is closer to how they would 've looked.
This strikes me like the debates about how to make Handel or Bach sound: can we take a good guess how they would have sounded in the 1700s with gut strings and lower tunings, etc?
DS9 decrees they were gold. Fine. They looked green in normal light, or even studio light in person.Do we know how they looked on the telly in 1966?
Color names are tough to agree on, but "khaki" is more imprecise than most. In Britain it has historically been more of a drab brownish-green, similar to what the US called "olive drab." The British military uses "stone colour" for their equivalent US uniform khaki. If you look at what are sold as khaki pants today, they will be a range of color, with various degrees of green, yellow, reddish or even gray hints.
I tend to agree. It's easier for me to buy that the command division was indicated by a shade of green that can be ambiguous with certain conditions and materials, rather than than it was indicated by a range of green, greenish and non-green colors at the same time.
Though the Army Green color would never likely be confused with khaki, it does brings up interesting and sometimes confusing cases of color names and standards. The WW2 US Army officer's winter coat was "olive drab shade 51," a dark brownish-green, while the enlisted "olive drab" was greener and quite a bit lighter. Officer's trousers were officially "drab shade 54," commonly called "pink," and would probably be most neutrally described as "taupe." When the warm-weather officer's uniform became light-weight wool instead of cotton, the shade was different enough from the cotton khaki that it was officially designated "tan" instead, but was popularly called "TW" from the tropical worsted fabric. When the US Air Force became independent, they adopted a summer uniform similar to the Army TWs but of a noticeably different hue they called "silver tan."
A shade of grey. ( at least in my house)
If one is looking from an "in-universe" perspective, one must answer with gold. Not only due to Sisko's dialogue about the color, but also that it would seem logical that Starfleet ships wouldn't naturally be lit as brightly as a Hollywood set, and thus the natural color would be viable rather than the saturated intense light color of the uniform.
OK, if you read my previous post and don't like the word "khaki," read it again and just substitute the word "tan" instead.
Look at the images on these pages. Pike and Colt are not wearing the same color, and it is the color Pike wore that went on to be in TOS. I don't care if it is called green or gold, it's just the specific command color.
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=20&page=3
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=88&page=11
In real life, iron pyrite, or fool's gold, is slightly greener than actual gold. On DVD, the difference between the two colors is about like that.
Not necessarily. In early TOS, red is less common, worn mostly by engineering, security, and some female bio-engineers, but even tactical officers and gunners wore something else. Picard, Riker, Chakotay, Janeway, Sisko and many more have backgrounds that could see them wearing red had they been in TOS; given it has been assumed that command officers get to chose between the Command Color and their Department Color. The color worn by Yeoman Colt could be the same color worn by B'elanna.
Rather than have the Division colors change each era, it would make much more sense that the colors for the branches of the service stay the same. What changes is which departments are part of which branch.
Maybe the solution is to call what Pike/Kirk wear "gold," and call what Colt/Kelso wear "orange" or "pink."
Yes, that's exactly my point.
Just to be sure I'm making the point I intended to, what I meant was that, growing up, I thought it would make sense for Starfleet to represent the same division (command) with two different colors: gold and green.
My "head canon" way of reconciling the problem of avocado green looking gold on-screen, which I wasn't aware of until much later, was to suppose that sometimes command officers wore "khaki" and other times they wore "olive drab."
Very interesting.
This exactly. There was never an in-universe reason why the Kirk-Sulu-Chekov shirt shouldn't be a different color than Kirk's dress uniform.
This works for me to explain why the wraparound tunic or Dress Uniforms looks greener than the regular Command shirt.
However, I should repeat that the TOS Command shirt matches the Command shirt from the pilots, not Services from the pilots, so calling it khaki does not quite work for me. In other words, the TOS Command shirt might be called "gold," but it is still "green-er" than the pilot Services shirt.
No, I wasn't calling it khaki. I was only comparing it to something else in history that was khaki. Hence, the scare-quotes.
Does anyone involved in film/video/production/remastering have any support/data for how the green-chartreuse-in-real-life shirts appeared or would have appeared via film on NBC television in 1966-8?
In other words, whom do I trust for how the shirts looked as originally aired, the clamshell DVD's (gold) or the "remastereds" (slightly greenish chartreuse).
('68-69 is a whole 'nother monkeywrench due to the polyester which photographs a bit greener than the velour with its nap.)
In other words, whom do I trust for how the shirts looked as originally aired, the clamshell DVD's (gold) or the "remastereds" (slightly greenish chartreuse).
('68-69 is a whole 'nother monkeywrench due to the polyester which photographs a bit greener than the velour with its nap.)
Got it. And I still agree. It would be fine if the TOS command duty uniform was greenish gold, while the Dress and B uniform were actually green.
Since the thread asks us to say what we think should be canon, I am going to try a different approach and rather than use color names that can be unclear, I will number them as I see them.
Color 1: Used by Command in the Pilots and TOS (greenish gold)
Color 2: Used by Services in the Pilots, TMP, Movie Era, and TNG-VGR (yellow/tan or orange)
Color 3: Used by Support in TOS, Cadets In Movie Era, and Support in TNG-VGR (red)
Color 4: Used by Sciences in all eras (blue or blue-green)
Color 5: Used by Science Officers in Movie Era, and on outer jackets in late DS9. (lavender)
Color 6: Used by higher command personnel on some uniforms starting with TMP. (white)
Yes, consider Support and Services two different departments. It explains why some lower decks personnel wear anomalous colors.
That's what I see going on the with uniforms. Some colors go out of use and come back, but it is mostly consistent across all eras from TOS-VGR.
The NTSC television format used by the U.S. in the 20th century is often jokingly referred to as "Never the Same Color." And TV sets back then had (obviously) analog Color and Tint controls that were hard to get "right" once you started playing with them.
But I'm here to tell you, the Kirk-Sulu shirt was always gold on a decently performing TV. And the Year 3 polyester shirts were just as gold. I don't know where people are getting the idea that they were greener than the Year 1 velour. The synthetic knits only got green after CBS Digital adjusted the image with computer software:
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x03/The_Paradise_Syndrome_006.JPG
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x03hd/theparadisesyndromehd0021.jpg
I can live with the color change, because the yellow shirts are not what sold me on Star Trek, and there is a truth in it, that the dye Theiss used on white fabric had a definite green component in it along with the yellow. But bringing the green out on screen was a change made for TOS-R.
More Year 3 gold:
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x09/thetholianweb009.jpg
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x09hd/thetholianwebhd0026.jpg
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I'll keep my eyes open when next I watch dvds. Except Im getting lazy and its too easy to just stream. Though the theme music is HORRIBLY wrong on the remastereds. I digress. And maybe am wrong on the S3 colour. Though I tbought there was even a quo te from someone i n production about the S3s photographing differently due to no nap of the fabric.
Seasons 3's shirts looked LESS green to me than previous seasons, even though many people here are saying they looked more green. But if you look at previous posts, it makes some sense in-universe that the newer fabric would be less green, as the greenish gold was going to be used less once TMP came around, and then not used much at all in future eras.
Ah, thanks, I see the point. Then the next question would be, why would one be worn instead of the other? In the case of the army green or khaki example it was weather-related and everyone would be wearing the same on any given day.
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