Do commanders choose their uniform color?

[Hoshi_Mayweather]

This aspect seems to have been dropped once TNG hit the airwaves... {I just wanted to use one of the new smilies or 'graemlins')....

Anywho, in TOS, it looks like the Commodore's wear either red or yellow--Mendez, Stone, Stocker...{and could have worn blue}. However, I don't recall seeing any Captain's wearing anything other than gold....although, there probably were a few who did, offscreen.

Did commanders have prerogative? {Well, in TNG they even had a 'Captain's Yacht'! Although, I don' think we ever saw Picard or any other captain use it..}

 

[Trekker4747]

The color of uniform would depend on your career track (Medical/Science, Command or Operations (Engineering/Security) so depending on what you're doing when you get promoted to Commander will determine your uniform color.

For example, in TNG Beverly was a Commander and wore blue which represented her career in the Medical field.

 

[aridas sofia]

http://www.voyager.cz/tos/epizody/images/15/15obr34.jpg

Space Command Representative Lindstrom, Starship Captain Krasnovsky, Commodore Stone, and Starship Captain Chandra.

 

[Timo]

Basically, the two starship captains could be the two greenshirts here - the dress uniforms of a Captain and a Commodore are virtually identical, and aren't consistently used in TOS anyway.

OTOH, this could be used as proof for Captain-ranked people of some other color besides Command. Scotty in the movies is another obvious case, though. Unless one assumes he at that point was both a Command-liner and an Engineer, and chose to act out the latter part only.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[AJBryant]

You know, rank has little to do with what your "track" is. Not all admirals command fleets. My cousin the dentist was an admiral -- he oversaw the medical (maybe just dental) officers for one of the fleets.

Tony

 

[new_mercury]

Hoshi_Mayweather said:
Did commanders have prerogative? {Well, in TNG they even had a 'Captain's Yacht'! Although, I don' think we ever saw Picard or any other captain use it..}

We saw the captains yacht in Insurrection and there's a picture of the D's in ships of the line.

 

[Crewman47]

In the TNG era we've seen Admirals in both Gold and Blue which suggest that not all Admirals have to wear red and these Admirals are in charge of the likes of Operation/Security and Medical/Sciences. One thing I've also wondered though is if a Captain/Commaner commands a Science or Medical ship then why don't they wear the Blue division colour which is what I expected to see when we saw Beverley command her own ship ,the Pasteur, in TNG's AGT. Shouldn't it be this way and the only Red shirt you'd have would be the Helms officer and maybe a few others who would normally belong to the Command department?

 

[Praetor]

There was also the gold-uniformed Admiral Toddman in DS9's "the Die is Cast" who seemed to be in charge of security. I presume there are medical admirals who wear blue as well. I assume the reason we see so few blue and gold admirals is that starships would logically usually receive their orders from command personnel unless they were embarking on a special tactical or medical mission.

 

[Timo]

Yes, Toddman is our single known case of a yellowshirt Admiral in the TNG era. I'm not aware of any blueshirt Admirals, although I imagine McCoy would have worn that sort of a uniform had he actually been in uniform in "Encounter at Farpoint".

And I second Praetor's logic on why most Admirals interacting with our hero captains wear command colors. Toddman is a fairly logical exception to the rule, as are the Services-colored Commodores of TOS who largely dealt with administrative affairs not directly related to starship operations.

And the shirt color difference between Stone and Mendez on Starbase 11 could and IMHO should indicate a difference in responsibilities - the command-colored Mendez would be in charge of starship operations, or perhaps of a specific starship (like Decker and Wesley), and might have nothing to do with the starbase as such, while Stone would mind the actual shop.

As for starship COs wearing something other than command color, I'd prefer not. We have little indication that Crusher in "AGT.." would have been the CMO of her own ship; while this is certainly possible, it is equally likely that Crusher had her hands full being the CO of the ship, and some other doctor (out of the no doubt dozens upon dozens) was the chief sawbones.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

^Agreed regarding Crusher. I would say that first officers and second officers are allowed in some special cases (Spock) to do double-duty, but COs are required to have no other responsibilities and be dedicated command officers. Captain Janeway no doubt once wore a blue uniform when she was a science officer but later switched to red when she switched to the command track.

 

[Robert Treat]

Kirk sometimes wore a green wrap-around shirt in TOS seasons 1 and 2.

 

[Trekker4747]

Robert Treat said:
Kirk sometimes wore a green wrap-around shirt in TOS seasons 1 and 2.

It seems Captains get a special variant unifrom.

Kirk had the wrap-around tunic, Picard had the jacket and gray undershirt and when the FC uniforms came around capatains also had that vest they wore under the top of the uniform. (Atleast I think that was a uniform variant, I'd hate to think that was just something EVERYONE wore under their usual uniforms. Makes for a whole lot of damn layers!

 

[C.E. Evans]

Trekker4747 said:
...when the FC uniforms came around capatains also had that vest they wore under the top of the uniform. (Atleast I think that was a uniform variant, I'd hate to think that was just something EVERYONE wore under their usual uniforms. Makes for a whole lot of damn layers!

I actually think it's a captain's standard uniform. Picard and Sisko both wore the two-piece FC uniform with the vest underneath.

But back to the subject of uniform colors, I think that there were starship captains that wore sciences and operations uniforms during TOS--perhaps they commanded science vessels or vessels from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers--but it seems that sometime afterwards during the TOS movies, all captains were required to wear command uniforms regardless of their original background.