Kirk's Tunic Color?

Something I cooked up the last time this subject came up...

Here's the picture as we've all seen it...



Here it is closer to reality, before the hamfisted techs in the photolab got ahold of it...

 

From the caption contest thread, Angela's uniform looks quite green here. She is not brightly lit since she's passing through the doorway.

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t113/shatmandu2/aaaaa.jpg

 

If anything, her uniform actually shades towards the red there. I opened it in Photoshop and took a color sample from the fabric. It's brown. Varying shades and brightnesses, depending on where one samples, but brown nonetheless.

 

Early on, I figured that yellow, blue and red were a "four-color" (i.e., comic book) representation of precious metals -- respectively -- gold, silver and bronze, a perfectly reasonable hierarchy.

 

Kodak print film of those days had a red bias thus giving the lightly colored green tunics a gold cast. Also, the studio lights are tungsten based, which means a warmer color of light. Publicity photos taken with flash photography have lights have a cooler color, which shows the tunic colors more accurately. The recent transfers from the original negative are also more accurate.

 

From startrekhistory.com:

 

Now that's an interesting take on it.

Cheers,
Doug

 

I hadn't heard the rumors about the Green tunic, but I actually SAW it. I was watching some of the episodes from the first season, and I did notice he would occasionally wear a green wrap around tunic... Peculiar, I wonder what the green stands for.

 

Please, tell us which episode you saw such a thing in?

 

It stands for they used a different fabric.

 

Kirk's First Season green wraparound (with the braid up by the shoulder) is in:

"The Enemy Within" (so we can tell the two Kirks apart):

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x05hd/theenemywithinhd325.jpg


"Charlie X:"

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x02hd/charliexhd002.jpg

"Court Martial:"

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x20hd/courtmartialhd019.jpg


(There might be others; those are the ones I know off the top of my head.)

 

The second season wraparound tunic saw more screen time, thanks to the growing problem with the ever-shrinking velour tunics and Bill Shatner's problems in keeping the weight off during the course of the season.

 

What a surprising revelation! Kirk's tunic was green, but the fabric and filming made us all believe that it was gold. When they changed the fabric for the wraparound and for the Dress Uniform, we knew those were green, so why didn't we question why the everyday uniform was gold?

I posted this earlier, and I can't name the episodes the pics are from, but as far as I know these photos are not re-touched. They just show how what we thought was gold was actually green.

BIG QUESTION: What Original Series era fan production will be the first to show us Green uniforms instead of Gold?

(Just answered that one myself, kinda, I guess the Phase II guys are wearing tunics dyed in the exact same way as TOS so they look green on the hanger, turn goldish-green when they put them on and appear to be gold when we see them on screen! Here's a thread from the Phase II forum on this subject: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/forum/index.php?topic=5676.0.)

Blue, Red -- easy. Green/Avocada/Gold -- fascinating!

 

So is this why Kirk's tunic was green in the Gold Key comics? I always thought it was just a mistake, like the fire shooting out of the back of the nacelles.

 

Oh no, the fire was real. It was only the fabric they used that made it invisible onscreen... How else could they achieve those warp speeds without massive jet rockets getting them there? Hey, it worked for Batman...

 

Good catch, Cuhl! Not only was Kirk's tunic GREEN in the Gold Key comics, but on some of the covers with the live action characters, you can see that the TOS tunics were actually GREEN.


(Yes that is Kirk, btw!)

This has been such a surprising revelation to me! Not gold, but green. How many years now have I been deceived? Avocado-flesh is a tricky colour! I like how Patty Wright from Phase II basically explains that putting the tunic on seems to change its colour. (Again, please note they are following Theiss' directions for making the uniforms, so they are as close to TOS as is possible.)

For more on this thread, see: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/forum/index.php?topic=5676.0

What a paradigm shift! Green, blue, red. The picture I posted earlier with Spock, Kirk and Scotty in blue, green and red is actually the truth and I am the one deceived over the gold thing! Wow! Filming and fabric are tricky!

 

Here's from my Phase II forum post:

**************

Part of the problem (in addition to the important fact that different people might use different terms to describe the very same thing they are seeing) is that the colors ar a bit of a moving target. They weren't exactly the same each season, the fabric fades with time, the film on which the episodes appear fade with time, different lighting makes them look different, they look different hanging on a hanger than they do when they are stretched taut, etc. All the stuff folks probably know.

So, when Trek costume designer Bill Theiss died, many of his notes, dyeing formulas and specifications for the very specific fabric dyeing company in Los Angeles, fabric swatches, patterns, and lots of other costume related stuff went to James (Cawley). And, of course, James has some original Shatner-worn shirts, too. At any rate, when we get our fabric dyed to make our command division uniforms, we go to the same fabric dyeing place in L.A., we use the same dye formulas (with codes--somewhat like mixing paint), we have the day shift at the dye shop dye the fabric under sunlight instead of having the night shift dye the fabric under fluorescent lights, and a zillion other picky specifications as spelled out in Bill Theiss' original instructions.

What color does it turn out? Well, you'd have to see it to know exactly what I'm talking about. But I think it looks "goldish" and I think it certainly does have some green in it. (I think the dye formula calls for some green.) In fact, I think you might be suprised at the degree of green. It's still not very much, but you'd probably say "Huh. A bit greener than I thought." Anyway, I believe Bill Theiss actually called this color "avocado" in his notes. Personally, I think that's the perfect name for this golden-greenish-yellow: the color of avocado flesh.

 

Kirk wore gold. Shatner wore green.

 

Well said! That's great!

Shatner put on a lime tunic, but Kirk wore avocado (just to keep up the fruit theme). It sounds like the experience of the Phase II guys. I just love this story!

 

^
Great story.