Little Green Men is one of my favorite episodes from Deep Space Nine, but it so obvious to me that the captain's bars in this episodes were wrongly placed on his uniform. They should have been vertical position rather than the horizontal position they appear in that I wonder if they did that on purpose or it was just a mistake. Does anyone know the answer?
You’re in the wrong place. You want to be in the DS9 folder! This one is for questions about the forum. But welcome.
My money says mistake. Tends to happen a lot when it comes to real-life uniform rules. (Not that I'd know myself.)
Often times mistakes made with military uniforms on TV or movies are actually intentional, as being 100% accurate is technically impersonating military personnel, a federal felony.
Which sounds pretty weird - a 99% impersonation would still meet the goals of the criminals who wanted to make people think they were soldiers, cops, clergymen, whatever. Why aren't all movie and TV sets raided and the actors jailed weekly if not daily, for committing that 99% impersonation? Of course, there would be purely dramatic reasons for breaking the uniform rules on occasion: say, medals worn, against rules, by a character to show how accomplished he is, or for a scene where those medals are ripped off him. Anachronisms would also be justified for "clarifying" a situation that in its true historical context would be too complex for the audiences. But wearing a rank marker upside down or sideways is not one of those cases; even if it were done to indicate the character is a sloppy dresser, most of the audiences would miss it. Timo Saloniemi
Ezri's pips are out of order in Only A Paper Moon. You'd think they would always get that right, but alas.
It's not earth, it's a parallel earth that's similar enough to our earth that the audience recognizes it but differs in little things like the orientation of captain's bars.
That actually happens more times than you realize. There are a few times on TNG where they couldn't figure out where to stick the hollow pip on Lt. Commanders.
I was curious if you could please provide an example. Not that I am disagreeing with you in any way, I completely believe you, I have now had my curiosity peaked and I was hoping to see for myself. I never noticed it.
Here's one from Man of the People in which Geordi is in fact wearing two hollow pips and one solid. Which is actually worse than I thought it was. I thought it was just the hollow on the wrong end when I wrote my earlier post.
TOS Kirk is lucky his rank was worn on his sleeve, so he couldn't put it on wrong the morning after a late night...
He still forgot to attach his chest badge on occasion, despite it having the false appearance of having been sewn in. Heck, the sleeve braid of "Where No Man" looks like it could be rubber band stretched over the sleeve when the officer dons the uniform at the beginning of the shift. Perhaps explaining why Lieutenant Commander Mitchell seems to have left half a braid on his cabin floor that fateful morning... Timo Saloniemi
Probably an oversight... I can understand why it's bothersome (and it is...) It is otherwise a fantastic episode, though I also did once get annoyed about the latest nifty means to travel back in time for the sake of getting the plot rolling, and I tend to roll along with that as well because there's otherwise no episode and they picked what amounts to the best possible guest cast for season 4 pumping on all cylinders... Side note: Shame that Quark didn't inspire the concept of go-go boots and mini to Nurse Garland there who, in roughly 15 years' time, could have made a fortune for the upcoming "revolution" (and thus inspire space hippie Adam to wear the same thing, hehe...)
As an aside: I never understood how it is that Odo can mimick a dog perfectly in this episode down to its fur, yet still has difficulty mimicking human faces. At this point I have to believe he's capable of doing it, but doesn't because he wants to show he's different, much like the female Founder.
I forget which episode but in one episode where Odo is complimented on mimicking a bird he responds "I doubt the other birds would agree with you." So the idea is that he's actually not good at mimicking animals, just we can't tell the subtleties cause we're human.
In LGM, Odo wasn't trying to impersonate (imcaninate?) one specific dog, just a generic dog that he could choose because it was easy.