So, why do helmsman wear red?

[Timo]

You know, I was just thinking of something similar and I kind of like that explanation. Wouldn't then JAG also be blue, though?

Perhaps it is. But Philippa Louvois in TNG red could be Starfleet's Harmon Rabb, a veteran soldier who only reverted to paper-pushing due to, umm, circumstances. She might wear red to denote her unrestricted line status while handling JAG duties.

In "Court Martial", Areel Shaw wore TOS red. Another case of officers only doing JAG work as a second job, perhaps. The actual court had a Captain in blue, possibly one of the starship skippers, possibly the Starfleet Command representative; dialogue and acting is ambiguous on the issue, even if Memory Alpha chooses to treat the blueshirt as "Star Captain Krasnovsky".

I thought blue was 'command' in the Robau era. Wasn't it?

Might be that the three colors rotate. Then again, might be that they stayed the same from ENT through STXI to TOS, and Robau was wearing blue because he was a scientist, in addition to commanding a science vessel. Or, basically the same excuse as Spock would have, whatever that excuse is.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Basically Trek has been awful in its consistency. In TOS, Sulu (who actually started in science blue) and Chekov (who often doubled at the science station) were command (i.e. XO) department but Uhura starts as command for one episode then services (engineering one assumes?) from that moment on. In TMP all three are yellow i.e. part of ops. From TWoK forward helm was traditionally yellow (same as engineering) while navigation and comms were grey.

I think that all three posts should have been command but Nichelle just looked better in red. In Twok, all three should have been grey. I have no idea why they use such an arbitrary approach.

TMP was my preferred layout, although even there I have no idea why the colour of the uniforms was so random.

I agree that tactical officer and security chief should be different posts though. Chekov was pretty good at shooting and working the shields but he was a dumb ass when it came to ship's internal security (see STVI for example).

 

[USS KG5]

Going back to Valeris being addressed as Lieutenant... Is there a transcript of TUC online somewhere? TrekCore only has the (as such enjoyable) version where the character was still Saavik.

Timo Saloniemi

This bit I remember - its when Kirk first meets her, he asks something like..

Kirk: "Lieutenant..."
Valeris: "Valeris Sir, I heard you needed a helmsman so I volunteered"

I need to get out more. Logically he could only have got the Lt. bit from reading rank anyhow, so its just a boob.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Wandering through Trek Cores captures I noticed that helm and navigation flip flop on colors sometime, with the folks alternating between grey and yellow. Except on Stiles' Excelsior where Miguel Ferrer's character wears white. Of course Robin Curtis wears white as Saavik too. Another jump from cadet to command?

 

[Jadzia]

To me, the red (command) uniform is the default uniform. You would only wear yellow or blue/green if you specialised in something:
- engineering (keeping things in working order) ;
- sciences (laboratory based and mostly invisible) ;
- security (armed personnel).

Helmsman falls into neither of these roles, so is in the default command division.

I see the operations officer as being an administrative engineering role, which aims to keep the ship as a whole in working order.

 

[Tallis Rhul]

I thought blue was 'command' in the Robau era. Wasn't it?

Was the Kelvin a science vessel? I'm pretty sure the captain and executive officer wear blue irrespective of their command designation on that sort of ship, and I'm 80% sure I got that idea from an episode of one of the TV series... I don't know if anyone can corroborate that?

 

[The Wormhole]

I thought blue was 'command' in the Robau era. Wasn't it?

Was the Kelvin a science vessel? I'm pretty sure the captain and executive officer wear blue irrespective of their command designation on that sort of ship, and I'm 80% sure I got that idea from an episode of one of the TV series... I don't know if anyone can corroborate that?

No, the captains and XOs on science ships always wear the command colour. Captain Estaban of the Grissom wore command white, Captain Ransom of the Equinox wore red. In fact, in All Good Things, Beverley Crusher wore red when she was in command of the medical ship Pasteur. In fact, every officer in the 24th century ranked cpatain and above wore red, with the exception of Admiral Toddman in DS9. In TOS we saw captains and admirals in other colours, however everyone who commanded a starship wore gold.

Since Robau and George Kirk were wearing blue uniforms, blue was clearly the command colour of that era.

 

[Pauln6]

I see the operations officer as being an administrative engineering role, which aims to keep the ship as a whole in working order.

In TOS Uhura was the operations officer or rather in the FASA rulebooks Damage Control Procedures was listed as the comms officer's domain and that is pretty much what we're talking about. In TMP we actually get to see her doing her thing in the opening scenes.

It's not very realistic though - a real chief operations officer would have to liaise with so many different departments on a regular basis that the bridge is the last place you would want them. Although you would need an operations station to re-prioritise energy management during a crisis I wouldn't have thought that the bridge was the best place for the person in charge of everything any more than you want the chief engineer managing the engineering station on the bridge.

 

[Therin of Andor]

(In fact, nobody knows what would have been the correct color for engineering in ST2, since red had been stolen for trainees and nothing new had been introduced.

If I recall correctly, the red-circled patches on the white engineering suits (made for TMP) were unstitched and replaced by yellow-circled patches.

 

[Therin of Andor]

TMP was my preferred layout, although even there I have no idea why the colour of the uniforms was so random.

Publicity materials suggested that officers could choose their personal preference of blue/grey or beige. For example, an Andorian would probably choose beige, as a contrasting colour.

They could also add personal touches, eg Spock's Vulcan collar, Ilia's Starfleet-issue leisure robe having the Deltan collar, the native Americans permitted to wear their beads and feathers, etc.

 

[Pauln6]

TMP was my preferred layout, although even there I have no idea why the colour of the uniforms was so random.

Publicity materials suggested that officers could choose their personal preference of blue/grey or beige. For example, an Andorian would probably choose beige, as a contrasting colour.

They could also add personal touches, eg Spock's Vulcan collar, Ilia's Starfleet-issue leisure robe having the Deltan collar, the native Americans permitted to wear their beads and feathers, etc.

Yeah Starfleet is so lax with its mamby pamby touchy feely style to discipline and dress code. Kirk should have spaced a few of the crewmen wearing Luke Sywalker outfits and see how keen they were to personalise their uniforms then!

My own take is that Ops is not a discipline in itself. It's an administrative posting under the auspices of the XO whose members are gunning for their own command one day. So Operations/Damage Control is likely filled by someone with an engineering background like Uhura or Data, Navigation is filled by someone with a background in science, particularly space sciences, and helm is filled by someone with a background in piloting and tactical.

Having said that, all crew would be trained in all those positions to a lesser extent and much of the work is done by the computers. Some scientists with a talent for piloting (such as Sulu) might transfer to ops after additional tactical training. If a fight breaks out, you would think they'd relieve any blueshirt (or blue collar) at helm and get a proper pilot in to perform evasive manoeuvres.

I never liked the degree of overlap we see involving all the bridge stations either. I agree that stations should have redundancies but you don't really want three people with concurrent duties to operate the shields. In a crisis everybody needs to be aware of what they're doing and why. I suppose the consoles could have a light that comes on if your station is the primary at any given time. That makes some kind of sense...

This is why I never thought that transferring Chekov to security chief made sense. He always struck me as a scientist with tactical training who transferred to the ops position in navigation and later to the tactical station under the umbrella of the security department. That makes sense to me. But to place him in charge of internal security and small unit deployment when he had repeatedly displayed ineptitude in that sort of thing seemed wrong somehow.

 

[Tom Riley]

To me, the red (command) uniform is the default uniform. You would only wear yellow or blue/green if you specialised in something:
- engineering (keeping things in working order) ;
- sciences (laboratory based and mostly invisible) ;
- security (armed personnel).

Helmsman falls into neither of these roles, so is in the default command division.

I see the operations officer as being an administrative engineering role, which aims to keep the ship as a whole in working order.

This.

 

[hamishw]

JAG officers wore red, if I remember corectlly (though they were probably all captains and admirals, so that would explain that). Starfleet Intelligence, have we seen any of them? I suppose they wear yellow, since it's kind of related to Security.

Starfleet intel was white, whats JAG?
Did you know there were also Starfleet marines?

 

[USS KG5]

I never liked the degree of overlap we see involving all the bridge stations either. I agree that stations should have redundancies but you don't really want three people with concurrent duties to operate the shields. In a crisis everybody needs to be aware of what they're doing and why. I suppose the consoles could have a light that comes on if your station is the primary at any given time. That makes some kind of sense...

Well this is something where you well and truly have to say "its a TV show".

The reason is (and I was watching a TNG episode last night where this happened) that often there are just Picard and one other major character on the bridge, with a few extras. The major character is therefore given all the lines about shields and phasers etc regardless of where they are sitting, to save money.

 

[Pauln6]

I never liked the degree of overlap we see involving all the bridge stations either. I agree that stations should have redundancies but you don't really want three people with concurrent duties to operate the shields. In a crisis everybody needs to be aware of what they're doing and why. I suppose the consoles could have a light that comes on if your station is the primary at any given time. That makes some kind of sense...

Well this is something where you well and truly have to say "its a TV show".

The reason is (and I was watching a TNG episode last night where this happened) that often there are just Picard and one other major character on the bridge, with a few extras. The major character is therefore given all the lines about shields and phasers etc regardless of where they are sitting, to save money.

That's absolutely true and it's also why Chekov used to double at spock's station instead of a different science officer.

I'd rather they only used supporting characters when they can actually use them properly and give us some fresh characters the rest of the time. It's a good way to inject some new blood into a long-running franchise in my view. Of course if we knocked Uhura out of any episode where all she says is 'Aye Sir' or' hailing frquencies open' she'd only have been in about a dozen episodes plus you run into problems with popular actors such as Michelle Forbes who was rarely available to play Ro in TNG so it's not a foolproof approach.

 

[Keith1701]

I'm talking about the TNG era, of course. We know red is what command officers wear, but apart from them we also see it's worn by helmsman, conn officers or whatever you call them (I suppose dedicated shuttle pilots also carry red). Why do you suppose that is? Is there some special relationship between them and the 'command track' (I assume not)? Or is that just what all other unassorted personel wear (those not in sciences, engineering or security). Have we seen any other positions wearing red? I seem to remember both Geordi and Worf wore red in early TNG, but I'm not sure what their positions were. Then again, Worf also wears red in DS9, as the strategic operations officer.

Great question, I must check into that.

 

[The Wormhole]

Starfleet intel was white, whats JAG?
Did you know there were also Starfleet marines?

Starfleet Intelligence does not wear white. Intelligence itself has no colour, Intelligence officers simply wear the colours of their specialty, just like ordinary Starfleet officers.

JAG means, Judge Advocate General, Starfleet's legal division. Read more about real-life JAG here.

Meanwhile, I believe the issue regarding "Starfleet Marines" is currently being discussed here.

 

[Sector 7]

So, why do helmsman wear red?

I always thought it was because the red and white bullseye shows up better on a redshirt during landing parties.

[Aw, come on... someone was going to say it eventually...]

 

[hamishw]

Starfleet intel was white, whats JAG?
Did you know there were also Starfleet marines?

Starfleet Intelligence does not wear white. Intelligence itself has no colour, Intelligence officers simply wear the colours of their specialty, just like ordinary Starfleet officers.

I saw on a website that starfleet intel was white, but i believe you anyways

 

[Timo]

The only time we saw a person who worked for Starfleet Intelligence was the TNG episode "The Pegasus", where Admiral Blackwell said that Admiral Pressman would be coming aboard on behalf of SFI. We then saw Pressman, wearing red, with two pips on his collar.

White collars only existed during the TOS movies (and no doubt for an unspecified and unseen period of time after that, although by the 2340s all that was left were white shoulder straps, in TNG "Yesterday's Enterprise). There, they were worn by high-ranking people, including starship COs and admirals and eventually also Scotty (after he gained the rank of Captain). None of these characters was explicitly said to work for SFI.

On the subject of JAG, or the lawyers of Starfleet, it's true that a JAG officer in TNG (Philippa Louvois) wore red. However, a JAG officer in TOS (Areel Shaw) also wore red, the color that in TNG era would become yellow. Thus, either there's no JAG color (just like there doesn't seem to be any SFI color), or then the color changed between TOS and TNG.

As for Marines, well, ship's security in the TOS movies had its own color, dark green. But in ST5:TFF, a hostage liberation force was seen wearing dark blue instead, so we could argue these were not Security but indeed some specialist force - Marines, SEALs, Army, Police, SWAT, whatever. That's just TOS movies, though. In TOS, redshirts handled preplanned ground combat almost invariably, and weren't treated as separate from Ship's Security. In the TNG era, the same applied to yellowshirts. Except when we saw small snippets of ground warfare, in which several ground fighters were seen wearing red and some were seen wearing blue, despite supposedly representing a preplanned, dedicated ground fighting force ("Nor a Battle to the Strong", "The Siege of AR-558"). So we could argue that there's no color for Marines or other ground combat specialists as such, outside the TOS movies - but that doesn't mean that Marines or the like couldn't exist. They'd just wear the usual assortment of colors; a Marine commanding officer would wear red, a Marine technician would wear yellow, a Marine medic or sensor specialist would wear blue.

One interesting question is, if O'Brien was an infantryman of some sort back in the 2340s, under the command of Maxwell, why did he wear a non-yellow shirt? He says in "Paradise" that he only started to wear yellow after saving his fellow troopers through repairing a transporter on Setlik III, and earning the position of Tactical Officer on the Rutledge. What did he wear until then?

Timo Saloniemi