Some changes I'd have made

[Ensign Benson]

I have no problems with the uniform colors. "Back in my day..." sailors in faded blue dungarees and chiefs/officers in wash khakis looked pretty different, but everybody knew they were part of the same navy.

TWOK used the same color scheme for everyone, but had completely different styles for officer and enlisted. Still "not uniform," just in a different way.

Yes, but navies traditionally have distinctly different uniforms for officers and enlisted personnel.

I like how the rank stripes were intentionally different from the US or British pattern. What I would have changed, though, was to have some kind of rank insignia for everyone below LTJG.

I read somewhere that Roddenberry did that right from the beginning because he didn't want Star Trek to be militaristic. Which again begs the question "What's with all the guns, ranks and uniforms?"

I've read that Roddenberry viewed the organization as less like the military and more like the police department, which also carries sidearms and has ranks. And with police, everyone is an officer, captains and lieutenants abound. Yet, Star fleet also has ensigns, commanders, and admirals, so....definitely a mixed message at best...

--Alex

I read that Roddenberry almost from the word go would say that Starfleet was supposed to be something akin to Jacques Cousteau's organization. He got to have more direct control over the show and the direction it went with TNG, but even there Starfleet is clearly the military, no matter how he denied it.

 

[Poltargyst]

Hi folks!

New member here. I've been a TOS fan since childhood. I still think it's the best of all the series. There are a couple of things that really bothered me about it though:

1. The multi-colored uniforms always bugged me, even as a small child. Uniforms should be uniform, dang it!

2. Spock looked so cool with a beard, he should have always had it!

So, having had a lot of time on my hands recently, I photoshopped a few pics fixing those problems. If someone can tell me how to upload pics, I'll post a few and let you see if you like them.

1. Disagree. I like that different crew members wear different colors to indicate their departments/specialties.

2. Totally agree. Ever since the first time I saw Mirror Mirror, I totally dug Spock's beard and wished he had it all the time.

In fact, I would play Star Trek with my Mego Star Trek dolls...excuse me...action figures, and I took a black magic marker and drew a goatee on Spock. MY Spock ALWAYS had a beard.

Have you seen the retro-mego bearded Spock doll? Very cool!
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Mir...=1-1-fkmr2&keywords=Mirror+Universe+Mr.+Spock

OMG, that's awesome!

 

[Pauln6]

The TOS uniforms were definitely intended to take advantage of colour TV and wow the audience. They had a great impact on younger viewers too, giving Star Trek a strong, enduring visual stamp that endures today. While I rather like the later uniforms, I do find their lack of logic to be annoying. I think the TOS uniforms with epaulets signifying rank might be preferable.

If I would tweak anything in TOS it would be expanding the roles of the supporting cast slightly to give them more agency, and to feature some of the more popular guest stars once or twice each season so we could have had more Reilly, Noel, Mulhall etc throughout the show and to feature Rand as a guest star in seasons 2 and 3.

 

[Noname Given]

The TOS uniforms were definitely intended to take advantage of colour TV and wow the audience. They had a great impact on younger viewers too, giving Star Trek a strong, enduring visual stamp that endures today. While I rather like the later uniforms, I do find their lack of logic to be annoying. I think the TOS uniforms with epaulets signifying rank might be preferable.

If I would tweak anything in TOS it would be expanding the roles of the supporting cast slightly to give them more agency, and to feature some of the more popular guest stars once or twice each season so we could have had more Reilly, Noel, Mulhall etc throughout the show and to feature Rand as a guest star in seasons 2 and 3.

FYI - At the time Star Trek was in production, NBC was OWNED by RCA (a major producer of color TVs in the 1960ies) - and if you look at how the original pilot and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" looked - yes, the 'colorization of the Enterprise Bridge set, and the multi-colored uniforms (as opposed to one color for every crewmember); was a request (which Desilu acceded to) WAS designed to entice viewers to buy color TVs; and affirm their purchase 'meant something (IE Yes, this show has a wide color palate and I can really see it with my new color TV - glad I bought it.)

 

[Ensign Benson]

If I would tweak anything in TOS it would be expanding the roles of the supporting cast slightly to give them more agency, and to feature some of the more popular guest stars once or twice each season so we could have had more Reilly, Noel, Mulhall etc throughout the show and to feature Rand as a guest star in seasons 2 and 3.

Those would have been excellent changes. Not as cool as Spock's beard, mind you. But excellent!

 

[Commishsleer]

I like the colourful uniforms. Its just a part of what makes TOS the legendary series that it is.(Even if they do look a little Wiggles like). Along with the occasional weird camera angle and the rocking of the characters in the corridors and on the bridge after a near miss.

I'm not against the field jackets they used in "The Cage" or TWOK. I think they were "prcctical". Also having a few more women wearing pants on occasion would have OK with me.

 

[Drone]

Okay, I figured it out finally. Here are a few more:

Captain Kirk in a blue shirt. I put a wreath around the star in his assignment patch as an indicator that he's the CO. I think the patches and rank stripes would have looked better in black.

I'm sorry, but these and a few of the others put me more in the mind of sweatshirts masquerading as tunics. For whatever reason, I find that I just can't take them as seriously as the genuine article.

We all know beards denote evil-doers. That's why I keep mine anyway, mwhahahahahahaahahahahahhahaha

[/QUOTE]

Don't babies supposedly find beards to be frightening?

^ depends which Roddenberry (i.e. when Roddenberry). More importantly, he had the concept, but it was other people who really set the tone of the show (Coon, Fontana, so many others). His word is hardly gospel. There is no disputing that Starfleet is a military service. It amazes me that people think it is anything else - I think it springs from a fundamental misunderstanding of what a military actually is.

This has been gone over so many times, and just recently too. I find that I agree with the interpretation of many posters that as constituted, Starfleet serves a number of roles and is not strictly a military organization, regardless of the outward trappings of uniforms, ranks, and weaponry. Certainly, it provides protection to Federation planets, colonies, and outposts that are being threatened. Obviously, when the Feds are in a state of open warfare, it is the agency that carries out all the actions, offensive and defensive. But when those scenarios are not in play, which doesn't represent an insignificant percentage of time in the Federation's history, it is responsible for myriad exploratory, diplomatic, basic scientific research, emergency medical relief missions, special supply runs, and much more. Are all of these latter functions, integral components of many iterations of contemporary military forces throughout the world? Please enlighten me if my sense of the answer to that question is very few, if any.

 

[Ensign Benson]

I'm sorry, but these and a few of the others put me more in the mind of sweatshirts masquerading as tunics. For whatever reason, I find that I just can't take them as seriously as the genuine article.

Now that you mention it, they kind of do, don't they? I suppose an entirely different design would be needed to pull it of. Maybe something in between TWOK and TNG uniforms?

This has been gone over so many times, and just recently too. I find that I agree with the interpretation of many posters that as constituted, Starfleet serves a number of roles and is not strictly a military organization, regardless of the outward trappings of uniforms, ranks, and weaponry. Certainly, it provides protection to Federation planets, colonies, and outposts that are being threatened. Obviously, when the Feds are in a state of open warfare, it is the agency that carries out all the actions, offensive and defensive. But when those scenarios are not in play, which doesn't represent an insignificant percentage of time in the Federation's history, it is responsible for myriad exploratory, diplomatic, basic scientific research, emergency medical relief missions, special supply runs, and much more. Are all of these latter functions, integral components of many iterations of contemporary military forces throughout the world? Please enlighten me if my sense of the answer to that question is very few, if any.

However, we also see that the Federation has a diplomatic corps and scientific organizations separate from Star Fleet, and emergency medical relief missions and special supply runs are common missions with modern day military forces. The USN regularly sends carrier groups to sites of disasters for example. So I would submit that Star Fleet is the military, and it's missions are primarily military.

 

[Drone]

But doesn't quite a bit of Picard's Enterprise's brief, for example, revolve around diplomacy? Also, aren't there many research oriented vessels in Starfleet's complement (I won't venture knowledge of classes other than the Nova)? It would seem that these functions, as presented, would have to be described as more than incidental to the overall mission and rationale to the organization, other entities involved in them nothwithstanding.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Don't babies supposedly find beards to be frightening?

Never had that problem, though I do always get stared at by babies, never scared though

 

[J.T.B.]

But when those scenarios are not in play, which doesn't represent an insignificant percentage of time in the Federation's history, it is responsible for myriad exploratory, diplomatic, basic scientific research, emergency medical relief missions, special supply runs, and much more. Are all of these latter functions, integral components of many iterations of contemporary military forces throughout the world? Please enlighten me if my sense of the answer to that question is very few, if any.

Contemporary armed forces, not so much. But today's world is not comparable in a number of ways. The planet is thoroughly explored and mapped. Major powers don't have a lot of colonies spread around the globe. Diplomats use air travel (sometimes military), much faster than naval vessels. Military forces still do humanitarian relief missions and emergency supply delivery, though.

In the 1800s, the navies of many countries engaged in diplomacy, exploration and research. Before WW1, the US Navy had a small corps of officers called Professors of Mathematics, who besides teaching at the Naval Academy also ran the Naval Observatory and published astronomical research. Naval vessels were the fastest possible means of transportation for diplomats, and the only way to represent national interests and police far-flung colonies.

With the British Empire having the most colonies and the biggest navy, the Victorian Royal Navy is probably the closest real world Starfleet there has ever been. This was acknowledged in the series writer's guide, too:

The mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise? Isn't it something like that of, say, English warships at the turn of the century?

Very close. As you recall, in those days vessels of the major powers were assigned to sectors of various oceans, where they represented their government there. Out of contact with the Admiralty for long periods, the captains of such vessels had broad discretionary powers in regulating trade, bush wars, putting down slavery, assisting scientific investigations and geological surveys, even to becoming involved in relatively minor items like searching for a lost explorer or school mistress.​

 

[Maurice]

Don't babies supposedly find beards to be frightening?

Not in my experience. They usually see it as one more thing they can grab!

 

[Shikarnov]

The multi-colored uniforms always bugged me, even as a small child. Uniforms should be uniform, dang it!

While I was never bothered by the bright colors of the TOS uniforms, I have to admit to preferring a smaller -- and more subtle -- palette. To my eye, The Cage's costuming was just about perfect. Even though the blue and the gold tunics were distinctly different, the slightly lower saturation made them appear much more alike than the TOS palette.

And I have to say I do love the uniformity of the old field jackets.

ETA: Hotlinked from TrekCore, with permission.

 

[T'Girl]

While the miniskirts were years in the future, it nice to see that one Enterprise crewmember wasn't adverse to showing a little leg.

(and is it just me, or does that crewmember look suspiciously like Tom Paris?)

 

[Shikarnov]

^ Maybe it's his great-grandfather.

 

[FormerLurker]

The guy at the engineering station(or what would become the engineering station in production) is wearing a peach colored shirt, not a gold one. There were three colors, they were just more subtle, and not used in the same way as we are used to, save that gold was for command, and blue for some sciences(though we don't know if it was for all, or what the peach was meant for).

 

[T'Girl]

I personally suspect a violation of the temporal prime directive.

WNMHGB had gold-green colored shirts (wore only by iirc four people), and sand colored shirts. There were crew in solid green colored coveralls too.

 

[Warped9]

The "peach" colour shirts in the pilots were actually a sand colour I believe. And the command shirts in both pilots were also a green colour that came out gold on film just like the TOS command shirts.

 

[A beaker full of death]

... it is responsible for myriad exploratory, diplomatic, basic scientific research, emergency medical relief missions, special supply runs, and much more. Are all of these latter functions, integral components of many iterations of contemporary military forces throughout the world?

The answer is yes, they are.
Further, though the shipboad procedures as depicted in TOS most closely resemble the USN of WWII, the fleet and duty concept portrayed are clearly inspired by the Napoleonic era, as Roddenberry always freely admitted ("Horatio Hornblower in space"). Master and Commander is the closest thing to TOS out there, and that is indeed a military ship.


EDIT: ah. I see others have answered more eloquently than, though substantively the same way as, I.