I don’t think the TMP uniforms were that far off in design, but having them all one colour seemed odd after TOS’ colour tunic with dark trousers. The TMP trousers flowing near seamlessly with the boots was kinda weird.
Those really did hit a great balance between preserving the general look and simplicity, while also having a fitted, tailored, more professional aspect to them. The ST09 uniforms had gone way too far in the other direction, with the shirts being colored jerseys worn over the actual clothes.
I seem to recall some earlier fanon that also had the TOS colored uniform shirt being a separate thing that went over a black undershirt, instead of the black piece actually being the collar of the uniform shirt. I can't remember where it came from, though. Maybe comic books? In any case, I actually liked seeing that come to life with the ST09 uniforms. In-universe, it's hard to conceptualize the TMP uniforms as a natural development from the TOS uniforms, just like it's hard to conceptualize the radical ship redesign as a "refit" of the ship that we saw in the series. The real-world explanation is that TMP is something of a re-imagining of the Star Trek universe in many ways. Kor
I feel like it comes from "The Naked Time" where Spock and another crewmember (I can't recall his name) are shown having a post mission physical and both are wearing a short sleeve black shirt that goes under the uniform top.
Yes, that must be what I was thinking of. Then Spock put the blue shirt on over that. It probably had its own black collar, though, since that's how the actual "prop" uniform was tailored. Kor
GR always wanted the uniforms to have almost magical properties, like no actual zipper because some futuristic equivalent joined the fabric to itself instead. I could see the colored cover jersey being meant to join the undershirt in some way to make it appear as a single garment as an idea of his.
GR also conceptualized a spray-and-wear system for clothing (basically the material was sprayed out of a candy and formed into a uniform around the wearer) during development for TMP
We see this general idea in the scene in which Kirk has a skimpy outfit materialized onto the Ilia probe. Kor
Yeah, as many fan images have shown, simply re-coloring the pants black makes the TMP uniforms look more familiar. I'm even ok with everyone wearing the white and blue tops, it's really only the beige/brown that seems dated or out of place.
Well, when a lot of the background sets have those earth tones and beige it seems odd to have uniforms incorporate the same tones.
I was never fond of the beige and browns and such tones in that era. To that end I never wore clothing with those colours. But the earthy tones we have today are not the same as back in the day. Today’s tones are richer and more varied, and I feel comfortable wearing such colours today.
We actually have no idea when Starfleet stopped using the maroons. It's definitely not TNG S1, as the flashback (to the Battle of Maxia) has the Stargazer crew wearing normal TNG uniforms.
To quote myself from earlier in the thread: (bold emphasis mine) Yes, it's true that we don't know exactly when Starfleet first began using them (but it would have to at least be immediately after TMP) or when they stopped (Jack Crusher wore one in 2348, but for all we know Starfleet kept using them right up until the Battle of Maxia where the Stargazer crew had the TNG season 1 uniforms.) Either way, that's quite a long time for one single uniform (sans a few minor variants) to be used, considering how short a turnaround uniforms became from TNG onwards.
Jack Crusher is wearing the movie style uniform in the holomessage he records when Wesley is 10 weeks old in "Family." Picard is seen wearing a TNG S1 style uniform in the flashback to the aftermath of Jack Crusher's death in "Violations." Dr. Crusher says in "True Q" that Jack died when Wesley was 5. So therefore the monster maroons were switched out for the TNG style uniforms sometime between 2348 and 2353. And I think the movie style uniforms were used for flashbacks to earlier times in TNG for two reasons: 1) It was cheap and they likely still had a lot of them on hand. 2) If you knew that TNG took place nearly a century past the movie era, they instantly told you "This happened some time ago" where an all-new, intermediate uniform design wouldn't have.
One of the interesting features of the monster maroons was the chest flap. In TWOK, there were scenes where Kirk had one of the flaps down. The reverse side of his flap was white colored. I thought the monster maroon uniform looked even more distinguished with the flap down. When I first saw the movie, I thought only captains were allowed to wear their monster maroons with the flap down, because, IIRC, only Kirk and, I think, Terrell had the flap down for any extended period of time. And coincidentally, the uniform, with the flap down, had a more authoritative look, which would be fitting for the captain of the ship. Of course, Kirk's white flap in TWOK was messed up by the cadet who stained it with his blood. I wonder what is the Starfleet regulation concerning whether one should be flapped up or flapped down. I have to say that Kirk looked better in a monster maroon than Picard did ("Tapestry"). Maybe it was because Picard wasn't wearing a turtle neck underneath. Not wearing a turtle neck underneath the monster maroon just doesn't look right, imo. In "Tapestry", Picard and his buddies wore their monster maroons with the flap down in some scenes. The underside of his flap wasn't white though. In any case, the flap-down style didn't make Picard appear more distinguished, though. It just looked sloppy.
We generally only see characters wearing the flap open when they're off-duty, or getting the shit beat out of them. Kirk rips open his during the first Reliant attack, which not only frames Shatner's face nicely against the contrasting red alert lighting, but also means there's a nice white area for Peter Preston to smear with blood. Doesn't Mr Beach have the flap open? And Valtane on the Excelsior. I think in general it's something only captains and senior officers can get away with. I may be wrong, but weren't only some of the 'hero' costumes tailored with the correct lining? It may be that Beach wears George Takei's costume for his brief scenes.
I don't know about "correct" but there were two different lining colours. Kirk and a couple of others had white linings whereas Commanders and below had buff/khaki lining in theirs.