TVH - Clothing question

[Christopher]

Yeah, me too. Don't the Klingons search their captives? I mean, they're known for concealing weapons in their uniforms, so divesting prisoners of their clothing should be standard practice. And if that patch emits a strong enough signature to be detected from parsecs away, wouldn't the Klingons have been able to detect it too?

Can't recall where I read it, but someone explained that said patch was of a color that Klingon eyes couldn't detect. Maybe that was mentioned in some version of the script.

The Klingons have sensor technology. Why would they rely on eyes alone? For that matter, the core question remains, why leave prisoners in their own clothes at all? In our prisons, prisoners have to give up all their clothes and possessions and wear prison issue. That's specifically to prevent them from sneaking in contraband or weapons. And as I said, we know from "Heart of Glory" that Klingons build weapons into their uniforms. It makes no sense by any standard that the Klingons would've let Kirk keep the same uniform he'd been arrested in, without at least scanning it first.

Anyway, it sounds like that "someone" was cribbing a concept from the novel Pawns and Symbols by Majliss Larson, which claimed that Klingons had different color pigments in their eyes and thus couldn't see the color red. If that were true, then movie-era uniforms would appear the same black as the patch. But that claim about Klingon vision has never been made anywhere else besides that book.

As Vulcan has no moon, who knows how long "three months" might be.

The line was Kirk's, so it stands to reason that he was using standard (Earth) months. Heck, everyone in ST seems to use Earth time units regardless of their planet of origin.

 

[balls]

Interesting that Scotty's rank pin is back to a commander, though he had the captain's pin at the end of TSFS. So, maybe he held onto his commander's rank pin and changed his rank on his own, yet kept the same clothes.

Just finished TFF. Scotty's back to wearing his captain pin.

 

[UssGlenn]

I figure the patch on Kirks shoulder wasn't an active transmitter, it was something that is highly visible to sensors when scanned with a very selective signal. A signal specifically chosen not to be something that is usually used when scanning prisoners (it would have to be classified).

 

[scotpens]

All Trek productions are notorious for their limited wardrobe. A non-fan watched a few shows with me once and said "how come they never change their clothes?"
Only TMP stands out for it's wardrobe changes which actually help the dramatic presentation as it would in a non-Trek production. Let's face it, it's dull and silly when characters go through an entire production in the same exact clothes. The one exception: Cary Grant in North By Northwest. That Kilgour suit must be made out of the same stuff they make Black Boxes from.

Hell, didn’t Robert Colbert and James Darren go through the entire series of The Time Tunnel wearing the same clothes? At least I hope they had a chance to launder them once in a while!

To be fair, you’d expect characters in a military or quasi-military service to spend most of their waking hours in uniform.

 

[Christopher]

Hell, didn’t Robert Colbert and James Darren go through the entire series of The Time Tunnel wearing the same clothes? At least I hope they had a chance to launder them once in a while!

They sometimes changed into period outfits, but their normal clothes inexplicably rematerialized on them just before each time-jump -- because, of course, the show just reused the same stock footage of their original "tumbling through the vortex" shots.

Most of the castaways on Gilligan's Island always wore the same outfit, with the exception of the Howells and Ginger. And there have been other shows where that was done as well. Keeping the characters in the same outfits makes things easier, since the wardrobe people don't have to worry about keeping track of what day a scene is set on, plus it makes it easier to use stock footage of the characters. (And it's routine in animated shows, since each costume change requires designing a new character model -- and because a lot of limited-animation shows in the past literally reused cels.)

 

[Shon T'Hara]

Right. Everything else seems to indicate that it's only been a little while since TSFS, but then there's the one line about "three months". I don't know why that had to be said. Just leave it out, and then it all seems to be maybe two weeks after TSFS, no problem.

I dunno. I think Spock would need a bit more than two weeks to recover from death.

 

[T'Girl]

... prisoners have to give up all their clothes and possessions and wear prison issue.

And this may have happened. But under our civil system, prisoners can have their clothing returned (or replaced with nicer) for trial proceedings. Something similar could have happened with Kirk and McCoy.

Why does the Federation have embassies to its own members?

Vulcan has a embassy with Bajor (DS9) apparently separate from the Federation, it's listed on a directory in the promenade. Vulcan also has (TAS) ambassadors directly with other Federation members. Kor (from Errand of Mercy) was the Klingon Empire's ambassador to Vulcan, directly.

In the (non-canon) graphic novel Star Trek Countdown, plotted by Star Trek Eleven co-writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, Jean-Luc Picard was, in the year of the destruction of Romulus, the Federation ambassador to Vulcan.

The Embassy that Uhura sought sanctuary within might have been the Vulcan Embassy to United Earth. I believe at least one of the novels places United Earth's central government in San Fransisco.

 

[Christopher]

And this may have happened. But under our civil system, prisoners can have their clothing returned (or replaced with nicer) for trial proceedings. Something similar could have happened with Kirk and McCoy.

Except that they were still wearing the same uniforms after their trial, and after their sentencing to Rura Penthe, a hellhole prison planet that few prisoners are expected to survive. That's the whole point -- the patch Spock put on Kirk's jacket allowed the crew to track him down in prison and rescue him. So they went through arrest, trial, sentencing, and imprisonment without ever changing their clothes.

 

[Basil]

And this may have happened. But under our civil system, prisoners can have their clothing returned (or replaced with nicer) for trial proceedings. Something similar could have happened with Kirk and McCoy.

Except that they were still wearing the same uniforms after their trial, and after their sentencing to Rura Penthe, a hellhole prison planet that few prisoners are expected to survive. That's the whole point -- the patch Spock put on Kirk's jacket allowed the crew to track him down in prison and rescue him. So they went through arrest, trial, sentencing, and imprisonment without ever changing their clothes.

Actually, letting them wear the same clothing makes sense because, as the "Aliens' Graveyard," the prison's function is to give them a relatively brief, horrible existence, and further the facility seems threadbare all around, with even the commandant having to stand on the 23rd century equivalent of a vegetable crate. And the Veridian patch being left on also makes sense because Chang wanted Kirk and crew to be killed while escaping . . . . if there was no Enterprise waiting, their escape would have seemed pretty pointless; one could infer perhaps that the ease with which the Enterprise penetrated Klingon space was also prearranged.

 

[Christopher]

Hmm... an interesting take.

 

[Elder Knight]

Hell, didn’t Robert Colbert and James Darren go through the entire series of The Time Tunnel wearing the same clothes? At least I hope they had a chance to launder them once in a while!

They sometimes changed into period outfits, but their normal clothes inexplicably rematerialized on them just before each time-jump -- because, of course, the show just reused the same stock footage of their original "tumbling through the vortex" shots.

Most of the castaways on Gilligan's Island always wore the same outfit, with the exception of the Howells and Ginger. And there have been other shows where that was done as well. Keeping the characters in the same outfits makes things easier, since the wardrobe people don't have to worry about keeping track of what day a scene is set on, plus it makes it easier to use stock footage of the characters. (And it's routine in animated shows, since each costume change requires designing a new character model -- and because a lot of limited-animation shows in the past literally reused cels.)

I used to watch the old Dragnet shows on Nick at Nite and marvel at how Jack Webb always wore the same blazer and same pants.

But, of course, that was so that the second unit could shoot umpteen takes of Sgt. Friday and his pal getting into or out of the squad car in one day for use throughout the season's shows.

You were supposed to watch those episodes a week apart at closest: no one back then dreamed that you might be watching two a night all week long, let along a 48-hour marathon!

 

[Christopher]

Of course, Joe Friday's just the kind of guy who would wear an identical suit every day. My father was like that. He always went to work in a 3-piece suit, even though he was a radio announcer. The only change he made was from his winter suit to his summer suit. One of his coworkers liked to say that he could track the change of the seasons by whether my father's suit was light or dark.

 

[Timo]

The ST3 vs. 4 clothing issue should be relatively easily explained simply by saying that the Vulcan exile was comfortably spent in Vulcan desert attire, but that the return to Earth called for the heroes' personal clothing for psychological reasons. If the heroes purchased clothing for their Vulcan stay, it would probably be something they wouldn't choose to wear back on Earth, in a different climate. OTOH, there'd be little point in purchasing Earth attire from Vulcan unless the original Earth gear was damaged or lost or otherwise unsuitable. Which Chekov's original clothing may have been.

In ST6, I sort of doubt the viridium thing was a "device" glued onto Kirk's jacket. Rather, I'd suspect it to be a dose of chemical that is delivered by means of a quickly degrading patch, and then soaks through the clothing into the body tissue. It does leave a nasty stain in the jacket, but that stain is not the signaling gimmick - it's just dirt left over from the delivery of the signaling gimmick (and indeed it is portrayed by a dirt stain in the movie, a stain that differs in shape between the application scene and the prison scene). Kirk could have lost his jacket or not; the viridium would be inside his shoulder, tracking him rather than his clothing.

Further, I'd think the viridium isn't emitting a signal at all. That would probably pose a serious health hazard if the signal can span lightyears. Rather, I'd think the substance is a passive one, and merely gives a distinct echo when pinged by starship active sensors. Difficult to detect by most means, and designed to be so. We do know that starships can do spectral analysis on some supposedly nonemitting substances across interstellar ranges; here we merely need a substance so radically different from all others that even this minuscule amount of it stands out in the spectrum.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[inflatabledalek]

Anyway, it sounds like that "someone" was cribbing a concept from the novel Pawns and Symbols by Majliss Larson, which claimed that Klingons had different color pigments in their eyes and thus couldn't see the color red. If that were true, then movie-era uniforms would appear the same black as the patch. But that claim about Klingon vision has never been made anywhere else besides that book.

That's a wonderfully silly idea, neatly explaining all that red lighting that comes on a Klingon bridge when the cloak is on. "Yes Captain, it must be working, can't see a thing".

 

[Christopher]

Actually it's a very smart idea, that aliens would have different color sensitivity. After all, there are species right here on Earth whose range of color perception differs from ours (for instance, insects can see ultraviolet), and many aliens would've evolved under stars with different spectra than our own. It's just that it's a hard idea to reconcile with the color and lighting choices of the filmmakers who created the Klingon bridges in the movies.

 

[inflatabledalek]

Actually it's a very smart idea, that aliens would have different color sensitivity. After all, there are species right here on Earth whose range of color perception differs from ours (for instance, insects can see ultraviolet), and many aliens would've evolved under stars with different spectra than our own. It's just that it's a hard idea to reconcile with the color and lighting choices of the filmmakers who created the Klingon bridges in the movies.

Well, exactly, it's silly because it picks the one colour Klingons really seem to love more than any other.

 

[Christopher]

Well, exactly, it's silly because it picks the one colour Klingons really seem to love more than any other.

That's an anachronistic assumption. Pawns and Symbols was published in 1985. Maybe subsequent Trek productions have presented a consistent red-lit look for Klingon ships, but at that time, the only actual onscreen example of such a lighting scheme was the opening few minutes of ST:TMP. The Klingon bridge in The Search for Spock was lit in fairly normal light, with only a bit of red. And we never saw the interior of a Klingon ship in TOS. So Majliss Larson writing in 1984-5 would've had no reason to believe that Klingons would routinely use red lighting. At the time, they didn't yet. Only one brief sequence in one movie had ever done it that way up until then; it was the exception, not the rule. It's hardly fair to call her "silly" for failing to be consistent with what people in her future would decide to do. You can't blame her for not being precognitive.

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm not a fan of TUC because of story points like that one. That, and books on the bridge, phasers in the galley and starships with rudders. But I think I'm in the minority.

I think the "rudder" line was just a semantical "callback"/term for a maneuver the thrusters do to make the ship move/turn not that the ship has an actual rudder somewhere. (Though if the impulse engines and thrusters are Newtonian some sort of rudder or flap has to be in place to direct thrust.)

The clothing in ST:IV didn't bother me, we obviously met back up with the crew on the cusp of a laundry cycle that synced with the last movie and coincided with their leaving Vulcan. It's a bit more head-scratching on the radical change to the BoP's bridge.

Now, what makes me wonder is why they're still on Vulcan! They've been there for a few months, Vulcan is a Federation planet and Kirk and his crew are all now criminals. Why didn't Starfleet send out a ship to pick-up Kirk and co. and tow the BoP?

 

[Timo]

I think the "rudder" line was just a semantical "callback"/term for a maneuver the thrusters do to make the ship move/turn not that the ship has an actual rudder somewhere.

Well, "right standard rudder" is a valid command today for vessels that don't have rudders at all, but rely on Azipods or other alternate steering methods. Anachronisms aren't really objectionable if used in the military context; most real world military terminology consists of ancient words that have lost their original meaning long ago, of needless jargon, or even of deliberate misnomers, after all.

A starship would need to have separate commands for the act of turning clockwise and for the act of sliding to starboard without turning. "Starboard thrusters" couldn't cover both, but it could plausibly refer to the slide without turning; "Right rudder" could the cover the turn. Of course, such commands would only be needed in close range, low relative speed maneuvering; in wide-ranging combat moves, course settings would be the way to go, with things like ship orientation left for the helmsperson to choose.

Why didn't Starfleet send out a ship to pick-up Kirk and co. and tow the BoP?

That jibes rather well with "Amok Time" and the concept of the Federation government trembling at the thought of T'Pau casting an evil look at them. Vulcan is probably quite a bit more equal than others in the UFP internal hierarchy. When Starfleet deals with Vulcan, it doesn't place a call - it sends an "expedition", as referred to in "Court Martial"... And Vulcan might choose not to allow such an expedition to proceed, or to return. It probably wouldn't be difficult for the intellectual puppets of the Federation to yank on their wires and bring the puppeteer tumbling down.

And we never saw the interior of a Klingon ship in TOS.

We did see one in TAS, though, and it was all greens and blues (with a bit of pink for variety, but no marked red elements). A pretty nice match for the interior used in ST3, to be sure - even if the ST3 design and colors were done mainly to get mileage out of maximally simplistic and cheap set elements.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[inflatabledalek]

EDIT:

Actually, scratch that as it's only going to stretch out a debate over a throwaway (and indeed very possibly crap) joke beyond breaking point.