Uniforms
- Thread starter PCz911
- Start date
This would be how I'd prefer the TMP uniforms to look. It doesn't take away from the design but it keeps the TOS color scheme, but with desaturation to keep with the toned down colors. And of course blackening the pants and collar to keep some TOS uniform elements.
I like this. Aside from my urge to tweak the collars, the biggest question I have here is: why are the circle backgrounds for the arrowhead insignia necessary in this case?
I agree with Avro on the TMP admiral's uniform being very cool.
The TMP was ok, I used to dislike it, but it has grown on me slightly over the years. It's a bit too clinical.
I did like the maroon and black. Besides, I have trouble imagining the middle-aged cast in their old style uniforms. The maroon and black was great for hiding those middle-aged waist lines, or making them seem more...manageable?
The TMP was ok, I used to dislike it, but it has grown on me slightly over the years. It's a bit too clinical.
I did like the maroon and black. Besides, I have trouble imagining the middle-aged cast in their old style uniforms. The maroon and black was great for hiding those middle-aged waist lines, or making them seem more...manageable?
Different days? Different shifts? Sure, to us it's only a couple hours, but to the characters it was more like, what, three days? I'm sure they all went to bed and washed and has lots of hot unprotected sex and so forth in that kind of time-frame, but we the audience didn't need to see any of it. Changing the clothes though, that indicates the passage of time for us.
The sudden change from hippiesque campy attire in TOS and TMP to more formal militaristic wear (well, relatively 
) smacks of a belligerent admiral who has recently come into the position of being able to decide uniform policy and has resented the casual attire he's been forced to wear all these years so sets about "smartening up" the fleet.
You could argue the exact same thing happens again in the TNG era when they go from spandex pajamas and overalls to the sharp grey formaler look.
It may yin and yang like this through the decades as Admiral Fashionista gets replaced by admiral formal over and over
) smacks of a belligerent admiral who has recently come into the position of being able to decide uniform policy and has resented the casual attire he's been forced to wear all these years so sets about "smartening up" the fleet. You could argue the exact same thing happens again in the TNG era when they go from spandex pajamas and overalls to the sharp grey formaler look.
It may yin and yang like this through the decades as Admiral Fashionista gets replaced by admiral formal over and over
Well, it would still be more specific. You could tell a medico from a scientist, a security guard from an engineer and so on.
Different days? Different shifts? Sure, to us it's only a couple hours, but to the characters it was more like, what, three days? I'm sure they all went to bed and washed and has lots of hot unprotected sex and so forth in that kind of time-frame, but we the audience didn't need to see any of it. Changing the clothes though, that indicates the passage of time for us.
Indeed. They also followed the naval custom of things being more formal in port. Once they were underway they shifted to the more casual "Class B."
But why not make the tunics follow whatever color scheme is in the insignia? If for each insignia background color, only one tunic color is possible, then the tunic color is redundant, yes?
The system doesn't quite gel (Uhura would be back in mustard, for example) but basically some of the departments have sub-departments. Command has command white and operations yellow; science has physical sciences orange and life sciences green; you could also also have tactical security grey and small unit security dark green; main engineering red and maintenance support staff blue.
TMP is my favourite overall look and if the uniforms were tweaked slightly as some people have suggested, they'd be top too (more consistency, shoulder pads, two-tone shirts, sensible (black even) trousers and boots).
The background color of the circle, combined with the basic tunic color, would be like a combination code.
So a yellow shirt with a white circle could be command.
But a blue shirt with a white circle could be medical.
Yellow with yellow > operations.
Yellow with red > tactical.
Etc.
Red with black is security
But a red shirt with a white circle could be a security medic.
Would or could? You mean could. And, really, only if it was not the same system used in TMP, because that would make the tunic colors redundant, I think, as I stated in my last post (I guess, unless we're supposed to assume that Uhura really is still in operations, and not back in command as in the beginning of season one, but that would be the only exception I can see).
The correlation is still there, just simplified.
Sulu and Ilia are both operations too (in fact I like to think that Sulu was chief operations officer who was just doing a shift at the helm since he's a bit senior to be doing the job of an ensign). Command isn't just reserved for captain and first officer though. There's a yeoman or junior officer floating around (possibly at Starfleet Command or on the station) with a white circle too.
We have technicians with grey circles and green circles on the Rec Deck so I would have no issue with this kind of delineation within departments. In fact if this was official it would mean the inconsistencies make a bit more sense.
I won't speak to the veracity of the article, but Memory Alpha has helm and navigation in the command division in the mid-2270s here, just as it was in the series.
Well, I just took it as an attempt to marry the TOS and TMP schemes. Extending the TMP color code to the tunic, putting Spock in an orange shirt, might have looked like too much.
Simplified so it no longer correlates, like I said, re-inventing the rank system. If having metal pin insignia was the goal they could certainly come up with something that corresponded to or evoked the TOS rank system, but they went with these devices with metal frames and angles and arrowheads and so on that just came out of nowhere.
Oh, I hated the orange anyway. It would have looked better blue, but I've heard on the board that they changed the insignia background for Spock to orange because blue would have conflicted with blue screen for matte work. If that's really so, then the same would have been true for a blue tunic, only more so. That's to say, if they could have made a blue tunic work for blue screen, then they could have chosen the same color for a blue insignia background.
I'm all for more than three colors.
I must confess that as a layman at the time, I used to dislike the TWOK uniforms because all those pins etc made it harder for me to distinguish the differences between the ranks visually. Say what we will about the TOS, TMP and TNG uniforms, at least the way the ranks were defined visually was simple, yet effective, and easy for the broader audience to follow. The TWOK uniforms are arguably the most realistic in the sense that they've got every rank covered by some insignia or other, but they're the very definition of "too much information" compared to the minimalist uniforms seen elsewhere.
I mean, I get them *now*, because I'm a fan and I've researched it. But I'm just not so sure that to a layman audience, the TWOK rankings are understandable. But then again, to a layman audience it probably doesn't matter.
I mean, I get them *now*, because I'm a fan and I've researched it. But I'm just not so sure that to a layman audience, the TWOK rankings are understandable. But then again, to a layman audience it probably doesn't matter.
In TMoSTTMP it says that Robert Wise thought that Spock should have a badge that stood out more on the gray-blue uniform.
Well, to be fair US armed forces officer insignia isn't always intuitive; there's no reason to expect a silver eagle would be below a silver star but above a silver leaf, which in turn is above a gold leaf. But those devices evolved over some time and there were reasons they turned out how they did. The TWOK insignia just appear out of the blue with no cues to connect to the established look of TOS/TMP.
No, it still correlates. Like I said before, the lieutenant, commander, & captain rank pins have a connection to what came before in TOS (even if loosely). Even Kirk's four-leaf admiral pin has a correlation to the four stripes he wore initially in TMP. Things don't have to be 100% the same to see a connection or an influence between them.
It's more about the fact that, at the end of the day, Star Trek is consumer entertainment, not reality. The stripes/pins are like a sort of 'dramatic short-hand', if you will. We can look at the TNG crew, count the pins on their necks, and immediately understand the rank structure. Same goes for the TOS stripes. The TWOK uniforms aren't like that. Sure, we (the fans) know all the little differences.
But Joe Average might look at them and be lost, comparative to the simplicity of the TOS/TMP/TNG rank schemes. In some ways the TWOK uniforms are a little overcooked, with all these little badges and pins, but on the other hand the differences between them are actually far too subtle to be intuitive to the average viewer. 
