What do those uniform colors mean, anyway?!
- Thread starter Neopeius
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Maybe "Where No Man" too.
The pilot uniforms/insignia are a little harder to make sense of than the later series.
Here's an interesting look at the second pilot's uniform colors. I see both a gold/green and a flat tan. along with the blue.
If we are thinking of it as if we were seeing the show in 1966 for the first time, then we would not have any frame of reference to suggest that these are oddities or errors. I think what he have here is a system that combines a shirt color with an insignia to say--something--about a crewmember's job.
Some suggest that the patches not matching the shirts consistently is an error, but if a certain color shirt always has the same patch, why have different patches at all? Looking to TMP, the uniforms combined a shirt color with a color in the patch to provide more info on that officer's certifications in some way.
Going back to a viewpoint that only considers TOS, we see the "tan" (or whatever color you want to call it) shirts still used (rarely) even once red shirts are in use. So I like to think that the "tan" worn by Kelso and others is not an early version of the "red" shirt, but instead some other designation (for the sake of argument, I'll call it technical).
So that gives us Line, Staff, Tech, and Engineering. We could suggest the shirt colors for these as Gold/Green, Blue, Tan and Red, respectively.
We also have 4 patches, "star," "planet," "swirl," and "c." For the sake of argument, let's call them command, sciences, engineering, and security. (Later there is a nurse patch with the red cross.) I don't necessarily have a problem with security wearing blue or red, and having a "c" or a "swirl," depending on background of the crewperson. On a small TV it might be easy to imagine many security offices have the "c" patch, even though we know now that they seem to be almost all "swirls."
Interestingly, there is a novel that suggests Piper is an expert in bio-weapons. His having a blue shirt with a swirl patch would describe this.
Moving ahead to TMP, we actually see a system a lot like the one I was imaging just looking at the pilots and season 1. In TMP there are are mostly blue and tan shirts with the occasional brownish red. Then there are colored patches that describe an exact department. So even though the exact shade has changed, I think we could still be seeing Staff, Tech, and Engineering crew. Kirk, Spock, Decker and Scotty are now special exceptions who are acting as staff officers but can take command, and everyone else seems to fit that system.
So perhaps 2254-2278 actually had a consistent uniform code, with just minor changes?
I thought the "c" meant "cadet"...They look young and all they did was stand around on the bridge observing or handing reports off: grunts. Pike: "What are we running here, a cadet ship, Number One? Are we ready or not?" Cadets serving on ships are real.
You know, I keep meaning to look at the patches, and I never do. I don't think I'd ever have noticed there were different insignia if it wasn't pointed out to me. They'd be less obvious on a small TV, too.
This brings up something that is a bit hard to sort out. In TOS we hear of both "cadets" and "midshipmen." Traditionally in the British usage a cadet is in full-time school training, while a midshipman is sort of a junior-junior officer serving aboard a regular operating vessel. The US used something of the same distinction until the early 1900s when they settled on "midshipmen" for students at the Naval Academy.
"Court Martial" and "The Ultimate Computer" make it sound like midshipmen are at the Academy, while in "Whom Gods Destroy" it seems like a cadet was on an actual mission. In TWOK there are cadets and (deleted scene) midshipmen on the same vessel. It seems like midshipmen faded away in subsequent Trek. So we're left to wonder exactly what they were and where they fit, sort of like fleet captains.
I could accept the C being for Cadet. For some reason I assumed that cadets are beginners at the Academy, and midshipmen are later in their training, but there is not anything to really support that, other than that it fits the situation.
Another factor about cadets worth noting is how often and in what capacity we are confirmed to see them. There seem to be two ways cadets are shown.
In the first way, cadets are shown as comprising the majority of the crew, and training on (and for) the specific ship upon which they will serve at graduation. In TWOK, it seems that the ship is mostly cadets, and since McCoy asks, "Why not put an experienced crew back on the ship?" it leaves the impression that the Enterprise will be manned by the crew training to do so in the movie. We see the same thing in the 2009 movie, with Pike selecting cadets and recent graduates to serve under him on a new ship that they are on for training until they and the ship are placed on actual duty.
In the second way cadets are shown, they are shown as a smaller number in the crew, who are training for duty on any ship or station. It is less clear if this way of showing cadets is meant to be "official," or common. In Star Trek VI, we see some engineers and crewmen that have red colors, which seemed to indicate cadets in TWOK, but it is not stated in dialogue. Also we have Wesley Crusher in TNG, who is basically a cadet but is not officially in the Academy yet.
All this is a way of looking for evidence if cadets were onboard the ship under Pike, where the "c" patch is used. Would Kirk have been one of only a few cadets or recent graduates on the Farragut, or was most of the crew trainees who were on the first shipboard deep space missions? Was Pike's Number One only a LT because most of the rest of the crew were cadets or recent graduates?
At least it makes sense if the "c" patch crewmen are in blue, as that would make them "staff" officers who would not take command.
Midshipman went through several different variations within the Royal Navy but the last but one variation (mid 20th Century to 2013), used both Officer Cadet and Midshipman in various scenarios:
Officer Cadet was the non-substantive title used by all candidates during initial officer training at Britannia (by default equivalent to OCS, though non-flying "command" officers typically gain a foundation degree in naval studies and all have the option of distance learning bachelors or even masters).
Midshipman was the substantive rank accorded to direct entrants who did not have an undergraduate degree when they joined the Fleet and effectively ranked with second lieutenant in the Army or Marines. Post-2013, this rank is borne by all initial entrants to the Fleet (with the possible exception of certain staff roles). A slight variation of this scheme is still used in some Commonwealth navies including the Royal Australian Navy.
Prior to the 2013 reforms, direct entrants who had already obtained an undergraduate degree from an accredited university (rather than minimum of two A-levels that was required) skipped the rank of Midshipman entirely and went straight from Officer Cadet at Britannia to Sub-Lieutenant in the Fleet.
The closest modern example to either scenario in the United States would probably be the training programme for Coast Guard cadets, although at least this case a four-year degree is eventually acquired, whereas in British service it's very much optional.
IMO, Wesley should either have been a Crewman (with accelerated promotion to the Petty Officer ranks as he already knew much of the practical material) or Midshipman (de facto equivalent in protocol), although I suppose the RAF designation of "Acting Pilot Officer" -- which ranks above Officer Cadets but below Midshipmen and Second Lieutenants, who wear the equivalent of the single "dark pip" as their insignia -- is an acceptable parallel.
"Laddie, don't you think you should rephrase that?" (A fight breaks out in the K7 Bar with the Klingons.)"C" stand for crewman.
"Laddie, don't you think you should rephrase that?" (A fight breaks out in the K7 Bar with the Klingons.)
I mean it's possible in the sense that no lieutenant or above is ever shown wearing one, but I doubt it.
My headcanon is that it's a simplified Sigma, used on Star Trek Online for Operations Department (Non-Engineers) including Quartermasters, Transporter Operators and potentially Armory and/or Security Officers (although STO groups the latter as their own group with a targeting scope as an insignia)
And in WW2 it was even simpler for the vast numbers of officers going into the RNVR: Those who were 20 years old went into officer training as sub-lieutenants; those younger were midshipmen.
Perhaps there is a symbol that this shape could be other than a "c" after all. I'm not convinced it is a Sigma though, but I could see how the online game could have started from there Does anyone know enough of the Greek alphabet or other such symbols to check and see if there is some actual symbol that is even closer to this particular symbol than Sigma?
Epsilon perhaps, without the center piece.
Part of the reason I went with Sigma is that in addition to the above, there is also the "lunate Sigma" which looks like a regular C in some contexts.
Whereas Epsilon always has that middle piece that differentiates it from the C shape.
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"C" stand for crewman.
C is for cookie. That's good enough for me.
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