Now that I've actually seen the uniforms in greater detail on the show, I like them better. The texturing wasn't clear at all on the pictures that showed up online previously.
Agreed. The uniform does look better close-up and the texturing on the fabric of the shoulders and collar helps to make it look a lot less bland. Noticeably, the costumes for the more significant characters also look much better tailored to the individual actors and that helps quite considerably too!
It seems very clear now that the combadges all look the same with mirror polish silver / chrome arrowhead outline and a sort of dull graphite grey for the backing plates. Of note, the rank pips also seem to be polished silver and the same is true for the pips and edging on the flag officer rank bars. At some points, particularly Admiral Clancy, it looks like the background of the rank bars is the same dull graphite grey as the back of the combadge although at other times it just looks black -- but I suspect this is just the lighting. It would be a nice consistent design feature if the had indeed opted to use silver and dull grey for both.
It's good to see the one-pip rank confirmed on-screen as "Commodore" so that we can safely put that discussion to rest! I'm kinda glad that they have opted to put a senior officer in the standard duty uniform with no other embellishments apart from the rank insignia. The use of specific division color is also a nice touch.
The grey jacket for Admiral Clancy may be something of a one-off that she she has chosen to adopt, given her unique role; I suspect we may not see this uniform used for other flag officers. I'm surprised they didn't take the option to just reverse the jacket colors for flag officers and simply use the exact same design as the standard uniform just with division colored body and sleeves and black shoulders and collar. At least Clancy does have an undershirt in Command burgundy.
where are the uniforms in the preview? I've watched it about 5 times and can't see them.
Very, very brief appearance -- blink and you'll miss it. Right at the end of the opening flashback scenes; you can just make out the Operations gold on the shoulders of the security guards -- it also looks like they're also wearing some sort of body armor similar to the security armor from TMP / TWOK. The uniforms have the distinctive detailing of that version of the Starfleet uniforms with black / division colour stripes below the colored yoke. It's really not very obvious though!
Why would an Admiral in charge of Starfleet Medical not wear blue/teal/whatever shade they’re using these days, for example?
Absolutely agree! Yes, Command burgundy may be the understandable default colour for most HQ / Staff roles but it does make sense that the various senior officers in particular Starfleet branches such as Engineering and Security or Sciences and Medicine would indeed wear their branch-specific colors. There has always been a precedent for non-Command senior officers going right back to TOS but but we just rarely see them on-screen as they haven't been part of the stories the shows have chosen to tell. From a production point of view, it also helps viewers to associate characters with particular roles and/or loyalties -- which is, I suspect, largely why we saw Adm. Todman wear Operations gold in DS9 -- and for the production team, that's as good a reason as any!