Star Trek uniforms
Star Trek uniforms are costumes worn by actors portraying personnel of a fictitious Starfleet in various television series and films in the Star Trek science fiction franchise. During the various series, the costume design has often changed to represent different time periods and for reasons of appearance and comfort. Sometimes different styles were deliberately mixed to enhance the sense of time travel or alternative universes.
Original series
The original uniform designs were the product of costume designer Bill Theiss. These uniforms consisted of a colored top and dark pants, with significant variations between the designs used in the pilot episodes and the rest of the series.Pilot version
The Starfleet uniforms seen in the unaired pilot "The Cage" and the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before", consisted of a tunic with a heavy ribbed turtle neck collar for men, and a cowl neck variation for women, each in three colors: gold, beige, and light blue, worn over charcoal slacks. Gray jackets were sometimes worn on landing party duty.Officers in the first Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", wore a single solid gold sleeve stripe, and only the officer grades of "lieutenant" and "captain" were used in dialog. A "chief" was also visible, but wearing a different sleeve stripe, consisting of two thin lines encircling the cuff, with a wavy gold line appearing above and below these lines. Characters addressed as "crewman" wore no sleeve insignia. The gray coats also bore silver rank stripes on the sleeves. In the second pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", most officers again wore a single stripe; Captain James T. Kirk wore two stripes.
The rank indicators used in the pilots and the production series differed because Roddenberry and Theiss had not yet worked out a consistent system for officer-grade indicators on the uniforms; this they would do after the second pilot.
The original series Starfleet uniforms do not include headgear of any sort, including the officer's combination cap and service side cap.
Production version
The original uniform material was velour. This was used in the first and second seasons because it was cheap and easy to care for, and had an attractive sheen under the set lighting. However, it shrank after it was dry-cleaned, and it tore easily. It was replaced in the third season by a doubleknit nylon fabric used in professional baseball uniforms. Differently colored shirts were worn, and charcoal slacks – which appeared black on camera – by the men.Although women wore trousers in the pilots, most female Starfleet personnel wear more revealing costumes per request from NBC; Grace Lee Whitney suggested miniskirts. William Shatner observed that Star Trek, "to the appreciation of all the men on the set, in fact all around the world, would boast the shortest skirts on women of any regular series on television". Miniskirt-length dresses with cheer briefs and dark tights were worn by the women. Black boots were worn by both sexes. Nichelle Nichols did not consider the miniskirts unusually short or revealing:
Once the series went into production, use of the jackets on landing parties stopped, even in inclement weather.
File:WonderCon 2012 - original series Star Trek uniforms.jpg|thumb|upright|Lt. Uhura's red uniform and Captain Kirk's green shirt uniforms from the Original Series
On certain occasions, the characters would wear dress uniforms that are made of a shinier fabric, apparently a polyester satin, and decorated with gold piping and colored badges varying according to rank. Montgomery Scott's dress uniform, especially as seen in "The Savage Curtain", includes a Scottish tartan – specifically, the tartan of the Clan Scott, one of Scotland's oldest clans. Jumpsuits in the same colors with black undershirts were also worn, mostly by background characters.
Shirt colors
Beginning with the first production episode "The Corbomite Maneuver", the department colors were slightly altered from the pilot versions: command and helm personnel wear gold shirts; operations, engineering and security personnel wear red; and science and medical personnel wear blue, all with black collars and undershirts. The most commonly used Command Section shirts were actually chartreuse-green in color, but they appeared to be a golden-yellow color both under the lights used on the set and in the post-development film stock. In later series, the gold color was canonized in dialog. However, some uniforms – the alternate shirts worn by Captain Kirk, and the Command Section dress uniforms – were made of a different material which, while the same color, showed up as chartreuse-green even under the lights and when photographed. The green shirts may have the rank stripes on the sleeves or on the collar, and always feature the Enterprise assignment patch near the waist as a belt fastener.Rank and insignia
The production rank system worked out by series creator Gene Roddenberry and costume designer Bill Theiss resembles that of the United States Navy, in contrast to other science fiction franchises that use an army ranking system. In Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, ranks are indicated by sleeve stripes. While these were originally planned to follow the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard model, the pattern was modified to avoid an overly flashy or militaristic look by removing one stripe from each Starfleet rank. Thus: a Commodore, when seen, wears a wide gold braid with a gold stripe above and below; a captain's insignia resembles that of a naval lieutenant commander ; a commander's resembles a naval lieutenant ; a lieutenant commander's resembles a naval lieutenant ; a lieutenant's resembles a naval ensign, and an ensign wears no sleeve stripes. The LtJG rank was used once in TOS in the episode "Naked Time". Also, there was no distinction made between ensigns and non-commissioned officers or enlisted crew members in TOS; everyone below the rank of lieutenant was presumed to be an ensign.In later movies based on The Original Series, ranks are indicated by pins on a shoulder strap and the left sleeve. These are unique symbols for each rank like those worn universally by officers in all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.
In most franchise television series, ranks are indicated by varying numbers of gold or black dots or bars worn on the uniform collar. These more closely follow the naval officer pattern, with gold pips equating to a whole stripe and black pips equating to a half stripe.
Service insignia
Six duty insignia were defined for TOS:Starship duty
Theiss designed a shield-shaped badge in 1964 which he called the "arrowhead", with input from Roddenberry. This came to be known as the Star Trek delta insignia, and has since become iconic of the Starship Enterprise and the entire Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry's intent was that personnel of all starfleet starships would wear this, but in production of the second season episode "The Omega Glory", Theiss mistakenly got the idea that each starship would have a unique insignia, from the fact that some starship officers in an earlier episode "Charlie X" wore a different insignia. He therefore designed a rectangular insignia worn by the captain and the chief medical officer of the USS Exeter. Shortly before October 7, 2018, a December 18, 1967, memo to Theiss from producer Bob Justman was discovered. Justman noticed the error while reviewing footage and consulted with Roddenberry, who clarified that this indeed was a mistake: all Starfleet starship personnel are to wear the delta insignia as seen on the Enterprise crew uniform. Footage was not reshot to correct the error, but Justman made it clear it was not to be repeated. Going forward, the delta symbol remained consistent for all starship personnel, as seen in "Court Martial" and "The Tholian Web".This was not publicized, leading to the "unique starship insignia" theory taking hold among fans. Confusion returned to the franchise during production of the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "In a Mirror Darkly", which shows what happened to the lost USS Defiant appearing in the original series episode "The Tholian Web". The Enterprise costume designers designed an insignia for the Defiant, based on the incorrect assumption that universal use of the delta symbol was in honor of the NCC-1701 Enterprise completing its first five-year mission.
In all other Star Trek series and movies, the delta insignia is universal regardless of duty posting.
The delta symbol has a number of variants, based on the ship's department served in:
- Command: Including helm and navigation functions; the basic delta with an elongated star is worn on a gold tunic and the captain's special green tunic.
- Science: The star is replaced with a circle representing a planet with its equator outlined. This is worn on a blue tunic.
- Operations: This includes Engineering, Security, and Communications. The symbol is a six-sided spiral shape. This is worn on a red tunic. A large number of security officers sacrificially die in landing party duty, leading to the meme "redshirt" which is often parodied in other media.
- Medical: Doctors wear the science insignia, and nurses wear the Red Cross, on blue tunics. Doctors occasionally wear scrubs in sick bay.
Civilian ship duty
The early first season episode "Charlie X" shows the captain and first officer of the Antares wearing a differently shaped insignia. As Roddenberry clarifiedthis was due to their service on a civilian vessel, but led to Theiss' mistaken idea that every starship had a unique insignia.