Why did tng change uniform colors

So, it makes sense that even a fictional organization such as Starfleet will change their uniforms as the times change. Why switch them from gold to red? Despite this real-life reason, fans can assume the changes were made due to changes in technology, ships, and Starfleet budgets.

A personal theory is that once the Starfleet introduced the red uniforms in Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn , the color switch between career groups would have been easy to make. This film is full of weird uniform changes and odd color choices. In addition to the strange style, the colors were boring compared to the vibrant choices in TOS. These accents were in the form of ribbons or undershirts of these colors. Eventually, the colors were changed once again to the choices seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Viewers saw the return of the traditional and iconic red, gold, and blue uniforms. The uniforms saw more than just color changes throughout the franchise. There were many different variants of the outfits depending on the work that needed to be done.

For example, there were dress uniforms that changed throughout Starfleet history. There were engineering jumpsuits as well as desert uniforms for hotter weather. With each new starship that Starfleet introduced, there was a new uniform to go with it. This included new variants for wearing the uniform as well. It ended up working against the creators of Star Trek because it caused the crew to look less unified. A few years ago I did this crummy Photoshop job for a similar thread, just to get any idea of what everyone would look like if they kept the TOS scheme.

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Show Ignored Content. Your name or email address: Do you already have an account? No, create an account now. It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. In the original Star Trek engineers and security officers wore red shirts but in ST:TNG engineers and security officers wore yellow shirts and command officers wore red shirts. Was it ever explained why there was a uniform color change? In the pilot original series episodes The Cage and The Man Trap , the science and security personnel wore blue; once the series went into production, engineering and security wore as you said red.

Enterprise also used this division colour scheme, but in a subtle line on the otherwise uniform uniforms. In The Motion Picture , the security guards wore white uniforms with brown helmets and breastplates and engineers worse white spacesuits with black collars.

In The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Roddenberry explained that the uniforms were redesigned because the original bright colours would distract viewers on the large screen. However, these changes proved unpopular, so were redesigned again for the later films. In The Next Generation , security wore gold as you said. Sisko mentions this change to Bashir in the DS9 episode Trials and Tribble-ations which refers back to the classic original series episode. Memory Alpha has a nice timeline of the colours for the different divisions.

As far as I know, an in-universe explanation for the change wasn't ever given but the real military make changes like this too. Out-of-universe, what I've read in various places suggests that it was due to colour-tests with the actors.

In particular:. So, the original "gold" becomes helm, then helm is merged into engineering, and engineering keeps it when helm merges back to command. This leaves red unused, but since red was the uniform primary color, making it the public face namely, Command makes sense.

Command starts out lime green but films as gold Kirk's dress uniform was green to match his duty uniform, which looked gold under the studio lights. I have books that were written during the production of seasons 1 and 2 of TOS, published after each wrapped. Don't know if there's a 3rd. The 1st season shirts were what the costume department called "that damned velour" because it shrank when washed, not just the first washing but every washing.

They had to be taken apart and re-fitted and sewn after every washing, eventually cut down for smaller actors. It wasn't easy finding a gold fabric for the 2nd season that looked the same under the lights as the green velour. Why not find a green fabric that didn't color shift under studio lights?

Because it was already bought and there was a tight budget so they just went with what they had and to heck with the discontinuity of the green dress uniform. ISTR there was a practical reason for science and medical both being blue and engineering and security both being red.

Don't know if it was because Desilu couldn't afford more colors or if the velour wasn't available in more colors. Poorly exercised wetware wants to say there were two different shades of red but the color gamut of television made them look the same.

There's also a rarely seen uniform shirt in TOS that's a sort of kahki color with lots of pockets. I know it's worn by one person in a hallway scene in one episode. To be fair, they were lucky just to make the shows TOS, anyway at all.