Honestly it could something like the TMP uniforms (which seemed rather short lived in-universe as well) that Starfleet trialed for a time, then found out it didn't really serve their needs and reverted to everyone using the Delta.
This happens in real world all the time and we shouldn't assume everything Starfleet does is perfect all the time and they never make mistakes unless the story demands it.
The Justman memo says it was continuity error, Phoenix. Are you going to argue with the producers of TOS now about what they did and did not say?
The Justman memo says that Tracey's badge was a continuity error, I did not contradict that in any way. If you recall, I even mentioned the error here:
Not the execution? Why would you say that? They only made one mistake (the unknown badge that captain Tracy had in The Omega Glory), which is the incident Justman was chewing Theiss out about in the memo. All of the other badges were correct and identified the division the wearer was assigned to, not a specific ship.
What I said I didn't think was a continuity error was an entirely different matter, that of the previously unseen (before the movie) insignia that the Epsilon station personnel were wearing. That insignia, considering how Trek uses analogies based on realworld things, is probably just not Starfleet, but rather a civilian intelligence agency like today's NSA.
Also, I did not say they never made any errors, what I said was that they did not make as many as current popular belief would have it.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,689Community Moderator
Except that Epsilon IX was a Federation Comm Station operated by Starfleet. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Epsilon_IX_station
So... the issue there is that it wasn't Intel, but actual Starfleet, indicating that they still had assignment patches in the 2370s on the TMP uniforms, but did away with the practice by the 2280s.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Except that Epsilon IX was a Federation Comm Station operated by Starfleet. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Epsilon_IX_station
So... the issue there is that it wasn't Intel, but actual Starfleet, indicating that they still had assignment patches in the 2370s on the TMP uniforms, but did away with the practice by the 2280s.
That or possibly they were in a period of reorganization where service divisions may have gotten swapped around, or the fact that they had already started changing the badges (if they hadn't then admiral Kirk would have worn the starflower instead of the delta), or (the most likely explanation) that Starfleet's auxiliary division had separate badges for "ground" and ship subdivisions the same way the front-line parts of Starfleet did and the change to everyone using the delta hadn't caught up with the far frontier units yet, or a million other possible reasons for that previously unseen badge. Since they never show any other "communications station" in that era there is no way to verify whether they all use the same division badge or individual ones for each comm station.
There simply is nothing there that proves that Bob Justman was wrong when he wrote the memo, and no valid reason to assume that it was a retcon that invalidated TOS in favor of a fan-made "ship insignia" chart instead of just a logical ongoing evolution/streamlining of the official TOS division insignia setup on its way to the "one service" model used in TNG.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,689Community Moderator
The fact remains that fans believed every ship had its own unique assignment patch, and this belief has existed for decades. And short of people finding that document that solidifies the Delta as for all of Starfleet, or SNW confirming it on screen (which it kinda has already but not through dialog), the belief remains. And it will probably remain long after as well because it is just that deeply rooted.
And STO also went the route of making assignment patches for ships as well for the TOS era.
Realistically though the Enterprise era is when assignment patches should be the most prevelant.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
It’s not just a fan theory either though, I think. The Star Fleet Technical Manual and Okuda Encyclopedia confirmed ship badges too. Those documents are not technically canon, but they are licensed sources of Beta canon. If Justman and Roddenberry were so so steadfast in their position that only stations or non-Starfleet ships like merchant marines used other assignment patches, They did a poor job of reinforcing that opinion. I hear what you guys are saying, but even if Star Trek.com or CBS or whomever is promoting this memo as the Roddenberry intent—I don’t think it really is so cut-and dry.
And if the Antares is a non-Starfleet ship, why are their uniforms otherwise Starfleet? On the other hand the Delta wall-hanging and Constitution livery does seem to imply the delta was something that transcended just being an Enterprise assignment pin.
It’s not just a fan theory either though, I think. The Star Fleet Technical Manual and Okuda Encyclopedia confirmed ship badges too. Those documents are not technically canon, but they are licensed sources of Beta canon. If Justman and Roddenberry were so so steadfast in their position that only stations or non-Starfleet ships like merchant marines used other assignment patches, They did a poor job of reinforcing that opinion. I hear what you guys are saying, but even if Star Trek.com or CBS or whomever is promoting this memo as the Roddenberry intent—I don’t think it really is so cut-and dry.
And if the Antares is a non-Starfleet ship, why are their uniforms otherwise Starfleet? On the other hand the Delta wall-hanging and Constitution livery does seem to imply the delta was something that transcended just being an Enterprise assignment pin.
The Antares was Starfleet, it was a fleet supply ship, that is why they wore the uniform and had the badge of the Fleet Auxiliary division (the lilypad). Two realworld examples of the kind of division Antares was in are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Fleet_Auxiliary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Fleet_Auxiliary_Force
The fleet auxillary division badge was not a ship badge either, it was a division badge like all the other badges.
The memo that Justman sent to Thiess was not about something he made up on the spot, the badges were official and included in at least one of the writer's bibles for the show. It was not just Roddenberry's and Justman's position either, it was official documentation that controlled what was seen in the show, which was primary canon, and so counts for more than fan-made material based on a misunderstanding, even if is picked up by unofficial (beta canon) third-party books, whether those books have a license or not.
I too used to think they used ship badges before I read The Making of Star Trek and saw the copy of that memo reprinted there along with a copy of the official division badge chart. And once you stop to think about it, it makes a lot more sense than having unique badges for every ship, base, and outpost in Starfleet when you consider they would need thousands of ships and hundreds of bases and whatnot.
It would literally be worse than learning Kanji, Pinion, Mesoamerican writing, and other logographic writing systems jumbled together since most of those use collections of sub-elements and the supposed ship glyphs would be random from what was shown.
Not only would the badges have to be considerably larger and more detailed than they are to differentiate thousands of different badges, in areas where a lot of ships collect, like starbases, there would be such a sea of random symbols that the chaos would serve no useful purpose (and complicating that is the fact that some non-starfleet services have their own badges, like the prison/rehabilitation service with their hand-dove-sun symbol which piles on even more symbols). On the other hand, knowing what division a person is in, along with department colors and rank, can at least give you some idea what their probable role is.
As for reinforcing tenets of Trek, they did well enough in TOS but ran into the problems of Hollywood ego and attitudes when it came to dealing with Paramount Pictures even though Paramount TV was technically under the same umbrella. Back then, TV studios were very much the poor cousin to the big movie studios and movie executives and producers looked down their noses at their TV counterparts. The movie division simply ignored the old TOS creative people and documentation as much as possible and pretty much did whatever they wanted whether it made sense in the context of Trek or not.
They didn't think much of Roddenberry during the production of TMP and locked him out of the creative end of Star Trek after that movie underperformed so badly. The agreement he signed that made him "executive special consultant" was in essence a "don't call us, we'll call you" snub in disguise and took away what little influence he had over the movies. However, Paramount Pictures did not count on his influence with the fans holding the way it did, which in turn allowed him a certain small amount of influence on the movies because of the potential damage he could do by riling up the fans against them).
That snubbing and trickery was the reason why, when Paramount offered Roddenberry an olive branch in the form of a new Trek series, Roddenberry insisted that Paramount TV give his lawyer (Leonard Maizlish) a place in the production even though he was not in the industry (and in fact made the writer's room so toxic that he drove all of the original writers away in the first season with his trolling and (technically illegal) interference with the scripts).
I enjoyed reading this! YOU have a great analysis of the Uniforms and I knew Kirk mentioned the fabric of his uniform being different and other worldly compared to some 20th century looking clothing once when talking to someone from the past.
I don't like the V Neck of the standard duty uniform. It reminds me of a Baseball jersey. They seem to have this problem with making baseball jerseys with the new shows, Discovery uniforms were like a Marching Band outfit. Whereas the new 25th century Picard starfleet duty outfit is almost my favorite starfleet uniform ever- EXCEPT the way they bring the neck together has a distinctly baseball feel...
The way you so eloquently described the advanced shimmering materials was so cool, that if new trek designers and producers and writers knew what they were doing we could see a far more screen accurate to the original but maybe with some kind of advanced materials just as you described....
I had a similar thought about the TOS Jewel/jelly bean buttons. I thought they should just use those but with some editing we could have seen them "rise up" as holograms then turn solid. We know from Voyager that tuvok could activate the "tactile interface." We never saw that that looked like, but I thought it would be an elegant solution to keep things canon but maybe just take a more closer look at the original tech, that in many ways show cases how much more advanced it was than we had assumed as the audience...
Again, missed opportunity.
I'd like to know what your ideas/expectations for the uniforms you had. I like the velvety shiny Cage tunics. I liked that Starfleet wanted to appear benevolent and comfortable. I agree with you the new uniforms do not convey that. They look like something from power rangers.
I do still look forward to some of these new uniforms in STO, but thats just cause I like to have screen accurate items. I'm a space whale :P
Well... considering the fact that SNW is Prime Timeline, I don't think they'd really change the Refit Connie much, if at all.
Seeing the WoK uniform with the SNW details on the shoulders and arms... looks pretty nice.
SNW is Prime timeline, but the episode in question has scenes that happened in possible future timelines that are alternates, not Prime, so even where it is different there is no solid reason to assume that the main timeline changed.
Personally, I dislike the SNW uniforms, both the regular ones and the 'future' ones. The original idea for the TOS uniforms was that they were supposed to be designed to at least look comfortable and (in the story) were made of a shimmering futuristic adaptive fabric that would adapt to various conditions to keep the wearer comfortable.
While the temperature thing was not possible to build into the real-world costume (it was only conveyed by dialog, like beaming down into forty degree (Fahrenheit) weather (about 4.4 degrees Celsius) without adding any sort of jacket), other forms of comfort, like lack of binding while moving one's arms, was accomplished with the raglan sleeves and other details (though they had a variety of cuts since they would trot out older versions to put on extras, and Spock's tunics could not use the raglan shoulders because they needed zippers on them so the top could be put on without knocking his ears off).
Conversely, the SNW uniforms, like DSC uniforms, generally look stiff, heavy, and uncomfortable, and are often shown with jackets over the tunics or the tunics themselves are stiff and jacketlike, with obvious bind lines that form when they move in certain ways.
Also, it is disappointing that they decided to emulate the look of the damaged velour by using that fuzzy wool instead of going back to the shimmer they still had in The Cage, or even going beyond that.
You are assuming a fleet of thousands of ships. If there were only 12 Constitution ships a decade (and possibly even 15 years if Captain April O’Neil also commanded one 5-year mission) after their initial construction. And 12, like the cardinal constellations and fishmen of Nazareth, were a sufficient number to protect the border of the Federation. It is obvious that the Constitution is supposed to represent the pinnacle of Starfleet shipwrighting.
If there were only 12 capital ships, then the likely size of Starfleet is only dozens and at best hundreds of ships. Moreover you wouldn’t need to memorize all the service patches to recognize them as Starfleet uniforms.
I concede that the Justman system is more sensible. But it was not what was established in Enterprise with the Defiant pins as well. And that is my perennial beat. There is not one constant Star Trek canon despite a memo. Ship badges were canonical in Enterprise, and are no longer canonical with Strange New Worlds. And that change is notable and interesting.
I think a unified delta makes more sense for Star Trek as a franchise—which is the real reason why we see it. It is why we got an Enterprise in Enterprise instead of a Challenger. It is why the ship resembles the Akira-class rather than the Daedalus. Design consistencies are way easier for casual fans and viewers. If someone is channel surfing and decides in a minute to watch or flip—you want the viewer to understand this is Star Trek as quickly as possible.
The Justman memo says it was continuity error, Phoenix. Are you going to argue with the producers of TOS now about what they did and did not say?
production memos and such are not canon. paramount definition of canon is appearance on screen. memos, memoirs books, drawings and memory alpha are not canon in the slightest. ESPECIALLY memory alpha, since that is nothing more than a wiki that can be edited by virtually anyone
The "Defiance badge" in ENT is a continuity error, one of the ones that people were using as an argument in the often-seen question of whether ENT was itself an alternate timeline, in fact. If you take a very close look at the bodies on the Defiant you can see that they use the delta, not the boomerang glyph (which is instead the hull symbol of Starfleet, just look on the TOS Enterprise and shuttlecraft, they have it in gold on a red background, though they apparently changed it too when they shifted away from department-based badges in the movie era).
A frame from The Tholian Web (via Trekcore) shows the delta on the person on the nearer biobed in Defiance's sickbay:
It is not a big deal, everyone makes mistakes (like for instance Tracey's badge in TOS that Justman was chewing out Thiess for), though it is a bit of an emersion-break in an otherwise good ENT episode.
The Justman memo says it was continuity error, Phoenix. Are you going to argue with the producers of TOS now about what they did and did not say?
production memos and such are not canon. paramount definition of canon is appearance on screen. memos, memoirs books, drawings and memory alpha are not canon in the slightest. ESPECIALLY memory alpha, since that is nothing more than a wiki that can be edited by virtually anyone
On the contrary, while it is true that unused alternative stuff from official sources where the final production deliberately does something else is obviously not something to depend on, Justman's memo to Thiess does not fall under that category since he was pointing out a failure to follow the rules for the show that were already in place. And every other Starfleet badge in the series did indeed follow those rules.
Rules set down in the official show documentation like that control the show, and in so doing control the canon. Or are you suggesting that fan theories about what they are seeing onscreen, right or wrong, (like the mistake of interpreting the different badges as unique to individual ships) carries more weight than the producers and official documentation of the show? Especially when what is shown (except for one mistake) conforms to what the documentation and the producers say?
Now you lot have gotten that badge debate out the way, back to the uniforms.
I saw the differences in the TWOK uniform and it doesn't look anywhere near as stuffed as the film did, it looks more reasonable and it has those shimmering shoulder pads integrated into the uniform.
i actually liked the new TWOK outfit more than the reimagined take on the TOS uniforms that Pike wore, i'm not actually a fan of it, you see more of Pike's neck and you can see his more aged appearance seeing through and it looks so strange for a ship captain to have such a thing. i'd have preferred going back to the turtle/polo neck design from TOS honestly.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
it could be that any variations are simply transitions from one uniform to another. From the late 70s to the early 80s you saw tha painter pants utility uniform and the dress uniforms from the 70s replaced by the dungarees and crackerjacks uniforms in the US Navy. both uniforms co-existed for a few years at least.
A friend of mine was issued the blazer dress uniform adn the new dungaree work uniform. he did not have to replace the blazer for a few years.
in TNG you see the same thing.. the first season had the skant and the leotard uniform, and the you saw the gradual transition to the collared uniform. although it should not happne in the 24th century, there are grace periods for uniform transition.
you also saw the WOK uniform without the tutleneck as an evolution of Kirks uniform as a transition to the TNG uniforms
I personally don't treat it that harshly. Yes, there are subtle alterations, but the uniforms in SNW, the regular duty uniform and the TWOK one, are for all intents and purposes supposed to be the same uniforms we already know. Likewise, I accept that the SNW Enterprise is supposed to be the same from TOS.
I don't agree with the DSC uniforms, their intention was to make a jump from ENT to DSC (ship design as well), but they forgot the Kelvin variant already existed. That's I point I will protest, but the SNW uniforms even have the green command tunic - I accept that as being appropriate for the time
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
The neck thing is a symptom of the digitalization of the fashion industry. It used to be that design illustrations were optimized visualizations of clothing made from real cloth and it was understood that the real article would have unavoidable wrinkles and stress lines when the person wearing them moves.
Digital design and animation has inverted that to some degree, where now some people (even designers) expect the clothing to lay perfectly no matter what, showing no wrinkles or other real-cloth features and act like they are painted on the idealized human digital models underneath. In this case, those models do not show age so there is no warning when clothing (or uniform) designs that are best for younger people are not so good for more mature wearers.
It also leads to the uncomfortable over-starched look that most of the new uniforms have instead of the soft-and-comfortable look that they were supposed to have in TOS (but which was quickly ruined by the excessive shrinking and surface damage the tunics were plagued by since they were made of unwashable toy/curtain/upholstery fabric that had to be washed when used in clothing).
That is true, the TOS uniforms look much more comfortable. But this is all production, not in-universe. Unless Pike unpacks a The Cage turtleneck next season I accept that SNW is supposed to show us the same designs. I don't like everything they did aesthetically, but it's overall okay.
DSC on the other hoof was a?big swing and a miss from it's concept phase on, in my opinion.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Comments
This happens in real world all the time and we shouldn't assume everything Starfleet does is perfect all the time and they never make mistakes unless the story demands it.
The Justman memo says that Tracey's badge was a continuity error, I did not contradict that in any way. If you recall, I even mentioned the error here:
What I said I didn't think was a continuity error was an entirely different matter, that of the previously unseen (before the movie) insignia that the Epsilon station personnel were wearing. That insignia, considering how Trek uses analogies based on realworld things, is probably just not Starfleet, but rather a civilian intelligence agency like today's NSA.
Also, I did not say they never made any errors, what I said was that they did not make as many as current popular belief would have it.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Epsilon_IX_station
So... the issue there is that it wasn't Intel, but actual Starfleet, indicating that they still had assignment patches in the 2370s on the TMP uniforms, but did away with the practice by the 2280s.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
That or possibly they were in a period of reorganization where service divisions may have gotten swapped around, or the fact that they had already started changing the badges (if they hadn't then admiral Kirk would have worn the starflower instead of the delta), or (the most likely explanation) that Starfleet's auxiliary division had separate badges for "ground" and ship subdivisions the same way the front-line parts of Starfleet did and the change to everyone using the delta hadn't caught up with the far frontier units yet, or a million other possible reasons for that previously unseen badge. Since they never show any other "communications station" in that era there is no way to verify whether they all use the same division badge or individual ones for each comm station.
There simply is nothing there that proves that Bob Justman was wrong when he wrote the memo, and no valid reason to assume that it was a retcon that invalidated TOS in favor of a fan-made "ship insignia" chart instead of just a logical ongoing evolution/streamlining of the official TOS division insignia setup on its way to the "one service" model used in TNG.
And STO also went the route of making assignment patches for ships as well for the TOS era.
Realistically though the Enterprise era is when assignment patches should be the most prevelant.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
And if the Antares is a non-Starfleet ship, why are their uniforms otherwise Starfleet? On the other hand the Delta wall-hanging and Constitution livery does seem to imply the delta was something that transcended just being an Enterprise assignment pin.
The Antares was Starfleet, it was a fleet supply ship, that is why they wore the uniform and had the badge of the Fleet Auxiliary division (the lilypad). Two realworld examples of the kind of division Antares was in are here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Fleet_Auxiliary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Fleet_Auxiliary_Force
The fleet auxillary division badge was not a ship badge either, it was a division badge like all the other badges.
The memo that Justman sent to Thiess was not about something he made up on the spot, the badges were official and included in at least one of the writer's bibles for the show. It was not just Roddenberry's and Justman's position either, it was official documentation that controlled what was seen in the show, which was primary canon, and so counts for more than fan-made material based on a misunderstanding, even if is picked up by unofficial (beta canon) third-party books, whether those books have a license or not.
I too used to think they used ship badges before I read The Making of Star Trek and saw the copy of that memo reprinted there along with a copy of the official division badge chart. And once you stop to think about it, it makes a lot more sense than having unique badges for every ship, base, and outpost in Starfleet when you consider they would need thousands of ships and hundreds of bases and whatnot.
It would literally be worse than learning Kanji, Pinion, Mesoamerican writing, and other logographic writing systems jumbled together since most of those use collections of sub-elements and the supposed ship glyphs would be random from what was shown.
Not only would the badges have to be considerably larger and more detailed than they are to differentiate thousands of different badges, in areas where a lot of ships collect, like starbases, there would be such a sea of random symbols that the chaos would serve no useful purpose (and complicating that is the fact that some non-starfleet services have their own badges, like the prison/rehabilitation service with their hand-dove-sun symbol which piles on even more symbols). On the other hand, knowing what division a person is in, along with department colors and rank, can at least give you some idea what their probable role is.
As for reinforcing tenets of Trek, they did well enough in TOS but ran into the problems of Hollywood ego and attitudes when it came to dealing with Paramount Pictures even though Paramount TV was technically under the same umbrella. Back then, TV studios were very much the poor cousin to the big movie studios and movie executives and producers looked down their noses at their TV counterparts. The movie division simply ignored the old TOS creative people and documentation as much as possible and pretty much did whatever they wanted whether it made sense in the context of Trek or not.
They didn't think much of Roddenberry during the production of TMP and locked him out of the creative end of Star Trek after that movie underperformed so badly. The agreement he signed that made him "executive special consultant" was in essence a "don't call us, we'll call you" snub in disguise and took away what little influence he had over the movies. However, Paramount Pictures did not count on his influence with the fans holding the way it did, which in turn allowed him a certain small amount of influence on the movies because of the potential damage he could do by riling up the fans against them).
That snubbing and trickery was the reason why, when Paramount offered Roddenberry an olive branch in the form of a new Trek series, Roddenberry insisted that Paramount TV give his lawyer (Leonard Maizlish) a place in the production even though he was not in the industry (and in fact made the writer's room so toxic that he drove all of the original writers away in the first season with his trolling and (technically illegal) interference with the scripts).
I enjoyed reading this! YOU have a great analysis of the Uniforms and I knew Kirk mentioned the fabric of his uniform being different and other worldly compared to some 20th century looking clothing once when talking to someone from the past.
I don't like the V Neck of the standard duty uniform. It reminds me of a Baseball jersey. They seem to have this problem with making baseball jerseys with the new shows, Discovery uniforms were like a Marching Band outfit. Whereas the new 25th century Picard starfleet duty outfit is almost my favorite starfleet uniform ever- EXCEPT the way they bring the neck together has a distinctly baseball feel...
The way you so eloquently described the advanced shimmering materials was so cool, that if new trek designers and producers and writers knew what they were doing we could see a far more screen accurate to the original but maybe with some kind of advanced materials just as you described....
I had a similar thought about the TOS Jewel/jelly bean buttons. I thought they should just use those but with some editing we could have seen them "rise up" as holograms then turn solid. We know from Voyager that tuvok could activate the "tactile interface." We never saw that that looked like, but I thought it would be an elegant solution to keep things canon but maybe just take a more closer look at the original tech, that in many ways show cases how much more advanced it was than we had assumed as the audience...
Again, missed opportunity.
I'd like to know what your ideas/expectations for the uniforms you had. I like the velvety shiny Cage tunics. I liked that Starfleet wanted to appear benevolent and comfortable. I agree with you the new uniforms do not convey that. They look like something from power rangers.
I do still look forward to some of these new uniforms in STO, but thats just cause I like to have screen accurate items. I'm a space whale :P
If there were only 12 capital ships, then the likely size of Starfleet is only dozens and at best hundreds of ships. Moreover you wouldn’t need to memorize all the service patches to recognize them as Starfleet uniforms.
I concede that the Justman system is more sensible. But it was not what was established in Enterprise with the Defiant pins as well. And that is my perennial beat. There is not one constant Star Trek canon despite a memo. Ship badges were canonical in Enterprise, and are no longer canonical with Strange New Worlds. And that change is notable and interesting.
I think a unified delta makes more sense for Star Trek as a franchise—which is the real reason why we see it. It is why we got an Enterprise in Enterprise instead of a Challenger. It is why the ship resembles the Akira-class rather than the Daedalus. Design consistencies are way easier for casual fans and viewers. If someone is channel surfing and decides in a minute to watch or flip—you want the viewer to understand this is Star Trek as quickly as possible.
production memos and such are not canon. paramount definition of canon is appearance on screen. memos, memoirs books, drawings and memory alpha are not canon in the slightest. ESPECIALLY memory alpha, since that is nothing more than a wiki that can be edited by virtually anyone
A frame from The Tholian Web (via Trekcore) shows the delta on the person on the nearer biobed in Defiance's sickbay:
It is not a big deal, everyone makes mistakes (like for instance Tracey's badge in TOS that Justman was chewing out Thiess for), though it is a bit of an emersion-break in an otherwise good ENT episode.
On the contrary, while it is true that unused alternative stuff from official sources where the final production deliberately does something else is obviously not something to depend on, Justman's memo to Thiess does not fall under that category since he was pointing out a failure to follow the rules for the show that were already in place. And every other Starfleet badge in the series did indeed follow those rules.
Rules set down in the official show documentation like that control the show, and in so doing control the canon. Or are you suggesting that fan theories about what they are seeing onscreen, right or wrong, (like the mistake of interpreting the different badges as unique to individual ships) carries more weight than the producers and official documentation of the show? Especially when what is shown (except for one mistake) conforms to what the documentation and the producers say?
I saw the differences in the TWOK uniform and it doesn't look anywhere near as stuffed as the film did, it looks more reasonable and it has those shimmering shoulder pads integrated into the uniform.
i actually liked the new TWOK outfit more than the reimagined take on the TOS uniforms that Pike wore, i'm not actually a fan of it, you see more of Pike's neck and you can see his more aged appearance seeing through and it looks so strange for a ship captain to have such a thing. i'd have preferred going back to the turtle/polo neck design from TOS honestly.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
A friend of mine was issued the blazer dress uniform adn the new dungaree work uniform. he did not have to replace the blazer for a few years.
in TNG you see the same thing.. the first season had the skant and the leotard uniform, and the you saw the gradual transition to the collared uniform. although it should not happne in the 24th century, there are grace periods for uniform transition.
you also saw the WOK uniform without the tutleneck as an evolution of Kirks uniform as a transition to the TNG uniforms
I don't agree with the DSC uniforms, their intention was to make a jump from ENT to DSC (ship design as well), but they forgot the Kelvin variant already existed. That's I point I will protest, but the SNW uniforms even have the green command tunic - I accept that as being appropriate for the time
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Digital design and animation has inverted that to some degree, where now some people (even designers) expect the clothing to lay perfectly no matter what, showing no wrinkles or other real-cloth features and act like they are painted on the idealized human digital models underneath. In this case, those models do not show age so there is no warning when clothing (or uniform) designs that are best for younger people are not so good for more mature wearers.
It also leads to the uncomfortable over-starched look that most of the new uniforms have instead of the soft-and-comfortable look that they were supposed to have in TOS (but which was quickly ruined by the excessive shrinking and surface damage the tunics were plagued by since they were made of unwashable toy/curtain/upholstery fabric that had to be washed when used in clothing).
DSC on the other hoof was a?big swing and a miss from it's concept phase on, in my opinion.
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