What Star Trek’s Uniform Colors Mean & Why They Changed
Star Trek's iconic uniforms have gone through many design changes over the years. These changes have been due to cost, design choices, and even to distinguish different divisions within Starfleet.
From the 23rd to 24th centuries, blue Uniforms were always associated with Starfleet's medical and science divisions. Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) wore white during Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Starfleet returned to this in the 32nd century, as Star Trek: Discovery's Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz) also wears white. In the 23rd century, the golden uniform denoted command and some operations positions like helm and navigation. Starfleet's red shirts were worn by the engineering, security and communications divisions, but had an unfortunate association with members of Starfleet away teams that were killed in the line of duty.
In the 24th century, there was a switch around of some Starfleet uniform colors. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) wore a red uniform throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, rather than a gold one. So too did his Number One, Commander William T Riker (Jonathan Frakes). Meanwhile, the gold Uniforms were worn by everybody with an operational role, from security down to engineering, with occasional USS Enterprise-D helmsmen wearing red uniforms, like Lt. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) in TNG season 1.
Starfleet Uniform Colors
Here's a breakdown of the color designations in the different eras of Star Trek:
| Century | Gold | Red | Blue | Green | White |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23rd | Command | Operations | Science & Medical | Command dress | Medical |
| 24th | Operations | Command | Science & Medical | N/A | N/A |
| 32nd | Operations | Command | Science | N/A | Medical |
Why Star Trek’s Uniform Colors Changed
There's never been an in-universe explanation for the red and gold switch between Star Trek's 23rd and 24th centuries. It can be explained by an operational decision made by Starfleet's wardrobe department to break away from the problematic "redshirt" association.
The real-life explanation for why Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes weren't dressed in gold is more interesting. There are stories that Stewart and Frakes didn't look as commanding in the gold Uniforms designed by original Star Trek: TNG costume designer William Ware Theiss. The dark red uniforms worn by Captain Picard and Commander Riker pop better on screen than the gold uniforms worn by the ops team. Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) was supposed to be in science division blue, but it was a bad color for his pallid android skin tone.
The Star Trek TV shows of the 2020s largely retain the color designations first established by Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is understandable, as Star Treks Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy all take place in the years after TNG ended. The only thing that changes in each of these shows is the uniform's design, which returns to the black collar and colored torso look of TNG, with the addition of a clear flap down the middle. After it switched to the 32nd century, Star Trek: Discovery resurrected the TNG color scheme but the far-future costumes were wildly different from their 24th century counterparts.
In Star Trek: Discovery's 32nd century, Starfleet uniforms were gray with a colored stripe down the left side to denote the officer's division. As the weakened Federation was dealing with threats from the Emerald Chain in the wake of the Burn, it made sense to revert to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's conflict Colors. With the Emerald Chain defeated, Star Trek: Discovery's Starfleet uniforms returned to a more solid colored tunic, which retained the standard red, gold, and blue colors. The Discovery finale's epilogue revealed that the Star Trek: The Next Generation color scheme even continued into the 33rd century.
Starfleet Uniform Variants In Star Trek
Interestingly, Scott Bakula's Star Trek: Enterprise went back to the color distinctions from Star Trek: The Original Series. Each of the blue flight suits had colored piping around the shoulders reflecting yellow for command and red for operations. The only notable difference was that comms officer Lt. Hoshi Sato (Linda Park) had the blue piping of the science division on her uniform to reflect her role as the Enterprise NX-01's linguist and translator. Star Trek: Discovery seasons 1 and 2 updated these blue uniforms with silver and gold piping to denote rank and division, abandoning the gold, blue and red altogether.
Dress uniforms are also a notable Star Trek uniform variant worn at various formal events like diplomatic meetings, weddings, funerals, and even court-martial hearings. In Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock's dress uniform was colored blue to reflect his division, while Kirk's was green. Kirk's green uniform was also worn on regular starship business in several episodes of TOS. The dress uniforms of the 24th century era reflected the colors of the officer's division, were longer and decorated with gold braiding. By the 32nd century, a starship captain would wear a purple dress uniform, while their crew wore a grey and gold ensemble.
Star Trek's iconic crimson movie costumes (affectionately called 'monster maroon') had different colored turtleneck sweaters under the tunics, presumably to denote crew role. Prior to those iconic crimson outfits were the poorly received monochrome uniforms designed for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which were sometimes referred to as space pajamas. The longer that the franchise continues into the future, the more likely it is that Starfleet uniforms will continue to adapt and change. However, Star Trek: Discovery's far future uniforms prove that Star Trek's command red is very much in style almost a millennium after it was first introduced.
