15 Times Star Trek Changed Its Uniforms and Why

Star Trek's costumes changed with every series, usually with a lot of thought put into the reasons. Here are 15 times Starfleet's uniforms changed.

It can be quite a mess sometimes, but it's also part of the fun. And like most other aspects of Star Trek, it's undergone a great deal of change over the decades. In some ways, the franchise can be marked solely by the number of times they changed the costumes.

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The uniforms from The Original Series are iconic and set the pace for the rest of the franchise. But they also underwent a few upgrades from the two Star Trek pilots: "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before." Most notably, the colors became bolder, which catered to then-cutting-edge color TV.

The Original Series also established the different departments each color represented. Yellow (and green) noted command and helm, blue stood for medical and science, and red was for security and engineering. Eventually, those three colors became emblematic of the franchise as a whole.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture arrived ten years after The Original Series was canceled, and the pop-art style of the tricolor uniforms was deemed behind the times. The new uniforms reflected a far more subtle palette. The bright reds and yellows were replaced with softer hues of beige, white, and blue.

It didn't work, causing the crew to fade into their surroundings while badly dating the film in the process. And while The Motion Picture turned a profit, it fell short of the Star Wars-like numbers that Paramount envisioned. The uniforms were dropped in favor of something new.

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In their place came "the monster maroons," consisting of dark red tunics over pale-colored turtlenecks. They first appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which director Nicholas Meyer likened to swashbuckling naval adventures.

The new uniforms reflected that aesthetic, resembling those of 19th-century European navies. They proved far more successful than those of the first film. The original cast continued to wear them for the remainder of their big-screen appearances.

The original movies were still in production when Star Trek: The Next Generation made its debut in 1987. Set 100 years after the events of The Original Series, it gave the franchise a chance to resurrect the tricolors for the first time in decades. Red and yellow were reversed -- with red now used by command officers and yellow by engineering and security -- and the new uniforms now resembled one-piece jumpsuits.

Season 3 brought a slight change to the look, with higher collars and a less snug fit. This was reportedly to accommodate the actors who found the original design excessively tight. Other subtle variations were added as the show progressed, such as a removable jacket for Captain Picard.

The arrival of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine necessitated another re-design. With two Star Trek shows running at the same time, different uniforms would provide visual distinction. The tricolors remained, but they moved to the very top of the outfits, with the rest black below the chest. A gray undershirt was worn beneath the top.

The new uniforms were intended as a kind of workaday fatigue: worn on the Final Frontiers' rougher areas like Deep Space 9. Star Trek: Voyager used the same design for its uniforms, as did the feature-length film Star Trek: Generations.

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Star Trek: First Contact delivered another big change in 1996. The aesthetic of Deep Space Nine's fatigues was revised. The top of the tunics was now a uniform gray, with the undershirt color-coded to the appropriate department.

Deep Space Nine followed suit starting in Season 5, Episode 10, "Rapture." The move maintained continuity as well as visually distinguishing the show from Voyager (which didn't make the change since its crew was trapped in the Delta Quadrant). They've remained in place with "capital ships" in Star Trek: Lower Decks as well.

Star Trek: Enterprise was posited as a prequel to The Original Series, depicting the early days of space exploration and the founding of the United Federation of Planets. With starships of the era cramped and clunky, the uniforms resembled those of submarine crews. Crew members wore blue overalls with colored piping representing the tricolor departments.

The blue proved remarkably durable, considering Enterprise's unfairly truncated status. It formed the basis for Star Trek: Discovery'suniforms and also appeared in Star Trek: Beyond. They formed a visual link between the modern world and Star Trek's hypothetical future.

2009's feature-length Star Trek was the first franchise effort in five years since the cancelation of Enterprise. It returned to The Original Series uniforms for the reboot. This time, it provided a more modern cut.

That included a better style of fabric, more pronounced delta badges over their hearts and a series of tiny symbols patterned in the uniform itself. Subtle touches helped distinguish them from their predecessors, along with variations such as some women's uniforms losing their sleeves.

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The first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery were set a decade before The Original Series. That gave the uniform design an easy mandate. It had bridged the gap between the blue coveralls of Enterprise and the classic tricolor look of Captain Kirk.

It did so by formalizing the cut and adding metallic piping to the sides. The metal colors matched that of the Delta logo. Gold stood for command, silver for science and medical, and copper for security and engineering.

Season 2 of Discovery also brought the core of what would become the Strange New Worlds crew, as Christopher Pike, Mr. Spock, and Una Chin-Riley arrived. They wore protean versions of the classic Original Series look, marked by an asymmetrical collar and subtle metal piping along the shoulders.

It signaled the end of Discovery's blue phase, though their uniforms needed to make the jump to the 32nd century to find their own look. Meanwhile, Pike and his crew got another slight update once they moved to their own show.

Star Trek: Picard followed the example of The Next Generation-era shows: a uniform design centered around the tricolors. It loosely resembled Deep Space Nine's fatigues, with the tricolor on top and black beneath. New com badges completed the look.

The design underwent another upgrade in Season 2, which it retained for the rest of its run. It added a tunic fold-over, reminiscent of the monster maroons of the first six feature-length movies. It also simplified the accouterments, making it all less busy.

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Season 3 of Discovery ended with the crew effectively rechristening a shattered Starfleet. That included a wholesale abandonment of the blue uniforms in favor of new takes on the tricolor.

The season finale provided a brief look at all-gray uniforms with a stripe down the right side in the tricolor configuration (white was added for medical). Season 4 abandoned the gray for new versions of the tricolors, along with a more militaristic cut along the shoulders. Season 5 looks to maintain the same uniform for the series finale.

Lower Decks was set a few years after the end of The Next Generation's movie run. As such, many crews still wore the gray tops from Star Trek: First Contact and the later seasons of Deep Space Nine. As a support ship, however, the USS Cerritos required a new set of threads.

The uniforms stuck to the tricolor pattern, with a black top and a tunic lined with white piping. Science and medical personnel also wore white boots. The design successfully made the leap to live-action during Lower Decks' crossover with Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 7, "Those Old Scientists."

Star Trek: Prodigy followed Lower Decks' example of bringing the Final Frontier into the world of animation. In this case, the show was aimed at a younger demographic, with a crew of teen-ish prison escapees onboard a starship. They eventually adopted cadet uniforms: black with a skewed gray top.

At the same time, Admiral Janeway pursued the crew in a ship of her own. At this point in the timeline -- 2383 -- Starfleet shifted away from the First Contact grays, back to another variation of The Next Generation tricolors.

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The arrival of Strange New Worlds brought the franchise back to The Original Series era, slightly updated for modern sensibilities. The tricolor pattern remained, with red and gold returning to their original meanings. The cut was more modern as well, though still very much in keeping with the spirit of the iconic originals.

The new outfits also added a few modern touches, such as variants with zippers for improved comfort. Some medical personnel -- notably Christine Chapel -- wore white instead of the tricolors, while women's versions of the outfit trended subtly away from the miniskirts of the 1960s.

A native Californian, Robert Vaux has spent over 20 years as a professional film and television critic: working for such outlets as Collider, Mania.com and The Sci-Fi Movie Page. His favorite superhero is Nightcrawler and his lucky numbers are 4, 9, 14, 16, 36, and 40.