rjnoe@ihlts.UUCP (Roger Noe) (05/11/84)
> the turtlenecks underneath the uniform jackets seem to be color-coded > The only sense I can make of the code might be that Captains and > higher wear white, with some other insignia to indicate specific rank; > Commanders and Lt. Commanders wear gray; and Lieutenants (and maybe > Ensigns?) wear orange. Comments? Ideas? > --- jayembee Pretty close. I still haven't seen the official list, but you can observe from the movie itself and production photos. The color of the turtleneck matches a stripe on the left wrist and the epaulet on the right shoulder (which holds the wine-colored tunic flap shut). On both the left sleeve and the epaulet are metallic-looking objects. This seems to be an indicator of rank, Admirals wearing a sort of Maltese cross shape, Captains a rectangular one which tapers at the top and bottom, all Commanders a different rectangular one with triangular cutouts at the top and bottom, and Lieutenants have two bars connected by two triangles. They're difficult to describe. The color itself appears to be a division indicator, one of the following: White - Command (e.g. Kirk, Spock, Terrell) Orange - Science & Engineering? (e.g. Scott, Sulu, Beach) Blue - Operations? (e.g. Uhura, Chekov, Kyle) Green - Medical (McCoy) Red - Cadets? (e.g. Saavik) McCoy's looks blue on my TV but green on stills (which makes more sense). Note also that the orange and blue are closely related and in the examples we have the full Commanders wear orange and the Lt. Commanders blue, so there may be an additional meaning here. On the wrist stripe are metallic looking pieces which make sort of a braid, apparently another rank indicator. All wear the executive insignia (now THE official ST insignia, it was called the Command division insignia in the TV series), a distorted pentagram in a circle, both as belt buckle and a pin on the left breast of the tunics. When the tunics aren't being worn, one often sees this insignia in cloth on the left shoulder, with the circle filled in with the division color. (Like in ST:TMP, but with these colors instead.) Now in ST3, we'll see Saavik with WHITE, but with the same rank (Lieutenant) insignia. (Oh, yes, all the uniforms are the same in ST3 and will not change as long as Harve Bennett is producing ST movies, which may be some time.) Chekov still has blue, but his rank insignia may be different, not one I've seen in ST2. Perhaps they decided to give Lt.Cdrs. a different insignia than full Commanders. Sulu and Uhura are also unchanged, so Sulu is not wearing his Captain's insignia (at least in one bridge scene). My guesses about rank badges are consistent with the other officers (Admirals and Captains, mainly) we'll see in ST3, and the colors stand up pretty well. Roger Noe ihnp4!ihlts!rjnoe
ron@brl-vgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (05/12/84)
Oh well, I guess that those were not THE uniforms I saw in the stills. -Ron