Star Trek: Why Do Starfleet Uniforms Keep Constantly Changing?

Welcome to Trekspertise, a series where we break down the technology, history, details, and decisions that make the Star Trek universe so complex — and so fun.

As we all know, Starfleet is a military-like organization devoted to efficiency, intelligence, and the chain of command. Many, many "Star Trek" stories deal with rank, formality, and who gets to make command decisions in a crisis. "Star Trek" is, after all, essentially a workplace drama, and many Trekkies get a nice nerdy high from hearing Starfleet characters talk about a starship's management structure. Starfleet is strict, very rank-and-file, and devoted to schedules, structures, and regulations. 

Except, it seems, when it comes to their uniforms. Starfleet uniforms are changing all the time, shifting from one pattern to another on a near-annual basis. One year, officers are wearing all-white, dentist-like uniforms. The next, they're wearing all-red, Christmas sweater-like uniforms festooned with rank pins. One would think that uniforms would remain, well, uniform throughout the franchise, but it seems that Starfleet officers are regularly required to dispose of their own clothing and replicate new outfits all the time. How embarrassing for an aspiring ensign who missed the ship-wide memo and shows up to work in his old uniform. 

For many years, there were no actual canonical reasons given for the rapidly shifting uniforms. As far as Trekkies had been able to interpret, Starfleet was merely capricious with its fashions and liked trying out new outfits all the time. Only the three central department colors have remained constant; /Film has written before about Starfleet uniform color designations.

But as eventually stated on "Star Trek: Lower Decks," the shifting uniforms are merely employed as a reason to improve them.

Some of the shifting uniforms on "Star Trek" are pretty notorious. At the end of the original series in 1969, Starfleet officers wore the tri-color uniforms, with the men in black pants and colored tunics and women in colored minidresses. For "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1979, though, the colors have been changed to beiges and grays, and the tunics were dramatically different. To be fair, a decade had passed, and the uniforms would likely have changed in that time, but did they all have to look like dental technicians? Also, what about the secondary uniform redux for 1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?" It had only been three years, and now the thick, red uniforms with color-coded trimming were standard. Those red uniforms looked hot and stuffy.

And, as we've mentioned, the colors have shifted around: Command officers wore gold uniforms and operations officers red ones in the original "Star Trek," but those colors were inverted on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987) and beyond. The Starfleet insignias also kept shifting, sometimes being embroidered into a uniform, and sometimes worn as their actual communicators. (William Ware Theiss designed the uniforms for the original series and for "Next Generation.") When "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" began in 1993, uniforms were all black with color-coded shoulders, and little, gray, pajama-like collars. 

Sometimes the uniform changes would be consistent across shows. There was a time when "Deep Space Nine," the 1994 "Next Generation" movie "Generations," and "Star Trek: Voyager" all had the same uniforms. In the modern era, though, the time frames and uniforms changed rapidly. 

It soon became clear that all the uniform shifting was merely done so that Trekkies could, on sight, recognize each individual series.

Some of the "Star Trek" uniform changes can be explained merely by the franchise's many time-jumps. If "Star Trek: The Next Generation" took place nearly a century after the events of the original "Star Trek," then, yes, it makes sense that the uniforms would be different. "Star Trek: Enterprise" takes place about a century prior to the original "Star Trek," so their indigo NASA-like uniforms made sense. 

Some Trekkies have posited that uniforms can also indicate the mission of a Starfleet officer. If one were on a deep space mission (as in "Deep Space Nine"), they would wear different uniforms. This, however, is mere fan speculation, and hasn't been confirmed in any canonical source ... that is, until "Star Trek: Lower Decks." 

In the "Star Trek: Lower Decks" episode "Reflections," Ensign Boimler (Jack Quaid) is running a recruitment booth, trying to entice passers-by into joining the service. One woman asks if she gets a uniform for joining, and Boimler quickly says she does. He adds that "our style isn't across the whole fleet, but they're in the California-class." That line of dialogue indicates that different classes of vessels have different uniforms. That explains a lot. 

A passing wiseacre then quizzes Boimler as to why the uniforms keep changing, holding up pictures of two different styles. Boimler calmly answers that "there's always room for improvement." 

And there you have it. The single canonical reason for "Star Trek" uniform changes is that, well, they can always be a little better. The service is apparently populated by ambitious uniform designers who get antsy easily. If they think of something better for a new year, they design it. Changing them across a fleet must be a headache, but the constant change would at least keep Starfleet officers feeling stylish.