Star Trek: Discovery season three saw the series unveil brand new uniforms and they are a massive upgrade over the original ones.
The uniforms of Star Trek: Discovery received a nice upgrade in season three of the show. The series introduced new, grey uniforms, with stripes on their right side indicating what divisions they belong to. These were a huge step up not just in terms of design over the originals, but in terms of the visuals, they allowed for the show. The vibrancy of the color stripe on grey was eye-catching, especially in the final episode of the season, where Michael Burnham becomes captain and the rest of the main crew members are lined up in front of her. That shot worked so much better because of the design change in the uniforms.
Had the show kept the blue ones, it wouldn’t have had the same uniqueness.
These are huge upgrades over Discovery’s original uniforms, which a base blue uniform with gold trim. There were some slight variants but nothing noticeable. The uniforms were seemingly based on the look from Star Trek: Enterprise, which saw the crew wearing very similar attire. Though those are far more of a jumpsuit. The other big difference was that those Enterprise uniforms had very noticeable stripes that reflect different divisions on the ship.
The vibrant contrast in the use of colors between Enterprise’s and Discovery’s uniforms is noticeable when compared to one another and gives a sharp contrast to one another. That’s partly why the Discovery uniforms were a bit lacking and why the change should be embraced.
The preference between Starfleet uniforms among the fans has long been debated. There’s the classic “shirt” from the Original Series, which was changed to more of a jumper in the Next Generation and its spin-offs. Not only that but the colors were changed to indicate which divisions were which. Originally gold was command and red was engineering. When Jean-Luc Picard took over, command was now red, while gold was engineering. Later on in the series, as it moved into films and spin-offs, a different jumper would be introduced.
Of course, as mentioned, there were also the more Navy-inspired outfits for Enterprise, and of course, the Kelvin timeline brought back the original designs but with a different material.
Each era and each iteration of Star Trek has made their uniforms their own, and after some really forgettable and bland uniforms for the first two seasons, it’s nice to see Discovery get it right.