At lot has come out in the last month or so about the the first 2 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is due mainly to the passage of time. People feel that now, almost 30 years later, they can tell the truth about what was going on behind the scenes of the show. Just look to William Shatner’s recently released documentary Chaos On The Bridge to see what I’m talking about.
And although that’s all really fascinating one question has yet to be answered. Why did the Bill Theiss switch the uniform colors?? In the TOS era the command uniforms were gold, medical and sciences were blue and operations (engineering, security) were red. Television audiences were used to the the bold Captain Kirk in gold sending his brave security officers in red on dangerous missions. We all know what happened to those poor bastards.
So why, some 20 years later, when Roddenberry and company were putting together a new TV show did we change the uniform colors up? In TNG command uniforms are red, operations gold and sciences were sill in blue. Why? I, for one, would like to have seen Picard in gold! I wonder how that would have looked? Well.. a quick google search gave me my answer. I believe this image was photohopped by Skywalker on the Trekbbs boards.
Look nice, right? Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Franks look great in gold! Data is shown in blue here– technically he should be in red since he’s the Ops officer. But really shouldn’t he be the Science officer? I mean, who is the science officer on the Enterprise D? Also- why doesn’t Counselor Troi have to wear a uniform? I’m so glad they allowed her to dress more properly in the later seasons. Marina Sirtis looks great in uniform! But I’m getting off topic…
The only reason I can think of the color change could be that they were influenced by the movie franchise. In 1987 Kirk was wearing red– and looking great in it. Maybe they wanted Picard to do the same.
Oh MAYBE Roddenberry was haunted by the ghosts of all those dead red shirt characters from the TOS! Maybe they demanded justice and insisted that the new Enterprise be Captained by a Red Shirt! Yeah, let’s go with that. 🙂
What do you think? Would you have liked Picard in gold?
Hailing Frequencies Open 
I have often wondered about that myself, but the new uniform colors never bothered me. Personally, I like Picard and Riker in red.