By Chris Snellgrove | Published
When longtime fans complain about NuTrek, they usually focus on the writing, which is understandable; after all, you can only hear so much Zoomer blasphemy before you have to question why the characters from centuries in the future all sound like modern-day teenagers and not, you know, competent Starfleet officers. However, the biggest problem facing the franchise today has nothing to do with writing or acting.
The worst thing about modern Star Trek is that it has become something of a stalemate it’s bad. Without spending more than eight million dollars per episodeuniforms, ships, and visual effects in space are even worse over 60 years of franchise history. If you doubt that, don’t worry: like a good Ferengi, I have all the receipts!
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Let’s start with the uniforms, and in the spirit of fairness, let’s start with what worked well. The uniform is inside Strange New Worlds see the good, though that was always given; one of the aims of the exhibition was to constantly renew and modernize the beauty of Star Trek: The Original Series. The uniforms from that early ’60s show are still intact it is an iconic buildingagain SNW they simply updated their look, giving us something like a Kelvinverse: clever redesigns of timeless uniforms across the franchise.
This may be a hot take, but I actually really liked the uniforms in the first two seasons Star Trek: Discovery. They feel like crisp, modern versions of the blue Away Team jackets worn by Captains Pike and Spock in the original. Star Trek: The Original Series pilot episode.
In addition, he fits into the existing convention better than many fans think: there have been similar variations in this franchise since the beginning (such as different symbols for different ships and different uniforms for special features), and the Golden Age of Trek has always featured characters using different styles of uniforms (such as a mix of TNG again DS9 designs on Generations).
Know the fact that the Discovery was an experimental vessel that appears to be supported by Section 31, and these characters getting shiny blue uniforms makes sense. However, the crew ditched this killer look when they jumped into the 32nd century. Instead, they adopted brand new uniforms that had just one major problem: they were extremely ugly, beginning the decline of Star Trek’s aesthetic that continues to this day.
It’s about to get ugly
In season 3 of Star Trek: Discoveryour favorite characters get new uniforms that express a huge reduction: those beautiful blue dresses are replaced by soulless gray uniforms whose shock is interrupted by a colorful dividing line. The characters looked more ridiculous than ever, and it didn’t help that this season’s storytelling was a huge letdown from Season 2. To add insult to injury, these fancy uniforms looked very similar to what Kirk and crew were wearing. Star Trek: The Motion Pictureand that film’s pastel pajamas are widely considered the worst uniform designs in the business.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 tried to fix this bad design, replacing the dullness of the previous season with bolder and more colorful uniforms. That’s a good idea on paper, but in practice, the new uniform designs look like what you’d get when you order. The Original Series Temu’s costume.
It’s hard to take any of these characters seriously when the low opening of their coats makes them look like a white-collared boss who felt cheeky enough to unbutton his shirt and unbutton his bottoms to celebrate Casual Friday in style.
No, Captain, my Captain
The next Star Trek fad is partially the fault of the most famous living Star Trek actor: Patrick Stewart. When Paramount lured him back Picardhe was adamant that he didn’t want to wear a Starfleet uniform, which is why his character and his crew in Season 1 ran around in black outfits that Stewart probably stole from David Lynch’s set. A mound. This is a big part of why the first and second seasons are so painful to watch: more than the writing is bad it does Nemesis looks like a work of art, the costume design of our regular series is lazy and completely wired.
Starfleet’s uniforms were better than Picard’s crew, but not by much: they alternated between looking like updated TNG Academy uniforms to simple looking uniforms that took the ones they were wearing. Lower Decks. In season 3, everyone was just wearing leather jackets with flashy Star Trek themes on them.
This caused our return TNG employees to look (embarrassingly enough) like bikers from an AARP themed motorcycle club. It was almost as if the producers were too afraid that this would look or feel like the original Star Trek show, which went crazy with an expensive game revival that brought the franchise back to life.
These Students Failed Fashion 101
The latest offender on the Star Trek fashion front is Starfleet Academya show that can’t quite decide what it wants its characters to look like. Sometimes, teachers like Jet Reno wear uniforms that look like colorful hourglasses that are randomly punched in a large area of black fabric.
The Doctor is wearing something like a monochrome version of himself Voyager clothes, and Holly Hunter’s chancellor is wearing something like a monster maroon tunic without any highlights. Over at the War College, Commander Nelrec is wearing something that looks like someone tried to draw it Battlestar Galactica resume blues work from memory after a blow to the head.
Unsurprisingly, the cadet uniforms are even more scattered in terms of style: most of them walk around campus in gray uniforms that look like an even worse version of what everyone else is wearing. Star Trek: Discovery Season 3. Sometimes, though, they unzip to wear tight red shirts and black pants (which they decorate with smart futuristic vests for exciting games of laser tag). Speaking of laser tag, after winning one game against War College, they put on letterman jackets, which leaves me wondering if anyone on the writing staff actually played sports in school.
None of these designs are great (minus the Starfleet Academy hoodie that looks inexplicably cozy), and several are pretty bad. That disadvantage is made worse by the visual chaos of the characters having more wardrobe changes per episode than most cosplayers do in an entire year. This is symbolic Starfleet AcademyThe biggest problem as a show: it tries to be too many different things at once, eventually losing its identity in the rush to please fans all the time.
Clothes Make A Spaceman
Believe it or not, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what makes NuTrek so badass. I haven’t gotten around to making memorable ship designs (hurry up, draw i Starfleet Academy teaching the ship by rote, I promise!) and lazy space effects that make battles hard to follow. Those battles alternate between being visually boring (like Battle of the Twin Stars in Adoption) is woefully lazy (like Riker threatening the Romulans Picard and all copy/paste vessels). After spending over $8 million per episode, NuTrek gives us space battles with little variety and excitement Deep Space Nine he did in the 1990s.
The biggest problem is still the clothing, which has only gotten worse since then Adoption it was first shown about ten years ago. Star Trek is a franchise with over half a century of cool costume designs, too The Next Generation it’s proof that Paramount once knew how to revise established designs The Original Series has become a pop culture phenomenon. If the creators of NuTrek can’t quite make these shows look decent, they’ll have no one but themselves to blame when audiences stop watching altogether.
