Does a captain always wear red?

[Scivan]

So this may be a useless question, but I keep wondering.
Every time I see a NPC with a captain rank, he wear the 'odyssey' outfit with above the line a white color, the line itself is always red, and beneath the line there is black. Now I automaticly assumed that they were just tactical officers with a captain rank. But I can't find NPCs with a yellow or blue line.

So my question is: Does a captain always wear red, even if his career isn't tactical?

[DarthHammer]

Usually in Star Trek canon, there is a 'command' branch that falls within one of the primary uniform colors. Its not always red, however. It was yellow in TOS, and then became red for TNG, DS9, and Voyager. The split of Engineering/Tactical/Science is a gameplay concession to create distinct classes, and the actual branches in Starfleet are more diverse.

There are also sometimes unique 'command variants' like the green tunic from TOS and Picard's command jacket in the later seasons of TNG.

In the STO timeline, red is still the command branch color, so therefore ship commanders should be wearing red. But with the Odyssey outfit standardization, they added a command variant that has the white shoulder color.

So if you're trying to be 100% accurate to the STO Starfleet uniforms, the ship commander/ranking officer (doesn't necessarily have to be a captain, but does have to be in the command branch) would wear the command variant, which always has the red color.

There's even a guide on the STO Arc webpage for the exact colors, and even more guides on the wiki for canon/non-canon uniforms.

Of course, I say let their aribitrary uniform code be damned and wear whatever you want, but that's just me.

[erniestarslayer]

I was going to say that "Typically it's the Tactical Officers that receive the command" but, this isn't really true. I remember TOS with Kirk wearing the Yellow/Gold shirt, then when it came to the movies he was wearing Red.

[Vellari]

According to the current STO official uniform code:

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/6005853

a commanding officer indeed has white shoulders and the color red.

Though even the game is inconsistent in this propably due to content spanning five years of development, much of it predating Odyssey uniform release.

As far as actual Star Trek canon goes, it has varied wildly over time and between series/movies.

[Hawk Man]

No, I always wear gold colors with my shirt no matter what my rank is.

[SkyFallen2]

Wear what you like. I use the basic colour shcemes Red/Blue/Gold for my bridge crew just as a reminder as to who is what specialty during ground missions.

My characters I dress as I like.

[Vellari]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in canon (tv/movies) outside of ToS redshirt cannon fodder, red is always command. ToS is very different for other departmens aswell to be honest.

Other than ToS, it is red for command/helm, gold for security/operations/engineering and blue/teal for science/medical.

[CoreHaven]

For myself I usually play an engineer. I wear yellow all the way to Lt. Commander. But once I hit Commander I switch to red because I've never seen a commander in the game or in the TV shows that didn't wear red. The Captains go without saying.

I base this on the TNG and so forth era of trek. Kirk / Spock trek had the colors reversed for operations and command.

[Vellari]

Quite, like Captain Crusher in a "future" episode clearly wearing command red.
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/3/30334/1135487-trek554.jpg

This is inline with the sto uniform code (commanding officer being always red), the uniform color represent the post one holds, not the "career choice".

[Nephilim]

There is only 3 cases I could find where a TNG Federation Captain in command of a Ship or Station did not wear red.

In those cases there were one case of TNG yellow and two cases of TNG blue. There are tons of examples of commanders that weren't wearing red.

In an interview that I could not verify, several Star Trek writters were asked why all captains wore red. Their responce was; red is recognized as the color of command and although Captains ultimately have authority of which uniform they choose to authorize on thier vessel or station, and could stay in yellow or blue, it is the expectation that they will change to red.

There are alot of examples where Starfleet uniforms vary from ship to ship, station to station or station to ship. (See DS9 Season 1 Episode 1)

[sven10077]

Originally posted by SH:

So this may be a useless question, but I keep wondering.
Every time I see a NPC with a captain rank, he wear the 'odyssey' outfit with above the line a white color, the line itself is always red, and beneath the line there is black. Now I automaticly assumed that they were just tactical officers with a captain rank. But I can't find NPCs with a yellow or blue line.

So my question is: Does a captain always wear red, even if his career isn't tactical?

In the modern era "mostly."

Starfleet subdivides its men and women and "others/both" into "branches."

Helm/Navigation/Security is Tactical

Engineering/Operations is Engineering

Science/Medical are "Science"

There are various combinations of badges in those groupings. The badges are "Operations", "Science", "Medical" and "Command."

Command winds up being officers chosen(and realistically NCOs for mundane jobs and the Marines) for particular consideration to advance into higher level operational command.

You have to figure the majority would come from the more tactical minded career fields, one of the more apocryphal "Fanon" stories on Kirk is he started out as security but was told by an insturctor to switch to helm b/c "you have command potential."

[sven10077]

Originally posted by erniestarslayer:

I was going to say that "Typically it's the Tactical Officers that receive the command" but, this isn't really true. I remember TOS with Kirk wearing the Yellow/Gold shirt, then when it came to the movies he was wearing Red.

Everyone was wearing Red, he wore some funky pastel in ST-TMP b/c "disco" baby.

[Bulitt]

yep in the TOS movies red was the standard uniform across starfleet regardless of branch, They did have straps that held the double-breast flap that had insignia pins on them, I believe these signified your profession.

[Vellari]

Quite right, from Wrath of Khan to Undiscovered Country, atleast for the officers, there was only the red jacket. Forget what crewmen wore....jumpsuit of sorts iirc.

Edit: Ah, here we go. Jumpsuit too was red.

http://www.therpf.com/gallery/data/655/medium/UniformGroup2.jpg

[Vosoros]

If you're looking to blend into the world of Star Trek Online then yes, command not only wears red...they actually wear a command variant of the odyssey uniform for the period...

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/6005853

I've even gone a little further and when I assigned T'Vrell to be my first officer in the duty officer assignments department head stuff and I changed her into the command colors too. It's nifty to know if you like to blend in and/or roleplay somewhat in the game.

However, if you don't care about such things...just wear whatever you like. But bare in mind you can't change the uniform of random crew when you visit the bridge and interior of your ship.

[Sirius]

I was at first using red for my captains - trying to keep the look of the thing.

but what with the Odyssee stuff and all, I gave up and now I generally have indistinct grey/ black (or other subtle colors) for my crews overall.

It really doesn't matter that much at all, unless you are heavy into roleplaying.

Then again, I'm always happy to see "decent" uniform setups as opposed to the usual MMO "as eye cancer inducing as possible" mentality so may MMOers seem to favor.

If it's canon, all the better.

Again, not that it matters much at all, but I'm personally more inclined to interact with people who at least try to look "good" in the sense of trying to look Star Trek. Conversely, I pretty much ignore everyone who thinks this is WoW with maximum glitter or what have you.

I have to admit I laughed hard at that Homer Simpson guy running around on ESD sometimes (looks pretty good and accurate, as far as the character creator allows), but that's all it's good for: A laugh. I can't imagine actually running around like that.

Breaks what little immersion the game has.