Every TV show in a large franchise gets its own new costumes and designs. In Star Trek, the uniform design department is mad with power in a post-money utopia society that allows them to change the design of a military/scientific/diplomatic force every few years.
In addition to the long, madcap timeline of Starfleet uniform history, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is no exception. The upcoming series is set between the events of Discovery's second season and the early years of the original Star Trek. It was different to when Discovery did that, and it was sent out with priority to crews on flagships, but don't worry about that. There are new costumes! It's pretty! It was retro! The uniforms that Kirk would wear during his five-year mission on the same ship were quite different.
The first good look at the new uniforms was shared on Star Trek's official website. Female officers now wear a long jacket over their undersuit and leggings, instead of the all-division-color miniskirt they used to wear. There is black panelling on either side. Very soft.
You can see even more subtle additions when you get closer to the uniforms, like the special print on the shoulders and arms, which is reminiscent of the icon of their respective division. You can see it from a distance, but if you forget what department a colleague is in, you can look at their arms instead of their chest. On the one hand, the reality of a new TV show like this in a franchise like Star Trek means you want to give the costume designers something to do with such an icon of visual design, pay homage. On the other hand, thinking about it in-universe terms paints a picture of a design department with an outrageous amount of power, pushing out incremental wardrobe updates to the fleet with a frankly incredible level of reckless abandon.
Is it meant to be separate uniforms for the ones that would be worn later during Kirk's tenure on the Enterprise? This is a vision of what they were always meant to look like in the fiction, and we are just getting to see it. The bridge set balances the line between Discovery's aesthetic and the classic glowy buttons and flip switches of the original Trek. I would like to think that at some point, the design division of the company sent up updated replicator files and a small note to every captain in the fleet.
When you think about Star Trek canon a little too seriously, it can lead to some fun exercises in giving you a brain-splitting headaches, but sometimes it just lets you imagine the absurd levels of bureaucracy that can exist in Starfleet at times. A dedicated core of people very into their scientist-explorer-soldiers looking as slickly styled as possible at all times. When Strange New Worlds hits Paramount+ on May 5, we will get to see them in action.
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