Misc. Observations, part 10

Regarding the color of these undershirts - and this may surprise you, so if you're not already sitting down we recommend doing so - there was a LOT of color variation over the years!

(Aren't you glad you were sitting?) 

Some of this may have been due to lighting, as well as to cinematography and color correction and a whole host of other things independent of the actual color of the fabric, but still - the color that the undershirt appeared to be onscreen definitely changed quite a bit, and many times, over the years. 

We cannot stress enough that the examples we are presenting here represent only general trends over general periods of time, not absolutes! There were pretty much always exceptions; we are only highlighting examples of what we interpret as trends and phases and directions over the years this uniform was in use. 

Furthermore, the undershirt color analysis we're presenting here only represents our interpretation of what those trends appeared to be. It is entirely possible for somebody else to watch the entirety of the modern era of Star Trek and/or wade through the same tens of thousands of screencaps we did and draw entirely different conclusions!

When the VOY uniforms were first introduced in Deep Space Nine (early 1993), they looked to be solid gray:

DS9, 1x1 "Emissary"

DS9, 1x6 "Captive Pursuit"

DS9, 1x16 "If Wishes Were Horses"

However, 1994-1995 was perhaps the time of the most, and most radical, changes in the undershirts' colors. 

For the first third or so of Deep Space Nine's third season (late 1994), the undershirts often looked downright purple/violet!

DS9, 3x1 "The Search"

DS9, 3x4 "Equilibrium"

DS9, 3x4 "Equilibrium"

DS9, 3x5 "Second Skin"

The purple phase didn't seem to last very long; by the middle of the season (late 1994 to early 1995), the undershirt had overall transitioned to a pale, light gray on Deep Space Nine:

DS9, 3x11 "Past Tense (part 1)"

DS9, 3x13 "Life Support"

DS9, 3x17 "Visionary"

During that portion of Deep Space Nine's third season, however, as you may recall, TNG's Generations was released and Voyager was launched, and lo and behold, the colors of the undershirts in those productions not only looked different from those currently in use on Deep Space Nine, but also different from each other!

In Generations, the undershirts sometimes looked surprisingly dark (heather?) gray:

Generations

They sometimes looked blue-ish:

Generations

And, at times, they looked purple-violet!

Generations

Voyager added to the confusion (isn't that what it was best at?) by premiering very soon after Generations with, overall, what looked to be gray uniform undershirts, but with a considerable (and unprecedented) amount of blue!

VOY, 1x3 "Parallax"

VOY, 1x3 "Parallax"

VOY, 1x14 "Faces"

Interestingly, in the latter portion of Deep Space Nine's third season, the undershirts overall transitioned from its pale, light gray to more blue-ish (especially on O'Brien):

DS9, 3x17 "Visionary"

DS9, 3x24 "Shakaar"

DS9, 3x26 "The Adversary"

That production year (late 1994 to mid-1995) was really a mess in terms of undershirt color consistency. 

Just to recap, the production year began with purple/violet undershirts on Deep Space Nine. 

Those transitioned to pale, light gray ones around the middle of the season. 

Around that same time, Generations was released, which showed us some dark gray, some blue-ish, and some purple/violet undershirts, all in the same movie. 

Not long after that, Voyager launched with undershirts that were bluer than ever before. 

And around that same time, some of Deep Space Nine's undershirts began moving in the blue direction, as well. 

Whew! 

Sometimes these color differences were especially apparent, such as during this scene of Deep Space Nine's third season episode "Visionary," in which the Sisko was seen wearing the mid-season light, pale gray undershirt, and O'Brien was wearing the bluer one:

Another apparent same-scene color discrepancy during this era can be seen in Voyager's pilot, "Caretaker," in which Commander Replaceable was wearing what looks like one of the darker gray undershirts while talking to Not Nicholas Locarno, who was wearing one of Voyager's standard lighter-gray-kind-of-blue ones: 

VOY, 1x1 "Caretaker"

After that crazy, all-over-the-place production year, things thankfully settled down and standardized a bit. 

Voyager stuck with its first season blue for a little while into its second season: 

VOY, 2x1 "The 37s"

But after that, both Deep Space Nine fourth season and Voyager's second season (late 1995 to mid 1996) overall seemed to consistently settle into about the same gray:

DS9, 4x1 "The Way of the Warrior"

DS9, 4x4 "Hippocratic Oath"

DS9, 4x6 "Rejoined"

VOY, 2x3 "Projections"

VOY, 2x11 "Maneuvers"

VOY, 2x9 "Tattoo"

About halfway through Deep Space Nine's fourth season, though, some of the undershirts had a brief "relapse" into the light gray (mainly on Worf, which is perplexing, since he wasn't even around during the light gray phase of the previous season):

DS9, 4x16 "Bar Association"

DS9, 4x17 "Accession"

Meanwhile, Voyager was having some random hiccups and relapses of its own, such as Voyager's second season episode "Twisted," in which Tuvok wore the then-current gray undershirt, Harry wore the bluer version, and Lieutenant What Should I Do In A Crisis? had on a darker gray one (the latter two of which were in the same scene!): 

VOY, 2x6 "Twisted"

VOY, 2x16 "Meld"

Another blue "hiccup" was with Wormtongue's undershirt in Voyager's mid-second season episode, "Meld":

There was also a scene in Voyager's mid/late second season episode "Dreadnaught" in which you can clearly see B'Elanna and Extra Lady wearing mismatching undershirts in the same shot (!):

VOY, 2x17 "Dreadnaught"

Except for the occasional "hiccups" such as those, the undershirt color remained more or less consistent for the remainder of the production year.

In Voyager's third season (late 1996), however, the undershirts sometimes appeared to be generally nudged toward a lighter gray again:

VOY, 3x1 "Basics (part 2)"

VOY, 3x2 "Flashback"

VOY, 3x11 "The Q and the Grey"

VOY, 3x12 "Macrocosm"

VOY, 3x13 "Fair Trade"

VOY, 3x17 "Unity"

VOY, 3x16 "Blood Fever"

With the occasional blue hiccup, of course, such as with Lieutenant Pon Farr in "Blood Fever": 

As you may recall, it was during this production year (late 1996 through mid 1997) that Deep Space 9 changed uniform styles, with Voyager now being the only show to maintain the use of these uniforms (and their corresponding undershirts). 

The following production year (Voyager's fourth season, late 1997 through mid 1998), the undershirts seemed to overall move back in the medium gray direction:

VOY, 4x7 "Scientific Method"

VOY, 4x26 "Hope and Fear"

However, noticeably darker gray undershirts (curiously harkening back to the early seasons of Deep Space 9) began to sneak in about halfway through the season, during the Hirogen arc:

VOY, 4x14 "Message in a Bottle"

VOY, 4x15 "Hunters"

VOY, 4x16 "Prey"

These dark gray undershirts seemed to gradually become popularized throughout the fifth season (late 1998 through mid-1999), and those seemed to remain the overall standard from then to the end of the show (mid-2001).

VOY, 5x2 "Drone"

VOY, 5x9 "Thirty Days"

VOY, 5x16 "Dark Frontier"

VOY, 5x26 "Equinox (part 1)"

VOY, 6x4 "Tinker, Doctor, Tenor, Spy"

VOY, 6x5 "Alice"

VOY, 6x19 "Child's Play"

VOY, 6x20 "Good Shepherd"

VOY, 7x3 "Drive"

VOY, 7x14 "Prophecy"

VOY, 7x18 "Human Error"

VOY, 7x19 "Q2"

So there you have it! About eight and a half years of almost constant undershirt color trends changing, no one color seeming to hang around more than two or three production years at a time ... and, ironically, after such a roundabout journey, appearing to end up very close to where they started! 

Obviously, determining a specific screen-accurate VOY undershirt color would be nearly impossible since they changed so many times over the years. 

While some of the variation might have been due to lighting and other contextual production issues, we know at least some of the variation was because of the fabric itself; just compare these two auction photos of a screen-used Chakotay uniform from who-knows-when to Geordi's from Generations:

(Yes, the auctioneers put Geordi's undershirt on backwards ...)

The only method of determining true color fidelity to an original would be to actually acquire one (ideally a main character's) for comparison, or to acquire a swatch of an original (such as on a character costume card). 

Even then, however, there might not be factual information of the garment's usage (which specific color phase it was from, or, specifically, in what episodes it was seen) though such details might be possible with some research. And even to determine that information would only be useful to a point since, as you saw, sometimes characters' undershirts were sometimes noticeably mismatched in the same episode - even the same scene, and even the same shot!

The most obsessive diligence in your research being to acquire a specific undershirt from every color trend and then determine an exact match for each would still leave you with multiple screen-accurate color options! 

So, when it's all said and done, about the most we can comfortably recommend regarding color screen-accuracy is "gray, perhaps leaning in the dark gray, blue, or even violet" direction ... or, simply, "gray."


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