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BTW: According to many rumors, Admiral Janeway will appear in STX. I hope she doesn't have the common 3 pip admiral insignia.

[ September 19, 2001: Message edited by: Spike ]

I've heard that Mulgrew has categorically denied all knowledge of any such cameo. It would be a nice idea, but she hasn't been approached. But one interesting thing is that Patrick Stewert recently hinted, and I quote...

"do not believe everything you see on the internet about Star Trek 10. There is a future for Star Trek: Voyager on the big screen..."

Hmmm

(This he annouced in a recent convention in Blackpool, UK)

They change things too often to be realistic as it is. They only switched to 'present' style in the past few 'years'.

My own inadaquately explaination goes like this:

Starships are broken down into generations with a certain design acting as that generations flagship (eg Galaxy as flagship design with Neb, Cheyenne, etc as design sisters). When this happens, uniforms are changed for some honorary reason to go along with it. Thus, as the first Galaxy-era ships rolled off the assembly line, officers switched over to TNG S1 uniforms. Before that, we had the movie stuff, suggesting this was a recently enacted (or revived) doctrine.

Especially considering the AGT uniforms dont really work very well the wraparound isnt convincing, trying unsuccessfully to mimic the Movie era jackets with none of the finesse. If they wanted to use them ever again, i would add a contrast color (a black or gray collar or stripe or both and someplace to affix the rank insignia, because they look out of place all alone over the wrap. Plus the AGT uniforms were meant to show the future evolution of the TNG uniforms, but since they added the First Contact uniforms, it seems the future designs might go in a different direction (making their use in Endgame kind of questionable)

Of course, the real reason Starfleet redesigns all its uniforms and insignia ever few years is to get stupid fanboys like me to $hell out for some more pins at conventions (or 'cons' for short, ironically enough)

[ September 19, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]

I could have done without the FC variant, really, but it's not quite that crowded in the "modern" era as it seems. Frequent and illogical uniform changes are so much a Trek rule that I'm instead annoyed at the *lack* of discontinuity between ST2 and "Tapestry", or the too logical and gradual progression from "Tapestry" to "Yesterday's Enterprise". :-P

In ST:I they had new uniforms because the director wanted to tone down the colors for the big screen. They cost a lot of $

In ST:II they had new uniforms because everyone said that the ST:I uniforms sucked. The new ones cost even more $ (with the exception of the shoes, which were horribly expensive in ST:I)

They kept those for 6 movies because it was easier and there was no reason to change.

In ST:TNG they had new uniforms because they a)needed to show the future setting b) wanted to return to the older design philosophy (i.e. color)

They slighly modified those (year 3) because everyone was uncomfortable, and plus Riker was getting fat.

DS9 had new work jumpsuit uniforms to show they were not in as perfect a place as the ships crew. They didnt replace the old ones, but were a variant. Everyone really liked those so they started to show up on ships and stuff.

Generations was slated to introduce new jackets for the same reason ST:I did.. to show that they were in movies now. However they were horribly crap, and were thrown out before ever being seen.
The end product of Generations was superb, showing the DS9 uniforms looked really snazzy on the ships crew.

The new combadge was designed though, for Voyager, and was incorporated into the film too.

But ST:FC decided to redesign them, much like ST:II did, because they had a desire to change their uniforms from the first feature.