Leonard McCoy and some of his medical staff wearing various sciences division uniforms in 2266
Sciences lieutenant on Epsilon IX station, early 2270s
Tuvok wearing a grey collar, denoting a science officer in the 2290s
Beverly Crusher, late 2360s
The sciences division is the corps of officers within Starfleet who specialize in both scientific and medical research and control functions on starbases, aboard starships, and at Starfleet Command. Members of the sciences division may specialize in sensors, research, theoretical and physical laboratory work, biological studies, and also as technicians, medics, and surgeons.
Officers who belong to the sciences division sometimes wear the division color of a department other than that which they specialize in. For example, if a science officer were to become a department head, he might wear the colors of command division, or if he has a dual specialty in an operations division department, an alternate color might be worn.
Beginning with the Earth Starfleet of the 2140s and 2150s, line officers and noncoms of science division wore blue division stripes on their uniforms. This use of blue continued through several uniform styles until 2260s. On starships, such as the USS Enterprise, science division crewmembers had a specialty insignia in their insignia patch, a circle with two longitudinal lines dividing it.
By the 2270s, new uniforms showed different division colors, with the sciences division signified by two differing colors. Science research and technical staff wore orange behind their Starfleet badge, on uniform bands, accessories, and epaulets. Medical crew now wore green badge backings and accessories.
The sciences division was changed again with the 2280s uniforms, with green continuing to represent medical personnel, but science and technical staff now wore gray colors (which was a style shared by services personnel of operations division). The insignia used gave the officer the option of wearing command division white uniform insignia, with another department color like sciences' banded across, or the opposite, with department color insignia (green or grey, in this case) with command white banded across.
By the uniforms used from 2350s onward, blue had again become the sciences division color. However, starting with the uniforms introduced in 2366, the color gradually shifted to teal, with blue being the color of the standard uniforms and teal being the color of the variant uniforms. By 2373, with the standardization of uniforms for all Starfleet personnel, teal became the sole sciences division color.
Subdivisions
- Planetary geosciences division
See also
Background
- During the original Star Trek, sciences blue first appeared in TOS: "The Cage" and was regularly worn by the science station officers, security personnel (in "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before"), who normally wore red, and medical personnel. Science Officer Spock wore sciences blue (even though he briefly wore command yellow, for his dual position as executive officer). Oddly enough, some scientists (like Ann Mulhall) even wore operations red. The work coveralls were muted variations in the pilots from the duty uniforms and were gray in color. Later they matched the blue of the standard duty uniform.
- Apparently officers with degrees of scientific or technical training held positions in other departments than just science and medical. Extra characters in blue uniforms were often seen occupying posts normally occupied by command or operations division personnel, up to and including captaincy.
- In the movie era, Star Trek: The Motion Picture featured Spock wearing orange bands and McCoy wearing green. By the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan uniforms, McCoy continued to wear green, but science officers wore gray, according to schemes and insignia of the later movie-era uniforms by Robert Fletcher.
- The decision to switch the meaning of the colors for command and ops divisions between the TOS and TNG uniform styles was made in pre-production of "Encounter at Farpoint." However, the TOS blue was kept as the sciences division color.
- Most often, in the Federation Starfleet, all captains and admirals wear command division colors; however there are exceptions, which proves that this is not a requirement. In TOS, a Captain Krasnovsky wore a science blue dress uniform, the only captain in Trek to ever do so.