Star Trek: Ranking Every Starfleet Uniform Worst To Best

After being absent from the Star Trek motion pictures, TOS' William Ware Theiss returned to the franchise to design Gene Roddenberry's ideal uniforms for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Swapping the command gold for command burgundy (and operations red for operations mustard), Theiss' early-TNG lycra spandex jumpsuits reflected Roddenberry's vision of a zipper-less, wrinkle-free future. They also represented the "total equality of the sexes" in the 24th century by bringing the world the "skant", the skirt-like uniform variant worn by both women and men, if only in the background.

Theiss' Next Generation uniforms were clearly successful, going on to inform the following thirty years of Star Trek costume design. But the early jumpsuits were also so tight and uncomfortable they wreaked havoc on the actors' backs, leading them to be reworked by Robert Blackman into season three's definitive and superior TNG uniforms.