Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Enterprise Uniforms

A big part of Enterprise's premise depended on depicting an early version of Starfleet, with technology that was futuristic, but still more primitive than that of the 1960s-produced Star Trek. To give Enterprise that retro-futuristic flavor, familiar Trek tech was regressed: Instead of phasers we got phase pistols, instead of tricorders we got scanners, instead of the transporter we got the transporting device.

Okay so not that much was actually changed, but one major addition to the lore, consistent with the show's setting, was Starfleet's new 22nd century space suits.

While they had featured in a handful of episodes like The Original Series' "The Tholian Web" and Star Trek: Voyager's "Day of Honor", as well as movies like Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: First Contact, space suits were a surprisingly rare sight in the spaced-based Star Trek Universe.

Designed in cooperation between the show's costume department and John Eaves and the art department, Enterprise's space suits were nearly as complex NASA's real life space suits, including battery-operated cooling systems, helmet-mounted microphones to record dialogue live, and internal lighting to illuminate the actor's faces.

According to Robert Blackman, these advanced new suits were, in fact, a response to Star Trek: First Contact's 24th century EVA suits:

Everyone really disliked those hot, clunky away suits that were created for the movie Star Trek: First Contact, so I went all out enhancing the new copper-colored ones for Enterprise.