Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Next Generation Uniforms

When Star Trek: The Next Generation ended its seven-season run on television, the cast and crew immediately kicked into gear on production of 1994's Star Trek Generations. While the show's sets, costumes, props, and models had all been designed to capture as much detail and realism as possible, certain elements simply would not stand up to the scrutiny of the big screen. What resulted were major renovations to the existing TNG sets, a full refresh of the 6-foot USS Enterprise-D filming model, and brand new costumes courtesy of Robert Blackman.

Producer Rick Berman encouraged experimentation with TNG's look, resulting in costumes that "looked great on paper", but, according to Robert Blackman, that's the only place they looked great:

...It turned out there was no way to really structure them. We kept fitting them and fitting them. The fabric choice was not working, we didn't have enough fabric to dye, nothing was working. It was like the perfect storm. Nothing went right.

Filming with Blackman's new Starfleet uniforms did take place but after a single day of production, it was evident that the costumes just weren't working and the decision was made to scrap them. Starfleet's new look was out, replaced with a combination of the old uniforms from TNG and the relatively new ones from Deep Space Nine.

Footage of that single day shoot with the revised uniforms is rare (blink and you'll miss it in this poor quality footage of LeVar Burton wearing his) and no photographs of the cast in these costumes have ever surfaced. However, Playmates toys produced their line of Star Trek Generations action figures anticipating the cast would be wearing these costumes and were unable to change the toys' look once the decision had been made to cut the new uniforms from the film... resulting in a lot of confused kids on Christmas Day 1994.