Hiya, Ric here. What are the actual Starfleet divisions and how do they correlate to the
uniform colours? It seems easy to point to sciences, operations and command and say there
you go, done, but the three primary colour uniforms are only the beginning. The myriad
jobs in Starfleet equal more than just three arbitrarily appointed primary colours, so
what actually goes into what uniform you wear? Sciences. The blue uniforms, aside from when
they were silver in the 2250s, and that grey-beige-phase Starfleet went through in the 2270s. And the
Red phase in the 2280s. Asking a scientist what they do and receiving the answer “science”
doesn’t really help, so looking at a blue uniform doesn’t really tell you much about
the career path of the person wearing it. Especially in Starfleet, when thing like quantum
mechanics, warp theory are taught to every cadet. The most basic breakdown we can first
look to is medical or other sciences. The former used to have its own division, and
even uniform before being lumped in with the rest of those nerds. Despite this, all the
healers of Starfleet are bundled into the medical division of Starfleet science.
General sciences breaks down further into all the differing arms of scientific study
from physics, chemistry, research and development, quantum theory, archaeology and so on. Needless
to say, many in Starfleet joined to pursue a scientific career and end up in the blue.
However, as we will see repeatedly, there is often quite a bit of crossover in the divisions
based on what your specialisation is, for example, someone who works with artificial
intelligences could have started out in the operations division before moving over into
a designated “scientific field” and changing uniforms. Plus Starfleet R and D is often
made up of equal operations and sciences personnel, who both theorise, then build an experimental
device. Operations. Gold uniforms in the 24th century
onwards, red in the early days. Like sciences, this can be broken down into obvious dividers,
as different as night and day. Security, Engineering and Operations. These three things are generally
considered what is necessary to keep a spaceship, starbase (or fleet for that matter), running.
Those who train how to neutralise threats, enforce and protect are designated as Starfleet
Security and encompass most aspects of Starfleet defence. They are the reason Starfleet has
to routinely deny it is a military and include armoury officers and tacticians.
Operations and engineers are the techies, on par with the science divisions and they
see a lot of cross-over. The line between sciences and these guys is a little blurred
but basically it seems to boil down to, if it is a job that is vital to the continual
functioning of the ship, then you are in operations. If it the reason that the ship needs to be
functional, you’re probably in the sciences. Engineering divisions deal strictly with the
workings of a vessel, whether that is maintaining them, improving them or straight-up building
them. Operations are generally those who manage graphs, spreadsheets and compile sensor reports.
Command. The Red. Or gold, in days gone. They are the supervisors. Command division personnel
received training centred on leadership skills, tactical thinking and decision making. It’s
not always a glamourous at it seems however, as the command roles also included vast swaths
of administrative work, logistics divisions and accounting. So just because a person is
in a command uniform, doesn’t necessarily mean their aiming for a ship command. The
more exciting roles that the command division encompasses are those on the path to be a
captain someday and strategic officers. Again, as with all the prior divisions, there’s
a lot of overlap. Strategy easily encroaches into security, an operations division and
pilots could be from either operations or command backgrounds. Another brief aside,
just because you took a Command training course or passed the bridge test did not mean you
had to transition over to the command division, it just meant that now you were allowed to
do so. This means that many who are now technically in the command division may have had a long
history in another department, such as Kathryn Janeway being from sciences, Jonathon Archer
being a Pilot, or Riker, from operations. Few are the captains who set out on the command
path from day one and made it all the way, the most iconic being Captain James T. Kirk.
Even then, he spent time as a weapons officer which could either place him in security operations
or tactical command. So that basically covers the colour coded
divisions of Starfleet and I hope that helped clarify some things. Almost everyone in Starfleet
has training in several of these divisions, because you can’t really do one part of
the job without a solid grounding in the others and certain professions end up leaning into
one side or the other when it comes to a change of uniform, such as a “strategic specialist”.
So come on then, what job would end up placing you in all three divisions and entitle you
to don any colour uniform you wanted? Thanks for watching, I’ve been Ric and I’ll
see you next time for another lore video. Goodbye!