Uhura

by Peter Christian

Some of you are aware that I am a producer working on Star Trek: Of Gods and men. What you may not know is that I am also the costume designer as well. I designed about 95% of the entire look of the film where new uniforms and costumes were needed. I also designed the alternate fleet logo as well as the look of the evil fleet ships.

One design I’d like to share with everyone here is the dress I designed for Nichelle Nichols. She is such a sweet lady and is very warm and friendly. She was a dream to work with while designing this particular piece. We went back and forth five or six times over the phione before we finally got it right for her. The following is the result:

When first asked to do costume design the producer and director both had a very dark universe in mind for our alter-heroes. Each design went through many phases. FOr example. The Galactic Order uniforms for example. These went through many different looks. Let’s take the female uniform for example as it had the most changes before final construction.

Here is the initial design for the GO crew woman’s dress. They wanted a decidedly TOS (The Original Series) look, with a slight amalgamated hint at the feature film uniforms at first. You can see this with the rank pin, belt and buckle, and the added double breasted front.

Tim Russ at this point decided he wanted more of a “Mirror Universe” look to the uniform and asked that it be re-designed into a two piece but retaining the color scheme. Also at this point, the original script had changed and we now had a role of an Orion Slave woman being played by Chase Masterson who’s character replaced the originally scripted “Saavik” who was going to be portrayed by Robin Curtis, but Robin’s scehdule got changed and she was no longer able to participate, so I did a sketch that reflected Chase’s new character with the design changes that Tim asked for as seen here (would’ve been cool to still have Saavik though, wouldn’t it?)

This was the final concept art that I created for the Go female uniform, but when the design went into implementation, there was yet another change to the uniform in the fabric and colors being used for the Galactic Order. We went with a ribbed silver synthetic fabric that was the same stuff that was used for Finnegan’s cadet tunic on the original series. As a matter of fact, it cam from the very same roll. As far as Xela was concerned, she wore this uniform, but with a unique twist in modifications to reflect her Orion slave background. Here are pictures of the two versions upon final completion. Actors are Crystal Allen and Chase Masterson:

So hopefully this gives you an idea of what goes into a small part of designing Star Trek. This one just one of about fifty costumes I designed for the film. I’ll share more in the coming months.

Cheers!

Captain Peter Christian
Executive Officer
USS Thermopylae
NCC-74703