Finished up this little Voyager/DS9 combadge today, planning to turn it into an ornament for a friend. I'm also gonna do a TNG one on red for a family member
Also
When fellow cross stitch folks told me that metallic thread is hard to work with...
They weren't kidding
I had SO many tangles and knots and issues with fraying oh my god
But the end result looks pretty good... so as long as my friend likes her ornament, it'll be worth it
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š age appropriate? depends! the show is rated at TV-PG and doesn't have any any adult content, language or violence in most episodes! i'd recommend checking out any warnings before watching and remember, it's always okay to turn something off if it isn't for you! <3
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š» note: i really need to watch star trek, everyone says good things about it and it IS a classic, so i really need to catch up hehe
Here's an oldie. I don't think I've posted it on Tumblr, if I have apologies. Captain Lexxa Singh (Adrienne Wilkinson), from Tim Russ's unauthorized fan film "Star Trek: Renegades."
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Delta Variants: No, but the Starfleet combadge kind!
By Ames
āPodcast to bridge. Youāre going to want to see this.ā A Star to Steer Her By is tapping our combadges this week to talk in great detail about all the different Starfleet insignia you see gracing a crew memberās left pec. From the sewn-on merit badge emblems to the magical multitools that are tricom badges, weāre gonna look at the familiar delta shape in all kinds of iterations throughout the different Star TrekĀ series.Ā
Listen to this weekās episode here (this convo starts at 1:19:24) to get our takes ā with guest star Liz filling in! ā on which emblems have us responding āGo ahead, Number One,ā and which ones have us hitting the snooze option they almost certainly have built in. Probably for whenever Worf is trying to give suggestionsā¦
āThe Cageā and āWhere No Man Has Gone Beforeā
More like sewn-on merit badges than the Swiss army communicator badges weāll visit in later series, the emblems that we first see in the two pilots were very functional and straight-forward, excepting that the department insignias and color combinations were evidently anyoneās guess.
Star Trek: The Original Series
By the time TOS made it to the airwaves, theyād finally settled on the department insignias and color combinations that weāre all familiar with. Still just practical cloth badges that were sewn on the uniforms, the emblems communicated exactly what they needed to. Just not literally with each other yet.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Weāll discuss the uniforms next week, but letās start with the makeover toĀ The Motion PictureĀ badges first. Weāre going to find that the outfits lack color and that might be because suddenly the badges had way more of it! With way more color coordination, it got confusing to us pretty quickly as to who was who, what department was which, and where the hell the department insignias went!
TOS Films II through VI
The typical officerās badge that gets introduced in The Wrath of Khan and runs the course of the TOS movies is pretty striking, with its shiny gold metal that finally seems to have some kind of weight, and its rounded rectangle background that makes it really stand out. Weāre fans.
We see glimpses of some nice straight-forward badges for Enlisted Crew and Civilian Services in the movies as well, but we got pretty hung up on the strange choice made for Starfleet Security in The Search for Spock. The outlining just looks like an ugly bottlecap, and the usually slim delta shape may have been spending too much time in the replimat, if you catch my drift.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
The TNG combadge is everything you need and more. Itās got a walkie talkie, a universal translator, a homing device, a cheese grater: everything for the Starfleet officer on the go who also wants to look fashionable. And its shape and color contrast are pretty classic too. The delta rests on a golden platter looking like a downright snack. Cut me a slice.
āFuture Imperfectā
In the imagined future we glimpse in Rikerās faux future, everyoneās still wearing basically the same uniforms but with ugly new badges! Controversially (at least on this podcast), your rank is now on both your collar AND your badge, which seems a touch redundant, and also the rank bars here just end up looking like sewer grates. And boy does it look unbalanced if youāre an ensign with only the bottom barā¦
āAll Good Thingsā¦ā et alia
We spy the future of the combadge in a couple flashforwards in TNG, DS9, and VOY, and that future is bright and shiny! The asymmetrical shapes behind the outline of the delta look really smart (kinda like a stole worn over a graduation robe ā thatās how smart). And keeping the light silver and gold color combination also catches the eye.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and TNG Films
This combadge is super recognizable because we see it the most. It graces our crews throughout Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and most of the TNG films, so its familiarity gives it a boost in popularity. We see another crisp shape and another brilliant combination of those metallic colors that we like so much together. But once you start thinking of the backing as a hair clip, thatās all you can see.
āRelativityā
We take a trip to the future in the Voyager episode āRelativityā and itās pretty grim⦠for badges anyway. The delta is on its side, which could be interesting, but then it does this weird thing with a roughly textured shape of metal extending from it like itās flying through spacetime. What weāre left with is a sadly squashed quadrilateral of some kind that has done some bodily harm to our favorite Starfleet shape.
Red Squadron
Just for fun, hereās the cadet badge for all the little sickos in Red Squadron. Itās another delta shape on its side, this time with a sharp command insignia that looks like it could be stabbing it? It ends up reminding us a bit of the mirror universe emblems youāre going to see later down the list, and that strikes us as just about right.
Star Trek: Enterprise
Weāre in prequel territory, so weāre back to sewn-on badges. As weāll discuss next week, Enterprise does a great job at bridging the gap in aesthetics between todayās NASA flight suits and the Trek universe uniforms, and the badges that we see (and we see a lot of them because every ship has their own!) are no exception. A couple extra points to the M.A.C.O. badge for the shark joke.
Star Trek: DiscoveryĀ
Seasons 1-2
Come the currently running series and weāve redesigned everything, from the Klingonsā faces to the uniforms to the combadges, which are metal and sleek. We like that the division insignias are back, as they lend to a kind of internal consistency, but what we donāt particularly like is putting rank pips in teeny-tiny little nubbins on the bottom. Like we said about the āFuture Imperfectā badges: keep rank where you can see it clearly.
Letās also take a moment while weāre here to look at that admiralās badge and quietly ask āwhy with the wreath of deltas?ā Is Starfleet really that conscious of branding that they know to put deltas on everything so you can buy it on etsy for more money than itās worth? Well, weāll see in the coming weeks when we talk about uniforms that the answer is āDuh.ā
USS Enterprise Crew
Pikeās crew from the Enterprise strolls in in season 2 in their new garb with something more like the classic TOS badge shape, but metal. And let me tell you: thereās something just refreshing about a combadge without a ton of bells and whistles. Itās easy to spot with its black outlining; the insignias are clear and crisp. These badges are just a breath of fresh air. It looks like weāre going to see a lot more of these in Strange New Worlds and that alone has us excited.
Seasons 3-4
In the future setting of Discovery, the future Starfleet has a new future combadge⦠thatās somehow the least futuristic thing about the show, but thatās beside the point. The clamshell oval shape⦠weāre not terribly keen on. Those damn rank pips are back on the badge because no one has learned anything in 900 years. And the colors, while close to the nice gold and silver weāve been lauding, look harder to differentiate now. Meh.
Star Trek: PicardĀ
Season 1
Everyone and their admirals first looked at the new combadge in Picard and for a split second thought it was the same one as in āAll Good Thingsā that you saw earlier, but a closer inspection proves itās got some differences: the colors are a little more samey and the fatter graduation stoles donāt extend over the top of the delta. Itās a very nice nod to one of the shapes we liked, but does it hold a candle to the original? Check out our favorites below to see.
Visitor badge
What a slightly bizarre badge to see grace Jean-Luc Picardās jacket when he visits HQ. Itās a partly comic and partly tragic effect to see how far the mighty has fallen to be reduced to being a visitor instead of an officer in the first place, and this badge is so huge and clunky and kind of juvenile that it just brings attention to that fact. It looks like a big, awkward bottle opener, which is actually probably the intended effect.
La Sirena
We couldnāt help including the very artful and beautiful mermaid badge of Riosās ship La Sirena. The colors are peaceful and evocative. The negative-space shape is almost too clever for its own good. And of course we acknowledge the nod to the themes of duality in the show since this badge comes in two distinct pieces that have to be worn together. Weāve definitely been lured in by this sirenās song because itās so beautiful.
Season 2
Adding to the menacing sense of the dark side in the latest trailer for season 2 of Picard is the updated combadge for this alternate dimension / reality / universe / thingy. Everything about it feels slightly wrong, absolutely enormous, and unquestionably violent. This badge isnāt for doing science work; itās for stabbinā. Itās also ugly as hell (the rank pips look like little staples now?! what?), and weāre gonna have to see if it serves its purpose, because right now weāre a bit put off.
Kelvin Movies
The badges that we see throughout the Kelvinverse movies all harken back to a really stripped down, shiny metal variation on the classic look. And thank goodness! We really appreciate that for once in a modern movie there was a place where less was more. The differences between badges that we see here are all just small variations for specific roles or occasions, and the minimalism of it all just works.
Terran Empire
TOS and ENT mirror universe
Letās take a trip through the dimensional mcguffin to see what theyāre doing in the mirror universe when it comes to emblems and insignia. The aesthetic of the Terran Empire is basically āall swords, all the time,ā which strikes us as accurate. We have to give some props to the Enterprise globe-getting-sworded for actually including the whole map instead of just the western hemisphere as well.
Discovery mirror universe
But oh boy, letās talk about the overwrought Discovery trainwreck for a second though. The upside-down delta shape is kinda funny if a little on-the-nose AND lazy (kinda like the title sequence we discussed previously), but itās the mirror universe so we accept it, albeit reluctantly. The utterly strange element though is that the map in this version of the mirror universe is BACKWARDS, which goes from being on-the-nose to punch-in-the-face.
Star Trek: Prodigy
We nearly didnāt notice the new combadge in Prodigy because all the marketing images were still using JanewayāsĀ Voyager combadge. Silly marketing! But in the show itself, we get to see this shiny new toy aboard the Protostar! Its main differentiating factor is that the command star is more abstractly referenced since we only see half of it. Are all the departments going to be like that? Itās an okay combadge; we just werenāt really expecting the need for a new one.
ā
We see a lot of very similar designs here of course, but some of these badges are an aesthetic delight to see and some of them take us out of the moment whenever theyāre onscreen. Hereās where we radioed in overall:
Favorites
Ames: āAll Good Thingsā
Honorable mention: La Sirena
Chris: The Wrath of Khan, et alia
Honorable mention: DS9/VOY
Jake: The Wrath of Khan, et alia
Honorable mention: The Undiscovered Country (Civilian Services)
Guest star Liz: Discovery (seasons 1-2)
Honorable mention: anything with a nice circle/oval!
Least Favorites:
Ames: āFuture Imperfectā
Dishonorable mention: Discovery (mirror universe)
Chris:Ā āRelativityā
Dishonorable mention: The Motion Picture
Jake: Discovery (season 3-4)
Dishonorable mention: The Search for Spock (Starfleet Security)
Guest star Liz: āRelativityā
Dishonorable mention: Picard (season 2)
ā
Iām sure I missed a ton of different badges (from Enterprise alone, no doubt!) if only for the sake of time, but if there are other emblems you want to shout out, drop us a line! As mentioned, weāre about to launch into a whole series of discussions on the different uniforms, so keep following us here, listen to new weekly episodes on SoundCloud or wherever you patch in for podcasts, hail us on Facebook and Twitter, and try new things with the delta shape just for fun!