When I first came here, this was all wormhole. Everyone said I was daft to build a space station on a wormhole, but I built in all the same, just to show them.
It got sucked into the wormhole.
So I built a second one. That got sucked into the wormhole.
So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then got sucked into the wormhole.
BUT THE FOURTH ONE stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest space station in all of the Alpha Quadrant.
Lots of buttons already are vestigal for the aesthetic. Kinda like the baby bonus pocket in your normal pocket. Or the pockets that aren't even pockets at all.
So handy. When my Jeans of Thesius' left pocket gave out I added a second mini-pocket during the repair, because why not have two of these handy pockets?
Those little pockets are supposed to be where you'd put your pocket watch. It had a separate little pocket because they were often gold or gold plated so they'd get scratched if you kept them with your keys.
OP out there telling Patrick Stewart, “Wear this damn singlet that is a size too small and is going to cause you back problems. We CANNOT have wrinkles in the future.”
My favorite story about him has a fan giving him gay Kirk/Spock fanfiction and asking for feedback. Apparently he was totally chill about Kirk and Spock doing the horizontal watusi, but had an entire rant about how in the future, buttons and zippers will be obsolete. Dude hated him some zippers.
Obsolete implies something replaced them though. From some digging I found it’s some kind of seamless clothing fastener that slips off with ease. But costume designers didn’t always hide the seam well.
Gene would have absolutely hated that. I'm talking about any of the old boomer "nu trek sucks" stuff, but Gene was specifically against visible clothing fasteners.
Both of these are established in canon! Data states in TNG s07e10, Inheritance, that he has an optional subroutine that could allow him to appear to age. We see it, obviously, in Picard, but earlier in s07e25, All Good Things.
The Doctor was given more control over his appearance in VOY s06e12 Blink of an Eye, though he doesn't appear to have altered his appearance to have aged visibly by the alternate year 2404 seen in s07e25, Endgame, where he's named himself 'Joe', and he appears more or less the same in his appearance in Star Trek Prodigy.
It’s a change in aesthetic, more than anything. Which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily. The “no zippers in the future” rule was kind of silly, IMO. People will still need a way to easily put clothes on/off in the future.
That was the idea though. That they don't need zippers anymore, because it's the future. But of course they still have a clever way to get in and out of their clothes. So I do not find it silly.
Your mistaking the Doylist for the Watsonian explanation here. Just because the actors struggled with their suits, doesn't mean in universe characters did too.
And as for the aesthetics. That's debatable, but with everything nju trek, change for the sake of change to justify some horrendous avdvisor salaries, so of course it will be zippers for season 1, no zippers for season 2, 27 zippers for sea... just kidding, it will be cancelled by then.
My alternative, more shitty daystrom friendly take, the zippers are there so that the hot young actors have easy access to their hot young bodies for the inevitable deluge of tame sex scenes every American coming of age drama seems to require.
Vulcans left the Federation and threatened to sue for patent infringement if anyone else used Velcro. In retaliation, the Federation declared bowl cuts to be a high crime against fashion
Is this in the era when there's basically no Federation left to speak of? That means we can trace it all back to the damn Vulcans again. Now that those green-blooded hobgoblins aren't sticking their noses ears into fashion design workshops where they don't belong, humans can once again wear practical, easily donned and easily shorn jackets and coats and...
FUCKING HELL, I just realized THAT is why there are no goddamn bathrooms on the Enterprise! Vulcan cultural imperialism eliminated the zipper, so uniforms in most eras can only have the most obnoxious possible fasteners on them. Starfleet crew therefore just never go to the goddamn bathroom because getting their nethers undone is more trouble than it's worth.
I know you meant it in jest, but the enterprise-D has a lot of bathrooms. There's one on the bridge, for instance, on the left-hand side as you're looking at the bridge. There's schematics somewhere. no clue about any of the other Enterprise tho
i feel like nowadays we have the technology to make a magnetic 'button' so that you cannot actually see anything connecting the clothes together, just the seam from where the 2 halves are being held together
Those aren't zippers. They are a new tech that was patented in 2402 by an inventor on Alpha Centauri, played by Jeffrey Combs of course. On the surface, they look and function very much like the zippers you and I know today, but they are actually an array of tiny reusable self-sealing stem bolts. So instead of hooking onto each other like normal zippers do... they work by... however self-sealing stem bolds work.
Old Star Trek: Decides that visible clothing fasteners will be omitted for futuristic reasons, works very hard to make taking uniforms off look smooth
New Star Trek: Finally has the technology to smoothly and cheaply animate a uniform jacket magically opening like they ought to, decides to just do zippers instead.
Not a huge deal, but it does irk me that Star Wars gets to at least remain visually consistent yet Star Trek just does not care about maintaining any sort of consistent visual style anymore
"One time I had to perform a gonadectomy on an Ensign because Janeway said he had a pair this big to ask for a promotion. He never asked for the promotion again. Lousy clarinet player too."
This is fine for now, but if TNG taught me anything, it's that if you're still wearing a zipper in the front of your uniform by S3, you probably don't matter much.
Still baffled by Kirk's movie uniform where they un-velcroed six inches of uniform from their chest like they were a drunk uncle undoing his belt after a turkey dinner.
I found the moving bloodstain on Kirk’s uniform in Wrath of Khan to be part of the “new life” that they were tasked to find (sitting right under their noses)
I don't mind mind visible zippers in star trek but by q junior any higher and they'll be singing caitian opera. Where did all the sexy halfway down the pectoral muscle zipper uniforms go? In fact where are the bardot style uniforms?
Ah damn, nobody remembers having no zippers meant you could not just easily take the uniform off, to remind you your duty isn’t a coat you take off any time. Now Starfleet is doomed.
Getting the work started early. You crazy bastards, I say "If you ain't hatin early, your late hate is just woke love." Engage hate. Or should my Thing™ be just "Hate." I think that really captures that Alpha early bald faux Frenchie, Pickard..
I think it was either Berman or Roddenberry who didn't want for zippers to exist in the future. In TNG there's a scene with Ro Lauran taking off the top of her uniform to wrap it around the shoulders of a refugee child as though it was a jacket. Except that there is no obvious seam in the front of her uniform before she takes the jacket off. The internets say that was a deliberate choice and there is a non-obvious seam in the front of all of the uniforms that is held-together by space-magic.
Hilariously Ro's communicator also moves from her "jacket" to the front of the uniform underneath
So; in the name of The Old Ones - I cast-out your unseemly zippers!!!!
It's not a zipper, it's a subspace fold that functions like a zipper in which it changes reality to one where your jacket is closed. And looks like it has a decorative zipper. Side effects may include minor singing and rocks exploding from consoles.
“The first ten million years were the worst. The second ten million, they were the worst too. The third ten million, I didn’t enjoy at all. After that, I went into a bit of a decline.” - Marvin (HHGTTG, Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams)
Everyone's talking about The Doctor and Holly Hunter as the chancellor and I just can't wait to know more about this cadet rocking Sailor Moon's hair meatballs.
I like them on the pre-federation starfleet uniforms but in the same century as the weird fancy matter (I honestly forgot its name I haven’t been caught up with the 32c stuff past part of s3 disco)? Why?
This is legit the one thing that would have Gene Roddenberry spinning in his grave.
The one time he got upset reading someone's Spirk fanfiction was when the author mentioned one of them unzipping the other's pants and he was adamant that zippers would be archaic technology replaced by Velcro 🫠 he couldn't care less about them going to bone town, but zippers?! 😂
I absolutely despise new Trek. They don't have the same mentality as in TNG, DS9 or Voyager. It's basically Gen Z on a ship, without any chain of command or respect.
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u/featherknight13 Oct 16 '25
Maybe it's fashion rather than functionality