This week , Star Trek : Prodigy dropped the first trailer forits second season , and it ’s full of all the sorting of good Star Trek action you ’d want — even more so if , like me , you ’re a Voyager sports fan . But asa Voyager buff , there was one shot in particular that called to me : Admiral Janeway , her uniform jacket remove , down to her high - waisted pants and a gray , Starfleet - exit tankful top .
This is a ludicrous matter to have your attention reap to , but being a Star Trek fan often affect having reactions and emotion about ridiculous thing . And yet , here I was : tank top Janeway ? Oh man , shit ’s about to go down . To me , that ’s “ Macrocosm ” Janeway , Ripley - ing her way through giant virus bugs on the compromised Voyager . It’s“Year of Hell ” Janeway , hobbling through Krenim place as her ship and crew are break up apart around her .
Sometimes the situations surrounding stripped - down Star Trek moments are n’t dire at all ; we ’ve seen the great unwashed rocking the look casually , on red-hot planet , while work on something particularly strenuous . What , exactly , Starfleet officers wore under their inglorious and division - color - accentuate uniform from TNG onwards has always been in flux — there ’s long - sleeved undershirts , vest like Janeway ’s , t - shirts , allwith varying pattern differences — but no matter of what was under them , regardless of the Trek show or the character , every metre you saw them , it felt like you were witnessing something vulnerable , something let on .
Screenshot: Paramount/Netflix
We ’re so used to the way the Starfleet uniform bet — and the berth they ’re almost always worn in — that they become this symbol of professionalism - under - pressure that encapsulate Star Trek’slove of competency porn . You ’re bust that uniform on the bridge , you ’re wearing it under fervidness , you ’re hold out it at the bar , you ’re wearing it on away commission , you ’re wear it knee joint - oceanic abyss in isolinear chips working on some control panel in the ass end of a Jeffries tube . No matter the office , arguably no matter how impractical , a Starfleet officer does their job in that uniform , take care like a Starfleet officer . So when you strip away layers of that uniform , out of necessity or out of casual circumstance , you ’re stripping away the layers of that mythos around it and revealing something about the somebody underneath .
Think about the dishevelled look Sisko has by the closing of“In the Pale Moonlight ” , where , in the interstitial scenes set in the present , he increasingly unclothe level of his uniform until he ’s in an unlaced vest and his command undershirt is travel rapidly down to reveal his breast , body forth his reflection of the moral sacrifices he ’s made over the course of the episode . Or howPicard in First Contact , the direr the situation gets , strips down further until he ’s in nothing in his undershirt and trouser by the time he ’s square up off with the Borg Queen . The rare times we actually saw one of our hero either in a berth casual enough to not warrant their full uniform , or nerve-wracking enough that they felt like they had to strip away parts of it , are somehow combust into your minds as significant — like they are for me when I see Janeway in that tank top , like it ’s a dissimilar mode or form of her .
It ’s such a modest , but apt bit of ocular storytelling in Star Trek that does n’t often come up all that much — but when it does , it hits something primal in your Trek - loving brain to soak up attention to its significance .
Gif: Paramount
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Screenshot: Paramount
