star trek skant uniform

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Star trek: why tng abandoned the skant (male minidress) uniform.

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In the early seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation , male crewmembers on the Enterprise appeared wearing the skant uniform, the minidress sometimes worn by female crewmates, but this was abandoned after only a few brief scenes. It was a bold and controversial move on television in the eighties, even though these skant-clad men were only relegated to the background. Initially appearing in early seasons of  TNG , the Star Trek  series dropped the idea of men in the minidress without comment. The Starfleet uniforms have changed many times in the show’s history, but it was strange for this change to come and go so suddenly. Although it was rumored that the network disapproved of this low-key progressive move, the male skant was likely dropped for a more practical reason.

The skant uniform seen on male officers was identical to the one worn by female characters in the early seasons. Both Deanna Troi and Tasha Yar wore the skant during scenes of “Encounter at Farpoint,” and female background characters continued to wear the skant in first two seasons. It was a successor to the Star Trek:  The  Original Series minidress that all women wore. Part of the reason the showrunners included men in skants was to make a statement following the changing perspective on TOS’ minidresses. The short-skirted uniform worn by female crew in TOS  was intended as a feminist decision, but like many things about Star Trek , it didn’t age well  and needed to be salvaged if it was going to be used in The Next Generation.

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According to Uhura actress Nichelle Nichols, the miniskirts didn’t carry the same sexist baggage for her in the ‘60s. Instead, they showed that the women of Starfleet were liberated and respected in their jobs no matter what they wore. However, over the following decades, fans started to feel putting the women in miniskirts while the men wore uniform pants was demeaning. When minidresses were revived for the sequel series, the uniform needed to seem less like an excuse to show off the female co-stars’ legs. The men in skants were included to show that it was a unisex uniform anyone could use, given the total gender equality achieved by the 24th century. Star Trek still had plenty of sexist uniform problems like Seven of Nine’s catsuit , but the Next Generation showrunners tried to indicate the skant was merely one choice of uniform anyone could make.

While the skant was used for some of the main cast in the Star Trek: The Next Generation  pilot, it was quickly dropped for everyone besides background characters. Troi’s original minidress and headband was poorly received as looking too much like a "space cheerleader," and Troi instead wore a variety of different civilian outfits after that. Tasha Yar wore the skant in a single scene of the pilot, but always wore the same jumpsuit uniform as the male bridge crew in later episodes. While it’s often been acceptable for some crew to wear a different uniform, it made more sense for the bridge crew to stick to jumpsuits while being thrown around in every combat. The costuming option was clearly not working, and men stopped wearing the skant in background scenes around the same time it was abandoned for women. In canon, the uniform was simply phased out of Starfleet.

The skant is an example of Star Trek ’s unique brand of gender equality, never abandoning the option for eye candy, but often allowing fans to ogle both the men and women. Fortunately, later Star Trek series have moved away from basing their costuming decisions on putting select women in the cast in the most form-fitting uniform. Star Trek has come a long way since its origins, but the male skant is one sign that the franchise tried to be progressive, even when creating The Next Generation ’s minidresses.

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• Skants were bare-legged unisex uniforms in the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Skants were a well-intentioned effort to undo the infamous miniskirts of Star Trek: The Original Series, with both men and women wearing them
• After The Next Generation Season 2, skants were replaced by standard pants for everyone, but their hilarious visual look has made them a beloved oddity.

Star Trek's uniforms have undergone a staggering number of changes over the years. Admittedly, it's become part of the fun, as new crews embrace specific visual looks while still being instantly recognizable as Starfleet. It also gives cosplayers a wealth of options, allowing the fan base to embrace the chaos with gusto. But it's also resulted in some out-there choices that look increasingly bizarre as time goes on.

The undisputed champion in that field has to be the skant, a well-meaning effort at gender equality in the early seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It flamed out quickly, but left a lingering (if dubious) reputation in the hearts of fans. The story of how it came about illuminates one of the most important moments in Star Trek history, as well as illustrating the challenges faced by any long-running franchise.

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Skants Were an Update on the Star Trek Miniskirts

Star Trek: The Original Series famously pushed all kinds of boundaries for women's representation, most notably with Nichelle Nichols' Lt. Uhura serving a prominent position on the bridge. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry intended to go much further. The original pilot "The Cage" famously failed to get greenlit in part because network executives were uncomfortable with Majel Barrett's Una Chin-Riley serving as second in command. She was removed from the second pilot, and remained out of canon until Star Trek: Strange New Worlds revived her with Rebecca Romijn in the role.

The pushback didn't stop there. While both "The Cage" and the follow-up pilot " Where No Man Has Gone Before " depict female officers wearing pants identical to the men's, the series itself switched to miniskirts. The look became an integral part of The Original Series' zeitgeist (Nichols in particular, boosted it to iconic status) but it subsequently endured fully justified criticism for its sexism, with the bare legs emphasizing vulnerability and sexual objectification. The first round of Star Trek movies largely dispensed with them in favor of a unisex design, though Nichols wore a variation that included a longer skirt in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Roddenberry had comparatively little creative input into the movies (which included a change in costume designers) and wanted to assert his vision more strongly with The Next Generation . That led to a good deal of difficulty during production of the first season, which struggled with script quality among other issues. The uniforms became a part of that, going from the "monster maroons" of the movies to the now-standard tricolor pattern of red, blue and gold to indicate onboard duties. The new series also entailed an update on the miniskirt, but faced with a new decade where social mores had changed and women's rights had advanced, it couldn't just return to the old style.

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Skants Were Unisex in the Weirdest Way

Star Trek's bright future entails de facto gender equality, at least within the Federation. Hence the inclusion of a miniskirt design among the new crew meant it had to be unisex. The result was the skant, which featured a slight flare above bare legs, and which crew members wore it in addition to the trouser uniforms that eventually became The Next Generation's staple. The series premiere, "Encounter at Farpoint," featured both Deanna Troi and Tasha Yar in skants, as well as several figures (including some men) in the background. It didn't work.

Besides the sheer awkwardness of the cut, it validated feminist criticism about the original miniskirts. No principal cast members wore them after the first episode, and they appeared in the background only eight more times in Seasons 1 and 2 before finally vanishing for good. Starfleet's uniform designs have been resolutely gender-neutral since then, though the franchise continued the problematic practice of putting attractive female leads like Marina Sirtis and Jeri Ryan in form-fitting outfits instead of Starfleet uniforms. More recent series have wisely abandoned the practice. The skants lived on (after a fashion) in The Next Generation's dress uniforms, which entailed a similar cut and black hose for the legs, and which principal cast members wore through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager .

The series even used them note of the skant controversy in Season 7, Episode 2, "Liaisons," when Worf complains that they look like dresses and Riker chides him for his sexism. Strange New Worlds has adopted a variant of it, worn by Romijn's version of Una Chin-Riley, among others and intended to convey feminine empowerment rather than objectification. The fans have openly embraced them (as they often do with the franchise's oddities) and they've been targeted by more open satirists as well. Zapp Brannigan's uniforms in Futurama openly mock the look, and Star Trek: Lower Decks cheekily reintroduced them in Season 2, Episode 5, "An Embarrassment of Dooplers," suggesting that they never really went away.

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Skants Illustrate Star Trek's Challenge of Staying Timely

One of the big complaints about Season 1 of The Next Generation was that it failed to update Star Trek to a new era. The tropes of The Original Series were 20 years out of date, which led to many of the series' early problems. The skants are a reflection of that by approaching the problem backwards and creating unnecessary complication instead of simply putting everyone in the same uniform. The franchise continues to face similar creative challenges as it moves forward by incorporating changing norms while still retaining the essence of Roddenberry's vision from The Original Series .

It certainly won't be the last time the franchise's good intentions have gone amusingly astray. Course correction has always been a part of the formula, and not every creative decision stands the test of time. The skants demonstrate not only the need to keep up with evolving standards, but how difficult that can be for long-running franchises of Star Trek's ilk. But it also indicates the franchise's good intentions (however imperfectly realized), and that even when it fails, it'll always strive to do better than it has before. Skants, and misfires like them, are an inescapable side effect of that admirable endeavor.

TNG Skant Analysis – Stylistic Influences and Appearances

Stylistic influences.

There were three different costume designers over the course of The Next Generation , the first of whom – and designer of the TNG skant – was William Ware Theiss.

Theiss had been the costume designer on Star Trek: The Original Series and the aborted Star Trek: Phase II .  

Fast-forward twenty years or so …

If you’re interested in the Starfleet uniform timeline over “The Lost Era” (from the TOS movie-era uniforms to those Theiss designed for TNG), check out this blog post and its corresponding video:

And of more direct relevance, see this post (and its corresponding video) on the topic of the TNG-era uniform paradigm – why I believe TNG’s uniforms were conceived and designed the way they were:

As I mentioned in both of the aforementioned posts, William Ware Theiss’ approach to designing the TNG-era uniforms appears to have been to simply “pick up where he left off” with The Original Series and Phase II , almost entirely disregarding Robert Fletcher’s movie-era costumes.

Although obviously different uniforms, Theiss TOS-era and TNG-era “skants” shared several design motifs, and their overall similarities are easily observable:

However, I find it both interesting and curious that Theiss chose to follow up on his original (seasons 1-2) design, rather than the “starburst” version primarily seen during the third season.

(Note the diagonal seams extending outward from the upper left corner, above the insignia patch.)

Another subtle design motif from The Original Series was the V-shaped tunic necklines, which Theiss definitely seems to have favored by season three.

His TNG-era uniforms would have similarly V-shaped necklines, albeit without the collar.

And as I mentioned in the aforementioned “ TNG-era Uniform Paradigm ,” the unisex TNG skants seem to have been an attempt to better portray gender equality in the future.

Rather than male Starfleet crew wearing full-body uniforms (tunic + trousers) and ladies wearing mini-dresses, it was apparently decided that both genders should have the same uniforms and variants.

This may be part of why the TNG skants are fondly remembered (and even celebrated) by many today – perhaps not necessarily as much for their specific design aesthetic, as their ideology and “statement.”

Theiss may have already been moving toward a more unisex uniform paradigm with the aborted Star Trek: Phase II , prior to the movies and long before The Next Generation .

It appears that in the abandoned Phase II , women would’ve finally been permitted to wear pants with their Starfleet uniforms, as evidenced by the uniform trousers below (presumably for wear by Janice Rand):

While not a literal inspiration for the unisex TNG skants, I believe this was perhaps a notable shift in the psychology of Theiss’ Starfleet uniform paradigm.

Ladies were no longer limited to “skants,” dresses, and mini-skirts, but they could dress in uniforms more analogous to those the men wore.

Although we may be reading a lot into the abandoned Phase II uniforms, we do know for sure that the uniforms Robert Fletcher designed for The Motion Picture and subsequent three movies were essentially unisex.

The Next Generation took things a step further by demonstrating that in the future, not only was it acceptable for women to wear the same uniforms the men wore, but that men could wear the same ones that the women wore!

As a side note, a unisex mini-dress may seem like an unnatural development following the woven, structured, and tailored TWOK-era uniforms.

However, we should bear in mind just how much, and how fast, mainstream fashion can change; just look at the past few decades … we really have no idea what will be fashionable centuries from now!

In Star Trek Costumes: Five Decades of Fashion from the Final Frontier , Theiss is quoted saying, “… It’s also fashionably probable that four hundred years from now men would wear skants.”

(This quotation was, itself, from “Bill Theiss: The Lost Interview.”)

Of course, his prediction was rather far-fetched … in that he thought it would take four hundred years, rather than forty. 🙂

Here are some TNG skant costume sketches by William Ware Theiss, which are even more bizarre than the uniforms that actually wound up being used for the show:

Observe the contrasting yoke panel colors (instead of all black), as well as the asymmetrical front paneling generally analogous to that on the corresponding TNG jumpsuits .

Also note the long sleeves, although we can only speculate as to why the lady’s uniform on the left has long black sleeves while the gentleman’s on the right has (presumably) division-colored sleeves. (Considering these elements and the different colors of decorative trim, I believe Theiss was simply experimenting at this point.)

FYI, these sketches are from The Continuing Mission (Star Trek: The Next Generation) , which is a very interesting book chronicling the production of TNG. If you’re interested in an engrossing, detailed narrative on the making of the show (with hundreds of accompanying concept sketches and photos), then I’d highly recommend it! 🙂

Appearances

The TNG skant’s most notable appearance was by Counselor Troi, who wore this uniform style during The Next Generation ’s pilot.  

She also wore the TNG skant during the “past” sequences of the series finale, which took place during and immediately prior to the events of the pilot.

The only other instance of a main character wearing the TNG skant was by Tasha Yar, for the final (interior) shot of the pilot episode.

The TNG skants were consistently worn by many women throughout The Next Generation ’s first season – nearly every episode, albeit mostly by extras/background performers.

Male crew wearing the TNG skant were more common earlier in the season.

There were quite a few male extras rocking the TNG skant in the pilot, the first of whom was seen in literally the second (interior) shot of the show – immediately after the introductory shot of Captain Picard.

(For whatever it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that was the same extra walking by in the upper two examples.)

After the pilot, though, men were seldom seen wearing the TNG skants.

Several episodes later, this male crew member was prominently (albeit briefly) seen wearing the skant.

A few episodes after that, this guy was chilling by the door during Deanna’s pre-wedding reception, apparently ready to bolt the moment things got uncomfortable – and who can blame him?

And a few episodes later, we again saw a familiar male crew member rocking the TNG uniform skant, but it appears to just have been recycled footage from a previous episode …

Obviously, the whole “unisex skant” idea was immediately toned down after the pilot and fizzled out pretty quickly after that … 

To the best of my knowledge, the only other appearance of a male crew member wearing the TNG skant was this fellow’s brief appearance in the season’s penultimate episode.

Durinda Rice Wood took over as costume designer for The Next Generation ’s second season, and the TNG skant appearances were further reduced to infrequent, “blink and you’ll miss them” moments in the background.

And incidentally – either by Wood’s decision, the producers’, or both – the skants were always worn with pants that season.

We first saw her take on the “skant” uniform styles on this extra, early in the season premiere:

I’d previously believed that with the exception of the series finale, that was the final appearance of the TNG skants in the show.

It turns out the TNG skants did make a few more scattered appearances throughout season two – always worn with pants – and I’d again like to thank Jörg Hillebrand for bringing these to my attention. 🙂

A few episodes into the season, this lady was hanging out in Ten Forward while wearing the skant.

A couple episodes after that, this extra wore the skant for multiple bridge scenes.  

And nearly a dozen episodes after that, a couple skant-wearing extras walked by in the background.

As best as I could determine, those were the only appearances of the TNG skant in season two.

Read my in-universe theory as to why the TNG skants disappeared here:

Also, what if the TNG crew had all worn the skants?

Check out my gallery of speculative cast photos here:

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Published May 18, 2018

Behold the TNG Skant

You asked for it, and now you've got it. ThinkGeek has just made available the ANOVOS line of Star Trek: The Next Generation Skant Uniform Dresses. Legendary TOS costume designer William Ware Theiss created the skant for TNG at the behest of Gene Roddenberry, who wanted an outfit that could be worn by any Starfleet crew member regardless of gender.

The skants come in a variety of sizes and in the familar red, gold and blue colors. They're priced at $249.99. Go to www.thinkgeek.com to purchase your skant of choice.

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