I just read my favorite bit of Star Trek production trivia, and man does it make me laugh.

For the TNG movie “Generations,” when Jonathan Frakes and LeVar Burton change into the DS9 uniforms, they’re actually wearing Avery Brooks’ and Colm Meaney’s.

Come on, really? xD (Though I did immediately notice how weirdly they were wearing it).

While Jonathan and Avery have a similar body type, that extra two inches on Jonathan really makes a difference. It’s a bit tight, but more obviously, he wears it with the black sleeves rolled up to hide how short the sleeves actually are on him. 

As for LeVar, why would you give him Colm’s clothes? A man several inches taller and built like a tank, which LeVar… is not. Maybe his attempt at trying to hide how big it is on him was wearing it unzipped so low and open? Surely, with all the extras wearing the yellow DS9 uniforms, one of those would’ve been a better fit?

It’s so hilarious, because it’s like “We’re making a big budget TNG movie! But only Patrick and Brent get their own new uniforms, three of you don’t get one at all… and two of you gotta share clothes with the DS9 actors.”

Well they did blow a lot of budget on all-new uniforms for the whole cast… then decided not to use them and do the above instead😂 the action figures made for the movie all wear the unused unis:

For years, the official story on the abandoned Generations uniforms was that Rick Berman scuttled them because he was scared of subjecting the audience to too many changes when TNG made the jump to the big screen. This makes a certain kind of sense, because Berman always came across as someone who didn’t really understand Star Trek (and was actually kind of embarrassed by it) but was doing his best to keep the franchise alive so his bosses wouldn’t fire him for killing their golden goose.

On the other hand, it also doesn’t make sense, because whatever Berman’s creative shortcomings were he was very good at not going way over budget. Spending a boatload of money on new uniforms only to decide not to use them doesn’t sound like him.

The real reason why the new uniforms were never used was because there wasn’t time to make them ready. Creating new costumes for a production like Star Trek isn’t quick or easy. Even after the design is approved, they have to be fabricated and screen-tested. What looked good on paper may not translate well to an actual garment. The last time the TNG cast got new uniforms, the costume designers had a few months during the hiatus between Seasons Two and Three to design, construct, and screen-test them. And even then, they continued making tweaks to the design well into the season. It wasn’t until several episodes into the the third season that we saw the final version of the uniform that would persist through the end of the series. But with Generations, the costume department didn’t have months of lead time.

The movie’s production was insanely accelerated. Preproduction was happening concurrently with production on TNG season 7 and DS9 season 2—and it was being done by the same people who worked on those shows. The movie actually started principal photography before TNG’s final season wrapped. The TNG cast only got a week off between shooting the TV show and the film. All of this was so Generations could make its November 1994 release date.

But why did the movie premiere so soon after the TV show ended? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to wait another year to create pent-up demand for more TNG adventures? Also, there’s an old Hollywood maxim that you can do something fast and cheap but it won’t be good, or you can do it cheap and good but it won’t be fast. More lead time might have led to a better, less-expensive movie (with snazzy movie-quality uniforms that weren’t a lazy reuse of the costumes from a different TV show)

The problem was Voyager. The new show was about to go into production in advance of the January launch of the UPN TV network. UPN was hugely important to Paramount, much moreso than the fate of a single medium-budget movie. And the Voyager sets would occupy the same stages as the TNG sets. The Enterprise-D bridge was set to be demolished to make room for the Voyager bridge on Stage 8, and the Stage 9 sets originally built for The Motion Picture, then modified and expanded for TNG, would be overhauled once again to represent the USS Voyager. The studio would never spend the money to completely rebuild the TNG sets on different stages; the only option was to shoot the movie before Voyager went into production.

And that’s why Generations was a sloppy rush job with a half-baked script, re-used SFX shots, and costumes borrowed from another TV show.

Remember that time that Jonathan Archer and Tom Paris met in 1957?

What about that time Archer made our with Jadzia?

my rarepair from @traitorslament was tuvok/sisko, or as i like to call it, the Ultimate Dad pairing. Dad4Dad if you will