Reviews and a design challenge
Quick review of the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie:
You should probably go see it if you like any of the other versions, or you like SF comedy. Sure, they took a lot of stuff out. (Cutting 3 hours of radio play down to 90 minutes will do that.) Sure, they changed a lot of stuff. (This was a practice Douglas Adams himself was quite fond of.) But if you go with an open mind and don’t insist on a copy of one of the other Hitchhiker’s media, you ought to have a good time.
Quick review of last Friday’s Enterprise:
Plot? Who cares? Space battle scenes with a certain class of starship… *happy sigh* (There’s some other eye candy too, for het-male or compatible formats.)
In all seriousness… I wonder how a 21st-century costume designer would design a believable futuristic military uniform that would provide eye candy for het-females and compatible? Bill Theiss tried showing some leg in the men’s “skant” uniforms for TNG, and the design died a quick, ignoble death. It’s an interesting question.
I put a considerable amount of thought into the outfits and uniforms for the GURPS:Space campaign I ran for many years; this was a “minimal tech magic” setting, with no antigravity, no force fields, etc.
The approach I finally took involved basically 3 tiers of underlayer:
* Non-spacers wearing a wide variety of options, including many common sorts of underwear from today (and the past), some updated types using advanced materials (adjustable-tension smart fabrics replacing wire and boning support, for instance, and impact-rigidifying flexible plastic sheets evolved from kinetic armor replacing rigid light sports protective gear), and a few new ideas made possible by heavy use of advanced materials (largely in the elaborate evening wear area, given the cost, but computer-controlled deformable active materials plus flexible display surface treatments allow for some interesting tricks).
* Spacers that don’t expect frequent combat or emergencies (e.g. most passenger liner crew, ordinary freighter crew, crew and residents in large space stations, etc.) would wear an outfit that ended up looking rather like a modern bicycle racing outfit; skintight shorts and T-shirt out of a somewhat slick and stretchy advanced material. This was designed to wick moisture away from the skin, provide support, prevent biological growth, provide for a fairly minimum level of modesty, and to be easy to get clothes and protective gear on and off over. It was designed to be a fairly good spacesuit underlayer for short to medium term use, and as a side effect also made fairly good swimwear.
Over this would be worn whatever work or play appropriate outfit the user desired (or their company required). In many space environments, the most practical addition would be simply a pair of cargo-pocket shorts, or a tool / utility belt; and some sort of grip-slippers. Many private spacecraft and the “working decks” of some company space lines would therefore be crewed by folks not really wearing much else.
I’m reasonably sure that an appropriately-built individual could provide eye candy by wearing what is basically spandex shorts & shirt, a tool belt, and little else… and it would be logical in context. People with more body modesty (either the characters or the actors) would wear what is basically tropical navy gear over it… lightweight pockety shorts and a shirt, probably also with pockets. Note that this is what Shuttle crews on long-duration missions basically have been wearing in the real world.
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* Spacers who are more serious, more paranoid, in positions decreed by their chain of command to require it (e.g. most combat and/or military positions), or who doubt the reliability of their quaint rustbucket tramp freighter, would wear a full-body suit made out of a material similar to the shorts above, but thicker and with a few more advanced features.
The suit would typically be complete coverage from the upper neck down, with the exception of the hands. Separate gloves would be carried in a pouch. There was a reinforced ring at roughly collarbone level, for attaching the inflatable emergency “bag helmet”, also carried in a pouch. It is designed to be a medium-to-long duration space suit liner. With the accessories, it is also capable of functioning as a fairly decent bad-air suit (e.g. smoke or noxious gasses basically at normal pressure), and a passable emergency space suit in its own right.
These would typically have an electro-thermal control layer (capable of considerable heating and limited cooling given some power). Rather than automatically wicking moisture away from the body like the shorts, the outfit had an active pore system, that could range from a Gore-Tex like arrangement (passes moisture but not liquids), down through various calibrated pressure-equalization settings that offered adjustable resistance to gas transfer, and finally to completely gas-tight. Assorted sealable pass-throughs allow for connection of spacesuit “plumbing”.
Over this would typically be worn the same sorts of cargo shorts or tool belts mentioned above, with some bias toward the belts… you want something that you can take off *fast* to get into your space suit. “Passenger side” crew on liners may have some sort of fabric uniform over it just for visual appearance, although the wide variety of decor options on the suits rendered that fairly redundant. The typical look here would be closer to the sort of look one sees today in motorcycle racer body suits, but with much less padding.
For a variety of reasons, I decided that color- and pattern-coding of uniforms would become common. Somewhat more expensive outfits were capable of changing color, and these sorts of things were used in some organizations to denote current roles.
For instance, if you were suddenly assigned from your normal engineering position to be damage-control, you’d hit a few keys on your PDA, and it would not only change which displays and functions it presented you, but change your uniform from yellow to red. Or on a passenger liner, whichever purser was closest to the best way out of a large zero-g ballroom in case of emergency would be tagged by the computer as the designated exit manager, and their suit would change color to a blindingly obvious arrangement while the suits of pursers keeping people from going through “bad” exits would be subdued down to make them less obvious.
Private spacers would adopt personal designs, which act as a sort of heraldry, typically with matching or thematically related designs on their body suit and their spacesuit.
I can’t speak for everyone, but generally those that find the male form appealing like a man in uniform. Period. Tailored is best, but a jumpsuit will do. There’s just three things that matter: 1: it fits 2: It moves well with the wearer 3: It shows off buns like a bakery window.
It shows off buns like a bakery window.
Thank goodness I wasn’t drinking anything when I read that. I don’t think I’d have enjoyed snorting it…..
I’ll second that!