Recently I've been re-watching SG1 and noticed that the characters mostly wear the green BDUs, but occasionally wear the blue BDUs (I'm not referring to the blue jumpsuit they sometimes wear, mainly on ships). I was wondering; was there ever a reason given as to why they would wear the different colours? I know it can't have anything to do with rank, position or specialty since the same people would wear different colours. Also, it wouldn't seem to be for camouflage purposes (really, blue doesn't blend into anything very well).
SG1-Green vs Blue BDUs-what's the difference?
- Thread starter Random Canadian
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At the beginning though , they used to at least coordinate wearing the same outfits on a given day (Jonas was even the butt of a joke about it). By the end, I'm fairly certain the actors just threw on whatever was on the rack for that day. :P
The odd thing is that in general NONE of the other SG Teams wore the SG-1 BDUs; they just wore the standard Air Force uniforms when on base. Almost everyone switched to the SGC field uniforms though, at least during the first few years.
Mark
The odd thing is that in general NONE of the other SG Teams wore the SG-1 BDUs; they just wore the standard Air Force uniforms when on base. Almost everyone switched to the SGC field uniforms though, at least during the first few years.
Mark
I don't think there was reason other than costuming...didn't they have a joke about that? Is that what you were talking about with Jonas?
Blue uniforms are used by the USAF in real life, it's more to do with blue being the 'air force colour' than camouflage per sé.
On SG-1, the BDU colour seemed fairly random - Daniel seemed to prefer green later on, while Carter seemed to prefer blue. There's certainly no rank or speciality relation to the colours.
One question about the BDUs I always had was - is it normal for AF officers to wear uniform which doesn't show rank insignia on base? I would have thought they should have had rank on their lapels or shoulders when in BDUs...
I notice that Jack started wearing stars on his once he became general, but Carter never wore rank on hers.
In that era's BDU rank insignia was worn on the collar points. On Army dress uniforms branch insignia was on the lapel and rank on the shoulders. US Army was distinct, in that on their BDUs the branch was worn on left collar, same side as the US ARMY tape on his chest and his rank on the right, the same side as his name tag. US Army enlisted worn rank on both collars like the rest of the US military, except Chaplians.
In the present field uniform the US has adopted the center mounted flap from the British so the rank would not be obscured by body armor.
I remember that episode. Jonas asked this question for us. All Carter said was that the uniform was announced in the trianing schedule. It seemed to serve no purpose except to set the heros apart from the extras during the SGC scenes.
Its pronounced Bee(battle), Dee(dress) U(uniform). The standard uniform outside of dress conditions was adopted in the early 1980s by the US Army in the woodland camouflage pattern designed for the battle on the north German plains and Bavaria. It replaced the earlier battle uniforms and jungle fatigues, except for Army Rangers who kept their jungle fatigues along with the then black beret. IThe BDUs main features being the large cargo pockets on the jacket and pants which before only paratroopers wore. Even though it was called battledress we expected that we would fight full time in our MOPP suits, the anti chemical and biological agent suits.
It also replaced the tan khakis for general office wear. The Army being by far the largest buyer the other services also began to buy BDUs. To the point where flight deck crews on aircraft carriers started wearing BDUs instead of the traditional jeans. WHile the USMC continued to develop their own battledress the BDU remained standard until after the focus was fully shifted from Europe to the Middle East. And after the initial phase in Iraq the BDU was finally replaced.
The only problem was that the SGC was fighting gods. They literally went into battle with their gate address on their unit insignia on their shoulders. In my opinion besides being for the casual viewer it was to show no fear so that the people would stand up against their gods and Jaffa captors. Similar in sprit to General Patton who would not allow 3rd Army officers to wear subdued rank insignia while those fighting in the Pacific theatre did not show their rank to Japanese snipers.
