The Star Trek Insignia
- Thread starter Bea Jonas
- Start date
I call it the StarFleet Insignia, because that's the official terminology for it in Memory α & it makes the most sense in terms of naming & classification.
Thanks for your reply.
Of course, originally, the symbol in question was worn exclusively on uniforms of Enterprise personnel, and only later adopted by Starfleet as their general insignia.
I suppose I should have directed my question to older Trek fans (a greying group to which I belong): What did you old Trekkers call the insignia seen on the uniforms of Enterprise personal on TOS?
Not quite. Originally it was supposed to be for the entire service. It crops up on non-Enterprise personnel in some episodes. Somehow the costuming department forgot this and created new insignia for other starships. Producer Robert Justman wrote a now famous memo about it
I think after Justman left they ignored this.
As for your question, I've gone back and forth between badge, delta and arrowhead. The latter two after hearing or reading someone referring to it as such.
I guess insignia is the formal term, but arrowhead or delta are used informally.
Star Trek Beyond kinda provides an in-universe reason for the Starfleet insignia, as well as why it was originally turned sideways during the United Earth Starfleet days.
The delta resembles the shape a Federation starship's warp field creates as it travels across space.
The delta resembles the shape a Federation starship's warp field creates as it travels across space.
Some may have called it "the Enterprise insignia," but even in TOS it wasn't entirely exclusive to the Starship Enterprise.
Delta & Arrow-Head sounds more like casual colloquial terms instead of official terminology.
Funny I didn't notice that when I saw Star Trek Beyond. Thanks for pointing it out.Star Trek Beyond kinda provides an in-universe reason for the Starfleet insignia, as well as why it was originally turned sideways during the United Earth Starfleet days.
The delta resembles the shape a Federation starship's warp field creates as it travels across space.
The date of that memo puts it at the very tail end of season 2 (The Omega Glory, if the timeline at Memory Alpha is correct.) The only episode that another starship is featured after TOG is The Tholian Web, where the arrowhead is definitely used.Not quite. Originally it was supposed to be for the entire service. It crops up on non-Enterprise personnel in some episodes. Somehow the costuming department forgot this and created new insignia for other starships. Producer Robert Justman wrote a now famous memo about it
I think after Justman left they ignored this.
As for your question, I've gone back and forth between badge, delta and arrowhead. The latter two after hearing or reading someone referring to it as such.
-----------
And I use insignia unless I need to be specific, since the starburst is also a SF insignia.
Star Trek Beyond kinda provides an in-universe reason for the Starfleet insignia, as well as why it was originally turned sideways during the United Earth Starfleet days.
The delta resembles the shape a Federation starship's warp field creates as it travels across space.
There was a novel that explained both curves, but I forgot the details.
Current space agency logos have arrows in them as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_insignia#/media/File:NASA_logo.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos#/media/File:Roscosmos_logo_en.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China.../File:China_National_Space_Administration.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO#/media/File:Indian_Space_Research_Organisation_Logo.svg
Probably Federation. Cochrane talks about warp field in that to Brack or someone after his first warp test at Saturn.
Cochrane draws the two curves to illustrate that it would require infinite energy to break the light barrier (top curve) in normal space, but using a warp field lowers and offsets the energy requirements to break the light barrier at lower (achievable) power levels.
I go with arrowhead.
IIRC, the novel even included illustrations that Cochrane was drawing, which even includes the elongated star featured in the command division insignia on TOS.
No, that's the name for the thing in the middle of Engineering (TOS/S2&S3).Is "Doohickey" an option?
