Starfleet Jedi

Again, someone tell me please if this is not the right forum for general questions and where I should be posting if this is not it, I'm not trying to be irritating to anyone.
I am, as I've said elsewhere, slowly working my way through the TNG series. I watched some of it before while it was still on the air and I enjoyed it somewhat, but never paid close attention, so some things are striking me odd and I keep having questions. I'd like to have a thread where I can ask these, and anyone with a free moment and nothing better to do could perhaps answer them? I'd appreciate it greatly.
These will likely just be little things that keep bothering me until I break down and ask someone. The first question I have is like that.

I've noticed that on TNG the Enterprise crew seems to have color-coded uniforms. As far as I can tell, it seems like red is for officers, blue is for medical, and yellow is for technical/engineering? Is that right, and are there other colors? Data wears a yellow outfit, but I thought he was an officer. Did he come up through the ranks from engineering, or am I wrong about him being an officer? Is red maybe only for officers who trained specifically to be officers? I'm confused.
Also, I noticed those little round buttons they have on their collars. I assume they are some sort of indicator of rank, since Picard seems to be the only guy on the ship with 4 of them. But then, Riker has 3, and I think if I saw correctly that Data also has 3. Since Riker (Ryker? I hate spelling things wrong and I actually managed to misspell Roddenberry earlier today) is the Number One, he outranks Data, right? So then why would they both have 3 buttons?

Any answers would be much appreciated.

With such questions you should go to Memory Alpha.

The side Starfleet uniform and Starfleet ranks should be able to answer your questions.

Alright so my confusion came from the fact that I couldn't tell that Data's collar dots had one of a different color than Riker's. I'm still curious about his yellow jumpsuit though, where did he go up the ranks? What was he originally?

mojo wrote:Alright so my confusion came from the fact that I couldn't tell that Data's collar dots had one of a different color than Riker's. I'm still curious about his yellow jumpsuit though, where did he go up the ranks? What was he originally?

With such questions you should go to Memory Alpha.

The side Data, especially the part about his time aboard the Enterprise and the sides Science officer and Operations manager should be able to answer your questions.

Data is the Operations officer, the red uniforms represents command level, yellow is the engineering and security, and blue represents the science level. They did the same in TOS exept that command wore yellow and engineering/security wore red thus the dreaded redshirt position.

watchdog wrote:Data is the Operations officer, the red uniforms represents command level, yellow is the engineering and security, and blue represents the science level. They did the same in TOS exept that command wore yellow and engineering/security wore red thus the dreaded redshirt position.

I didn't even register the fact that those poor red guys always got annihilated in TOS and then the reds were pretty safe in TNG. Do you think that was intentional?

Also, THANKS. Watchdog = mojo's favorite forum genius :D

Dont know how intentional it was, Roddenberry wanted to originally distance TNG from TOS and make a whole new interpretation of Star Trek. In some ways he suceeded, but other ways fell flat. The first couple of seasons were not very well liked, but by season 3 they finally hit their stride with the threat of the Borg (the Ferengi were supposed to be the new villans on trek, but their first appearance did not strike fear into the hearts of...anyone).

watchdog wrote:Dont know how intentional it was, Roddenberry wanted to originally distance TNG from TOS and make a whole new interpretation of Star Trek. In some ways he suceeded, but other ways fell flat. The first couple of seasons were not very well liked, but by season 3 they finally hit their stride with the threat of the Borg (the Ferengi were supposed to be the new villans on trek, but their first appearance did not strike fear into the hearts of...anyone).

Those huge ear guys? What the hell? I always thought they were around for comic relief!

Thats what they became, originally they were ment to be the new Klingons.

I'm sure they'd strike fear in the hearts of baby ewoks.

GStone wrote:I'm sure they'd strike fear in the hearts of baby ewoks.

:D it's the pointy teeth. Remember, though, that the Ewoks eat screaming humans cooked alive.

Is there any way to know how Roddenberry planned to make TNG so different from TOS, and why?

But, the babies had the parents around and between them and the humans.

I had heard it was basically him wanting the people to not be bound by what was before, but could keep as much as they wanted.

I heard that he was against the character of Whorf because he did not want the Klingons in the show.