Zoe Saldana shared a photo of herself doing reshoots for Star Trek: Beyond and, in doing so, gave us the closest look at the new Starfleet uniforms. They have improved tremendously.
First off, mea culpa that it took Saldana’s Instagram for us to notice the sleeves. I went back over the trailer, and she clearly has sleeves in it:
And here you can see that it’s a change that isn’t confined to Uhura:
For comparison, here’s what Uhura wore in the last two movies:
What the trailers didn’t show was the rank insignia on her sleeves (the woman in gold behind Uhura in the still above seems to have them, too). Which makes the whole look much more in line with the one from the Original Series:
Yeah, the reboot movies were actually more sexist in their uniforms than the show from the ’60s was. Shocking. Now, if only the length made any sort of practical sense.
The other thing made clear by this image is that the weird “delta-patterned” fabric has also been replaced:
To which we can only say thank god. This always looked cheap, somehow; I think it was the sheen on it. The costume Saldana is wearing is clearly a heavier weight and just generally looks nicer. So we can already say that at least one thing in Star Trek Beyond is better than Into Darkness.