Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day... Trek-style

[Vic 17]

Welcome to National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day!

I, for one couldn’t think of a better reward for surviving another April 15th than to boldly go to work in my favorite PJs. Now, I tend to be fairly traditional, and so my pajamas of choice look pretty much like the uniforms worn by the original crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I know what you’re gonna say, so let’s get this out of the way right here and now: Starfleet uniforms have NEVER resembled pajamas (Yes, I have seen The Motion Picture, and...yes OK, THOSE look like footie pajamas, but come on. I love that movie). Anyway, I wear these a lot, and almost always in Command Division Gold. Hey, my dreams, my ship.

Of course, the show itself had PJs on display in almost every episode right from the start of Star Trek: The Original Series. We see them in “The Cage,” “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” “Dagger of the Mind,” “Space Seed,” and on and on until the end of the series. They were the ever-present Technician’s Uniforms (seen in Sciences Blue, Operations Red, and even Command Green), and showed up on patients in Dr. McCoy’s Sickbay. Made in the 1960’s by a company named Pleatway, these spacey PJs were actually called “AstroJamas” (I love crazy coincidences like that). TOS Costume Designer William Ware Theiss used modified, off-the-shelf AstroJamas, and made his own for all three seasons, and so it can truly be said that some of the crew of the Enterprise wore pajamas to work.

As for the movie era, there were jammies there, too. In The Undiscovered Country, we see Captain Sulu and some of the crew aboard the Enterprise-A wearing Starfleet-issue pajamas (truth be told, I kinda want STVI PJs), and they look comfy, too.

Moving into the 24th century, we see lots of jammies throughout from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but they mostly seem to be individual civilian pajamas and night gowns, and Captain Picard’s collection of sleepwear seems to be the best in the fleet.

That being said, I have been known to lounge around my Ready Room, and even flip a pancake or two for my daughter in a pair of 24th century, “Jean-Luc PJs.” They’re comfy and all, but still formal enough I suppose with that high collar to wear to meetings. There’s even a “Onesie” version of these now, which are almost too comfy, especially when stuck somewhere on our planet that’s still cold.

Of course, jumping back in time to the NX-01, we find that crew wearing mostly their own jammies again, with Captain Archer favoring just a pair of khaki PJPants.

Which brings us up to Star Trek: Discovery and Starfleet’s nifty, new maroon pajamas. Discovery’s Costume Designer Gersha Phillips hit it out of the park with these cool PJs in a red that’s the perfect counterpoint to the “Federation Blue” of her duty uniforms, and ensured that they even had their own small Starfleet insignia. Minimal, comfy and cool, these might be the best jammies in the franchise.

Whatever you chose to wear today, and wherever you work, I hope your day is a great one. Me? I have a meeting in an hour, and I’ll be rocking my Starfleet jammies all day.

Lounge Long, Live Long and Prosper.


John Cooley is a lifelong Star Trek fan and one of the Star Trek product designers at ANOVOS.

 

And check out some of the Trek PJ products available to fans:

TOS Captain Kirk PJs from the StarTrek.com Shop

TOS Mirror Universe Uhura PJs from ThinkGeek.com

TOS Women’s Sleepshirts from ThinkGeek.com

TNG Picard Lounger “Footie” PJs from ThinkGeek.com

 

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