18

In DIS season 2 episode 13, when Captain Georgiou walks onto the bridge of the Enterprise, she says

Orange? Really? Ew!

But I see no orange anywhere in that scene. What am I missing here?

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  • 16
    Are you sure, the orange uniforms of the two people in front are not adressed? Nov 17, 2020 at 6:04
  • 1
    @Allerleirauh The thumbnail messed with the color saturation, but in the actual show those uniforms are gold/amber.
    – RedCaio
    Nov 17, 2020 at 6:17
  • 3
    Okay :) But maybe it is a joke in this way, like some people say "salmon colored" and feel good to wear it, but pink/rosy they would never wear!!! For me it looks like pumpkin orange ^^ Nov 17, 2020 at 6:20
  • 1
    Also, recall that people from the Mirror Universe are very photosensitive. It could have an effect on the color wavelengths they perceive versus how we perceive them. Nov 17, 2020 at 16:08
  • 1
    I notice that the show has the occasionally maligned “orange-teal” color grading. I half hear it as a joke about the orange/tungsten white point of the photography. Nov 17, 2020 at 17:04

1 Answer 1

35

She's talking about the rails, the console backs and the doors, which were in fact more red than orange even on the original sets, but sometimes looked quite orange with 1960s lighting and cameras:

TOS Enterprise bridge illustrating orange-red panelling

There's an interview with the production designer responsible on the Star Trek official site here , from which the most relevant sections are perhaps these:

Then, I really wanted to color-code. So, I was playing a lot with the colors of the Enterprise. There are actually variations [of the red-orange] in the Enterprises . That's very distinct, and I went through the archives at CBS to look at those colors and try and match them, but in a new way.

We couldn’t help but laugh out loud when Georgiou walked in and complained, “Orange? Really? Ick!" Was that scripted, or ad-libbed by Michelle Yeoh? And, either way, what was your reaction?
TD: That was scripted. The Enterprise had different colors. They changed it over time. The way it was lit, sometimes it looked really orange and sometimes it looked very red. The orange we’d picked, which was the original orange, was really red. [So] I actually went to the writers and said, "I'm uncomfortable with this line." I did this whole layout of the different oranges and the red we decided we were using, and all of that. We had powder-coated this metal in this red, so there was no going back. I went on and on and on. Alex Kurtzman wrote back, saying, "This is why we love you, Tamara. It's okay. We're gonna say orange. It's okay, don't worry." It was just a funny story. I loved Michelle’s line, but to me, like any production designer would think, it was all about, “Do I have the right color?”

So the ultimate answer may well be 'it's a partial in-joke that you're not meant to think too hard about".

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  • 3
    I have to say, it's awesome to hear they left it as an inside joke
    – Machavity
    Nov 17, 2020 at 17:02
  • 9
    Plus, it's a plot point Terrans have different eyes than us. That could very well look like orange to her. Nov 17, 2020 at 21:15

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