STAR TREK: DISCOVERY

TRIPS INTO TREK HISTORY PROVIDE SOMETHING OLD AND SOMETHING NEW FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY COSTUME DESIGNER ANTHONY TRAN

- DARREN SCOTT

THE BREEN

I really studied that Deep Space Nine costume. Luckily, through the magic of Google, there was a Christie's auction years back and they had really detailed photos of the original costumes. I sat with those for a bit because the undertaking for that felt so huge, because those costumes are so specific. That helmet is very specific, the diagonal plating is very specific so you feel like, how am I going to update this where it still feels exactly like what it is?

I knew I wanted to slim it down - that's just the language of Discovery. Then, in the script, obviously fleshing out the idea of this refrigeration suit - they were in this gelatinous situation, but the refrigeration suit was keeping them in body form.

The original costume had this backpack, which I'm sure was just because they needed to hide the lighting element in the helmet. But for me, that became the genesis of the cooling technology. If you look at the backpack, it's pretty similar in terms of the style lines, but we made it more angular and slimmed it down.

There's tubing that goes into the helmet, there's tubing that goes around the helmet. There's also tubing woven all around the costume. That was inspired by cooling suits in spacesuits - if you look at those, there's a bunch of tubes that are woven and so we wove them on the diagonal, because for me that was the aesthetic language of the Breen.

Then we use those similar plates, the shoulder pauldrons. Everything is very similar in terms of the actual style lines, the silhouette has just changed because we've slimmed it down so much and made it feel more tactical and hard, a more rough and tough military feel.