Command division
The command division was the corps of officers and crewmen within Starfleet who specialized in command and control functions on starbases, aboard starships, and numerous Starfleet Command positions.

Duties
Those in the command division were considered to be among Starfleet's supervisory personnel. ()

Members of the command division were trained in leadership and had tactical training allowing them to decisively take action in organizing and mobilizing Starfleet crews to perform missions. Command officers included most all of the admiralty, captains, executive officers, adjutants, and pilots (flight control officers, navigators, and helmsmen). (; , , et al.) 

Command division personnel also filled the posts of communications officer (), records officer (), phaser specialist (), gunnery officer (), radiation specialist (), TAC officer (), and strategic operations officer. ()

History

In the Earth's Starfleet of the 2140s and 2150s, line officers of command division wore gold division stripes on their uniforms. () By 2233, command division personnel wore blue. ()

Gold was again the color of the command division throughout the 2250s and 2260s, worn by line officers and flag officers of this division. Officers in the command division wore a five-pointed star with a lengthened upper point as an insignia on their assignment patch. (; ; ; ) 

By the 2270s, new uniforms showed different division colors, the command division was signified by a white backing on their Starfleet badge, and also on uniform bands and epaulets. () This continued onto the 2280s uniforms, and the insignia used gave the officer the option of wearing command division white uniform insignia, with another department color banded across, or the opposite, with department color insignia with command white banded across. ( – )

By the uniforms used from 2350s onward, red had become the command division color, and this continued through several uniform styles. (, et al.)

Individuals from several possible futures, and some that have been proven to be alternate timelines, continued to wear red when in the command division. (; ; ) By the 29th century, several timelines had switched the command color to blue. ()

Gallery

Command division officers

Background information

The Original Series
Once fully established during The Original Series, command gold was regularly worn by those in positions of higher authority, such as ship captains, commodores and admirals; however, evidence suggests that this was not a requirement for holding a command position. In the first case, starbase commodores  and Stocker both wore operations division uniforms, yet this exception seems to exclude commodore Mendez. The second case was that of Captain Krasnovsky, a starship captain who wore a sciences division uniform. 

The helm and navigation officers typically belonged to the command division, as was the case in , however, in , the positions were held by operations officers, before returning primarily back to the command division once again. 

Number One in "The Cage" and Spock in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" both served in the command division as first officer, before he switched back to the sciences division for the duration of the series (the same color he wore in the first pilot).

The work coveralls worn by technicians were originally muted variations on the division colors with the command division being represented by olive green, then later matching the duty uniforms. This coincides with the actual color of TOS which was lime green and only appeared gold under the lights.

The purpose of the colors was only obvious through inference, but in , gold was established in dialogue as the "old" style command color (and red as the "new" command color). The decision to switch the meaning of the colors between the TOS and TNG uniform styles was made in pre-production of .

The film era 
The schemes and insignia of the  era uniforms were designed by Robert Fletcher. For , he replaced the colorful Starfleet uniforms with a series of gray and brown uniforms, with department indicated by a colored circle behind the Starfleet logo.  Command was indicated by white.

Many of the roles previously held by command officers were distributed to other departments. Helm and navigation, for example, became part of Operations and were marked by yellow.

Fletcher redesigned the uniforms again for , putting all officers in maroon tunics and black slacks.  Division was marked by a colored undershirt and trim on the jacket, with white remaining the command color.  Command officers in training, such as Lt. Saavik. would wear white slashes on the red (cadet) armbands of their uniforms.

Command officers who were assigned to other departments had the personal choice to wear slashes of that department color on their command-white armbands and/or shoulder straps.   Department heads had the option of wearing white slashes on their department bands, if they so chose, or alternatively command white undershirts with slashes of their department color.  Many department heads, such as Dr. McCoy, forwent this option entirely. Montgomery Scott occasionally wore a white undershirt after receiving his promotion to captain, but only with the more casual bomber jacket and engineering vest, never with his maroon tunic. 

Following her command training as seen in , Saavik wore command white in  and , with a science division gray slash indicating her posting to sciences.

According to his personal notes from around the period of The Search for Spock (p. 1-2), Fletcher laid out the command division this way:

Command division includes both line and staff officers and all personnel, both enlisted and commissioned of the following corps:
Administration
Base Operations
 Fleet Operations
Personnell [sic]
Colonial Operations
General Accounting
Accountants
Pay Masters
Budget Analysis
Logistic Support
Store Keepers
Resources
 Supdy [sic] analysis
Technological Support
Basic Research
Energy
Planetary Facilities
Strategy + Tactics
Requirements + Plans
Exploration + Survey
Inspector General
Adjutant General
Judges
Dept. of Space Safety
Security (See-5th Div.)
Intelligence
Planetary Relations
Special Diplomatic Corps.
Translators
Fleet Archives + Records
Fleet Academy (See Div. 7)
Officers in command division uniforms were seen in Spacedock, Starfleet Headquarters, and on starships.

Later eras
During the course of The Next Generation, command level officers regularly wore red uniforms, however, again another exceptional case would appear in , where Admiral Toddman wore an operations uniform, the only such command level officer to do so.

Captain Braxton wore blue in  and , but an alternate version of him in "" wore red – indicating that Starfleet never changed the command color in that version.

Appendices

Apocrypha
In the game Star Trek Online, by the year 2409, Starfleet had restructured the Command division and renamed it to the Tactical Division. The new Tactical division included Command, helm, navigation, tactical, and security. This was later changed back to the Command Division at an unspecified time (STO; DIS: Season 3)

fr:Division de Commandement
ja:司令部門
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