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novakspector · 9 months

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With the evolution of the Cardassian look and their military uniforms, we can see them revising and refining their appearance on the shows.

The Cardassian prosthetics were designed around the appearance of actor Marc Alaimo. He had appeared on an early TNG episode as a member of a doglike/Chewbacca-esque alien species, and for that role they had to create a full face cast of him to create the prosthetics. They already had a mold of his head, and he's a fantastic actor, so why not bring him back as Gul Macet?

Alaimo has an extremely long neck, so makeup and prosthetics designer Michael Westmore created the neck/shoulder pieces to accentuate that. Alaimo has a strong brow and the Cardassians also have that feature accentuated.

The prosthetics would be refined over the years, but the basic form remained the same. The neck ridges, brow bones, the nose piece, the appendages from the ears to the jaw, the chin ridges, and of course the forehead spoon. It's one of the more involved prosthetics sets in terms of number of parts. So it initially took them 4 hours to do the prosthetics and makeup for each Cardassian. Eventually, they got the routine down to 1.5 hours on DS9, which is probably just by necessity since there's a lot more of them on that show.

Female Cardassians have slightly more delicate features, because realistically a look that was designed around Marc Alaimo's face isn't going to be flattering on a woman. So they tone down the heaviness of the features. The first female Cardassian we see is Gul Madred's young daughter. As for adult female Cardassians, on TNG we see only 2: a random unnamed female soldier played by background actress Cameron, and Gul Ocett played by Linda Thorson.

The brow of the female Cardassians is less pronounced and the forehead is smoother than the males. They also have a blue makeup on their spoon and neck scales to make them stand out. They wear red lipstick and nail polish, which seems like it must be a custom they got from Bajorans or other humanoid aliens.

As for the evolution of the uniforms, first of all was the look from the TNG episode The Wounded which introduced the species to us. They wore the 1.0 uniforms that looked a bit like brown American football padding + the weird helmet thing. The spoon protector. Why did they wear helmets? Who knows.

We only ever saw Gul Macet + the crewmen of the CDS Trager and Gul Dolan in the episode "Ensign Ro" wearing the brown football padding outfits. This uniform variant appeared in 2 episodes of TNG and was dropped after that.

Now of course compared to the later and more familiar iconic look we see from them, it's a bit silly. But it's not really a terrible design, certainly looks very "alien" and laid the groundwork for their overall look. The Cardassian ship designers were inspired by Egyptian forms, like the Ankh, and so we can feel a sort of desert cobras vibe in their appearance from the very beginning. Their whole backstory is that of desert cobras trying to survive in harsh conditions in the only way they can- by being predators. So the design of the characters in look and story is very cohesive. The center of the chest piece has an Ankh-like shape, sort of mirroring the teardrop/spoon on their foreheads.

Do you notice how many aliens in Star Trek tend to wear gloves? The Jem'Hadar in DS9 also originally wore grey gloves. It's just easier than painting everyone's hands and nails to match their alien faces.

The Cardassians in The Wounded also had much pinker skin than the Cardassians who would be shown after them. Pink, tan, olive, and brown tones are really common among the Star Trek aliens because these are much easier to blend with human skin tones. To get a blue Andorian or a green Orion looking like their skin is natural and not just paint is a more involved process, so most aliens have human skin colors.

On the next time we see the Cardassians, their appearance has changed dramatically. The uniforms are the 2.0 version. They're still recognizable as a species, but their look is more refined.

Gul Lemec was such a striking looking man. Handsome and frightening, charming and sinister, which is what you want for an antagonist of this kind. Aside from Marc Alaimo who is of course the O.G. Cardassian and the blueprint for the species, I think Lemec actor John Durbin really embodied the Cardassian look the best.

The prosthetics have been refined and look more detailed compared to ones seen in The Wounded. The brow bones look more defined, like bones rather than pinched blobs of skin. The wigs are now jet black. The neck scales went through several variations, becoming more defined and 3-dimensional over time. Their skin is greyer, and their uniforms have become the now much more familiar 2.0 style which stayed generally consistent in form throughout the 1990's Trek shows (with some variations I'll detail below).

The main shell of the uniform is a bodysuit made from neoprene- very insulating wetsuit material! It's uncomfortable! Hot! Sweaty! Not meant for land use. Not designed to wear under studio lights. Just think about how they had to film in the California desert wearing a wetsuit + the wig, the prosthetics, the foam rubber armor- it must have been like hell. I'm getting heat stroke just imagining it.

The uniform now had some piping and ribbed flourishes along the sides giving it dimension so it looked like alien clothes and not just wetsuit for surfing. Those little details make all the difference.

There's a round foam rubber "corset" shaped like a lozenge around the ribs and matching smaller ones guarding the elbows. Originally these were black/dark grey, the one above is from later on.

The football padding is gone, and has become a foam rubber cuirass with a diamond shape pointed outward on the chest, giving the chest a "barrel chested" look, which drives home the idea that these are lizard-like people.

They wear textured "boots," with patterns that match the cuirass, which are actually leg gaiters worn over platform shoes/ankle boots if you look close. Same thing was done with the Bajoran boots. Gaiters are easier and cheaper than having so many pairs of custom boots made. The shoes look like they give the already quite tall actors an extra 1.5-2 inches in height. This was common on Star Trek, actors wearing these Robert DeNiro elevator shoes. Captain Picard had them, too. Nobody is gonna notice for another 30 years when everything becomes HD.

The first variants of this new uniform we see on TNG look uniformly black or very dark grey on screen, but there are color variants later on. They wear a wrist communicator on the left wrist. The mold of the wrist communicator was also re-used on the doorbells on DS9 and Cardassian ships:

Originally the Cardassian actors were tall and slender guys built like Marc Alaimo, and that's how they wanted the species to look like, so they could all wear 1-piece bodysuits without any issue since that looks good on tall and slender people. If they're all shaped the same way that makes the tailor's job a lot easier as well. In the TNG days they probably thought they would have 5 at most of them on screen at any one time. But then came DS9 with dozens upon dozens of Cardassians.

But really, there's only so many actors who are not only 6 feet tall and 0% body fat but also right for the roles they wanted, so eventually they wanted to branch out and hire different actors- including older actors, heavy set actors, actors who had different body types, so the Cardassians would no longer just be all tall and very slender lizard men. They introduced a 2-piece costume that would be more comfortable and flattering on different body types. This is first seen on Legate Parn, who was the first chunky military Cardassian we see.

The Legate variant of the uniform also has sliver detailing on the cuirass, along with the gold Legate badge.

As for color variants, the earliest new style Cardassian uniforms seen on Gul Lemec & co. are black and dark grey on screen. But the uniforms in DS9 tend to be in dark blue, the cuirass and accessories have dark green colors. There are even some 2 piece uniforms with a pinstriped Dark Mauve color.

You can see above the different styles of one piece uniform and 2 piece uniform. The 2 piece uniform has overalls-design with attached suspenders worn under the top. So it was still pretty inconvenient to wear in terms of, like, needing a bathroom break. The only time I recall Dukat wearing the 2 piece uniform is when he was briefly promoted to Legate in the episode Indiscretion.

I for one don't understand why Star Trek costume designers think everyone in the future will be wearing 1-piece bodysuits. Even if everyone is hot and skinny in the future thanks to replicators rationing out our calories, a bodysuit still makes bathroom breaks a pain in the ass. But I digress.

The armor cuirass is made from cast latex, in a dark greyish green color. The cast latex would have made them lighter to wear than actual rubber, but as you can see it has a lot of wear and tear on it, it's less durable than rubber.

It has a strip on the side with writing and symbols in the Cardassian script, possibly denoting rank or division. These are velcroed on.

The construction of the back of the cuirass is slightly different from the front, and if you look closely you can see how it closes in the back, most likely with velcro or a hidden zipper?

There's an all-black and unique variant of the uniform worn by the unnamed sleazy Legate who talks with Major Kira in the episode where she goes back in time to see if Dukat banged her mom. His uniform is made with a shinier black spandex material which you can see below. Not as warm to wear as the neoprene. These pictures from the auction show all the detailing which is never really seen because it's covered by the cuirass and "corset." I'm not sure if these details are present in all the uniforms, because we don't really see it. The ribbed and piping details extend to the upper bicep and are also seen on the chest. The uniform is black yet the belt and holster are the usual dark green color. I can't find a shot of his boots/leg gaiters to see what color they were.

Of course these slight color variations didn't really register on 1990's televisions. The show has moody dim lighting and was broadcast in standard 480pixels definition, on cathode ray televisions. Only until seeing auction photos I've included here, and seeing HD AI-Upscaled version of the shows did I even notice all these color differences. I always assumed their uniforms were always black and dark grey the whole time.

The only time I can recall seeing a Cardassian with his rubber cuirass off was when Tekeny Ghemor took his off in his home. I mean, it makes sense why would you wear that around the house on your time off? Ghemor's legate uniform looks similar to the sleazy Legate's uniform, but Ghemor's is made of the standard wetsuit material.

And finally the holster for the Cardassian phase disruptor is made of the same foam rubber materials as the cuirass. The belt is made from the same materials and raised diamond-style rubber as Major Kira's uniform belt. The leg belt is held together with velcro, while the waist belt has snaps. I found these images from an e-bay auction and saved them for costume research purposes.

This is no means a definitive guide, but just showing that if you're gonna make a Cardassian military cosplay there's enough variations in color and style to choose from that you can improvise and still look like a legit Legate.

#costume research

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