“Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive,” wrote Ms Ursula K LeGuin, in the introduction to her 1969 novel The Left Hand Of Darkness. It’s a rather pertinent thought in relation to Star Trek which, despite its futuristic, utopian space setting, has always been rather good at depicting the sartorial mores of its time, whichever decade you care to look at. As we eagerly await the cinematic release of Star Trek Beyond, the latest instalment in the franchise, we at MR PORTER thought it right to pay tribute to the times that – despite a fictional gap of several hundred years into the future – Star Trek was absolutely on trend, despite itself.

Though the original TV series of Star Trek first screened in 1966, just three years before the actual moon landing, the crew of the Enterprise weren’t seen in anything that looked remotely like a space suit until the 1968 episode “The Tholian Web”. No, of course not – why would you wear a big clunky thing with the ability to protect you from the cold, airless vacuum of space when you could wear… a velour V-neck? On the plus side, there’s a brilliant, utopian simplicity to the uniforms of the original Enterprise crew (as demonstrated above by the exceptionally clean-cut Mr William Shatner as captain James T Kirk), which seems thoroughly sympathetic to the rightly revered “atomic” designs of the period. Mr and Ms Charles and Ray Eames would have approved of the Enterprise crew’s brightly coloured uniforms in the very 1960s shades of bright red, cobalt blue and mustard.

Though the Star Trek franchise looks set to continue until we reach the stardate 1500 of its original setting, the early outlook for the cult space series did not look good. In fact, NBC cancelled the show in 1969, in a move which many fans see as one of the biggest mistakes in television history. In any case, it meant that the next time we clambered aboard the Enterprise was on the big screen in 1979’s creatively named Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Thanks to the success of recent sci-fi blockbusters such as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and the growing fanbase that Star Trek had built through a decade of syndication on TV in the 1970s, STTMP was treated to a multi-million-dollar budget, a healthy proportion of which, it seems, was spent on the wardrobe. And though the world was at that point leaving the 1970s, the Enterprise didn’t quite manage to come with it – hence deep-V tunics, slashed bellbottom-like trousers and the emergence of Mr William Shatner’s chest hair from beneath a zip-collared raglan-sleeved jersey.

By the time of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Spock, played by Mr Leonard Nimoy, had died and come back to life again, and now the exiled crew of the Enterprise were off in search of a few whales, which they hoped could communicate with a giant, whalesong-emitting probe threatening Earth. Yes, it was all much simpler in Free Willy. More importantly than the rather bizarre plot, however, is the fact that Spock et al decide to source their giant mammals from that famously whale-rich year of 1986, during which they head out of the spaceship and onto the streets. Coincidentally, thanks to the likes of Messrs Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Thierry Mugler and other designers of that ilk who were active in this period, neither Spock nor Captain Kirk actually look that out of place in this era – the collarless shirt, shoulder-padded jacket and odd, oversized kimono-type thing all being wardrobe staples in the 1980s, of course.

It’s 1991, the Enterprise looks like a Virgin Atlantic airport lounge and the entire crew has a can-I-help-you logo badge on their left breast. Yes, that sounds about right – the world has become a complex jigsaw puzzle of world-guzzling corporations and we’re halfway through the broadcast run of the second Star Trek TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. This show is not only often ranked among the best TV programmes of all time, but also turned a tidy profit for studio Paramount via syndication deals that allowed it a cut of the national advertising revenue when the show was broadcast on independent channels. By 1992, the budget for each episode was close to $2 million, and it shows in the crisply cut, ergonomically designed uniforms of the Enterprise’s crew, which came with a sporty contrasting panel across the shoulders. These, of course are now available to buy on shop.startrek.com for $49.99, if you find that the merchandising strategy has worked on you.

Is that the sound of booing from the wings? Generally speaking, Star Trek fans are not particularly keen on Star Trek: Enterprise, the TV series starring Quantum Leap’s Mr Scott Bakula, which ran from 2001 to 2005 and investigated a time period before the setting of the original Star Trek series. There’s a lot of blog-space out there explaining just how and why the show, which was cancelled after season four of the customary seven-season trajectory, just did not work. But few could criticise the costumes, which, with their tough, military stylings and lack of primary colours, represented a more real, gritty and – dare we say it – believable version of the Star Trek universe. It should have been a perfect aesthetic for a generation of science fiction fans then plugging into realistic, militaristic video games such as Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) and Call Of Duty (2003). Turns out, it wasn’t. It seems you can’t win them all, even if you’re one of the most beloved franchises of all time.

In the latest trilogy of Star Trek movies, which continues with the release of Star Trek: Beyond, the costume designers (Mr Michael Kaplan for part one and two, and Ms Sanja Hays for the most recent edition) have taken a very teenies approach, combining absolute reverence for all things “vintage” in their faithfulness to the original costumes of the 1960s Star Trek series (it’s the same urge that has everyone currently stuffing their flats full of Mr Jean Prouvé furniture and now, apparently, brass pineapples) with a techy, modern approach to execution. When you look at these jerseys up close, they bring to mind the sort of sweat-wicking, performance-driven apparel that you might expect from Nike Running or Arc’teryx. From afar, though, they’re still the same good-old Star Trek uniforms, with bright colours reflecting each person’s position on the ship and job title (a system probably not coming to an office near you soon). Very post-modern-performance-nostalgia. Is that what you call what we’re going through now?