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Discovery Boots
Discovery boots are very distinctive, and unlike any other boots in the franchise. There are lots of details to the boot stitching and features. Also, the boot colors vary with division. Science (and medical) have silver soles, command has gold, and operations are copper. Also, the boots have flat delta shield badges on them as well. The first two image montages are of screen-used boots, as shown on an online auction and convention.
A detail to note about the boots is that the delta shields on the right boots are normal, but the shields on the left boots are reversed. (The far left pair of boots in the image below, had the delta shields mounted backwards...oops.)
If you are looking to reproduce the look of Disco boots, a good place to start are the inexpensive boots you might be able to find online. For the low price (usually less than $50), you'll get something that is surprisingly accurate in terms of stitching patterns, but are made out of very cheap, flimsy material. Even so, it's an impressively good match. (The image below shows these boots, adorned with little lapel pin badges I picked up at an STLV convention.)
I wanted to bring my uniform game up a level, though, so I contacted my bootmaker contacts at Barismil.com (more about them on my page about Enterprise boots). I gave them a number of photographs of boots, and information about the stitching pattern I wanted them to capture. I also asked them to make the soles out of white material, to at least get towards the light-colored soles I really wanted.
After sending them a whole series of measurements, the wizards at Barismil.com sent me these fantastic boots...seen here with those little lapel pins. I was super happy with them!
By the way, Barismil.com also has an Etsy shop, with the name LeatherDistrict. Don't be surprised if you see them using my images to sell their boots...I gave them unrestricted use of the images.
But let's talk about the damned complicated soles. When Sully Wong's designers (George Sully and Henry Wong) designed the boots for Discovery, they opted to incorporate super weird, ridged soles. These soles are shown below (left) on a pair of Orbitur slip-ons. (By the way, it was irritating, back then, trying to research these shoes because they were called "SW Orbiturs." I know SW was for Sully Wong, but it would have been better if the shoes were called "ST Orbiturs," right?).
Cosplay and creator genius Dino Ignacio pioneered a method of grafting nice soles onto the cosplay boots mentioned above. He found slip on shoes available from Ali Express (at right, above), pulled off the soles (with very hot water and effort), and glued the cosplay uppers onto these soles. Unfortunately, this didn't work for me, with my larger feet.
However, I found that I could do the following....
Remove the soles;
Cut out the middles of the soles, retaining just the edges;
Use my dremel to shave the edges to just thin ribbons;
Paint the ribbons using metallic acrylic;
Glue the ribbons onto my leather boots.
I needed two pairs of donor shoes to make one pair of sole strips, since the largest sole donors I could find were not big enough. That said, it worked beautifully. Here they are--still with the mini lapel pin badges.
One problem about painting the soles, was that even though I used primer, three coats of metallic, and a clear gloss cover coat, the paint has to be touched up after a long day of wear. However, I was gratified to see that--during an online auction of screen-used boots--I could see similar wear and tear on those soles too! (For example, see the operations division boots, below.)
As a final improvement, I wanted to improve the badges on the boots. They are flat delta shields, and a little smaller than ones used on uniforms. As noted above, the badges on the right boots are normal, but the ones on the left boots are in mirror image.
I contacted Dino Ignacio, and he and his associates were able to fabricate a set of badges for me (some reversed for the left boots). Here is a view of them as I'm painting the grey badges silver and gold.
It's been a lot of work, but here is a pair of my finished command Disco boots! Finally...the cost for custom Disco boots (just white heels) is about $490. Yeah, that' pretty pricey, but you're getting a pair of custom, high quality, leather boots that will fit like slippers.
(One final note...I've been asked if I could make the rubber sole edges for folks...but I'll decline. Sorry!)
Above you see the final project, complete! Also, me and Beth wearing our boots at STLV 2021.The uniforms are Anovos.
Season 4
Trek being what it is, the uniforms are constantly being changed. Here are some photos of the boots that go with Season 4 uniforms. Does anyone know anything about them? So far, I've got nothing!
