What were the design elements in Next Generation? Were the original series colours banned?

Well, in 1966, everything was blue. All the walls were painted a very light blue, because that was supposed to be good for skin tones.

1965, the first year I started working at NBC, was the year that they made NBC all colour. So all the art directors started using colour. Before that, you had to paint things shades of grey, you had to paint things green, you had to paint things almost any colour except the colour they really were in order for the camera to be able to relate to them and give you a realistic black and white picture. All of a sudden we were all going to colour, and the art directors were going wild.

NBC sent memos saying, "Tone down the sets. You can�t compete with the actors. The sets have to go pastel." So they literally turned 180 degrees, and went so pastel that if you watch anything from the 60s you�ll see a lot of nice pale blues and pale yellows and pale salmons so that the colours aren�t competing with what�s going on in front. As the film stock became more sensitive to variations and shades of colour we were able to go back to a more realistic palette in everything.