Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The First Contact Fleet

While the Akira-class starship received the star starship treatment by ILM, the additional three vessels designed for the battle were far less detailed and less fleshed out.

Initially called "Streamrunner" before losing an "R", the Steamrunner-class was represented by the USS Appalachia, depicted in battle alongside the Norway-class USS Budapest and the Saber-class USS Yeager. Additional starships of these classes appear in the film but go unnamed, generally seen in the deep background and, let's face it, mostly just there to blow up.

These three vessel types were designed with less detail than the Akira-class starship and were also rendered in lower resolution CGI, essentially intended to fill out the Starfleet armada. According to their designer, Alex Jaeger, the quality of the CG models themselves actually dictated the design of the Steamrunner, Norway, and Saber-class starships, requiring them to feature more angular configurations than the higher resolution and much more curvaceous Akira-class model.

Though it's impossible to see in the film, the VFX producers actually recycled existing textures for these three ships, speciifically reusing textures from Star Trek Generations' digital model of the USS Enterprise-D for the Saber-class and textures from ILM's digital USS Defiant to outfit the Norway-class.