Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The First Contact Fleet

Following the release of Star Trek: First Contact, ILM handed off all of its digital assets to Paramount Pictures for use in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. However, because ILM utilized different rendering software than Star Trek's television VFX vendors, the ships of the First Contact fleet had to be extensively rebuilt and remained relatively low resolution when they finally made the transition to the small screen.

Owing to that low resolution, these ships rarely featured prominently in any single episode (except for the previously mentioned high quality Akira-class) and the VFX teams continued to fall back on more detailed CGI versions of the stalwart Excelsior and Miranda-class starships, despite their in-universe ages.

Debuting on television in DS9's "Call to Arms", the Akira, Steamrunner, and Saber-class starships made numerous appearances throughout that series' Dominion War arc, generally peppered into huge Federation fleets, though occasionally used as stock vessels stationed at Deep Space 9.

Due to Star Trek: Voyager's distance from the Alpha Quadrant and thus the rest of the Federation fleet, these ships made even fewer appearances on that show, with an unnamed Akira-class starship playing a fairly prominent role in the episode "Message in a Bottle" and Steamrunner and Saber-class starships appearing in flashback at Utopia Planitia in "Relatively" and seen escorting Voyager home in "Endgame".

If you squint, anyway.