Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Danube-class Runabout

As we've said countless times in this series of starship secrets, spaceships are expensive to build. In its grand tradition of cost savings through redressing, reusing, and recycling standing sets, the Star Trek franchise utilized Deep Space Nine's runabout cockpit across all of its 1990s properties. With varying degrees of modification, the standing cockpit set appeared in 79 episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and in the previously mentioned single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, and the feature film Star Trek: Insurrection.

Notably opening the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager, DS9's runabout interior was modified with Motion Picture-era backlit graphics and video displays to stand in for Chakotay, B'elanna, and Tuvok's Maquis Raider. Following this major overhaul, the set would get a similar update for two episodes of DS9 set in the Mirror Universe, standing in for the Terran Raider in "Through the Looking Glass" and "Shattered Mirror". Like the overhaul for Voyager, the Mirror Universe makeover utilized Michael Okuda's 23rd century graphic style and an enormous amount of black masking tape to give the cockpit a distinct new look that in no way just looked like the old runabout set with masking tape all over it...

Finally, the runabout set was given its most radical overhaul for 1998's Star Trek: Insurrection to serve as the Enterprise-E's type-11 shuttlecraft. For that appearance, the set was completely repainted, the graphics were replaced with LCARS interfaces similar to those used aboard the Enterprise-E, the transporter pad was refreshed, and the forward windows were replaced. Still, the original runabout set's chairs, triangular lighting fixtures, and distinctive airlocks were retained.