Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Wolf 359
7. Saratoga On High
As shown on the Movie Magic episode Space Effects: The Space Race, the scale of the explosion of the Saratoga for Emissary required filming be moved from in-house at production company Image G to a much larger sound stage on the Paramount lot "for safety reasons". This was the early '90s. Blowing things up for television risked more than the computer processor.
To capture the shots needed, a "breakaway model" of the Saratoga, Miranda-class, was "wrapped with explosive primer cord" (aka detonation cord or blasting rope), then hoisted vertically into the air over a camera which filmed upwards in slow motion at 240 frames per second. The camera was shielded from debris by a sheet of Lexan (a transparent polycarbonate thermoplastic) and a fan.
"Usually, for some reason, everything goes in threes," noted Robert Legato on the Movie Magic episode. First bang wasn't a boom, so "even more explosives" were added to another breakaway model. Second time didn't quite work either, so the third and final Saratoga model was rigged and sent to high heavens. Just right.