[kevin]

I don't think money was ever 'no object' in TNG, early on or later, despite being a well funded show for the time. Now you could just do a CGI shot of something new.

Bear in mind 'Shades of Gray' came about because they had no money left at the end of season 2.

I think the Excelsior would be a tighter fit, but I think it would get through.

In fact, that point makes the Spacedock in the new film make a lot more sense - as the ships are all docked 'outside' so to speak, they can be built as big as you like as long as the docking port is compatible with the station.

No doors to worry about!!

[Samuel]

Hmmm...

Well to be fair I cannot speak to the specific monies in the show but the penny pinchers will save money wherever they can... such as using old models that will get the job done. Even tho there will be people who go "Uhhh, wait. Isnt that....?": I would put the occasional kit-bashing in that category also.

Also, money saved could be used for better things in other places like sets, props, and more elaborate SFX shots. Everything has a budget and the more whiz-bang a show gets the tighter the money. Oh and of course when you have to renegotiate actors salaries that puts more strain on things. LaO comes to mind as a recent example even tho its a very popular show. Of course the economy is quite different now.

[Zardoz]

Each episode had a 1 million dollar budget, unheard of for a syndicated show of the era. Most of that went into the Image G SFX shots we saw each week.

[Samuel]

Yup that was the number. I forgot. So they would have been the ones more than any other to be told to keep costs under control within whatever number they had to spend each week. They also would have been the ones to internally shift money around to what they felt was more important.

[kevin]

And to be honest, the reuse of partial effects from previous screened material not only gives better production value (the show could never have afforded to build such a new model for a one-off appearance - in fact, in nearly all times that model was used in TNG it was stock footage) it allows consistency is design.

I love that big Spacedock - I used to wonder how many of them Starfleet built. At least 3 by my count.

[vantheman77]

That sequence of the Enterprise-D entering a Starbase was the exact same thing from Star Trek 3.