As fans, we can all tell when shots from one show are re-used on another because producers sometimes get real cheap and started performing hand-me-downs all over the place. We all know how the Bird of Prey visuals were put into various "stills" or re-angled for different TNG episodes, but what really annoyed me was re-hashing the classic D-7 from "The Motion Picture." When TMP came out, I watched it four times in the theaters - not because it was that great of a movie, but somehow Star Trek was special to me at that age so I ended up seeing it that many times on the big screen.

In TMP, the first scene shows three Klingon D-7s flying in formation, beautifully detailed and much more grander to behold than the TOS siblings which were comparatively featureless. Observe the middle ship in the first shot - it becomes the cornerstone of re-use:

We also got a first look at the Klingon native tongue which raised the scale of credibility immensely for me.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of times when weapons are used, we've only seen these updated D-7s fire torpedoes.

In "The Wrath of Kahn," we got to see these ships again during the Kobayashi Maru simulation. When I was a kid, I distinctly remember thinking to myself that this shot of the Klingon formation looked very, very familiar ... perhaps it was because they were directly recycled from TMP but with some creative reversing of the shot so the lead ship is now on the left side.

Somehow the right ship eventually takes lead and its firing port glows. While this shot is technically from TMP, what we see in TWOK is apparently just a bit earlier in the originally-filmed time sequence compared to the TMP so it's "new footage." The trailing ships are also re-arranged slightly.

They finally had the budget for some new shots in "The Undiscovered Country." In my opinion, this was the finest depiction of the D-7 throughout either the movies or in TOS and TNG, glowing nacelles included.

Let's not forget the obligatory torpedo port hotness:

Of course, when the Gorkon finally gets ready to fire on the Enterprise, it aligns itself to the same plane of space as its target. Funny how ships conveniently align themselves like this in the Star Trek universe so that they're all "neat" for the viewing audience.

Seasons 1 and 2 of The Next Generation recycled the original TMP shots for "Heart of Glory" and "The Emissary." Disrupters were never shown with this variation until in "The Emissary."

I never realized that there were disrupters in those areas of the D-7. Either I missed the memo on this, or someone didn't consult the blueprints when producing the effects. While they did at least change the emergency reactor glow from red to blue, this is the only angle we ever see the D-7 from. The viewing experience feels very limited because one can tell that the effects shots are just a patchwork of existing material from the re-use pile.

Just looking at these examples makes you imagine the producers rambling, "Well, we ain't got the money to film new dynamic passes of these ships, so we'll just restore footage we shot a long, long time ago and hopefully no one will notice."

Heh, yeah right. We can see this from a mile away.