If I may editorialize for a moment... I really don't see why TPTB kept churning new Starfleet classes out over the last few years. The Federation is up to forty four classes in service at the moment, with another 10 that are no longer in use. In comparison, the Klingons have six vessel designs in their entire history, and still use all but one of them. The Romulans only have five ships, and only one of them is a serious warship - and that's a hulking great battlewagon. The Ferengi, Cardassians and Dominion have three classes each.

We have more than enough Federation designs to have nice varied fleets, but the poor old Romulans look like they built the D'Deridex and then just ran out of ideas for new ships. Really, I'm sure that the fans would far rather have seen a few new Klingon and Romulan ships around than yet another combination of Federation classes. I can't believe the expense was a limiting factor - not when Voyager has been throwing up new ship designs at a rate of over one a week during the same period. Hell, they even have two or even three new ships in a single episode on occasion!

Well, DS9 is at an end and Voyager only has two and a half years to run. We don't know what the future holds for Trek after that, so I guess it's possible that there won't be any new classes for the Alpha Quadrant for a while. Hell, there may not be any new classes for anybody, ever, come to that. Now there's a gloomy thought...