[4] Production and post-production took several years, with shooting in Minnesota and Texas (and an insert scene recorded in Sydney), mixed between exterior locations and custom-built sets.

The second, a far more ambitious production titled "The Tressaurian Intersection",[5] with a script by Nebula Award nominee Dennis Russell Bailey[6] (who co-wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tin Man"), was shot in mid-2004.

In addition to CGI effects, the film also used elaborate miniatures to realize the interiors of both a shuttle and ruined starship courtesy of Minneapolis-based MNFX,[7] and to portray wreckage both on a planet and in space as built by Thomas Sasser (not all of whose work made the final episode).

In addition to the two full-length episodes, a humorous vignette titled The Night Shift, written by Dennis Russell Bailey, was shot as a trial run and as camera tests at the start of principal photography of "The Tressaurian Intersection".

[11] Albeit not the first, Exeter's "The Savage Empire" is arguably the vanguard of the modern internet-distributed Trek fanfilm in terms of scope, production value, and large audience reached primarily through social media.