Strange New Worlds’ XCV-100 Is a Missing Link in Star Trek History

Spoilers appear in this Star Trek: Strange New World year 3 episode 6. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds year 3 show 6″ The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” concluded with one the excellent traditional science fiction curls. The Enterprise encounters a feared and almost mythical scavenger ship, which had been [ …] flying through the ship.

The article Weird New Worlds ‘ XCV-100 Is a Missing Link in Star Trek History appeared initially on Den of Geek.

Episode 6 of Star Trek: Strange New World year 3 is spoiler-free in this article.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds year 3 show 6″ The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” concluded with one the excellent traditional science fiction curls. The feared and almost mythical scavenger ship that the Business encounters, the one that had been destroying planets and spacecraft with impunity, was in truth a long-lost space mission that was initially launched from Earth.

It&#8217, s not exactly a new twist ( even before Planet of the Apes did a variant on it, numerous versions of it had appeared in The Twilight Zone and beyond ), and in this installment it even bordered on being a little problematic. You might have been wondering if Kirk would have been quite so unhappy about those 7, 000 incidents if the room hat had opened to reveal a new kind of slippery face.

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But it also gave us a picture into a exciting time in Star Trek‘s potential story. The Star Trek universe’s 21st century is riddled with abandoned and destined place operations. In Kirk’s very first trip on monitor,” Where No Man Has Gone Before”, he encountered the journey record of the SS Valiant, and later the area sensor Wanderer. The staff of Next Generation discovered the body of the stricken NASA spacecraft Charybdis, as well as the body of its sole remaining crewmember, who had been buried in a restoration of an ancient pulp novel. Even Voyager ran into the long-lost Mars mission Ares IV ( presumably making The Martian movie’s Ares III mission Trek canon ), and the experiment warp probe Friendship One.

This hunter fleet stands out despite these galaxy-spanning journeys thanks to what we can see on the viewscreen when the ship’s remaining Earth-originating features are zoomed in.

We see a familiar emblem now known as the” Starfleet Delta” ( there’s a whole other article to be written about the history of that ) and the letters and numbers “XCV-100”. That send receives a heritage that is unlike the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 herself thanks to those figures.

” All these ships were called Business”

In Star Trek: The Motion Image, those numbers initially appear together on camera ( though they are too small for you to really examine ). An alien entity has possessed a member of the ship’s crew ( later it would turn out this entity was yet another Earth probe that had gone astray, this time the Voyager VI probe ). The Enterprise is given a tour of the Enterprise in search of peace and understanding, including the ship’s recreation room ( not to be confused with the holodeck, which was also known as the recreation room in Star Trek: The Animated Series and the most recent” A Space Adventure Hour” ). Here the entity is shown a wall of pictures, including a sailing ship, the real-world aircraft carrier the crew would eventually break into in Star Trek IV, the prototype NASA space shuttle ( which in real life was named after the fictional starship ), and the Enterprise we know and love. Another, never-seen-before spacecraft, some previously unknown part of the Organization lineage, was located in between those spaceships.

A small, circular spacecraft on the end of a long pole, surrounded by a pair of large circle shapes. The title Enterprise XCV 330 would have appeared if viewers had been able to look carefully enough. It was a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it aspect, but obviously Trekkies have been obsessing over it for years.

Set a Ring on It

That image has its origins straight at the very beginning of Star Trek‘s narrative, when Matt Jefferies ( the man who the popular” Jefferies Tubes” are named after ) was sketching out possible details for what would later become the Enterprise. A ship with a large set of rings at the back, sometimes with a saucer at the front, and occasionally with other shapes, would be one of those sketches and yield some interesting outlines for a dozen new sci-fi shows. But one of those discarded sketches, sketch” 22L” would go on to have a far longer continuing mission.

A wide range of Star Trek projects have been based on that sketch, including some that Mark Rademaker has created as his own digital artist.

” About 10 years later sketch 22L got picked up again when Gene was developing a new series called’ Starship’”, Rademaker tells us. That series was never realized. But for that series Matt Jefferies did make some more detailed interior and exterior blueprints and artwork of the’ 22L ‘ version”.

Because this new series wasn’t going to be Star Trek, the interior would have some significant differences, even if those differences might end up being more cosmetic.

Instead of a bridge based around one man in a chair, it was based around people sitting in a circle around a computer console – a design with ideas that would still find their way into Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s early set designs.

People “would not travel to a planet, but rather” step into” the “metafier” ( the dome on the right side of the command module ) and “project” themselves onto a planet,” Rademaker says. ” I assume this was another cost saving mechanic, just like a transporter”.

Another attempt to relaunch Star Trek with the spinoff Phase II was unsuccessful, and the resultant movie production was the Star Trek canon.

” When they were building the ship wall in the rec room, Gene]Roddenberry ] asked Rick Sternbach to do a high contrast ink version of a Matt Jefferies ‘ painting, to add onto this wall”, says Rademaker.

The Space Cruise Liner

For a long time that detail would remain a tantalizing tidbit of canon. The Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology served as the only additional information fans could have on the ship for decades. Published in 1980, written and edited by Stan Goldstein and Fred Goldstein, and illustrated by Rick Sternbach, this book was for years the “official” history of the Star Trek universe.

The ring-ship Enterprise was referred to as” Declaration Class,” operating from 2123 to 2165 as an interstellar cruise liner with three theaters, three nightclubs, and a zero-gravity gymnasium, among other things, according to this chronology, which ran from the earliest days of spaceflight to the Enterprise as depicted in the Star Trek movies. The book also claimed it was the first kind of ship to be equipped with a subspace radio.

Up until 2001, the launch of a new show showcasing the adventures of the Enterprise that came before the one in the Original Series, that is where the ship remained in canon for decades.

Probably correctly deciding that the show’s hero ship would need to be more recognizably” Star Trek” than the historic ring ship, the show opted for a different design, one that for some reason never made it to the rec room wall of the 1701.

Return to the Canon

But while the Enterprise that would appear in Star Trek: Enterprise was reassuringly saucer-and-warp-nacelle based, the show would also need other ship designs. Vulcan starships, for the first time, would be required for such iconic aliens to have an iconic starship design.

Like many designers before and since, their first idea was to dive into Matt Jefferies ‘ wastepaper basket.

As designer Doug Drexler later stated,” My main goal was to create a new classic Matthew Jeffries concept for Star Trek as a signature ship.” So the Enterprise Vulcan spaceship design ethic came from Matt Jeffries ring ship for Gene Roddenberry’s Starship“!

With the episode” First Flight,” Enterprise would go a step further in establishing the ring ship’s place in the canon. This episode provided a flashback to the early days of the warp program, where 80 years after Zefram Cochrane achieved Warp 1, Earth was still trying to get to Warp 2. We are introduced to Club 602, a San Francisco bar where all the Starfleet flyboys hang out, after we saw Jonathan Archer’s young competitor competing for the title of first to command an actual starship. The bar is decorated with various photos and insignias celebrating the history of flight and spaceflight, and in another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance, the Enterprise XCV-330 mission patch, with a picture of the enigmatic ring ship, is right up there on the board.

This again raises the question of how the XCV-330 fits into Star Trek‘s chronology.

” My personal theory: Somewhere between 2055 and 2110, XCV ships were developed”, suggests Rademaker. I assume the XCV-330 was created using a Vulcan low warp ring template from a sub-light XCV platform. It might be a later and perhaps even the final version of this line of ships. This would explain the crew’s long neck, dated cylindrical design, and thin internal layout, all of which are due to the crew being far from the danger areas.

Relaunching the XCV-330

Rademaker has had ample time to consider this. He first came into contact with the ship in a professional capacity when he met Andrew Probert, who among other things designed the Enterprise for The Motion Picture and The Next Generation, as well as the XCV-330 for Star Trek’s” Ships of the Line” calendar.

Rademaker recalls that Andrew and I mailed back and forth about the general shapes and a lot about the details, with Andrew sketching over my renders to help us decide which direction to take. ” This collab with Andrew really opened my eyes, I improved a lot because of it”.

The work received a lot of attention, including that from the modeling firm QMx. They asked Rademaker for a file of the 3D model so that they could use it to create an” Artisan model”.

” Later, when I sat in the theater, I discovered that QMx used the model to create an Into Darkness prop”! Rademaker says.

Between Zefram Cochrane’s experimental warp ship” The Phoenix” and the real-life Ares V rocket, the miniature appears on Admiral Marcus ‘ desk. This places it before humans achieve lightspeed. This Enterprise was” Earth’s first sublight, interplanetary, and interstellar space vehicle,” according to the QMx website, which is sadly no longer online.

Rakemaker’s model would continue its voyages, with Eaglemoss using it as the basis for their own Enterprise XCV-330 miniature. According to the Spaceflight Chronology, Rademaker was hired to work on the ring ship once more until 2023, 100 years prior to the launch of this Enterprise.

” I was just about to do a refit on this ship to make it compatible with my current render software when Mike Okuda reached out and asked me if I could model the bridge for the Roddenberry Archive. Great performance”! Rademaker says.

At the Rodenberry Archive, you can visit Rademaker’s reconstruction of this Enterprise, both inside and out, including an explorable 3D reconstruction of its bridge and “metafier” room, based on Jefferies ‘ blueprints from the defunct Starship show.

The model even gave the ship its first actual appearance, depicting its eventual demise in the short film” Memory Wall”. Ragemaker has also continued to work with NASA’s ring ship shape. You see, the workings of Star Trek‘s warp drive are very close to the ideas of physicist Miguel Alcubierre. His” Alcubierre drive” is thought to be driven by an engine that is most likely, you might say, ring-shaped.

” In 2011 Dr. Harold ‘ Sonny’ White ( Then working at NASA ) asked me to modify the XCV-330 to create a ship for STEM outreach”, Rademaker shares. We ultimately made the decision to create a completely new ringship that would be more in line with his theory. ( The IXS-110 aka IXS Enterprise. ) The media chose not to present that ship as a genuine new NASA Starship, but rather as a useful tool for inspiring students to pursue STEM/STEAM, despite the fact that the idea never materialized. It was good fun”.

The Continuing Voyages

The ring ship design is finding its way into Star Trek shows for the first time as well. With what is now a Hugo award-winning finale, Star Trek: Lower Decks came to a close last year. The story featured an alternate 21st century, parallel universe traversing ship called the USS Beagle. Its design was undoubtedly a variation of the Enterprise XCV-330, with some more solar panels, details, and a clever new landing mechanism.

And finally, we come to the XCV-100 in last week’s episode of Strange New Worlds. It provides a lot of insight into how the Enterprise ringed up in Star Trek history. If this ship has a ring like the Enterprise, that is obscured, and the ship appears much bigger than the ship in Rademaker’s models.

The XCV-100’s size was a requirement for their mission, and it was not a warp ship. The XCV-330 compared to the 100 seems to be a scaled down version but with very similar parameters of the nose/front end, like that was an optimized shape for some reason”, Rademaker hypothesizes. Or perhaps they simply created this shape in a few sizes. Not unheard of in shipbuilding, some hulls in terms of hydrodynamics can be scaled up from for example 60 to 120 meters, without significant changes in characteristics”.

The ID number, the American flag, and the iconic Starfleet delta are visible in the ship’s brief glimpse, which is significant considering that Starfleet was a long time in the making.

” The 100 probably was constructed somewhere between 2055 and 2063. Therefore, it still appears alongside an UESPA logo, which we also see on the Friendship One probe launched in 2067, according to Rademaker. ” However, that probe does not carry any nation flags on the outside. That makes me think that 2067 will mark the beginning of UESPA’s successful integration in terms of space-related issues.

We even see the crew’s spacesuits, which are clearly based on the prototype of NASA’s” Z2″ spacesuit being developed for a potential Mars mission. In that way, the XCV-100 serves as a missing link, a direct link between Pike’s spacecraft Enterprise and our own time’s NASA space program ( however long that might last ).

Look closer though, and there’s a bit more to it than that. We are informed of the legends and rumors surrounding this scavenger ship in” The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail.” Even the Gorn call it a monster.

Its needs are bottomless, according to Scott. All it does is consume and make itself bigger. More resources are required by it the larger it grows. Then it moves on to devour the next resource, like it will never stop. &#8221,

When he says it, we think he’s describing an alien monster. Something consumes, destroys, and assimilates everything it encounters, such as the Borg or the Doomsday Machine from TOS.

But of course, it turns out he’s describing us – humans as they exist in the 21st century, viewed by the inhabitants of Star Trek‘s perfect future.

It’s a long journey to get from here to there, to quote another old Enterprise.

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with a finale on Sept. 11.

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