Fright Night Predicted the Two Sides of Nerd Culture 40 Years Ago

The 1980s seemed to be the era of geeks. Not only did geeks get their own company with Revenge of the Geeks, but they also were mainstays in shows such as The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and even pictures no starring Anthony Michael Hall. So it should come as no surprise that the 1985 monster video Fright Night had […]…

The article Fright Night Predicted the Two Sides of Nerd Culture 40 Years Before appeared primary 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 hunter send the Organization encounters, the one that had been destroying planets and spacecraft with impunity, was in fact a long-lost place objective 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 so unhappy about those 7, 000 deaths if the room hat had opened to reveal a brand-new bumpy forehead.

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But it also gave us a picture into a exciting time in Star Trek‘s potential story. Lost and destined place operations are a constant in the Star Trek universe in the twenty-first era. In Kirk’s very first trip on display,” 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 bodies of the stricken NASA spacecraft Charybdis and the only survivors left inside a fiber novel reconstruction. 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.

Yet among these galaxy-spanning journeys, this hunter ship stands out thanks to what we can see when the viewscreen zooms in on the remaining Earth-originating functions.

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 ship receives a heritage that is unique to the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 herself thanks to those numbers.

” 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. One more, never-seen-before starship, some of which had never been seen before, was located in the ships that were in between those spaceships.

A tiny, circular spacecraft on the end of a long pole, surrounded by a pair of large circle shapes. The brand 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.

Put a Ring on the Ring

That picture has its origins right at the very beginning of Star Trek‘s story, when Matt Jefferies ( the man who the famous” Jefferies Tubes” are named after ) was sketching out potential outlines for what would eventually 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.

Mark Rademaker, a digital artist, has contributed to a wide range of Star Trek projects, including some that were entirely based on that sketch.

” 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, its 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 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, when a new show showcasing the adventures of the Enterprise that were previously untold in the Original Series, the ship remained in canon there 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 would play a significant role in the show for the first time, and such iconic aliens needed 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 were introduced to Club 602, the San Francisco bar where all the Starfleet flyboys hang out, and we saw young Jonathan Archer competing to be the first person 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’m assuming the XCV-330 was a human design that was based on some sub-light XCV platform but that was engineered to work with a Vulcan low warp ring template. It might be a later and perhaps even the final version of this line of ships. This would explain the rings, a somewhat dated cylindrical body with a thin interior, and a long neck, keeping the crew 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 make a prop for Into Darkness“! 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&#8217, s first sublight, interplanetary, and interstellar space vehicle,” according to the QMx website ( which is unfortunately 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”. For NASA, Reedmaker has also continued to work on the shape of the ring ship. 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 decided against the idea of presenting that ship as an actual new NASA Starship, instead acting as a useful motivator for students to enter STEM/STEAM. 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, which included some extra solar panels, added details, and a clever new landing mechanism, was undoubtedly an evolution of the Enterprise XCV-330.

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 ship with a warp capability. 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 altered the shape to fit your needs. 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”.

We can see the ID number, the American flag, and the iconic Starfleet delta in the brief glimpse we have of the ship ( many decades before Starfleet could have been created ).

” The 100 probably was constructed somewhere between 2055 and 2063. Therefore, it still appears a US-like flag next to the UESPA logo, which is also visible on the Friendship One probe launched in 2067,” Rademaker suggests. ” 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 long-term unification and the formalization of Earth’s unification 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 NASA’s ( however long that may go ) future.

Look closer though, and there’s a bit more to it than that. We are informed of the legends and rumors about this scavenger ship through” 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. The more it demands, the bigger it becomes. 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. Like the Doomsday Machine from TOS or the Borg, something consumes, destroys, and assimilates everything it encounters.

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, in the words of another old Enterprise…

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

The first post on Den of Geek was titled Strange New Worlds &#8217, XCV-100 Is a Missing Link in Star Trek History.