Ne Zha 2: The Real Lore Behind the Biggest Movie of 2025 (and Why You Haven’t Heard of It)

Ne Zha 2 was released in theaters around the world last February, and it marked the start of the Chinese New Year. It has since grossed more than$ 2.1 billion globally, including a select few on American screens. For context, that makes it not only the biggest movie of the]… ]

The first article on Den of Geek was Ne Zha 2: The Real Lore Behind the Biggest Movie of 2025 ( and Why You Haven’t Heard of It ).

This article contains trailers for Star Trek: Strange New World year 3 season 6.

The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail, the sixth season of Star Trek: Odd New Worlds year 3 finished off one of the excellent traditional science fiction turns. The feared and near-mythical hunter send the Organization encounters, the one that had been flying through the cosmos wiping out planets and spaceships with leave, was not a strange new mysterious threat, but in fact a long-lost space mission previously launched from Earth.

It’s not exactly a new spin ( there were numerous variations of it in The Twilight Zone and beyond before Planet of the Apes made one ), and in this episode it actually crossed the line of being a little difficult. The show did leave you 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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However, it likewise provided a window into a exciting time in the future of Star Trek. The 21st era of the Star Trek universe is littered with misplaced and doomed space missions. In” Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Kirk’s quite first screen encounter, he ran into the flight record from the SS Valiant and the area probe Wanderer. The Next Generation’s team came across the wreckage of the doomed NASA spacecraft Charybdis ( as well as the dead of its sole surviving crew trapped in a restoration of an old pulp fiction ). The long-lost Mars mission Ares IV ( presumably creating the Ares III mission Trek canon ) and the experiment warp probe Friendship One collided with Voyager.

But even among these jaunts into the galaxy, this scavenger ship stands out thanks to what we see when the viewscreen zooms in on the remaining Earth-originating features of the ship.

We can see the letters and numbers “XCV-100″ and the now-famous emblem known as the” Starfleet Delta” ( there is a whole other article to be written about the history of that ). Those numbers give that ship a lineage that leads to none other than the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 herself.

” Energy was the name of all of these ships.”

The first time those numbers appear together on screen ( although too small for you to actually read ) are in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A member of the ship’s crew has been taken by an alien entity ( it would later turn out to be another Earth probe that had gone wrong, this time the Voyager VI probe ). In search of peace and understanding, the entity is given a tour of the Enterprise, including the ship’s recreation room ( not to be confused with the holodeck, which was also called the recreation room in Star Trek: The Animated Series and the recent” A Space Adventure Hour“. A sailing ship, the real-world aircraft carrier the crew would eventually use 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 are all depicted in this wall of pictures. Between those spaceships was another, never-seen-before spaceship, some previously unseen part of the Enterprise lineage.

A pair of large ring shapes surround a small, cylindrical capsule on the end of a long rod. If viewers had been able to look closely enough, they would have seen the name Enterprise XCV 330. Since it was a tiny, blink-and-you-ll-miss-it detail, Trekkies have undoubtedly spent years obsessing over it.

Put a Ring on It

That image was created when Matt Jefferies, the man behind the famous” Jefferies Tubes,” was drafting out ideas for what would eventually become the Enterprise, was sketching out its outlines right at the beginning of Star Trek‘s story. You could go through those sketches and find cool outlines for a dozen new sci-fi shows, but one shape that kept recurring was the idea of a ship with a large set of rings at the back – sometimes with a saucer at the front, sometimes with other shapes. However, one of those discarded sketches, sketch” 22L,” would go on to have a much longer-lasting mission.

Mark Rademaker is a digital artist who has worked on a wide range of Star Trek projects, including several based around that very sketch.

” About ten years later sketch 22L got picked up again when Gene was creating a new series called” Starship”,” Rademaker tells us. ” That series never came to fruition. However, Matt Jefferies did produce some more detailed interior and exterior blueprints and artwork for the” 22L” version for that series.

This new show was not going to be Star Trek, which meant its interior would have some extensive differences, even if ultimately those differences might turn out to be more cosmetic.

Instead of being based on a single man in a chair, the bridge was designed with concepts that would still be incorporated into Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s early set designs.

” People would not transport to a planet, but step into the’ metafier’ ( The dome on the right side of the command module ) and ‘ project’ themselves onto a planet”, Rademaker says. I assume that this was another low-cost mechanic, similar to a transporter.

When Starship failed to materialize, another attempt to relaunch Star Trek with the spinoff Phase II turned into a movie production and that design finally found its way into Star Trek canon.

Gene Roddenberry requested Rick Sternbach to create a high contrast ink version of a Matt Jefferies painting for the rec room wall when they were building the ship wall, Rademaker claims.

The Space Cruise Liner

That particular detail would continue to be a tantalizing piece of canon for a long time. For decades the only further information fans would have on the ship was the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology. This book, which was published in 1980 and was based on the “official” history of the Star Trek universe, was edited and written by Rick Sternbach and Stan Goldstein.

This chronology, which ran from the earliest days of spaceflight to the Enterprise as depicted in the Star Trek movies, described the ring-ship Enterprise 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. Additionally, the book asserted that it was the first ship of its kind to have a subspace radio.

That was where the ship remained in canon for decades, until 2001, with the launch of a new show chronicling the adventures of the Enterprise that came before the one in the Original Series.

The show chose a different design, one that for some reason never made it to the 1701 rec room wall, because it was probably correctly determined that the show’s hero ship would need to be more recognizably” Star Trek” than the historic ring ship.

Back into the Canon

However, the Star Trek: Enterprise based Enterprise was reassuringly saucer-and-warp-nacelle based, and the show would also require other ship designs. For the first time, Vulcan starships would play a major role in the show, and such iconic aliens needed an iconic starship design.

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

As designer Doug Drexler said later,” My main impetus was to get another classic]Matt ] Jeffries concept on Star Trek as a signature ship. So Matt Jeffries ‘ ring ship for Gene Roddenberry’s” Starship” is where the Enterprise Vulcan spaceship design ethic originated.

Enterprise would go a step further in cementing the ring ship’s place in the canon with the episode” First Flight”. In the early days of the warp program, where Earth was still attempting to reach Warp 2 80 years after Zefram Cochrane’s victory, this episode gave a glimpse of the program’s beginnings. We saw young Jonathan Archer competing to be the first person to command an actual starship, and are introduced to Club 602, the San Francisco bar where all the Starfleet flyboys hang out. The Enterprise XCV-330 mission patch, which features a picture of the mysterious ring ship, is right up there on the board, and the bar is decorated with numerous photos and insignias that honor the history of flight and spaceflight.

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

XCV ships were developed somewhere between 2055 and 2110, according to Rademaker. ” I assume the XCV-330 was a human design based on some sub-light XCV platform but engineered to combine it with a Vulcan low warp ring template. This line of ships may have been written in a later or perhaps even final form. This would explain the rings, a rather dated cylindrical and thin internal layout, and a long neck so the crew is far away from the danger bits”.

Relaunching the XCV-330

Rademaker has had plenty of time to think about this. When he met Andrew Probert, who 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, he first made contact with the ship in a professional capacity.

” Andrew and I mailed back and forth about the general shapes and a lot about the details, with Andrew sketching over my renders to illustrate what direction to take”, Rademaker remembers. ” This collab with Andrew really opened my eyes, and I greatly improved as a result.”

The work caught a few eyes, including that of modeling company QMx. In order to create an” Artisan model,” they requested a file of the 3D model from Rademaker.

” Later, when I sat in the cinema, I found out that QMx used the model to do a prop for Into Darkness“! Says Raemaker.

The miniature appears on Admiral Marcus’s desk, between the real-life Ares V rocket and Zefram Cochrane’s experimental warp ship” The Phoenix”. This places it before people can travel at light speed. According to the QMx website ( which is sadly no longer online ), this Enterprise was” Earth&#8217, s first sublight, interplanetary, and interstellar space vehicle”.

Eaglemoss would use Rakemaker’s model as the foundation for their own Enterprise XCV-330 miniature, and Rakemaker’s model would continue its journeys. Most recently, in 2023, 100 years before the launch of this Enterprise according to the Spaceflight Chronology, Rademaker was recruited to work on the ring ship once again.

When Mike Okuda reached out and asked if I could model the bridge for the Roddenberry Archive, I was just about to do a refit on this ship to make it compatible with my current render software. Great gig”! Says Raemaker.

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

In the short film” Memory Wall,” the model even made its first real appearance on the ship, depicting its eventual demise. Rademaker has also continued working with the ring ship shape for NASA. You see, the theories of physicist Miguel Alcubierre are very similar to those of Star Trek‘s warp drive. His theoretical” Alcubierre drive” would be driven by an engine that is most likely, you guessed it, ring shaped.

” Dr. Harold ‘ Sonny’ White ( Then working at NASA ) requested in 2011 for me to modify the XCV-330 to make a ship for STEM outreach,” Rademaker says. ” We eventually decided to do a whole new ringship that would conform better to his theory. ( The IXS-110, also known as the IXS Enterprise. ) The idea was never to present that ship as an actual new NASA Starship, more like a good motivator for students to get into STEM/STEAM, but the media decided otherwise. It was enjoyable.

The Continuing Voyages

For the first time, Star Trek‘s ring ship design is being featured. As Star Trek: Lower Decks drew to a close last year, with what is now a Hugo award-winning finale. The USS Beagle, a ship in the middle of the 21st century, was featured in the story. Its design was clearly a variation of the Enterprise XCV-330, with some extra solar panels and added details, and a nifty new landing mechanism.

Finally, in last week’s Strange New Worlds episode, we come to the XCV-100. It gives us a lot of clues about how the ring ship Enterprise fits into Star Trek history. If this ship has a ring like the Enterprise, it is obscured, and the ship appears much larger than the ship in Rademaker’s models.

” The XCV-100 was not a warp capable ship, and the larger size was a requirement for their mission. In contrast to the 100, the XCV-330 appears to be a scaled down version with very similar nose/front end parameters, as if that was an optimal shape for some reason,” Rademaker suggests. ” Or maybe they just made this shape in a couple of sizes. Not uncommon in shipbuilding, some hulls can be increased from, say, 60 to 120 meters without making significant structural changes.

In the brief glimpse we get of the ship, we notice the ID number, the American flag, and the iconic Starfleet delta ( many decades before Starfleet could have actually been established ).

” The 100 probably was constructed sometime between 2055 and 2063. Hence it still shows a US like flag alongside an UESPA logo that we also see on the Friendship One probe that was launched in 2067″, Rademaker suggests. That probe does not, however, have any nation flags on the outside. That makes me assume that 2067 is when UESPA is well established and Earth &#8217, s unification in terms of space related things has been formalized”.

Even the crew’s spacesuits, which are clearly based on the” Z2″ spacesuit prototype being created for a potential Mars mission, are visible. In that way, the XCV-100 is a missing link, a very concrete connection between Pike’s starship Enterprise, and our own time’s NASA space program ( however much longer that might last ).

However, look closer, and there’s a little bit more to it than that. Through” The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” we are told the legends and rumors about this scavenger ship. Even the Gorn refer to it as a monster.

As Scott describes it,” Its needs are bottomless. It only consumes and grows bigger. The bigger it gets, the more it requires. Then it moves on to eat the next resource, as if it never stops. &#8221,

We believe he is describing an alien monster when he says it. Something consumes, destroys and assimilates everything it encounters, like the Doomsday Machine from TOS, or the Borg.

However, it turns out he’s talking about us as humans are in the 21st century, as the Star Trek universe’s inhabitants see it.

To a paraphrase another old Enterprise, it’s a long road getting from here to there…

On Paramount+, new episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds air on Thursdays, with the finale scheduled for September 11.

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