When Georgiou escorts Noe into his hotel room, she activates and tosses a device onto the container he’s carrying. It’s a palm-sized, metallic saucer-dome shape with intricate detailing, and sports three rounded signal lights that glow white. It magnetically grips to the surface of Noe’s container. He cautiously asks what it is and she pulls out another one to show him, explaining it is a “phase pod”. She attaches hers to her belt, and a beat later its white lights turn green. Her appearance becomes blurry and shifting and there is an audible low purr. A beat later the lights on the pod attached to the container turn green, and it gains that phasing appearance as it slips from his hand to land with a thud on the floor. He tries to shoot her with a phaser, and the blast passes through her to hit the wall behind. He tries to hit her physically and passes through. When San enters through the wall a little later, we see a similar pod attached to his belt and the phase-fight begins.
There’s a moment where Georgiou pulls her phase pod off to render herself immune to the knife he’s slicing at her while phased. San pulls his off to reengage her in unphased-space. A beat later we see them crash through the glass window separating the room from the nightclub floor.
When the fight takes them both onto a raised dias, Georgiou taps her pod to turn it on again. We see its lights and the lights on the case pod instantly turn green. She’s phased. San turns his on again, too, and the fight continues. About midway through the fight, San stabs her pod. He doesn’t quite disable it, but it starts to malfunction, its status lights flickering between green and white.
San drops the case and kicks it through a wall. Georgiou tries to run through the wall to retrieve it, but the malfunctioning pod fails to phase her left shoe. It “catches” and won’t pull through the wall. The status lights of the pod flicker green and red. In frustration, Georgiou smashes the device a few times to no avail.
Caught, she watches as San appears, opens the case, removes the Godsend, and teleports away. Too late, the pod sorts its shit out, and Georgiou is able to pull her foot through and stand up to be confronted by Sahar.
Caveat: Some things are unexplained, here
It’s not clear how the floor holds a phased thing, while the walls do not. Maybe it’s some aspect of the artificial gravity? It’s also not clear why Baraam doesn’t have the equivalent of a red alert when the fight starts, which would prevent San’s beaming away. Most casinos have outrageous levels of security and Georgiou is paranoid, so one would expect it. These are script questions, admittedly, not related to the interfaces, but things that the skeptic in me must voice.
One production gotcha
Before they reach the dias (below) we can see an unphased Georgiou holding the case. Its signal lights are green, but since she’s holding it, it must be unphased, too, which breaks one of the two diegetric rules already established.
- Green means Thing is Phased.
- Phased and non-phased things do not interact.
Rather than trying to backworld this (which would get complicated fast) I’m going to presume this is just a production mistake.
Evaluation as a wearable
On this blog I’ve established some guidelines for what makes a good wearable. I’ve used those to evaluate this interface.
Sartorial? Yes.
Yep. Palm-sized, one flat side, other side rounded. Lovely textures and shape. All fit being worn.
Easy to access and use: Tap to activate
I wonder about accidental activation. The fight has a lot of bumping around. If it’s a dumb momentary button, capacitance sensor, or accelerometer, some accident of the fight might accidentally turn it on or off, so let’s presume it’s not that. If it’s a biometric signature requiring the authorized user to tap it, it still seems riskily “out there”, ripe for an accidental touch that could have the wearer slamming into a wall they thought was passible, or dephasing in the middle of something. A long-touch, as seen with the mission briefer, might make more sense. Long-touch trades discoverability (how is anyone supposed to know to long-touch a thing) for increased certainty (accidental long-touches are less likely than accidental brushes.)
A long-touch introduces some challenges mid-fight, but I suspect this is primarily meant as an infiltration tool, not a combat one.
Social and Apposite I/O: The glow is almost fine
You might think that having the glow there gives too much away, diegetically. It would draw the attention of onlookers and raise suspicions if not alarms. Generally speaking, a covert wearable announcing itself brightly runs counter to its purpose. But the visual and audio effects of the underlying tech are far more conspicuous, and I presume, unavoidable. So subtlety is not an option using this tech. And the signal lights help convey to the user the states we see.
| Status | Display |
| Off | Dark |
| Ready | White |
| Active | Green |
| Damaged | Green and white |
| Error | Green and red |
That’s quite useful, even if they require a glance down. There’s an additional status which is “these two pods are paired” which might be accomplished with a synchronized blink, but that might also give too much information away to assailants.
As we see in the film, one problem is when phase-ees want to kick other phase-ees out of phase-space. Then the light on the surface provides a helpful signal of exactly where to target. Let’s trust that the jerky visual effects we see from our non-phased vantage point are still in effect when phasing, so that little target’s going to be jumping around anyway. Also, as long as all pods have the same lights, it’s not granting an advantage to anyone in particular. Georgiou could just as easily targeted San’s pod.
Haptics, probably
The use case of most concern for me is when the pod is malfunctioning. It looks like the tech prioritizes its effects for living matter, so bodies don’t unphase inside of solid matter. That would make for graceful degrading that could inform the user that the tech is trending in an unsafe direction. “Hey, why is my scarf stuck. Oh crap!”
We can’t rely on the phasing side-effects, because those seemed to continue as usual even during the half-functioning. Whatever that signal is shouldn’t rely on her looking at the device, either. A haptic feedback seems most fit, and specifically where it vibrates when the device is working, pulses when it is half-working, and buzzes or goes still when it is not working at all. Since film generally does not convey haptic feedback well, it might actually be part of the device we see. That would explain why Georgiou was willing to risk passing through the wall. The stakes were high, and she could tell, without looking, there was a good chance she would make it.
Between the tap that should be a long-tap, the lights that clearly signal mode, and the haptics that we’re going to presume are there anyway, the phase pod makes for a plausible wearable that meets basic usability and story needs, too.
