Door Bomb and Safety Catches

Johnny leaves the airport by taxi, ending up in a disreputable part of town. During his ride we see another video phone call with a different interface, and the first brief appearance of some high tech binoculars. I’ll return to these later, for the moment skipping ahead to the last of the relatively simple and single-use physical gadgets.

Johnny finds the people he is supposed to meet in a deserted building but, as events are not proceeding as planned, he attaches another black box with glowing red status light to the outside of the door as he enters. Although it looks like the motion detector we saw earlier, this is a bomb.

jm-12-doorbomb-a-adjusted

This is indeed a very bad neighbourhood of Newark. Inside are the same Yakuza from Beijing, who plan to remove Johnny’s head. There is a brief fight, which ends when Johnny uses his watch to detonate the bomb. It isn’t clear whether he pushes or rotates some control, but it is a single quick action. Continue reading

Aperture Door

Barbarella-056

After the ship crash lands on Tau Ceti (damaged as it was from the magnetic disturbances), Barbarella decides to leave the ship and explore. She enters a simple airlock and then opens a circular aperture door on the far side. Unfortunately we never see the controls. The door is a few feet up on the side of the ship, and Barbarella must step down. It is not clear if there is an alternate or accessible method of exit in more standard landings.

When we see her re-entering the door later, the tail of the furs she wears gets caught in the aperture. This suggests that it is a manual or a time-based control rather than a smarter sensor or artificial intelligence like Alphy.

Barbarella-door-03