Tag Archives: hologram

Star Trek: Section 31 – Mission Briefer

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As part of the Fritzes Best Interfaces award for 2026, I am reviewing the interfaces in Star Trek: Section 31. This post is about the mission briefer.

Close-up of two hands holding glasses and a spherical object on a table, with a blue liquid in a transparent glass.
A close-up of a hand resting on a black table, adorned with a silver bracelet. Next to it is a small glass containing a blue liquid, and a bell-shaped object on the table. The scene features a shimmering, glittery outfit in the background.
A spinning object resembling a flower or pod shape, set on a circular base, with a blurred background.
A futuristic device resembling a lens or orb with unique geometric wings, resting on a reflective surface.

When HQ needs a team to get moving, they send a mission briefer. (n.b. Ths is my term. They don’t mention it by name in the movie.) This little faceted matte-black pod is the size of an orange with one flat side. Rest it on a surface, and when an authorized person long-touches the top, it spins open like a lotus flower. A lens rises up and emits a holographic video projection above it with mission information. The projection has a highly pixelated translucent appearance. The movie begins with the decontextualized briefing for the pre-Georgiou team, and ends with the final team standing around a table in Baraam, receiving a briefing for a mission that will take them to Turkana IV. (!)

A futuristic device emitting light rays and glowing elements, set against a blurred background.
A futuristic digital interface displaying the text 'EXECUTING ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL' with bright light beams in the background.
Close-up of a futuristic device with a glowing central display that reads 'ENCRYPTION VERIFIED', surrounded by hexagonal patterns.
Abstract image featuring a blue light beam radiating from a central point, creating a dynamic and futuristic atmosphere.
Futuristic holographic display showing a critical priority incoming message from control, with a starfield background.
Digital interface displaying a critical priority incoming message from control to alpha team leader, with a note indicating that voice print is authenticated and briefing has been initiated.
A digital interface displaying information about Philippa Georgiou, identified as the Emperor of the Terran Empire. The screen indicates priority clearance required and mentions her location in a parallel universe with a high criminal population. It also notes a mission critical re-engagement objective.
Map showing the Federation border with the text 'Federation Border Crossing Banned via Treaty of Ka'tann'.
Image of a digital display showing the current status of a character named Georgiou, with the identification 'Madame du Franc' and a highlighted location.

One excellent design aspect is that there’s no indication from the outside what it is or how to use it. Ordinarily of course we designers work hard to make sure use is clear to the novice user, but in this case obscurity is security. No rando off the street should be able to figure out how to open the top secret clearance container. This aspect might be even better if it looked and functioned like some other mundane object, so that said rando wouldn’t even suspect it was worth investigating. But that introduces other risks and complications, and for an object that is not quite plot-critical, would require too much screen time to explain.

Otherwise I have some minor questions about the device. Each of these can be dismissed as “well, it’s really high tech, you see”. Sophisticated tech is a plausible explanation, but that’s the unsatisfying “a wizard did it” answer that doesn’t help us with design lessons.

Shouldn’t it have strong multifactor authentication?

I suspect all briefings contain highly-sensitive information. And sure, we can give it the benefit of the doubt that mere contact provides a biometric signature “something she is.” We should see some indication that she provides one of the other two: Something she knows like a password or something she has like a combadge. (I’m not a security expert, but I believe holding the briefer itself might count as “something she has” but it’s a prohibitively weak authentication factor since it’s coupled to the content.)

Isn’t orientation a problem?

This one’s tiny, but how does the projection get oriented (yaw in this case, since pitch and roll are handled by the surface)? Sahar seems to fuss about its placement on the table, but the device looks the same from all angles, so I’m not sure that what he was doing was orientation. In the end scene, the projection is just of a person talking, so the orientation is not critical. It might be awkward for a projected person to be facing directly away from the listener, but not significantly hinder the information. But in the opening sequence, there is text and maps and lots of 2D information, which would be made significantly difficult to interpret if it was backwards or off-facing.

A futuristic device resembling a blooming flower, positioned on a circular base with subtle lights, set against a blurred background.
It seems silly to comp up pinpoint lights, but here we are.

Of course, it could have built-in tech that finds where the team is around it, and calculates the optimal display yaw. If we had half a second after the long-touch of tiny glowing bits around the base that demonstrated it finding them and thereby the optimal orientation, it would telegraph this feature. (See above.)

Is everyone supposed to be able to see it?

A vibrant bar scene featuring a variety of patrons interacting, with colorful lighting and art deco decor.
The team is watching the mission briefing in the lower right. As is anyone else at the bar, I guess.

As you can see in the wide-angle shot, the team is just watching the brief with the briefing agent in the nightclub of Baraam. It draws attention. Can’t anyone just glance that way, record it, and sell the information to the highest bidder in the underworld network? That can’t be secure. If it was just projecting into the team’s eyes, ears, or brains, that might be secure, but the film would need to change that wide-angle shot to indicate that. Projection beams or something. Somehow it should signal how this isn’t just broadcast for any eavesdropper to pick up.

What if the team has questions?

I’ve never seen this in a mission briefing in present-day spy thrillers, but there’s an opportunity here since we’re dealing with very advanced technology. If the briefer has a knowledge base, then the team should be able to ask questions of it. Clarifications or additional detail. If it was driven by something like a large language model, rather than a recording, then it could be interactive, and there could be a question and answer session at the end, and serve as a just-in-time reference during the mission, too. (c.f. related concepts in the real-time interplanetary chat post.)

Again, these are nit picks, as it hits the narrative beat just fine. It’s a prerecorded message that plays and tells them what they need to know. (And Jamie Lee Curtis!) Anything else would be gravy.

Next up: Phase pods

Fritzes 2026: Best Interfaces

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The Fritzes award honors the best interfaces in a full-length motion picture in the past year. Interfaces play a special role in our movie-going experience, and are a craft all their own that does not otherwise receive focused recognition.

Today we’ll be covering Best Interfaces. The movies nominated for Best Interfaces manage the extraordinary challenge of being believable and helping to paint a picture of the world of the story. They advance the state of the art in telling stories with speculative technology.

The winner of the Best Interfaces award for 2025 is Section 31.

As you’ll read below, my posts on the winner will be a series rather than a single post, so let me do one Also Check Out here. 

Bust first, also check out: Superman

Though I have some issues with the amount of fuigetry in most of the screens, and how Lex has to call out countermoves rather than have an assistant offer next most likely countermoves; the robots in the Fortress of Solitude and the crazy-cool gestural control of his spheres by Mr. Terrific make me think that interfaces and tech will not be an afterthought in DC’s new Gunn era. 

A futuristic scene featuring two characters in advanced helmets observing a holographic figure displayed on a device within an icy environment.
A character dressed as Superman lies on a futuristic platform surrounded by humanoid robots.
A humanoid robot dressed in a blue cape interacts with various futuristic controls and glowing crystals in a sci-fi laboratory.
A control room scene featuring a person operating multiple high-tech computer monitors displaying green radar-like graphics. The individual is wearing a headset and appears focused and engaged.
A woman wearing a headset is seated at a high-tech control station, monitoring multiple screens displaying aerial views of urban buildings with data overlays.
A high-tech control room featuring multiple computer screens displaying a heatmap visualization of two figures engaged in a physical altercation, with a person in a headset observing the data.
A futuristic hover vehicle flying over a dense cityscape, with passengers visible inside.
A person flying with a futuristic jetpack over a dense green forest, holding a digital interface display in front of them.
A digital display showing a split view of a hazardous underwater environment with glowing lava and debris, overlaid with red targeting graphics and depth measurements.
A retro-styled computer console displaying red text and data on a screen, with various buttons and controls in a dark environment.
A futuristic setting with multiple screens displaying data in the background. A humanoid figure in a suit stands in the background while a creature with textured skin and a fur-like coat interacts with a glowing object in the foreground. A stylized humanoid statue is seen on the left.
A person monitoring a high-tech screen displaying a cityscape with a superhero figure flying alongside a drone.
A high-tech monitor displaying a holographic image of two figures interacting, surrounded by digital interface elements and controls.

(James: reach out and I’ll send you a free copy of my book about assistants, it would have helped with that Luthor interface.)

The 2026 Best Interfaces Award goes to
Star Trek: Section 31

Maybe I was out of the loop, but I don’t recall hearing a lot of buzz about this movie at the time it came out. But when I finally caught it, I was impressed with the breadth, the art direction, and some interfaces of a sort I don’t think I’ve documented before. This year I’m going to honor the winner with an old-school breakdown, interface-by-interface. In this post we’ll start with a general overview, and then move to the Mission Briefer.

Note I try to only describe just enough so the interfaces can be understood, but since this is a cloak-and-dagger spy thriller, it’s still pretty intricate.

Banner displaying the text 'MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD' in a bold, stylized font, set against a cosmic background.

Plot overview

In the Mirror Universe of Star Trek, the mostly-good United Federation of Planets doesn’t exist. Instead it has a morally-inverse counterpart called the Terran Empire. Philippa Georgiou became ruler of this evil empire in part by defeating and enslaving the ambitious contender San. Once ascended, she exercised cruelty and ruthlessness until sci-fi shenanigans landed her in Prime Universe (the home universe of the shows), in 2257.

[Here I bypass a lot of stuff that happened in Discovery for the sake of brevity.]

A stylish woman with long blue nails and a glamorous outfit is posed at a bar, playfully blowing kisses with a serene expression while illuminated by soft lighting.

Eventually she takes up an alias as “Madame Veronique du Franc”, proprietor of the pleasure space station Baraam, outside Federation territory. Section 31—essentially the Federation’s black ops—sends a team to blackmail Georgiou to help them intercept a superweapon, which happens to be en route to Baraam in the hands of a shady middleman named Dada Noe.

A serious-looking man with a short beard and styled hair, wearing a dark, textured jacket, staring intently.
A man in a futuristic armored suit stands confidently inside a high-tech control room, featuring various glowing screens and controls in the background.
A female character with a bald head, wearing a sparkly silver dress, seated in a futuristic setting with illuminated control panels in the background.
A man in a stylish patterned suit stands in a futuristic setting, with blue and red lighting in the background.
A woman with a blue bob hairstyle and bold makeup, looking contemplatively to the side with dramatic lighting in the background.
Close-up of an alien creature with a large head and expressive eyes, set against a futuristic, colorful background.
A character with pointed ears and blonde hair wearing a red jacket and multiple necklaces stands in a futuristic, dimly lit setting with glowing controls and panels in the background.

The team consists of their superstrong “augment” leader Alok Sahar, a mech-suit guy named Zeph, a seductress named Melle, a shape-shifting genius called Quasi, a buttoned-up Federation overseer named Garrett, and Fuzz, a microscopic Nanokin who pilots a teeny tiny spaceship and most often inhabits a black market Vulcan-looking android body.

Using some technologies called Phase Pods, Georgiou successfully separates the superweapon from Noe only to have it intercepted by a masked person also wearing a phase pod. Masked person kills Melle and escapes with the superweapon, but on the way Georgiou learns it is the Godsend, a quadrant-vaporizing weapon she had commissioned when she was Terran Emperor.

A woman in a dark purple outfit leans forward with an intense expression, looking at a decorative object in front of her.

Georgiou convinces Sahar to form a partnership to recapture the weapon. They beam to his spaceship above a desolate planet where they interrogate Noe. They learn Noe is from the Mirror Universe, where he administered a facility that housed the Godsend. He hatched a plan to sell it and with the money escape to Prime Universe to retire in peace. His portal is an unknown but routinely opening rift between worlds. He tells them he is scheduled to meet his anonymous buyer when the rift next appears in four hours. He expects that if he does not deliver the weapon to his buyer—and the Terran Empire learns that the Godsend is gone—they will trace it to the rift, surge through, and conquer Prime. At that moment a massive explosion rips through the ship. The computer automatically beams the crew to the surface, but Noe dies in fiery debris. (Narratively convenient, but consider that the ship’s computer knew enough to beam our protagonists to safe, non-fiery-debris places, raising the possibility that it chose to murder Noe.)

Sahar says the explosion was sabotage by someone working with the still-unknown Godsend thief. One of them is a mole! Accusations fly, but Garrett focuses them on finding a derelict garbage scow she knows about, as a means to continue their mission. The team splits. Georgiou, Quasi, and Fuzz search for the scow. Sahar, Garette, and Zeph work to repair an antenna in an old Section 31 safehouse so they can warn the Federation of the impending danger.

Team Scow repairs the ship. We see Fuzz behaving a little strangely.

A tall structure emitting a powerful beam of orange light into the night sky, surrounded by trees and a dark landscape.

Meanwhile Zeph skips out on Team Antenna. While Sahar and Garrett search for him, the antenna gets activated, some message sent, and then the antenna is destroyed. The whole team rejoins and begins a search for Zeph. They find him dead. When they recover the video from his mech suit, they see something was controlling his suit and made him kill himself. Georgiou reasons that the mole must be Fuzz, who left his Vulcanbot on autopilot while he flew to Zeph to hook in and control him to commit the crimes and fly back to his bot. Thusly busted, Fuzz takes remote control of Zeph’s suit (grossly with Zeph’s corpse still in it) and the two try to escape on a float. The rest of the crew pursues in a second float, and there’s a vehicle combat sequence. Fuzz tells Georgiou that he’s been working with San. Then San beams Fuzz up to his ship. San speeds toward the rift to tell the Empire everything and begin the invasion. The remaining team gets the scow running and gives chase.

They catch up near the rift and the scow tries to delay its entry into the rift via tractor beam. Sahar and Georgiou beam to San’s ship to learn that San has initiated the Godsend. San fights Georgiou. Sahar fights Vulcanbot while Fuzz escapes to watch from a safe distance. On board the scow, Garrett forges a makeshift weapon in the ship’s hold and they release it at San’s ship. It lands and explodes, giving the heroes the upper hand in their respective fights. Georgiou grabs and activates the Godsend via biometric signature. Quasi manages to beam her and Sahar back to the scow just in time, leaving San, Fuzz, Vulcanbot, and the Godsend to be destroyed in the explosion as it passes back to the Mirror Universe and seal the rift forever. (And, presumably, something about the confluence of energies neuters the Godsend so it doesn’t go on to kill quadrillions in the quadrant where the rift happened to be, because that would be multiple, multiple genocides and sully whatever victory this is.)

Group of three people toasting with drinks in a stylish, futuristic setting.

The movie ends with the team back on the Baraam. They meet Wisp, Fuzz’ widow, piloting a second bootleg Vulcanbot. They receive a mission briefing that has them warping the Baraam (surprise, it’s also a spaceship) towards Turkana IV.

A futuristic spaceship with swirling metallic structures, set against a dark starry background in outer space.

Whew.

Star Trek: Section 31 is primarily set in the 24th-century “Lost Era” between 2324–2326. This places it roughly 66 years after Discovery (2258) and about 40 years before The Next Generation. For continuity, the designers have to find some middle ground between the glowing, 3D, multiplanar translucency of Disco and the flat, 2D, highly-graphic, vibrant oranges-and-blues palette of LCARS. I think they did a really nice job. We see circular, glowing interfaces. We see hints of the fully realized LCARS to come.

A handheld device displaying a character's image with a bloodied face and the text 'MATCH DETECTED' highlighted on the screen.
A person holding a futuristic device displaying a face on the screen, with various data and interface elements visible around the display.
A hand holding a futuristic device displaying a digital map with topographical lines and a central red dot.

There’s also a clear delineation between Federation/Section 31 interfaces, the mining colony interfaces, the few Terran Empire interfaces we see, and those of the foreign-language garbage scow.

A person in a flowing gown stands before a large, intricately designed circular pedestal featuring a golden dragon sculpture, surrounded by a dimly lit, atmospheric environment with glowing elements and red accents.
A close-up of a futuristic control panel displaying various digital readouts and a 3D model of a spacecraft, with a hand interacting with the touchscreen.
Futuristic cockpit interface displaying 'Conveyance Autopilot Engaged' with various control elements and glowing indicators.

San’s ship interior, by the way, is high-contrast red-on-black, and very pointy, making me wonder if the production designers have read my post on the Design of Evil, because it is practically an archetype of those patterns.

A futuristic red spaceship with illuminated edges flying near a large planet, resembling Mars, in a starry space backdrop.
Interior view of a futuristic setting with dramatic lighting, featuring sleek architectural lines and illuminated surfaces.
Two figures in futuristic attire stand in a high-tech environment filled with red and blue LED lights and streaks. Sparks are flying as they navigate the space, suggesting an action scene.

Anyway, now that we have a grasp on the plot, next let’s look more closely at those interfaces.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9603060/Currently streaming on:

Next up: The mission briefer

Dr. Strange’s augmented reality surgical assistant

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We’re actually done with all of the artifacts from Doctor Strange. But there’s one last kind-of interface that’s worth talking about, and that’s when Strange assists with surgery on his own body.

After being shot with a soul-arrow by the zealot, Strange is in bad shape. He needs medical attention. He recovers his sling ring and creates a portal to the emergency room where he once worked. Stumbling with the pain, he manages to find Dr. Palmer and tell her he has a cardiac tamponade. They head to the operating theater and get Strange on the table.

DoctorStrange_AR_ER_assistant-02.png

When Strange passes out, his “spirit” is ejected from his body as an astral projection. Once he realizes what’s happened, he gathers his wits and turns to observe the procedure.

DoctorStrange_AR_ER_assistant-05.png

When Dr. Palmer approaches his body with a pericardiocentesis needle, Strange manifests so she can sense him and recommends that she aim “just a little higher.” At first she is understandably scared, but once he explains what’s happening, she gets back to business, and he acts as a virtual coach.

DoctorStrange_AR_ER_assistant-08.png

In this role he points at the place she should insert the needle, and illuminates the chest cavity from within so she can kind of see the organ she’s targeting and the surrounding tissue. She asks him, “What were you stabbed with?” and he must confess, “I don’t know.”

DoctorStrange_AR_ER_assistant-11.png

Things go off the rails when the zealot who stabbed him shows up also as an astral projection and begins to fight Strange, but that’s where we can leave off the narrative and focus on everything up to this point as an interface.

Imagine with me, if you will, that this is not magic, but a kind of augmented reality available to the doctor. Strange is an unusual character in that he is both one of the world’s great surgeons and the patient in the scene, so let’s tease apart each.

An augmented reality coach

Realize that Dr. Palmer is getting assistance from one of the world’s greatest surgeons, rendered as a volumetric projection (“hologram” in vernacular). She can talk to him as if he was there to get his advice, and, I presume, even dismiss him if she believes he was wrong. Wouldn’t doctors working in new domains relish the opportunity to get advice from experts until they they have built their own mastery?

Two notes to extend this idea.

In the spirit of evidence-based medicine and big idea, we must admit that it would be better to have diagnoses and advice based on the entirety of the medical record and current, ethical best practices, not just one individual expert. But if an individual doctor prefers to have that information delivered through an avatar of a favored mentor, why not?

The second note to anyone thinking of this as a real world model for an AR assistant: I would expect a fully realized solution to include augmentations other than just a human, of course, such as ideal angles for incisions, depth meters, and life signs.

A (crude) body visualization

One of the challenges surgeons have when working with internal damage is that the body is largely opaque. They have to use visualization tools like radiographs and (very) educated guesses to diagnose and treat what’s going on inside these fleshy boxes of ours. How awesome that the AR coach can help illuminate (in both senses) the body to help Dr. Palmer perform the procedure correctly?

DoctorStrange_AR_ER_assistant-13.png

Admittedly, what we see in Doctor Strange is a crude version. This same x-ray vision appeared with more clarity and higher resolution in two other films, as cited in the Medical chapter of Make It So. In Lost in Space, the medical table projects a real-time volumetric scan of the organs inside Judy’s body into the eyes of the observers.

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In Chrysalis, Dr. Bruger sees a volumetric display of the patient on which she is teleoperating.

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But despite its low-resolution, I wanted to draw it out as another awesome and somewhat subtle part of the way this AR assistant helps the doctor.

A queryable patient avatar

Lastly, consider that Dr. Palmer is able to ask her patient what happened to him. Of course in the real world passed out patients aren’t able to answer questions, but of course understanding the events that led to a crisis are important. I can imagine several sci-fi ways that this information might be retrievable from the world.

  • Trace evidence on the patient’s body: High-resolution sensors throughout the operating theater could have automatically run forensic analysis on the patient the moment they entered the room to determine type of wound and likely causes, such as  microscopic detection of soot in entrance wounds.
  • Environmental sensors: If the accident happened in a place with sensors that are queryable, then the assistant could look at video footage, or listen in to microphones in the environment to help piece together what happened. Of course the notion of a queryable technological panoptican has massive privacy issues which cannot be overlooked, but if the information is available to medical professionals, it would be tragic to ignore it in genuine crises.
  • Human witnesses can provide informative narratives. Witness and first responders may be on record already. But in looking at the environmental sensors, the assistant might be able to instantly reach out to those who have not. Imagine one of these witness, shaken by the event he saw, on a commute home. His phone buzzes and it is the assistant saying, “Hello, Mr. Mackinnon. Records indicate that you were witness to a violent crime today, and your account of the event is needed for the victim, who is currently in surgery. Can you take a moment to answer some questions?”
  • Patient preferences should be automatically exposed and incorporated via the assistant as well. If the patient was a Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, then their desire not to have a blood transfusion should be raised in whatever form the assistant takes.

An surgical assistant could automatically query all of these sources to make a hypothesis of what happened and advise the procedure. This could be available doctor for the asking, volunteered by the assistant at a lull in more critical action, or offered by the assistant as a preventative. I suspect it’s more likely the doctor would ask the assistant than the patient, e.g. “OK, ERbot, what happened to this guy?” but if the doctor prefers, she should be able ask in the second person, as Dr. Palmer does in the scene, and the system should reply appropriately.

Sure, in this context, it’s magic, but since we can imagine how it could be done with technology, this scene gives us a very dense set of inspirational ideas for the future of surgical assistants.

The answer does not program

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LogansRun224

Logan’s life is changed when he surrenders an ankh found on a particular runner. Instead being asked to identify, the central computer merely stays quiet a long while as it scans the objects. Then its lights shut off, and Logan has a discussion with the computer he has never had before.

The computer asks him to “approach and identify.” The computer gives him, by name, explicit instructions to sit facing the screen. Lights below the seat illuminate. He identifies in this chair by positioning his lifeclock in a recess in the chair’s arm, and a light above him illuminates. Then a conversation ensues between Logan and the computer.

LogansRun113

The computer communicates through a combination of voice and screen, on which it shows blue text and occasional illustrative shapes. The computer’s voice is emotionless and soothing. For the most part it speaks in complete sentences. In contrast, Logan’s responses are stilted and constrained, saying “negative” instead of “no,” and prefacing all questions with the word, “Question,” as in, “Question: What is it?”

On the one hand it’s linguistically sophisticated

Speech recognition and generation would not have a commercially released product for four years after the release of Logan’s Run, but there is an odd inconsistency here even for those unfamiliar with the actual constraints of the technology. The computer is sophisticated enough to generate speech with demonstrative pronouns, referring to the picture of the ankh as “this object” and the label as “that is the name of the object.” It can even communicate with pragmatic meaning. When Logan says,

“Question: Nobody reached renewal,”

…and receives nothing but silence, the computer doesn’t object to the fact that his question is not a question. It infers the most reasonable interpretation, as we see when Logan is cut off during his following objection by the computer’s saying,…

“The question has been answered.”

Despite these linguistic sophistications, it cannot parse anything but the most awkwardly structured inputs? Sadly, this is just an introduction to the silliness that is this interface.

Logan undergoes procedure “033-03,” in which his lifeclock is artificially set to blinking. He is then instructed to become a runner himself and discover where “sanctuary” is. After his adventure in the outside performing the assignment he was forced to accept, he is brought in as a prisoner. The computer traps him in a ring of bars demanding to know the location of sanctuary. Logan reports (correctly) that Santuary doesn’t exist.

LogansRun206
LogansRun205
hologram

On the other hand, it explodes

This freaks the computer out. Seriously. Now, the crazy thing is that the computer actually understands Logan’s answer, because it comments on it. It says, “Unacceptable. The answer does not program [sic].” That means that it’s not a data-type error, as if it got the wrong kind of input. No, the thing heard what Logan was saying. It’s just unsatisfied, and the programmer decided that the best response to dissatisfaction was to engage the heretofore unused red and green pixels in the display, randomly delete letters from the text—and explode. That’s right. He decided that in addition to the Dissatisfaction() subroutine calling the FreakOut(Seriously) subroutine, the FreakOut(Seriously) subroutine in its turn calls Explode(Yourself), Release(The Prisoner), and the WhileYoureAtItRuinAllStructuralIntegrityoftheSurroundingArcitecture() subroutines.

LogansRun221

Frankly, if this is the kind of coding that this entire society was built upon, this whole social collapse thing was less deep social commentary and really just a matter of technical debt.

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Technical. Debt.

The plastic educator

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Dr. Morbius introduces the Krell “plastic educator,” saying, ““As far as I can make out, they used it to condition and test their young, in much the same way as we once employed finger painting among our kindergarten children.””

Morbius grasps the educator’s head mount.

The device is a station at which the learner sits. There is a large dashboard before him, in turn before a space enclosed in a tetrahedral encasement of plastic. To his right is a large column made of plastic with red and yellow graduations running up the side. Inside the column is a strange shape like a lathed accordion, terminating in a pulsing ring that indicates a level against the graduations. An arced panel hangs from the ceiling with other printed graduations with lines of light above and below. Blue neon squiggles blink randomly along the walls.

Morbius demonstrates proper placement of the educator interface.

To activate the station, the learner grasps a pair of curved metal arms, which are connected at a hinged base and tipped with crystal orbs. He leans forward, rests his forehead on a third arm, and pulls the pair of arms to rest on his temples. He turns a pair of dials on the dashboard before him, and the crystal orbs on all three arms glow, indicating that the headset is operational.

Morbius points to the intelligence indicator.

Adams and Doc try to guage their own IQs.

The device’’s immediate result is that the accordion shape inside the column rises such that the lit ring indicates the intelligence of the user. (To Adams’ and Doc’’s dismay, their readings are much lower than Morbius’.)

With the press of a lever Morbius manifests a thought visually.

The primary function of the device is for the user to make a thought of theirs manifest in the tetrahedral space. The user concentrates on the thing, and then pulls a lever at the base of the headset. A red ring at the base of the headset illuminates, and a material appears above a pedestal at the base of the tetrahedron. By concentrating, the user shapes this material into the desired thing. Morbius shapes it into an image of Alta. The image is a scaled, translucent, volumetric display of Alta, which moves and smiles just as she would.

The projection ceases immediately when the mechanism is removed.

To stop using the device and shut down the projection, the learner simply lifts the lever and removes the headset from contact, and the orbs, the red ring, and the volumetric projection all fade within moments.

Finished with his demonstration, Morbius turns the educator off.

Turning the dashboard off requires a user to turn two free-spinning dials that sit to each side of the headset inwards. The lights of the dashboard fade.