Star Trek: Section 31 – Nanokin interfaces

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 interfaces used by Fuzz. Fuzz is a Nanokin, a species of microscopic, squidlike beings with impressive, tiny spaceships. To engage with his teammates in the human-scale world, he does so by flying into a black-market android built to look like a Vulcan, and controlling it from within. In the film they call both the android and the Nanokin “Fuzz”, but that would get confusing in writing, so I’ll call the android the Vulcanbot. I want to believe that the character concept began as a tardigrade or amoeba, but it got more octopus-like over development. From its tiny spaceship, it can get through tiny holes and cracks in machinery or body modifications, hook in, and cause plot-critical mischief. When the camera is at the nano-scale, the film uses tilt-shift and floating-particle techniques to emphasize the smallness of Fuzz. That means that only a small…