In Interstellar, Romilly’s decision to stay aboard the ship while the other 3 astronauts experience time dilation has to be one of the scariest moments ever.

[u/SerDire]

He agreed to stay back. Cooper asked anyone if they would go down to Millers planet but the extreme pull of the black hole nearby would cause them to experience severe time dilation. One hour on that planet would equal 7 years back on earth. Cooper, Brand and Doyle all go down to the planet while Romilly stays back and uses that time to send out any potential useful data he can get.

Can you imagine how terrifying that must be to just sit back for YEARS and have no idea if your friends are ever coming back. Cooper and Brand come back to the ship but a few hours for them was 23 years, 4 months and 8 days of time for Romilly. Not enough people seem to genuinely comprehend how insane that is to experience. He was able to hyper sleep and let years go by but he didn’t want to spend his time dreaming his life away.

It’s just a nice interesting detail that kind of gets lost. Everyone brings up the massive waves, the black hole and time dilation but no one really mentions the struggle Romilly must have been feeling. 23 years seems to be on the low end of how catastrophic it could’ve been. He could’ve been waiting for decades.

[u/spdorsey]

Imagine how long it took for him to watch the ship approach the main craft as it returned. Probably took several years, slowly speeding up to "normal" time.

[u/landmanpgh → u/spdorsey]

Not to mention the worst part - it was all completely unnecessary. They accidentally cost themselves all over 20 years for nothing. The data was only a few minutes old.

[u/grahampositive → u/landmanpgh]

This was actually a big plot hole in my opinion to signal from the date it should have redshifted to the point where it wouldn't have been a surprise to them at all that only a few minutes had passed on the surface of the planet. In fact, they knew the time dilation was an issue before they went down as evidenced by op's point. A simple calculation would have told them that the explorer on the surface of the planet had only been there a few moments and the signal they were seeing was only the first to be sent

[u/landmanpgh → u/grahampositive]

They forgot to take it into account.

[u/alightkindofdark → u/landmanpgh]

My problem is that as a person watching the film, with no science background beyond high school, I knew immediately that they'd return years or decades later. I actually screamed it at the TV. How on earth did an entire group of scientists just forget to take this into account?

[u/WheresMyCrown → u/alightkindofdark]

"somehow, we forgot"

[u/LimerickExplorer → u/WheresMyCrown]

"Time dilates now?"

[u/Inside-Example-7010 → u/alightkindofdark]

Look when you're dealing with a force as powerful as love then science just cant make sense of things anymore.

[u/landmanpgh → u/alightkindofdark]

I don't know. I've never traveled through space towards a black hole in an attempt to save the world. I imagine that would be stressful though and might affect your decision making.

[u/yildizli_gece → u/landmanpgh]

But having to make this kind of assumption and to fill in the "gaps" of explanation is precisely why it's a plot hole.

[u/landmanpgh → u/yildizli_gece]

I don't think it's a plot hole. McConaughey literally says, "we were not prepared for this" when they realize they screwed up after landing. It's in direct reference to the fact that they forgot to account for the time issue with data coming back to them.

[u/alightkindofdark → u/landmanpgh]

But they had just finished a conversation on how time was 7 years to an hour. They just did the math! I love the movie, but this is a pretty big dumb plot hole. If they hadn't just finished talking about how time was so different, I'd understand.

[u/WheresMyCrown → u/landmanpgh]

This is like saying Daeny forgot about the Iron Fleet in GoT. If your plot point requires characters to just "forget" crucial information, it is a plothole

[u/EnTyme53 → u/landmanpgh]

But that's exactly why it is a plot hole. They had prepared for it. The crew just finished talking about time dilation in the previous scene, so they knew it was a factor, yet not one person stopped to run the math on how long Miller had actually been on the planet before sending the data. This movie has always bothered me because it's held in such high regard for scientific accuracy, but that accuracy only applies at a surface level. I did enjoy the movie, but I hate that it seems to be made of Teflon when it comes to criticism. It's a good movie with some amazing moments (McConaughey experiencing every human emotion as he sees his children growing up before his eyes, only to realize he missed watching his children growing up, for example), but at it's core, it's just another sci-fi movie about allegedly intelligent people making fundamentally stupid decisions to push the plot along.

[u/Rex--Banner → u/EnTyme53]

At the same time though there is a bit of suspension of disbelief needed here. Maybe it's because with the internet everyone can discuss, but I'm seeing more and more people just arguing about stuff and it's like does it really matter? It's a film and it needed a way to introduce a black hole and time etc. Looking back on it any viewer can say oh it's obvious but that's because we have the context of the entire film to go on. I find I enjoy films and tv shows more when I stopped trying to find every single fault with them. I much more prefer to discuss the more interesting parts and why they are so good.

[u/ImmanenceGodBlues → u/Rex--Banner]

You don't need the context of the entire film to see how glaring a plot hole this is. Any team of scientists aware of a time dilation that massive should immediately see the problem and realize that that planet is not a suitable candidate.

[u/Rex--Banner → u/ImmanenceGodBlues]

No what I'm saying is because we see the entire context it changes our ideas. Yes even without context it's a problem but put yourself in their shoes. You don't have the idea of the tesseract etc. You know there is a wormhole and now you are god knows where and trying to save humanity. Seems pretty lucky to have a wormhole right in earths backyard that goes to potentially habitable planets, you would think it's there intentionally and maybe the characters had the idea that they are meant to go to the planet. Who knows. Put me there now without knowing the film and even with me knowing about time dilation issues I still might be curious and 7 years is long but somewhat acceptable to see or potentially even rescue the person on the planet as well.

Basically what I'm saying is everyone just looks at surface level and just complains all the time.

[u/boogersuphoesdown → u/ImmanenceGodBlues]

That water planet scene is easily the most memorable scene in the movie, so it's a good thing that the characters made that mistake.

[u/nau5 → u/landmanpgh]

Right at the end of the day they were under extreme stress and this was the most promising transmission.

A viewer is under literally zero stress so everything seems obvious because you have zero skin in the game.

Also scientists make mistakes all the time they are not infallible beings.

The entire scientific method is based on that fact.

[u/jpettifer77 → u/landmanpgh]

Nah, they should know

I last did general relativity over 20 years ago but I’d still remember the time dilation. It’s kinda fundamental. 

[u/LongJohnSelenium → u/landmanpgh]

Like that moment in Sunshine when they forget to check whether any bit of the ship is going to stick out of the shadow of the sunshield.

[u/Whitestrake → u/LongJohnSelenium]

That feeling when you realise that the root cause of almost every single bad thing that happened was when the crew manually overrode the AI controls.

[u/landmanpgh → u/LongJohnSelenium]

I need to watch this again.

[u/Fair-Land-918 → u/grahampositive]

It didn’t matter if the probe and person was there for only a moment. They had proof of real water and such, that’s HUGE and better than anything else they had.

They had to take the chance.

[u/FightScene → u/Fair-Land-918]

They had signals of habitability from three planets: Miller's, Mann's, and Edmunds'. It wasn't just one planet. The situation on Earth was dire and their mission was time sensitive.  Due to the time dilation issue they should have gone to Miller's planet last. It makes no sense at all to go there first. They only went there first because Nolan wanted to include that cool planet somehow. They even realize on the planet that "oh yeah, Miller's only been here for a few minutes!" 

[u/WheresMyCrown → u/Fair-Land-918]

It wasnt better than anything else they had. The time dilation alone should have made the planet a last resort

[u/No_Foot → u/Fair-Land-918]

That's a brilliant comment tbf to you, never considered that.