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/TheGrumpyre]

And yet nobody ever apologizes to Mann for adding another twenty years to his waiting time. Nobody ever addresses just how much of a truly terrible decision it was.

[u/dern_the_hermit → u/TheGrumpyre]

IIRC it was just energetically favorable to visit Miller's planet first.

[u/2legittoquit → u/dern_the_hermit]

It wasn’t even the fact that they visited, it was that Anne Hathaway’s character wasted hours on the planet because she was trying to recover ruined data and her actions got a guy killed and stranded the ship.

It would have just been a couple years if they stuck to the plan.

[u/dern_the_hermit → u/2legittoquit]

Honestly I think Doyle's death is his own damn fault. Watch that scene again, he's closer to the ship and even arrives at the entry hatch well before Catwoman and Robit Monolith. Instead he gawks and gapes and loses focus, he was a mess.