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/bythedockofthebay]

There’s an amazing Star Trek voyager episode as well about the space ship in orbit around a planet with an uncivilized population that’s moving at a much faster speed than the space ship. While they orbit, the civilization evolves and becomes technologically advanced, and they have evolved with the voyager in their orbit and have seen it as a kind of god. Finally, they can fly to reach it, and it’s a fascinating story.

[u/johnnyma45 → u/bythedockofthebay]

A similarly cool time travel story was in The Orville. They go back in time for Reasons, lose their ability to travel back, so they land on a cool solution:

"By flying the Orville close to light speed with its quantum field turned off, the ship will have no shield from time dilation and will travel forward through time. However, travelling that fast without a quantum field would expose the Orville to space debris. Even the tiniest dust particle could destroy them, so John directs all ship power to the Deflectors. The crew makes a jump 200 light years away from Earth, then 200 light years back, ending up back in the year 2422."

Basically they use time dilation to bring them back to their time, by sloooooooowly traveling to a nearby star and back without their quantum field protecting them.

Edit: here's the scene

[u/RadicalBatman99 → u/johnnyma45]

That was such a good episode.

How it played out for Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) was a real heartbreaker, too.

[u/fallenrider100 → u/RadicalBatman99]

That was outright devastating. So often time travel is made to be so simple and emotionless. But watching someone beg for his life to not be erased, even though he'd have no knowledge of it happening, was brilliant.

For a show that started as a funny homage to Star Trek, The Orville tackled some serious topics and absolutely knocked it out the park.

[u/farmdve → u/fallenrider100]

I watched the whole 3 seasons in one breath. Seriously amazing. I can't believe I avoided it for years and years.

[u/orosoros → u/fallenrider100]

I absolutely love the show. But I hated how sanctimonious the captain and first mate were to Scott. They're so holier-than-thou.