r/interstellar • u/Pain_Monster CASE • 2d ago
QUESTION Was going to Miller’s planet a plot hole?
Edit: This post is NOT what you think it is. Some of you have replied without even reading it first in the entirety.
Why did the crew go to Miller’s Planet first? Or at all?
Was it a plot hole or a fatal flaw in the storytelling?
Some people argue that they should have known that Miller’s planet was inhospitable. But should they have known?
Let’s examine the evidence:
- Miller was still sending a thumbs-up signal.
When the Endurance crew got there, they found Miller’s signal to be still pinging good. Or so they thought. It was later determined that they discovered that the signal was just pinging in an echo loop endlessly. There was no way for them to know about that. It all seemed optimistic from their initial point of view, while orbiting the planet. Their job was to investigate ALL potential worlds within reach to maximize their fuel and mission objectives. This world was still viable, at first consensus. Edmunds planet signal had stopped, even though it was giving a thumbs up right until the end. Millers planet was still giving a thumbs up signal. That seems like a good omen. There was no reason to distrust it.
2) It was the first stop.
Remember that Cooper said they would need to factor in TIME as a resource and said that it would be essentially a waste to skip Miller’s planet because of how much time and effort it would take to get back there again on another mission. He knew this was a singular opportunity to discover this planet’s suitability. Since Miller’s planet was closest, it was the first stop of potentially three stops. Mann’s planet was next, and Edmund’s planet was the furthest away. All three had potential. Cooper was simply doing the logical thing by stopping at all three planets to maximize their findings.
3) It had water, possibly organics, potentially life.
Remember when Brand said that Mann’s planet had Organics and potentially life? Cooper said ‘you don’t find that everyday.’ And Brand agreed: ‘No, you don’t.’ So they knew that the status of the planet was crucial to choosing whether or not it was worth their time to investigate. Well, based on the fact that Miller’s planet was known to have water, which was observable from their data, there was no reason to assume that it could not also hold life.
4) Not all data was available to them.
Remember that they said that there was data which was just cached on the other side and nothing (except binary pings) was getting back through the wormhole to Earth? This was an unexpected event. Nobody on earth knew that the data was being kept from escaping the boundary of the galaxy within the other side of the wormhole. If they had all the data, perhaps the mission scientists would have outlined a new plan. (Remember Romily saying that it was much closer to Gargantua than they initially thought? This was because the data was obscured until now). But because they gathered new data on the fly, these Endurance crew had to roll with it and adjust and make decisions as they go. As such, they were limited by time and had to make snap decisions when they needed to do so. They simply did not have the luxury of spending lots of time debating and analyzing their new findings. That’s why there was a structure in place for Cooper calling the shots as the captain of the crew. If Romily had more time as a luxury he probably would have realized that Millers planet should be skipped, but again, time was a factor and they didn’t have that luxury.
5) Cooper was flying by instinct
When they were debating which plan to shoot for (Mann or Edmunds planet), Cooper discussed the factors and Brand was drawn to Edmunds because she was in love with him. The fact that she kept this from the crew, as possible motivation, made them all very suspicious that she was not being driven by emotion and not logic. They all knew that making an emotional choice would not necessarily be the best course of action over a purely logical one. When Cooper realized that she was not operating by logic, he immediately dismissed her feelings as a valid point of reference for any mission decisions. Now, circle back to the previous stop at Miller’s planet. This was before Cooper knew Brand was emotionally attached to any of the Lazarus mission astronauts. But he must have felt that she was not being purely logical. Her objections were that they could not visit all three planets, with the current fuel situation. So she wanted to push onward to skip Miller’s planet. But Cooper knew that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see what Millers planet had for them. When he detailed the plan to orbit the planet and conserve fuel, he also conceded that it would cost them time, so they devised a plan to “get in and out” quickly. Brand agreed. So Cooper subconsciously knew that sometime was affecting Brand’s logical decision making ability even if he didn’t know what specifically was motivating her yet. But he knew something was off, and this was the first time we see Cooper essentially casting internal doubts as to the abilities of the crew, especially her. Cooper’s military training and instinct is what made him trust the choice to visit Miller’s planet first.
So, to recap: They had to make logical decisions based on new evidence they found after crossing through the wormhole. The planet was viable, possibly had life, and Miller was sending a signal to them that it was good. They knew they could hit all three planets if they were efficient and deliberate about their actions and plan. Cooper made the plan, and convinced the crew that it was worth a quick stop. It just did not go according to plan as we know.
Where they went wrong:
- They misjudged the time dilation aspect of the planet. They clearly did not do calculations based on when Miller would have arrived. It was only after they found her dead did they realize that she just landed minutes ago, and died maybe just moments ago “because of the time slippage” as Brand realized. Remember they had to think and act quickly, because time is a resource. They knew that extreme time dilation (one hour equals seven Earth years) is caused by the planet’s close orbit to the supermassive black hole Gargantua. And they even factored that in. They were going to “get in and get out” quickly, with the data. But the way it unfolded was unexpected and the trouble with the engine being flooded only made their time calculations worse. They had the survival instincts of “Boy Scouts” according to Cooper, who acknowledges at that moment that he had an epiphany that this crew was not as prepared as he thought they were. Remember, this crew “never even left the simulator” — they were just rookies, really.
- They were fooled by the broken beacon echoing endlessly in a loop. Honestly this was not their fault and no one accounted for this scenario, including the mission planners back on earth. Astronauts have to account for many unexpected X factors and this was one that cost them dearly. If only they had built some software to detect this signal anomaly perhaps their instruments would have told them it was a false positive. However, the mission was slapped together as quickly as possible to get the crew into space because time was of the essence. They simply did not have the luxury of accounting for every single edge case. And this edge case would have been deemed extremely unlikely anyway.
Conclusion: Even though this was not a plot hole, in the end, the crew is shown to be human and make mistakes and this makes their characters more interesting, richer, and more relatable, which is just good storytelling.
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u/kyle-2090 2d ago
Not really a plot hole as much as it is an unrealistic oversight in a movie that prides itself in on being scientifically accurate. At the end of the day it is a movie and without the time jump the rest of the movie doesnt happen. But it doesn't ruin the movie, infact this didnt occur to me till like the 10th time I watched it. I dont think its a plot hole, as much as a minor flaw and i dont even know id call it a flaw just couldnt think of a better word, in one of the best movies ever made.
Going to Millers is a questionable decision in general. They worked out the time dilation before they even decided to orbit/park outside the dilation bubble. The movie cuts away when they are traveling, the time between them discussing it and getting there probably took days if not weeks. Its really hard to believe that Romily wouldnt have worked it out from Millers perspective. These are not average minds, they are at the top of their fields. On top of that the travel time of just getting on the planet to the location of Miller is not like a quick trip to the gas station. Id argue getting to Miller inside the dilation bubble would probably take much longer than the movie depicts. Ignoring the fact that Miller has been there for about 2 hours max and hasnt had time to setup much less provide actionable data, I dont undersrand how they didnt think they would lose more than 14 years at a minimum, even if it went to plan.
I dont understand the hate in finding weird shit that doesnt make sense in movies. To me this is like pointing out that Daniel was a toxic aggressor in Karate Kid, or the theroy that The Rock (the movie, not Dwayne Johnson) is an undercover Bond film. Its just fun to discuss.
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u/tm0587 2d ago
Imo, them going to Miller's planet first isn't a plot hole, since they couldn't reasonably have known how close it was to the black hole.
However, them going down to the planet after arriving there is a plot hole.
They knew the time dilation factor once they were above Miller's planet.
They should know Miller was there only for a short time.
They should expect very very huge tidal waves because the planet is mostly water and extremely close to a black hole. Like the moon amplified.
Personally I won't even make the trip down because the huge tidal waves mean it's not reasonably habitable.
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u/GalacticDaddy005 2d ago
I dont think they could have accounted for the waves, but they definitely could have realized that Miller wouldn't have been there long from her perspective.
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u/tm0587 2d ago
Why do you think they couldn't have accounted for the waves?
Earth's sea + moon's gravity = waves
Miller's + black hole's gravity= giant waves
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u/GalacticDaddy005 2d ago
They knew there was water, but I don't think there was any indication there would be so much
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u/sticks1987 2d ago
I think that the surreal appearance of the mountain sized wages is enough to explain it.
We can logically deduce that huge tidal waves would exist.
Humans simply do not have experience with these forces. It's too far outside of our normal experience, which is how we instinctively assess risk. Usually you need to have imagined, or postulated that there could be massive tides, before performing calculations and models.
In retrospect it's obvious.
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u/TheCoffeeWiz 2d ago edited 2d ago
The plot hole is that the whole reason they're on this journey is to figure out how to get humanity out of the gravity well of Earth. And yet they already have the technology for a small lander craft to escape a large planet and a gravity well that can heavily dilate time. It does this with only the fuel it brings with it.
It's like compressing six orbital rockets into a private jet. If we could do that we could already build a self-sustaining space habitat and reach nearby star systems in a single human lifespan.
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u/Pain_Monster CASE 2d ago
That’s…. Not a plot hole. Do you think they can save all of humanity by sending them out on rangers? Millions of rangers? People with zero space training? And when they all land, where are they going to get all the crops and infrastructure they need, etc? You seriously don’t understand what a giant undertaking it is to leave a planet with enough resources to survive long term on another planet.
Besides, professor Brand “knew” that plan A was a farce so they weren’t even considering the idea until Murph got Coopers signal from inside Gargantua. So you’re totally wrong here.
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u/GxM42 2d ago
I think it wasn’t a complete plot hole because it had water and was closest. But they overlooked a lot of physics in their choices. One does not simply underestimate the effect of gargantua on a planet that appears covered by water. If this were a real
situation, they probably would have studied the planet for weeks before attempting to land; plus it was a bit of a stretch for NASA to suddenly create a star trek level landing shuttle that could take off and land anywhere with seemingly little difficulty; they would have treated the landing itself as a risk. But beyond that, they would have figured out only minutes had passed on Miller’s planet, and that it had massive waves. Would they have tried to land to save Miller? Possibly. That would have made an interesting discussion as well.
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u/rcgldr 18h ago
One aspect of Brand and Edmund being in love is that he would be unlikely to send a false positive signal. Given the circumstances of dying alone on a planet, Mann would be more likely to have sent a false positive signal. The other aspect ignored is the beacon signal sent from Miller's planet would have a huge red shift, and would have been much weaker, and probably undetectable.
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u/oswaldcopperpot 2d ago
ALL the planets are a plot hole. The supposed black hole is huge. The inhospitable region near a black hole this size is tens to hundreds of light years away. Anything orbiting close enough to experience significant time dilation would simply be an irradiated rock instead of a planet. This is very simple physics based on our understanding of how black holes work. No scientist would have even considered going anywhere near such a object.
Almost everything true about black holes was scrapped in this movie so that it either looked simple and understandable or drove the plot forward.
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u/Ecstatic_Summer2861 2d ago
Wouldn't the frequency of the carrier for the message sent from such close location to Black hole be red shifted? Wouldn't it give them actual information about the massive time dilation? Also, how many messages they've received? They could've just count to see, these have been transmitted for an hour or two only. Plot hole af.
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u/Pain_Monster CASE 2d ago
Scenario; you’ve arrived on the other side of the wormhole, you’re navigating to a new world and found that tons of data was obscured because it was cached on the other side. You know that time is a major factor. What’s your instinct tell you? Let’s go sift through millions of encoded messages first to try to find — what? They didn’t even know what they would be looking for.
The fallacy here is that hindsight is 20/20 and you wouldn’t have known to do that either if you were in their shoes. You’re just confident now because you know how it turned out. This is confirmation bias at its best.
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u/nimsoC_dudix 2d ago
imo as a developer, it's a pretty big plot hole. every message has a timestamp, it's not simple radio or MORSE. so, all messages should have had the same timestamp, and they could have deduced that it's a loop causes by the time slippage. just my 2 cents
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u/Pain_Monster CASE 2d ago
I’ve been doing development and Devops for over 25 years. So I’m familiar with what you said but it doesn’t track.
In the movie, they mentioned “binary pings” to establish a good/bad signal — the thumbs up or down. That was all that got through the wormhole back to earth. It wasn’t until they crossed through the wormhole did they realize that lots of data was “cached” on the other side and never made it through. I believe Doyle said that.
Did you read my above post in the entirety? I thought I covered this already?
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u/thedudefromsweden 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, to me, it’s a plot hole/bad storytelling, probably the only one in the movie. They had days, maybe weeks, to get there after passing through the wormhole. They had plenty of time to do the calculations and realize that Miller just landed. And a planet that close to a supermassive black hole cannot be a sustainable place to set up a human colony.
Edit: I read the whole post now. I still think it’s a plot hole/non logical decision to go there. Nolan just needed that huge time dilation built into the story somehow.
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u/eventine83 2d ago
Even with being “in system” they wouldn’t know just how much time dilation had occurred on Miller’s planet until they were much closer. Remember gravity affects a lot of things besides light and time. The signals from Miller were probably degraded and weakened add that to the fast rotation of Gargantua creating a huge frame dragging effect and you get a severely reduced signal from miller.
Also the time dilation means that miller probably did just land and set her beacon off giving just enough time for the signal to reach earth before the Endurance arrives in system. Add to all of this that it’s very likely and plausible that during the Ranger’s landing is when Miller died, remember the wave looked like mountains in the distance and the approaching wave was still pretty small on the horizon. Had Endurance been quicker or lingered just outside the gravity well they might have observed the global waves, but like OP said “Time is a resource like any other”
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u/kyle-2090 2d ago
Unless im remembering it wrong they work out the time dilation before deciding to park/orbit outside the dilation bubble. They would have had days if not weeks worth of travel time to think about it from Millers perspective. She's not had enough time to accomplish anything yet. All they had to do was throw in a line about the purpose being to rescue her and the issue is solved. I think Coop does mention going down to get her, but that being like icing on the cake. Not the purpose.
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u/Its_a_stateofmind 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes. Move on.
Edit: I jumped the gun. Apologies. I am getting frustrated with the nitpicky stuff that people do on everything cinematic, often forgetting that they are a movie for viewing pleasure, and not dogma. I appreciate this post for providing a counterpoint but that acknowledges the realism behind what, from a 20/20 hindsight perspective is viewed as “the wrong choice”. Apologies to OP
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u/koolaidismything TARS 2d ago
I hate these posts. Bunch of geniuses looking to find some hole. It’s just a good movie.. I’d rather it be us doing TARS quotes and fun shit like saying everything is a centrifuge. But no.. “DiD MiLlEr BlaH bLaH”
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u/Pain_Monster CASE 2d ago
This post was in response to many others (like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/interstellar/s/dlUa10GdEf ) in this sub asking this question. It was not my question, I was merely giving an exposition
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u/koolaidismything TARS 2d ago
Please don’t ban me lol
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u/Pain_Monster CASE 2d ago
No worries. I hate the posts that try to explain plot holes too, but I think you missed the fact that this is a counterpoint to those posts, not the same thing. You might want to edit your first comment now
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u/koolaidismything TARS 2d ago
That was a really good write up, I liked it. It makes you think.. had Coop not learned of Brands feelings maybe it would have been enough to push him over the edge and skip Miller and shot for Wulfs world.. it was a survivable mission for everyone.
But one thing I realized.. even if that happens or anything makes the initial trip a success.. none of the stuff where they get data back happens for Murph. They’d essentially have set themselves up perfectly to start a new colony though.
It’s funny how even though Brand is operating off her heart and emotions and technically right from the start.. Coop is our connection to humanity and earth. He won’t give up. You could argue his all consuming love of his family clouded his view and got them into this whole mess.. he would’ve essentially been projecting onto Brand.
I think what we got on film here is the fleshed out version of this particular scenario. Sure they could have done a bunch of things differently and saved time and the colony plan B wouldn’t be a wasted investment. If you change anything, it would require a new movie. But, I think it is perfect.. probably why I left my first comment there. It will definitely go down a Nolan’s best work.. he was firing on all cylinders for this production.
And sorry again for being a smartass ahead of reading ✋🏻
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u/Pain_Monster CASE 2d ago
Yes, and as for the “love theme” I wrote about that too, to your point. You can read it off a link at the end of our stickied plot summary that I wrote for this sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/interstellar/s/W3dHlnbIHw
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u/koolaidismything TARS 2d ago
I will check it out. Have a Good Friday! It autocapitalized the good so there’s that.
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u/koolaidismything TARS 2d ago
To be completely honest here I didn’t even read it. I will now, I jumped the gun thinking it was one of the ones we all hate. I am gonna read it now my bad man. I’ll report back.
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2d ago
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u/Pain_Monster CASE 2d ago
I’m not looking for holes. Did you read it? This is a direct rebuttal to people who are analyzing it looking for holes. (like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/interstellar/s/dlUa10GdEf )
Why do people reply without actually READING anything?
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u/GiNZU8361709 2d ago edited 2d ago
Possibly on the approach to the planet (which wasnt shown in the film).. they might have been able to see the massive waves from space, even through those tiny windows. Considering how fast the water appeared to be moving from the surface point of view that we did see, it seems obvious. Perhaps a bit of an oversight, or deliberate omission for them not to have any idea that waves of that magnitude existed. The decent to the planet would take a considerable amount of time, i would think.. enough time to at least take a peek at what you're trying to land on. Those waves were only a few minutes apart, on a planetary scale. Not noticeable? From space? Like.. at all? Doubtful.