Little Interstellar Breakdown

Before I dive into the main bit (shredding Interstellar's sciency bits), a couple of other things to natter about :

I use the word "Little" as a description for some people. I hope they don't mind ! I see it as a valid descriptor meaning that they're shorter than I am. Nothing more than that, nothing less. And I think "Little Lady" has a certain ring to it too. That said, "big girl" also has a certain ring to it but I'm not going to be using that. A lot of ladies are sensitive about their size, which cuts out "big" and other ladies will get the dagger eyes out if you call them a "girl".

It's a little strange that I find one descriptor ok but others to be anathema. I hope the little ladies don't object to me using that descriptor. I personally attach it to "elfin", "cute", "dainty" and a few other descriptors that mean nice things. Conversely, calling a lady "big" when you just mean "she's taller" will lead to a slapping ...

Forget descriptors - all ladies have their own special beauty, no matter what size or shape they are.

Second and this is where I put SPOILER WARNING ! Read past this and I'll be putting in spoilers for Interstellar ... Christopher Nolan is guilty of a lot of crimes against science but he's no Michael Bay. I wanted to see the Turtles movie but avoided it because all reports say it's an abomination. Like the accursed Transformers movies.

Despite all the faults, I really enjoyed Interstellar. There's the people who appreciate the story and there's the people who will throw things at the screen due to the dodgy science. I'm somewhere between the two. I really enjoyed the movie but there was a little part of me screaming inside (it wasn't quite dead yet after Michael Bay killed Transformers).

Soooo ...

Going to the black hole water planet first. Why ? With the time dilation there'd be no way to coordinate planetside with orbit. And it's a short lived solution due to the impending It's Gonna Get Sucked Into The Black Hole !!! thing.

Not anticipating conditions on the water planet. We have our tides due to the presence of our moon, so it stands to reason that a water planet next to a honking great big black hole is going to have tides too. Big tides. Not mentioning the lack of anticipation of the effect of time dilation on the scientist who landed.

The Ranger craft. I liked these as a concept. They're a lifting body aircraft which looked good in the movie and made sense from the science point of view. But ... when they take off in one from Earth, it needs our biggest rocket to date (a Saturn V) to lift it to orbit. Yet on the new planets, it suddenly becomes Single Stage To Orbit and can get there on its own. This is despite the water planet being 130% the gravity of Earth.

The whole causality thing. Who put the wormhole there, who brought the astronauts and T.A.R.S. into 3d space. Causality is pretty nuts.

One way wormhole when it comes to communications ? Very convenient from a plot point of view.

The Blight - it feeds on Nitrogen right ? So it should be metabolising the Nitrogen into something different. Possibly NOx compounds or NH compounds. Either way, the Nitrogen component of the air should reduce right ? Mind you, NOx compounds and NH (Ammonia) compounds are also really nasty. But ... it did seem like the Blight was more a bio-terminator targeting the staple food crops.

The airlock blowout - holy carp that was dangerous. You would have thought those claw things wouldn't operate only as a lock, they'd assist with the mating process joining both sides together. Or perhaps that was the bit disabled with the autodocking.

Distillery - they land a distillery on the ice planet. What happened to it ?

Ice clouds - what's holding them up ?

Choosing the second planet. I think I'd have prioritised the planet with a breathable atmosphere over one with a poisonous atmosphere but then again ... engineering the plot again.

I think that's enough for now ...

The thing to remember though, is that if you can keep that little voice inside quiet that's begging to scream out at the inconsistencies and the bad science, this is still a remarkable movie on all sorts of levels. The visuals are incredible and I loved the characters. So much that when Mr Cooper bursts into tears listening to the messages, I'm almost ready to blub too (that's not the bit that got me).

I'll still get the bluray when it comes out, will probably get the soundtrack if it dips to an acceptable price. But I'll be gagging that little scientist voice to stop it spoiling the story.