interstellar - Why did the Endurance crew bother landing on Miller's planet?

After the events on Miller's planet, it seems to come as a revelation to Brand that

Miller had only landed a couple hours ago, and died a few minutes ago.

The crew of the Endurance, even when they were back at NASA headquarters, had all the information they needed to figure out the time dilation and how long Miller had been on the planet. As such, they must have known that

Miller, even in the best case, would have only had a couple hours worth of data.

Why use all those resources (fuel and time) just for that?

Answer

Assuming the team knew that planet Miller would only have a few hours of data, visiting the planet was still a rational decision. They had 3 options, and they thought they would have enough fuel to try at least 2 before returning to earth. Edmunds was sending no signal, so the hope was that Dr. Miller, by not immediately ending her signal when she landed, thought the planet at least had potential.

As to why

Amelia Brand risked her life to obtain the probably worthless data,

that decision was likely a poor one even regardless of the time factor: they were already aware the planet was covered in water and plagued by massive waves.

One of the main themes of the movie is the contrast between humans innovating vs. behaving irrationally when faced with death ("the dying of the light"). This was an example of Amelia behaving irrationally, similar to

Tom keeping his family on the farm even when their lungs were clogging with dust

and

Dr. Mann opening the hatch to the Endurance even when he hadn't attached properly.

Amelia was probably frazzled by the danger they were in and the massive use of time, and (irrationally) hoped she could make the effort less futile by trying to save the data.

Eventually, the film favors the interpretation that despite our occasional irrationality, humans face death by innovating and helping each other, as evidenced by

Cooper sending Murph messages via the tesseract, her solving the gravity problem, future humans building the wormhole for past humans, etc.

Comments

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...

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