Corrected entry: At the end, Jim tells Aurora that the medical diagnostic and treatment unit "AutoDoc" can place her back into a state of hibernation so that she can complete the journey to Homestead II. She immediately objects, saying, "But there's only one AutoDoc!" (i.e., saying she won't do it if it means leaving Jim behind). Really? Only one AutoDoc unit on a half-mile-long starship with over 5,000 passengers and crewmen? Stupidity.
Question: How did Aurora drown, then magically 'undrown' while being submerged?
Answer: The shock of the gravity returning and crashing her back down into the pool probably woke her up before she was unconscious too long.
Yes, and it should be noted that drowning is a lengthy process. Much longer than it's shown in movies. After a person falls unconscious, it still usually takes a good five minutes at least for the brain to go into failure and for death by drowning to occur. It's safe to conclude Aurora wasn't without air for long enough for the brain to go into death.
Question: At the beginning of the movie, was Jim purposely woken up to fix the Avalon's damage or was it because his pod malfunctioned?
Answer: He wasn't woken up deliberately because he didn't have a crew wrist pass to give access to all areas, which you'd need to fix the ship.
Answer: Jim, who was a passenger and not a crew member, was not intentionally awakened to repair the damage to the Avalon. It was a malfunction, but because Jim happened to possess useful mechanical engineering skills (he "fixes" things), the ship's damaged computer system may have detected this information from his passenger profile and then mistakenly routed a signal to his pod, opening it.
Gus examined Jim's pod, and determined it had a malfunctioned clock circuit. The computer didn't wake him intentionally in any way.
Question: Laurence Fishburne is obviously a person who would be familiar with the workings of the entire spacecraft. Wouldn't he have known that the Autodoc had the capability of putting a person back into hibernation? Why wouldn't he have informed Aurora of this after being told that she was purposely awakened?
Answer: I suspect he was too busy with fixing the ship and his own health.
He's a technician, not a medical person, and likely had no idea if the autodoc could safely keep someone in suspended animation for long periods. It is also possible he may not have known it even had this particular function.
You can't call a service rep if equipment on a spacecraft, billions of miles from Earth, has a problem. An onboard technician would have to be highly trained on every system on the ship. He wouldn't necessarily have medical training, but would have to have been trained on all the systems on something as important as the Autodoc. It was the only one on board.
Corrected entry: Given all the passengers are supposed to be in hibernation, and the hibernation pods are "fail safe", why would the ship's computers be programmed to announce scenic views in the middle of the voyage, such as passing the star Arcturus?
Correction: The pods were not "fail safe" as evidenced by Jim's pod being opened due to the malfunction. Once Jim is awakened and starts moving around the ship, utilizing different functions, and so on, the ship's computer would be triggered and act as if all passengers have been awakened. It starts providing its normal services, such the hologram greeting Jim and giving information, entertainment, Arthur working as the bartender, and passengers being informed when there is an interesting astronomical event to watch.
Correction: The whole premise of the movie centers around the belief the pods are fail safe. If the engineers and programmers believed the pods to be fail safe, then there is no reason to program in sight seeing subroutines for locations passed in the middle of voyage when everyone is believed to still be in hibernation.
The ship, once it happened to be activated by Jim and Aurora for passenger mode, may have sensors that then identify and announce any scenic view it encounters on its journey. The ship follows a pre-set path to and from the planet, and every astronomical object would be catalogued in its computers, regardless of whether it was intended for passengers to see it.
Corrected entry: When Jim is in the exhaust tunnel and Aurora is trying to 'vent' the reactor, as the 'flames' reach him, he should be incinerated within seconds. The heat output of the reactor should be over 10,000° F.
Correction: With flame resistant technology as we know it today, this would be a reasonable conclusion. However, this movie has made pretty clear this ship has very advanced technology beyond what we have in today's world in order to make a safe passage 150 light years away which is an impossible journey in of itself with our current technology. With the movie taking place in an unsaid time in the future where technology is far more advanced, it's not unreasonable to assume they have come up with better flame resistant technology that is currently not known in the technology we have today.
But then his little shield burned up instantly when it hit the propulsion stream. If the tech was savvy enough to withstand the venting heat, then it would have withstood the propulsion wash.
I honestly don't think it's fair to assume how things will work in a future we will never live in where they probably will have extremely fired resistant objects with the significant progress they are making. Such as the solar probe that can now touch the sun. An initial burn may be part of the way a clear shield shows its resistance in the future similar to how many fire resistant clothing will initially catch fire then the flames will suddenly go out. Especially since the shield didn't crack.
Plot hole: Gus wakes up and doesn't realise initially that he's seriously ill, although he knows he's not right. When Jim woke he was given a full body scan to check his health minutes after waking, so surely Gus must have had the same scan? When all his medical problems would have been identified. So he'd have known he was very ill minutes after waking.
Suggested correction: Minutes after waking there was nothing wrong with his body yet, his body started to deteriorate rapidly afterwards.
How do you know nothing was wrong with him minutes after waking up?
Because he got a full body scan like you said and nothing came up. The first sign of symptoms he shows is after they enter the bridge (or command center) and he dismisses it as something common. Before that he shows no sign of any medical problems.
That's the mistake here - he should have had a body scan on wake-up. So did he develop multiple medical issues in the pod because his pod function was affected by the central computer being damaged by the asteroid strike? Which would fit as his pod woke him up early, a built in safety feature perhaps so people don't die in their pods? Maybe his pod wasn't working right for 2 years, so slowly damaging his body? So the wake-up body scan should have detected his multiple issues! He couldn't go from healthy to over 600 disorders in a day.
I'm not sure the pods are sensing anything, they're essentially freezers, but without freezing you. The finger connections are not sensing anything from a person in the pod as there's nothing to sense, as people are dormant. It only senses vital signs when people are woken up. So Gus blaming his pod for his medical issues is inaccurate surely? A movie mistake?
The malfunctioning pod caused his medical issues. It keeps them in cryogenic stasis. We don't know exactly how they work of course but it is more than just sensing. Basically the people inside the pods are kept dead, but the pod manages to halt any deterioration of the cells. Imagine that going wrong and the pod isn't able to keep the cells in check. Just like when exposed to high levels of radiation the cells have been damaged but there won't be any signs immediately. Only after a few hours the cells will start to break down.
He developed several severe medical issues after being woken up too early in a pod that was malfunctioning. This is fictional, future technology and we have no idea how it works, but I think its safe to assume that the pod has to keep the entire body in check during cryosleep, and if the pod malfunctions it could cause all kinds of problems, both directly and later on. If it works on a molecular level than no issue can be detected for quite a while before problems start to show, much like with radiation poisoning when cells suddenly and rapidly start dying whilst hours or even days before you feel fine.
Seems far more likely the different faults described affected the routine. Pratt's unit failure was treated as a normal wake-up, where Fishburne described a multitude of failures resulting in an emergency opening. The procedures for Pratt likely aren't triggered this way.
Corrected entry: When the ship loses gravity, only Gus' arms rise from the bed. His head, the rest of his body, the blanket, etc. should show some effects of being weightless but do not.
Correction: In that scene, the blanket doesn't appear to move at all, while (as you said) his arms float into the air, which suggests that the blanket itself is held down magnetically (or through some other mechanism). His bed may have this extra feature because he's a crew member.
Even if your explanation was accurate, for which there is no evidence, Gus' body, not just his arms, would still show effects of the lost gravity. His head would move, his body would attempt to lift up and be shown to be restrained by the "magnetic" blanket holders. Even if it was magnetic, there was enough slack in the blanket that his body would have risen an inch or two.
When gravity disappears, objects do not attempt to lift up; they stay where they are, unless there is some force applied to them.
Question: If he can't afford more than crappy coffee and oatmeal, then how does he afford all the alcohol and fancy restaurants he goes to?
Answer: I think the breakfast is free, however the lower class doesn't get a fancy meal for free but a more basic type. The restaurants and bar on the other hand cost money.
Answer: Perhaps customers at the bar and restaurant are allowed to run a tab that doesn't have to be settled until they are leaving the Starship Avalon and about to go to Homestead II. (This could be risky given the different resources of the passengers.) Or maybe the bar and restaurant are included in the fee for some passengers and staff would typically be at the door to allow admission to these passengers; Jim - awake and roaming - may be assumed to be eligible to use the bar/restaurant when, under normal circumstances, he would not be permitted to enter.
Answer: I wondered about this, too. His lower-class passage limits his breakfast choice. However, it seems that any passenger should be able to upgrade their individual meals at anytime and order what they want, as he does in the multiple on-board restaurants. It may be that breakfast, for whatever reason, is exempt from that option.
Yeah but they simply push a button for the breakfast and actually order food from the restaurants. You might think he would just go ahead and go to one of the restaurants to get his breakfast, but maybe they aren't open yet at that time. The ship seems to be more of a cross between a luxurious cruise and boot-camp. The breakfast is perhaps standard ship protocol.
I agree the paid for bar and restaurant don't probably open until 'Evening time' on the ship (You don't want your workers getting drunk all day, Jim is work group). The ship has a day and night clock system as heard by the announcer. I suppose Jim could change his wake up and sleep time to get a decent breakfast in the Chinese, but then his dinner would be basic and he wouldn't be able to have a drink before bed. What would you choose? Basic breakfast, good evening meal with drinks or good breakfast, basic evening meal and no drinks.
Correction: The auto-doc is a tool for human doctors, it was not meant to be the primary form of medical treatment. This is evident when the auto-doc refused to reveal a prognosis because there was no doctor present, and in another case, it refused to administer treatment without medical supervision, and someone had to choose the specific treatment (s) to apply. Plus, it's likely an extremely expensive piece of equipment and the for-profit company that built the ship didn't see a need to put more than one on the ship.
sfbiker1
While there are reasonable explanations for why there's only 1 autodoc on board, the question not addressed in the film is whether they could create another one. Jim says a few times that the ship's storage areas have replacement parts for everything on board, which would presumably include the autodoc. But maybe it's not that simple.
Vader47000