10 Films That Actually Got Biology Right

Say what you want about its physics, but Interstellar's biology passes the test. First, let's look at the instigating blight, a virus that obliterates the world's crops. Yes, the chances of a virus being mutable enough for this are minuscule, but not completely impossible. Since plants hold the soil together, the consequential dust storms were also a nice touch.

Prompting a search for a new planet, we then get to the mission's Plan B, a failsafe in case only a few can get there. For this, Biologists were impressed by the consideration of genetic diversity, something sci-fi often ignores when new worlds are colonised. A new, smaller population is drastically more vulnerable to environmental changes due to the reduced pool in which genes can be mixed. Known as the Founder Effect, this can also cause the accumulation of mutations that increase the likelihood of disease.

Interstellar's Plan B elegantly addresses this problem by a population bomb. Here, 5,000 fertilised eggs stored in liquid nitrogen and surrogates would be used to increase the new population's genetic diversity, which is a brilliant approach (even though research suggests it'll probably take 20,000). At least as far as Biology is concerned, Nolan's attention to detail strikes again.