10 Interstellar Script Changes That Drastically Changed The Film

9. A Space Probe Sends Cooper To NASA

The story of Interstellar really kicks off when Cooper mysteriously finds his way to a secret NASA facility. This occurs in all versions of the story, but the first draft did it in a very different way. One night he is notified about a crashed probe and, having once been an engineer, takes it for research. He discovers a photograph of an ice planet and, through a rudimentary screaming mechanism - the probe emits a loud noise that only decreases if it is carried in the direction of the base - it leads Cooper to NASA. Instead of sending astronauts into the wormhole, they've been using probes, of which this is the first to return with positive readings for water and oxygen. The mission here is to verify this world is suitable for human life - there's no Plan A/Plan B confusion here. It transpires that the probe has been sent knowingly by a future Cooper and data it contains is used by Murph to solve the whole gravity issue (there'll be more on that later), making this the sole form of explicit time-travel communication. That's right - there's none of Murphy's ghost stuff. This would have probably sat easier with many viewers, with the Cooper-influenced origin less blatant and the whole bookshelf-love-ghost stuff exorcised, but it's generally the same plot beat, just presented in a very different way.