30th Anniversary of BTTF Time Travel - October 26, 1985

[Rich W]

Congrats to Doc Brown's dog Einstein, for becoming the first Time Traveler, 30 years ago today.

Of course, this is also the day that Marty McFly first traveled through time, back to 1955.

Not nearly as much attention that October 21, 2015 received from the media last week,
but it's still a great reason to drive around in your DeLorean today.

[DMCVegas]

Bums me out, but it's true...

http://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/blog_post/primary_image/mzs/back-to-the-future-is-now-all-back-and-no-future/primary_Screen_Shot_2015-10-20_at_9.54.43_PM.png

[burch]

I always assumed that today was the actual original date that Doc traveled to, as it would make sense to be exactly 30 years in the future. Additionally, he mentions that he was already further ahead in the future and traced everything back to 10/21.

If that's the case, happy unseen BTTF day to everyone :)

[Mark D]

I always assumed that today was the actual original date that Doc traveled to, as it would make sense to be exactly 30 years in the future. Additionally, he mentions that he was already further ahead in the future and traced everything back to 10/21.

If that's the case, happy unseen BTTF day to everyone :)

I always thought Doc would have had to spend quite a bit of time in the future before coming back to get Marty at the end of Part I (start of Part II). The modifications to the DeLorean for both the hover conversion and the adaptation of Mr. Fusion to replace the plutonium reactor would have taken at least a few weeks.

Really though, if Doc wanted to prevent all the bad things from happening to Marty's family in the future all he would have had to do was prevent Marty from getting into the Rolls Royce accident. That was ultimately the starting point for things "going down the tubes" for Marty and his family (breaking his hand, legal troubles with the Rolls Royce driver, etc) Doc could have intervened, potentially even without Marty's knowledge. You would think that since Doc was so willing to step in and change events from occurring in 2015 that he would be equally as willing to step in and alter the future from 1985.

Since Marty does not get into the car accident later on in the trilogy none of the events we see take place in 2015 with Marty Jr. will actually happen... Marty will no longer get stuck working a crappy job, be living in a run down neighborhood, and the conditions for Marty Jr. to get sent to jail will no longer exist. All the work Doc and Marty did to change the future in 2015 becomes moot.

[DMCVegas]

You would think that since Doc was so willing to step in and change events from occurring in 2015 that he would be equally as willing to step in and alter the future from 1985.

Totally different. Applying the theory of relativity here where time is relevant to yourself, the events of 2015 themselves had not yet occurred to Marty, so it was perfectly fine to modify them because they would not affect his past to the extent of jeopardizing his present self (though there is a ehtics question about screwing with events that do not affect you directly). Now without getting into the entire multiuverse of the multiple Martys that exist, we have this angsty Marty of the original 1985 timeline that coming from a weak father and looser family still has this chip on his shoulder to prove that he's better than his dad. The problem is that particular Marty has now replaced what seems to be a more responsible one who was also gifted with the Toyota. Not being able to handle his emotions of course, we end up having the wreck with the Rolls Royce.

Now if Doc simply stops Marty from racing Needles, sure he would have prevented that accident, but Marty would still have been vulnerable because he still doesn't have control over his emotions. Ie he just would have gotten into trouble some other way, with possibly worse consequences. Perhaps by going into the future Doc's idea is that he can show him how badly he's screwed-up his own son, and can get Marty to snap-to and stop the cycle of bad parenting by becoming responsible. That of course doesn't entirely work, and is why Doc just flips out when he sees the almanac. Now luckily of course after they happen to go back to 1885, Marty finally has a couple of life or death experiences (both with Buford Tannen and the steam locomotive), and then his final third experience with death with the diesel locomotive in the 4th alternate 1985.

Marty is now finally responsible, and we see this with his avoiding the race, and ultimately the crash with the Rolls. Doc going into the future probably checks up on Marty and sees that his plan has finally worked to save Marty. Just as Marty saved his life from the Libyans, Doc has now paid Marty back by saving him from himself. So he then goes back to visit Marty and give him the photograph. Now, save for whatever the hell Doc goes on to do, the space time continuum is safe and secure.

[Mark D]

Totally different. Applying the theory of relativity here where time is relevant to yourself, the events of 2015 themselves had not yet occurred to Marty, so it was perfectly fine to modify them because they would not affect his past to the extent of jeopardizing his present self (though there is a ehtics question about screwing with events that do not affect you directly). Now without getting into the entire multiuverse of the multiple Martys that exist, we have this angsty Marty of the original 1985 timeline that coming from a weak father and looser family still has this chip on his shoulder to prove that he's better than his dad. The problem is that particular Marty has now replaced what seems to be a more responsible one who was also gifted with the Toyota. Not being able to handle his emotions of course, we end up having the wreck with the Rolls Royce.

Now if Doc simply stops Marty from racing Needles, sure he would have prevented that accident, but Marty would still have been vulnerable because he still doesn't have control over his emotions. Ie he just would have gotten into trouble some other way, with possibly worse consequences. Perhaps by going into the future Doc's idea is that he can show him how badly he's screwed-up his own son, and can get Marty to snap-to and stop the cycle of bad parenting by becoming responsible. That of course doesn't entirely work, and is why Doc just flips out when he sees the almanac. Now luckily of course after they happen to go back to 1885, Marty finally has a couple of life or death experiences (both with Buford Tannen and the steam locomotive), and then his final third experience with death with the diesel locomotive in the 4th alternate 1985.

Marty is now finally responsible, and we see this with his avoiding the race, and ultimately the crash with the Rolls. Doc going into the future probably checks up on Marty and sees that his plan has finally worked to save Marty. Just as Marty saved his life from the Libyans, Doc has now paid Marty back by saving him from himself. So he then goes back to visit Marty and give him the photograph. Now, save for whatever the hell Doc goes on to do, the space time continuum is safe and secure.

You're completely missing that Doc never intended to change Marty's future. The emotional growth that happens throughout the sequels does not happen because of any intentional actions set about by Doc.

1. "You and Jennifer both turn out fine, it's your kids Marty. Something's gotta be done about your kids". Doc has no goals to change Marty's future.

2. Doc definitely did not intend for Marty to meet his son as a means to prevent some kind of cycle of bad parenting. The original plan was to knock out Marty Jr. with the sleep inducer so that Marty could take his place, say no to Griff, and prevent the robbery from happening. The robbery is what Doc identifies as the one event that leads to the destruction of Marty's family. Doc is noticeably upset to find out that the sleep inducer did not work as planned.

3. After the hoverboard chase and alteration of future history, Doc declares the mission a success anyway and is ready to jump in the DeLorean and head home to 1985.

4. After rescuing Jennifer when she encounters her future self, Doc is again ready to return to 1985. He also reveals his intentions to destroy the time machine. Doc has detailed information on Marty's future life as evidence by his knowledge of minute details (such as what time future Jennifer arrives home from work). Yet he still has no plans to prevent Marty's life from turning out exactly as it was portrayed. After returning to what they think is 1985 Doc drops Marty off at home. This would have been the end of the adventure if not for the Almanac.

5. After resolving the 1985A timeline by burning the Almanac the plan was to return to the restored 1985. The adventure only continues due to the DeLorean getting struck by lightning.

6. After getting sent back to 1885 Doc gives Marty a final goodbye letter telling him not to come back to get him, to return to 1985, and to destroy the time machine. The letter would have been Doc's final chance to help Marty avoid his fate by warning him of the accident, or at least giving him some kind of clue that he needs to alter his behavior.

7. Finally, in 1885 doc refuses to tell Marty the details of his own future when he slips and mentions the accident. Doc ultimately tells Marty that he's "gotta do what he's gotta do" and won't give him information to prevent Marty from learning too much about his own destiny.
.
.
.

Doc accepted Marty's future for what is was and had no plans to intervene and change Marty's future life. If Doc's plan all along was to help Marty grow and avoid his fate then it would have been wasted effort to try and fix his son's future first.

So back to what I said originally... "You would think that since Doc was so willing to step in and change events from occurring in 2015 that he would be equally as willing to step in and alter the future from 1985."

Doc was willing to change future events.... Saving Marty's son and daughter would also impact Marty's future life as well, so one way or another he was changing Marty's future. Why was Doc willing to change Marty's son's future but allow Marty to pretty much ruin his own life first? It doesn't make much sense for Doc wait 30 years to prevent Marty's life from turning to complete shit when he knows it mostly turns to shit anyway starting with a car accident in 1985.

To prevent Marty's future from turning out so poorly Doc wouldn't have have had to tell Marty his future directly, just intervene to prevent the one auto accident event from happening. This was the same logic Doc used in his plan to change Marty Jr's fate. So why throw a bone to Marty Jr. but not Marty?

[DMCVegas]

That's a good point, especially since we can only take Doc's words at face value as clues to his true intentions.

Certainly it could be argued that by augmenting Marty's past, his children wouldn't have been born. But by the same token, chances are of course that with Marty Jr's arrest and Marlene's subsequent arrest and/or suicide, Doc creates grand children and extended relatives where there shouldn't have been any, let alone some other unnamed events that Doc may or may not have alluded to.

[Mark D]

That's a good point, especially since we can only take Doc's words at face value as clues to his true intentions.

Certainly it could be argued that by augmenting Marty's past, his children wouldn't have been born. But by the same token, chances are of course that with Marty Jr's arrest and Marlene's subsequent arrest and/or suicide, Doc creates grand children and extended relatives where there shouldn't have been any, let alone some other unnamed events that Doc may or may not have alluded to.

It's a really good question and interesting that you touched on Marty's children... One thing has bothered me about the trilogy is how the underlying message of he film shifts more of a "fate" based timeline in Part 1 to a "your future is whatever you make of it" timeline in the sequels.

In Part 1 Marty makes some pretty huge changes in his father's life... I always thought that going from a complete wimp to a confident "if you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything" mentality would have changed the timing of when Marty and his siblings were born. The circumstances of how they were conceived had to have been different given the new dynamic in the relationship between Marty's parents, yet all three kids were born on he same dates, with the same names, they lived in the same house, and even ended up wearing the same clothes in the photograph you see restored in 1955.

Perhaps the even more extreme example is the relationship between Doc and Marty. After the events that take place in Part 1 it seems that it would be nearly impossible for Doc to continue on as he did previously in a way that would lead to the destruction of his house, living in his garage, and eventual friendship with Marty. The circumstances of their first meeting would have had to have been different, and Doc would have had to hide his knowledge of the future from Marty throughout their entire relationship. Not to mention he would know the exact date and time of the mall parking lot experiments and when he would succeed in time travel. What would Doc's reaction have been in the early 80's when DeLorean was first coming out? How would he know the exact DeLorean to buy that he would have bought originally that would have the same stalling issues? And why not change the date of his time travel experiments to prevent Marty from getting sent back to 1955 completely? Would have have created a paradox? It seems like there had to have been fate involved to keep Doc on the correct path so that when Marty arrives back in 1985 very little has changed.

From the way things unfolded in Part I the message seems to be that our futures are pretty much set and that we have some predetermined destiny. The specific details can change, but the general path is predetermined and we can only get there in slightly different ways. When Marty prevented his parents from meeting that was a big enough issue that caused his own existence to come into jeopardy, but as long as he steered he ship back on course prior to he moment of his parents first kiss, he was able to get things close enough that fate would take care of the rest.

...

The message in Parts 2 and 3 seems to change though... what we're told to believe is that everything can be changed, down the point where if the events of today continue into tomorrow, then that is what the future will be. It seems more open ended and that our fate is whatever we decide it to be, and a decision is enough to take us where we want to go, rather than fate leading us down a predetermined path. Examples of this are how Marty is able to change his fate by deciding he no longer cares if people think he's chicken faced with photograph of his own tombstone. Doc also drastically changes his own fate by living out the rest of his life in 1885 and marrying Clara.

The one exception during the sequels that moves back towards the fate based message is how 1985 auto detaling Biff at the end of Part III still ends up identical to 1985 Biff at the end of Part I even though the additional events of Part II occurred where he was given the almanac for a few days, hit another manure truck, and saw a flying car.

So based on all that I still can't make up my mind if Marty Junior or Marlene would exist given that Marty was no longer involved in the car accident...

[DMCVegas]

There are a lot of specifcs that we simply don't know the details of. Like the fire that consumed the Brown Mansion. We just know that Doc accidentally caused it with an experiment. Doesn't say if it was careless lab practices, or perhaps even bad wiring. We also know that Emmett spent his family fortune trying to perfect the time machine. That could still happen, absolutely. BUT, unless you consider the TellTale games absolute cannon, there is no proof that the lab fire still actually happened. Only in the 3rd alternate 1985 where Biff has the almanac do we ever get to see the lab/garage again. And there is no mention of the rest of the mansion either then or in the 4th 1984 at the end of Part 3. We really don't know the extent of just how much Doc Brown's own timeline changed.

With the birth of the McFly children, we also don't know the specific circumstances surrounding their own procreations. Technically sperm have been found to still be alive (albeit with limited mobility) in the Fallopian Tubes 7 days later. So there's still some leeway with that given we don't have specific dates and times to measure any shifts in their births. They could have been born surrounding external events that still would have impacted the McFly's lives that were immune from shifts in the space time continuum. I.e. maybe they had to go on a trip to visit a dying relative that would have remained at the same time, and had sex during that trip. Granted that still does not account for external stresses from a different life impacting Lorraine's menstrual cycles beyond that 7 day window of potential fertilization.

The problem with the failure of the DeLorean to start assumes that there is an inherent problem with the vehicle itself. But what if it's not? Doc Brown wired up all sorts of crazy things into the DeLorean. If the electrical problem itself was created by him either wiring something into the accessory relay, or something inhibited proper function of the ballast resistor or other part of the ignition circuit for example, that would still account for the exact same problem with a totally different car.

To a certain extent of a time traveler, yes, part of your future is somewhat "predetermined". It's the ultimate paradox: You go back in time and murder yourself as a child. If you do that, you never grow up so you never go back in time. But if that happens then you DO grow up, and then you can travel back in time to murder your younger self... Thus the entire thing is on a loop that shifts back and forth between two alternate realities. That's why young Marty McFly and Doc Brown can go into the future to screw with the lives of Marty Jr. and Marlene: it has absolutely zero effect on them because it doesn't create a paradox that jeopardizes their own existence.

Which also completely kills the entire premise of these films.
Part 1: Marty's parents don't fall in love, he's never born. Marty is never born, so he can't go back in time to interfere with their falling in love, so then they DO fall in love and he's born...

Part 2: Old Biff gives young Biff the Sports Almanac. Middle aged Biff has Emmett Brown committed. Time travel never gets invented, old Biff has no way to deliver Sports Almanac to young biff, so never wins anything and Hill Valley never changes...

I suppose we could just cop out with a Deus Ex Machina, but that's no fun.

Doc's existence in 1885 isn't really TOO big of a deal for him personally. I mean, he wasn't supposed to live past when the Libyans killed him anyway... Though I do wonder just why it was renamed into Eastwood Ravine. Perhaps Doc goes back to his blacksmith shop where he dismantles the model (as well as his freezer), and tells some heroic tale to exonerate himself for a train robbery. Who knows. But from there he could still close up shop, Clara could immediately resign, and they could have moved to another town that wouldn't have affected the events in Hill Valley as to jeopardize future events and their very existences in their current relative times.

IF Marty's avoiding the crashing into the Rolls Royce does prevent the birth of his two children, I don't think it would have been THAT big of a deal (strictly speaking in terms of the universe itself) because it seems as though his kids never actually had children of their own. But who even KNOWS if their births might not have been an accident?! Check this out: what if Marty and Jennifer are meant to break up? What if Jennifer experienced the exact same Florence Nightingale Effect that Lorraine did with George, and marries Marty out of pity for the accident? What if in the first and fourth alternate realities of 1985, she and Marty don't last because in those two realities he never crashes into the Rolls?

[refugeefromcalif]

All of the, Predetermined, Paradox, Free Will and Separate timelines talk, (in a couple of threads), led me to this video...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxoPaDk7a0U

Take it as you will.

George