Skip to main content

time travel - Was Doc Brown about to break his own rules?


Richard's comment on this question made me realize that Doc Brown seems to be a bit hypocritical. Allow me to explain.


The whole reason Marty ends up in 1955 (as opposed to any other point in time) is that the 1985 Doc set the controls to that year, because he wanted to visit himself on the night he invented the flux capacitor. Unfortunately, the Libyans show up and gun him down, Marty tries to escape in the DeLorean, accidentally goes back in time, and you know the rest.


Marty finds the Doc in 1955 and asks for his help. He eventually tries to warn the Doc about the Libyans, but Doc refuses to listen, and repeatedly lectures Marty on the importance of not changing the past.


And therein lies the problem. 1955 Doc knows that you shouldn't change the past, but 1985 Doc doesn't. At some point over those 30 years, he managed to forget the whole "time travel paradox" issue, to such an extent that he was going to visit himself 30 years earlier (to be fair, this is sort of explained in the movie itself, albeit in a rather unsatisfactory manner- when Marty gets back to 1985 and sees that the Doc has survived the shooting, he asks how the Doc knew about the Libyans; Doc reveals that he read Marty's letter, and adds "I figured, 'What the hell'").


Is there some explanation for why the 1985 Doc thought it was okay to visit himself, but the 1955 Doc was dead-set against letting Marty tell him about the Libyans? Do we know why the 1985 Doc was going back in time in the first place (apart from the fun of visiting himself)?




Answer



Doc never had the intention to visit his 1955 counterpart during that sequence of events. Here's the script:



DOC: I'll show you how it works. First, you turn the time circuits on. This readout tell you where you're going, this one tells you where you are, this one tells you where you were. You input the destination time on this keypad. Say, you wanna see the signing of the declaration of independence, or witness the birth or Christ. Here's a red-letter date in the history of science, November 5, 1955. Yes, of course, November 5, 1955...



As you can see, Doc is putting in several dates to show Marty how to operate the time circuits in the DeLorean.


Just a little bit later, the follow conversation occurs:



DOC: Who knows if they've got cotton underwear in the future. I'm allergic to all synthetics.


MARTY: The future, it's where you're going?



DOC: That's right, twenty five years into the future.



So, Doc wasn't planning to go back to his 1955 self, it was just an accident that Marty activated the time circuits and the DeLorean took him to the last date entered, which was November 5 1955. Doc actually planned to go to the future, so


No - Doc was not about to break his own rules


Admittedly, Doc does contradict himself at the end of Back to the Future by reading Marty's letter on the reasoning of 'What the Hell!', but that's another matter...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more