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Why did the Doc refuse to let Marty tell him about the night Marty went back to 1955?


On more than one occasion in Back to the Future, Marty tries to warn 1955-Doc that he will be shot on the night he tests the DeLorean. The first time, he tells Marty to shut up and says something like "I don't want you to endanger my future the way you endangered your own future". But even from Marty's perspective in 1985, any potential consequences of telling the Doc about the shooting would only affect the "real" future, i.e., things that hadn't happened yet in any timeline.


This is very different from Marty's situation in 1955 - by changing the course of events, he was creating a very real possibility of negating his own existence (as well as the existence of his siblings). But 1955-Doc learning that Libyans would try to kill him in 30 years does not pose similar problems. No one who already exists will cease to exist, and the changes that would proceed from the Doc wearing body armor would have no effect on current events only things that had not yet come to pass (in any timeline). In fact, I can't see how it would change anything other than 1985-Doc dying.


Am I missing something here? How is Marty changing his own past anything like him changing the Doc's future? Is it actually dangerous for 1955-Doc to hear that he will be shot?



Answer




But 1955-Doc learning that Libyans would try to kill him in 30 years does not pose similar problems.



This isn't necessarily the case. From Doc's point of view, he didn't know the threat that was facing him. If he had known about the Libyan terrorists killing him, he may have decided not to go through with developing the time machine, as it may have got him to think about the problems a time machine would face (namely creating paradoxes) which (ironically) would have created the paradox where he wouldn't develop a time machine because of information which was given to him from someone operating his own time machine. Alternatively, he may have built the time machine and tried to source the plutonium from somewhere else, getting himself caught, meaning he couldn't show Marty the time machine (another paradox) or given up on the time machine realising it was too dangerous to try and use plutonium which was necessary for the 1.21 jigawatts. The potentials for creating a paradox is huge.



Hence, to Doc, information about the night of his death that Marty was trying to give him probably looked like it was too likely to cause a paradox.


Doc also didn't know what other information Marty was going to give him about the future - and information about the future can cause all sorts of trouble, which forms the basis of the plot with Biff in Back to the Future II


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