Doc Brown - Tragic Figure
Back to the Future celebrates its 40th anniversary (!) this year, and after all this time, it sure as hell still works. It certainly was an all-time favorite for me as a kid. And while the two sequels predictably did not live up to the original, they still had the same zippy style and zany time travel hijinks that made for a good time.
All that being said, there are a few plot points that always gnawed at me. I’m not talking about the time paradox plot holes that are typical with time travel movies, which you can usually let slide. My issues were with Doctor Emmett L. Brown and a few decisions that seemed out of character –
Why did he eventually piece together Marty’s letter from 1955 to learn about his future (and his eventual death from Libyan terrorists)? His explanation (he figured “what the hell”) doesn’t jive with his adamant stance from 1955 – that no one should know too much about his or her own future as it can “have serious repercussions on future events.”
Why was he determined to take Marty back to 2015 to help Marty’s kids and change the future? “Scientifically” speaking, this doesn’t make sense. The future is not set, right? Why travel forward in time to stop something when you could, I don’t know, pull a Marty McFly and write a note? It also, once again, contradicts his rightful stance on the danger of others knowing too much about their own destiny.
To be fair the writers Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis never intended to make a sequel, so any movie following the original’s ending was always going to be put in a corner. Sometimes you just go with it, because the ride is too much fun. But I still couldn’t quite let it go. Then, after a recent re-watch of the series, I had a bit of a “Great Scott” moment and started to develop a theory that may explain Doc’s motivations.
Stay with me here because this gets confusing, but it basically boils down to two things. From the moment Marty McFly first travels back to 1955, an alternate timeline was created that impacts Doc Brown in profound ways. In this new reality, every decision the Doc Brown of this new timeline makes is at least partially driven by the fact that he KNOWS his future, and as the films progress, he learns more and more - from the attack by Libyans, to the sports almanac theft by Biff, to the time jump to the Old West. More to the point, not only does he know what happens, he recognizes these events HAVE to happen in order to prevent a potential paradox. You know, one of those things that destroys the universe.
Let me take you back to the end of Back to the Future Part II. At this point Doc Brown is a happy camper, sending Marty back to 1985. He has also torn apart Marty’s letter, freeing him from any potential entanglements regarding his knowledge of the future. In short, it is mission accomplished…until everything goes to hell. Marty McFly reappears mere seconds after his departure, back from the future and once again needing Doc’s help.
From there, Marty goes into great (and I would argue reckless) detail explaining how he ended up back in 1985 (in a fun scene that mirrors Marty’s original 1955 introduction to Doc), and it’s at this point where my theory takes shape. The 1955 version of Doc is now fully aware that they will eventually travel to 2015, that Biff will take the almanac and steal the time machine, and that eventually his future self will accidently be transported to 1885. And since Marty is here with him in 1955 as a result of said events, it must follow that all of these events in the future MUST occur because they have already occurred. If all of these future events do not happen, you have a paradox.
Doc now knows that he not only has to build a time machine, but it has to be made in 1985. Even before that, he has to meet and become friends with Marty. And he has to be sure that Marty has to travel to the past, on a very specific date (“a red letter date in the history of science – November 5th, 1955,” to be exact).
In a way, Doc Brown is “cursed” with his knowledge of his future. As the third film progresses, even his own death is revealed to him as they find his tombstone from 1885, just days after his letter to Marty is written.
I would argue that this in turn justifies his decision to put Marty’s letter from the original film back together. He already knows that he is going to die in the old West at this point; why not read the letter? He very likely suspected that Marty’s repeated attempts to inform him about the future (from the first film) were regarding his potential death. He now knows he has to survive at least through Marty’s first time jump in order to travel to 2015, so in some ways, he HAS to read the letter, to ensure his survival, and (you guessed it) avoid a paradox.
This also explains the decision to travel to 2015 to help save Marty’s kids. Based on my theory, his decision actually has nothing to do with Marty’s kids, but has everything to do with the almanac. Doc knows that Future Biff has to take possession of the almanac and steal the time machine in order for all the necessary events in 1955 to occur - namely Marty’s return and his own accidental time jump to 1885. If he does not travel to 2015 and these dominoes do not fall in place, Doc knows that a paradox could be created and potentially destroy the fabric of the universe. He also knows that Future Biff has to go back specifically to November 12th, 1955. If my theory holds up, Future Biff traveling to that exact point in time is no longer an “amazing coincidence” or “holds some sort of cosmic significance in the space time continuum.” Instead, Doc had preempted Biff’s travel already by inputting the 1955 date in the DeLorean in advance and leaving the time circuits on.
It kind of makes sense, right? Why would Doc leave the time machine so unsecured in 2015, giving Biff such an easy path to steal the DeLorean? How would future Biff know how to turn the time circuits on? A few other bits of circumstantial evidence that suggests my theory – notice how Doc Brown explains the specific inners working of the time machine on camera, emphatically ordering Marty to keep filming as he calls out the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity required for the time machine to function. It’s almost as if he’s laying the instructions intentionally, knowing that his 1955 self will need that information. Also at the beginning of the first film, (before Marty’s jump that starts these chaotic events) Doc Brown proudly announces to Marty his plan to travel to the future - 25 years into the future to be exact (which would be 2010 for the record). But at the end of the film, he instead tells Marty that he is traveling 30 years, “a nice round number.” Why the change to 2015? Because after all the chaos that occurred in 1955 and the knowledge he gained about the future, he must go to 2015 to set everything in motion. To avoid a paradox, he essentially has no choice.
Admittedly, there are a few problems with my theory. For starters, this means Doc is pretty much lying to Mary through the entire trilogy, withholding information and essentially putting up a front, secretly knowing full well how the events were going to play out. The theory does make him a look a bit more deceptive. But one could argue here that revealing the truth to Marty would just create more problems and jeopardize the overall mission Doc has been tasked with.
The bigger issue with my theory is how it defines the concept of time travel itself. Obviously, I am no quantum physicist here, so this is a pretty simple-minded explanation, but my theory suggests that time travel is actually linear; everything that has happened will always happen. Even if you go back in time, you can’t change the past because you were always in the past in the first place. The best example I can think of from television or film with Lost – the survivors of Oceanic eventually go back in time to destroy “the hatch” which in turn creates the magnetic field that causes their crash in the first place. In Back to the Future’s case, all of the events that took place from November 5th – 12th, 1955 always happened because Doc knew they would happen from the very beginning. In other words, there are no alternate timelines. (This is giving me a headache.)
However, this doesn’t really work in the Back to the Future films, because there are alternate timelines all over the place. By my count, there are 4 different versions of 1985 alone - the original version, a new and improved version at end of the original film with Marty’s now successful parents, a version where Biff makes millions off gambling, owns a casino and marries Lorraine McFly (Part II), and the final version in Part III (with Eastwood Ravine instead of Clayton Ravine). My only counter to this is that the timeline was changed from Marty’s first jump to 1955, and from that point this “alternate” timeline was formed, but with enough of a foundation (I guess?) to not cause a paradox.
It’s a stretch, I realize, but if you can let that contrivance slide a bit, my theory does cover some of the other plot holes I mentioned previously, and, perhaps more importantly, it also re-invents the character of Doc Brown. I mentioned earlier how Doc is somewhat “cursed” with his knowledge of the future, but more specifically he knows his destiny. When we last see the 1955 version of Doc Brown as he assists Marty in sending him to the Old West in Part III, he is fully aware of all of the events that have to happen, and thus he is ultimately responsible to ensure these events actually happen. His life for the next 30 years is now pre-determined and focused on that time machine.
“No one should know too much about their own destiny,” Doc Brown preaches. But through unintended consequences, he now knows all of it. From this lens, he no longer appears as some “crackpot,” but a man cursed with a predetermined destiny, with a massive responsibility to ensure that all these future moments in time – from the creation of the time machine, to his friendship with Marty, to the time travel stops across past, present, and future - must happen to secure the fabric of the space-time continuum. The only unknown in his life, the only part of his future that is not written, is what happens to his future self when he travels to 1885. Can Marty prevent his death from Mad Dog Tannen, or is this truly his final destination?
Your head can spin with all of these time travel possibilities. But if you look at the entire trilogy as a series of events that Doc Brown is burdened with, then its conclusion is a more endearing and moving finale. Not only is Doc’s death prevented, but the cycle of events that needed to occur did in fact occur and the risk of paradoxes eliminated. For the first time since he slipped off a toilet and envisioned the flux capacitor, Doc Brown is free. His future is no longer predestined. This makes his romance with Claire more logical and touching – Claire represents a future that for so long could not exist for him. It also makes his final speech to Marty even more powerful. “The future hasn’t been written. No one’s has!” he proclaims when he returns to 1985 in his new, steam powered time machine. He is not just proclaiming this as advice for Marty. It’s a declaration of independence for himself, a freedom he has not known for 30 years.
Now, why does Doc create yet another time machine, a flying steam powered train time machine at that, blatantly visible to the public? Why is he traveling again through time, potentially creating more chaos and paradoxes, recklessly putting the universe’s survival at risk? Uh, well, yeah, I guess I will have to let that one slide…
