BTTF Trilogy (Spoilers, for the one person who hasn't seen it) (1 Viewer)

[TheoGB]

I was just thinking. At the end of BTTF part II Marty makes the Doc fall unconscious and then it seems like he doesn't remember any of the night before at the beginning of part III.
So, doesn't this mean he fails to get the bits of the note Marty leaves him in Part I and save himself from being shot? Hmmm.

It has been a looooonnnng time since I saw them, though.
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[Nate Anderson]

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[Sean Cauley]

Well, if you want a plot hole you could drive a DeLorean through . . . Parts II and III could not have happened, given the rules of time travel set up by the first film.
See if you're with me on this:
-In Back to the Future, during the testing of the time machine, Doc sends Einstein the dog one minute into the future. He makes a big deal about how, to Einstein, no time passed, while a full minute went by in the world outside. For that one minute, however, Einstein was completely missing from the face of the earth.
-If this was true, then at the end of Part I/beginning of Part II, when Marty and Jennifer join Doc for some future travel to see their kids, they should have arrived in a world in which they had gone missing at age seventeen and not been heard from in thirty years. They would not have a house, jobs or children in the future, and the plot could not progress in any of the ways it would through the remaining two movies. [Note that Doc didn't seem to have any worries about encountering his future self in 2015, as it seemed that he had pretty much "moved" there and spent much time getting acclimated to the clothes, society and technology of the future, before his return on the morning after the night he left 1985.]
-The only way the future Marty, Jennifer and kids could have existed is if the BTTF universe allowed for Bill & Ted rules of time travel (in which the mere intention of past travel could result in the present being changed - like Bill & Ted retroactively planting the housekeys at the police station).
As airtight as I thought most of the BTTF films' past-destination time travel theory was, they really mucked up their one trip to the future. But it's still a fun ride (and I do really like Part II).
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[Chad R]

No, I don't think he forgets the night's events. When he comes to at his house he grabs the microphone to his recorder and begins relating the success of the operation and then is startled by Marty's presence.
However, Marty showing back up and making him faint, then taking him home does prevent Doc from picking up the pieces of the letter to reassemble it.
So in the end you're right, I guess.

 

[JohnS]

UM
look closely again.
Doc puts the ripped up pieces in his pocket!!!!
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[Graeme Clark]

quote:
they should have arrived in a world in which they had gone missing at age seventeen and not been heard from in thirty years
[/quote]
Except that it can work both ways. As long as they go back to the same time that they left, then to them they have been gone for hours/days/years, but to the world they never left. Einstein never did any backwards travelling, therefore he was in fact gone for that one minute.
It's been so long since I've seen BTTF 2 and 3 though, so I can't comment on specifics.
[Edited last by Graeme Clark on November 14, 2001 at 12:31 PM]

 

[Nick White]

I actually did my final paper on this trilogy for my Sciencee Fiction class last year. Man I love these movies. Admittedly, there are several inconsistencies in the time travel theory presented here, but if you look at *any* time travel story *ever* written, there are holes you can punch into it(a.k.a. paradoxes).

 

[Rob Lutter]

if you wanna get really technical... you could prove that you couldn't change anything in the past... because... ok this may get complicated...
If you have a time machine... any you go into the past... then technically, wouldn't you have already gone to the past in the future and therefore already changed the past in the past... therefore you have already changed the future in the past by even thinking about going into the past... err... oh... I've gone cross-eyed again.

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[Joseph Howard]

Time travel is easy. I do it all the time.... one
second after another I time travel into the future.
However, the faster I drive down the highway, the faster
I travel forward in time (that is compared to those at
the side of the road).
Going backwards, Ah! now that is another matter.
Dr. Joe
Oh! And EVERYBODY has a time machine. It is called the UNIVERSE.
[Edited last by Joseph Howard on November 14, 2001 at 01:43 PM]

 

[Bill Moore]

The BIG plot hole in II - if I remember correctly - is that the future Tanner (old man) gets the book, goes back to the 50s to change the future, then returns to his FORMER present in order to get the car back to Doc & Marty, who are still in that future. Then, when D & M go back to the 80s, they find that everything has changed.
BUT if our bad guy successfully changed the 50s (and thus the 80s), there is no way he could have returned to his original time to return the car. That time frame would have changed too, and D & M would not have been there to return the car to.
They avoid the common time-travel "gotchas" in BTTF, and have a good, tight, story. But this plot device in II has always marred that episode for me.
I have a fondness for III... just love the western sendups.
B
[Edited last by Bill Moore on November 14, 2001 at 01:53 PM]

 

[TheoGB]

Well there is that deleted scene where Biff comes back and then disappears because he doesn't exist any more or something.
One could also suggest that anyone who won as often as Biff would put betting out of business long before he got very rich. Or even that his early wins would ripple down and alter the later events in the Almanac.
JohnS - I hope your right that he does pick up the pieces. As I said I've not seen them in many years and until the sodding DVDs come out I can't check.
Heh heh. So many plot holes possible. I still love BTTF part II simply for the whole 1950's section where we see them match in part I.
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[Adam Lenhardt]

Or even that his early wins would ripple down and alter the later events in the Almanac.

Not according to the BTTF rules of time travel... the Almanac would change accordingly, like all the newspapers and such.
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[Hugh Jackes]

I have a different question.
When Biff comes back to 2015, he's clearly in agony, looks like he's been shot or beaten severely. Yet we con't see anything like that happen to him in 1955. What happened?

 

[Greg K]

The only conclusion I can come to is that everytime someone time travels in the Trilogy, they enter a parallel universe. This preserves the original timeline and allows the person to travel through time. Thus, the Trilogy goes through at least 5 different universes!!!! When Marty ends up home in part III, he's not in his "real" universe.

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

Not really a time travel point here, but more of an inconsistency. In the first film Doc says one of the reasons he is going forward in time is to see who wins the next 25 World Series.
But in Part 2 he says, "I didn't invent a time machine to win at gambling, I invented a time machine to travel through time". Just seems a little out of character.
Until time travel is possible it's all just theory. Who knows. BTTF could be right (but it probably isn't). They are a lot of fun though, and I love them all!
Neil
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[Geoffrey_A]

I spent a lot of time looking into time travel. At the time I wanted to write a comic book that involved time travel, and being the doofus I was, I decided to make it really accurate. Here's what I disacovered:
Time travel is absolutely useless as a story telling device unless you throw away all the rules of time travel. Here's why:
Quantum physics says that there are an infinite number of dimensions. Every possible scenario. So, say you go back in time and kill your grandparents. Will you not be born? doesn't matter. Now that you've killed your grandparents, you occupy a universe in which your grandparents were killed. Nothing happens to you, you came from a universe where they survived. Your universe carries on without you. Problem now is, unless you can travel through dimensions as well as time, you're stuck in this universe where you wont exist. You can't go forward to your time period to live happily, because you never existed there. And even if you did, your double would still be there.
It's impossible to alter the past, because by altering it you create an alternate dimension in which the consequences of that scenario play out. Makes time travel kinda useless eh?

As far as BTTF time travel rules go, they implemented something called the "ripple effect". Assuming the ripple effect takes time to instate itself, it would be possible for Biff to return to his future, when doc and marty go back, they go through the ripple effect and end up the hell present. We know the ripple effect takes time, because marty screwed up his parents first meeting, and it took several days for the ripple effect totally anihilate his timeline.
Still, love the BTTF movies, but don't look to them as a sound source for time travel insights

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[Andy_R]

As mentioned, in Part I, Doc does put the torn up letter in his pocket (Doc is not a litter-bug) so it can be assumed that even if he forgets events of that night, he will eventually find the pieces and reassemble the letter, thus saving himself from the terrorists in 1985.
Also, as said before, the "ripple-effect" is how Bif could return to the same 2015 that he left. The reason he seems to be in pain (and I think this might have been explained in The Secrets Of The Back To The Future Trilogy documentery) was that by changing the past, he made it so that he was no longer alive in 2015 (living the super-Bif lifestyle must have caught up to him). His being in pain is consistent with the pain Marty was in at the end of Part I as he was being ereased from existence.
Now a question I have. Once Marty changed the past, there must have been a Marty (lets call him Marty 2) that was raised by cool, sucessful George and non-fat Elaine. This Marty 2 grew up in a tastefully decorated house with a brother Dave that worked in an office (rather than BK), and nicer sister Jennifer who has many boyfriends, and a non-Bully Bif who had a car-detailing business. Marty 2 even had a cool Toyota pick-up truck prior to the events of October 25th, 1985.
At the end of Part I, "our" Marty (Marty 1) gets back to 1985 in time to see himself (Marty 2?) go back in time. Does this set up some sort of temporal loop? Does Marty 2 (since he is a different person than Marty 1) somehow not interfere with the initial meeting of George and Elaine (where George is hit by the car), thus not leading to George knocking out Bif and becoming cool George. Would this mean that when Marty 2 gets back to 1985, instead of his cool family / cool life, he goes back to the world of Marty 1? That would suck for him.
Was that too heavy?
Anyway, its fun to think about this stuff (for me, at least).
-Andy
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[Johnny G]

Andy,
Your question is one I've always had but nobody seems to understand what I mean.
Can the question be answered?

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I think Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me said it best, "Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed".
That pretty much sums up my feelings of explaining time travel in the BTTF trilogy. Quite frankly, I could care less, since Marty and Doc rule!!!
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[Nate Anderson]

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