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Line 6: Actually, Marty is the one hooking up the camcorder in a deleted part of that scene. He even asks Doc for an adapter that hasn't been invented yet, and somehow ''still'' manages to get the TV working correctly with just the parts from the lab. And an earlier version of the screenplay had Marty as an A/V whiz of sorts, so maybe it's a hidden talent of Marty's that the filmmakers didn't really expand on in the films proper. * On the other hand, the scene might've been deleted because the filmmakers realized how hard it'd actually be and decided to let the audience assume he had Doc's off-screen help. * In 1985? Most new TV's in that era didn't provide anything more than an antenna input (and were likely transformerless designs where the "hot chassis" was hard-wired to one side of the AC line) so an RF modulator would've been the standard way to get a signal into the TV. Of course the 1958 TV was no better, but... * In the 70's my family would ask me for miracles like this. Since my grandma had an early 1970's VCR with RCA inputs we could pull it off easily but without that you would need some sort of RF converter (common now...) or a camcorder with RF output and/or a 75->300ohm adapter (pretty common adapter back then actually) and I only saw one camera like that, and that one in the mid 80's no less, the rest were RCA output. Of course none of this even applies if there is something about 1955 TV's different from 60's and 70's TV's I was asked to do this on. *** Marty is an aspiring professional guitarist. I speak from experience when I say that there are guitarists who wouldn't know an ohm from a dog turd, but are freaking whizzes at jury-rigging electronics. They kind of have to be. Line 96 ⟶ 97: * How does Doc shift gears when the DeLorean is under RC control? While automatic was an option on the DeLorean, it's fairly well established that the one used for the time machine has a manual transmission seeing as Marty shifts into 5ht gear just before going back to 1955. ** Close-ups of the shifter show it surrounded by wires. Doc probably rigged it and the clutch with small servos to do the shifting via remote. == Back to the Future: Part II == Line 294: * When 1955 Doc saw his tombstone, how come 1885 Doc didn't remember it? Because that Doc never saw the tombstone, in the same way that the Doc from the start of the first film didn't remember meeting Marty in 1955. * Actually it's quite possible Doc did remember meeting Marty but was acting like he didn't, the same way he pretended to be shot instead of just avoiding the whole situation with the Libyans... he was preserving the timeline. I think the answer is more something like that when you actually become a time traveler in BttF, it endows you with [[Ripple Effect-Proof Memory]]. Thus Doc would be subject to his memory being changed by time travel interference only up to the point before he travels in time himself, at the end of the first movie. Everyone else who's traveled in time shows that their memories don't change with the timeline. Marty doesn't remember his and his parents' different lives, nor does he remember growing up in Hell Valley. Similarly, Jennifer can still remember what happened in the future of 2015 even though that future now no longer exists (as do Doc and Marty). This is probably an example of [[Required Secondary Superpowers]] to avoid paradox, since it would otherwise be impossible to use time travel to fix any sort of problem... if you fixed it, it didn't happen, thus you wouldn't become aware of needing to fix it, so it wouldn't get fixed, so you would become aware of it, etc. * So, Doc couldn't repair the time circuits with 1885 components. But he knew how to fix them with 1955 technology; couldn't he build the components he needed? He was able to build a steampunk ice-making machine, would it be that difficult to build 1955 circuits? I don't have knowledge of these things, so probably my question is stupid... but ''why'' is it impossible? ** Because making refrigeration coils is considerably easier than making something to produce a vacuum and thus vacuum tubes, which are clearly a part of the 1955 "microchip"? Line 302: * Was anyone else disappointed that Old West Doc hadn't acquired a new dog back then, and named it Newton? ~~== Back to the Future: The Game ==~~ * In the [[Telltale Games\|Telltale]] game, the timeline eventually gets so messed up that the events of the movies never happened, up to and including the part about the time machine having been built in the first place. Shouldn't that cause a major [[Grandfather Paradox]], making that version of the timeline unviable? ** [[Delayed Ripple Effect]] works on time machines as well as time travelers. * Couldn't Doc and Marty just kill Edna in 1931 instead of having to go through a long sequence that leads to the planned break-up? Right, because Doc and Marty are cold blooded killers who would be totally fine with straight up murdering someone. That's completely and totally consistent with their characters. The timestream would also take a way bigger hit if they did that. * Also, why doesn't Marty just swap Emmett's mind-map with Kid's? Surely Kid must be a "Degenerate Criminal", and Emmett didn't even test Kid's mind-map when the break-up was about to happen. Why go through such a long sequence involving changing smells? Maybe the punch card had some kind of identifier we couldn't make out printed on it. So switching them wouldn't work because Edna would have noticed, being the one to get Emmett to build the thing. If you click on Kid's card, Marty examines it and notes that Kid's name is written on the card. Why you couldn't just get a blank card and punch holes in it to match Kid's is beyond me though. * In the third episode, Einstein and Doc disappear from the Delorean wreck and we only see their alternate universe personas. But Marty never changes to his alternate personas throughout the series. Why does this affect Doc and Einstein, but not Marty? Because Doc isn't Doc anymore. By going off with Edna instead of going to see Frankenstein, he is essentially preventing a fundamental aspect of his own Doc-ness. The moment he displays the mind map thing instead of the flying car, he stops being Doc Brown, and starts being First Citizen Brown. It just took until Marty hit 88 for the timeline to catch up to him. Marty didn't disappear because: a.) He didn't put his own existence in jeopardy, and b.) even if he had, it would have taken the timeline longer to catch up to him (due to being the last born), which gives him a chance to undo the damage. == Paradoxes == Line 523 ⟶ 509: * If the time circuits measure time in minutes after 0000-01-01 00:00 (assuming a proleptic Gregorian calendar with no 4000-year rule), then the smallest amount of memory that could be used to express all values from then until 9999-12-31 23:59 would be 33 bits (unsigned). This would actually cover it until approximately the beginning of April 16332, but you might have trouble seeing it on the Present Time display. If they measured time in ''seconds'' following 0000-01-01 00:00, you'd need at least a 39-bit unsigned integer, which would cover you until roughly mid-January 17421. ** I don't think Doc ever planned to travel that far in time. The machine may have been intentionally built not to be capable of it, or he may have had some technical solution, or been able to think one up, if he changed his mind. If he didn't stop at four-digits, how many was he going to stop at? Five? Six? 34? 24187? It probably would have been a bit mind-boggling even for the Doc to travel to build the Delorean with the ability to travel [[Toy Story (franchise)\|\|to infinity and beyond]]. Besides, a 4-digit year is a good cut-off point as that can theoretically get a person back as far as the Late [[Stone Age]]. I don't think he'd ''ever'' deliberately go that far into the future. Traveling ''30 years'' into the future is risky enough. Who would have the ''slightest idea'' what to expect in the 100th century? The Earth might have been rendered completely uninhabitable due to nuclear war or something. Line 676 ⟶ 662: This troper remembers a fanfic that said he met Marty then he crashed into his trashcans after he lost his grip on a car. Simply because Doc knows he'll have to befrend Marty at some point from meeting him in 1955. Doc is probably the one who sought Marty out, so that there would be no major paradoxes. [[Word of God]] is [https://web.archive.org/web/20120904232828/http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/97285 right here]. Turns out that Marty was just a curious kid circa 1981, and wanted to see this crazy inventor who everyone told him to avoid. Doc found Marty's curiosity to be heartwarming, and hired the lad on as a part-time lab assistant. * As a side note, for many years there were rumors of a script for a prequel TV movie called ''Back to the Beginning'', which would have shown how Marty met Doc. * When Marty writes the letter to Doc in the first film, why does he write "Do no open until 1985" on the envelope? First, there wouldn't have been anything wrong with Doc opening the letter right after Marty had left anyway and secondly, all it did was tell Doc that Marty was trying to tell him about the future, prompting him to tear it up.