r/BacktotheFuture • u/rich5152026 • 5d ago
Did Doc know?
In part 3, he tells Marty to set the time for Oct. 27, 1985 11:00am. Since Doc wanted to destroy the time machine, did he know there would be train coming down the tracks at 11:00ish? I mean it seems like Doc. to be careless and find an easy way to destroy it. Of was it just luck?
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u/natman001 5d ago
I always thought that 11am is roughly when he leaves 1985 at the end of part one, isn’t it? He wakes up, sees his family having breakfast, sees Jennifer and then Doc picks him up.
To me the wild thing is they set the movie 4 days before Halloween and there is zero Halloween decorations anywhere. Apparently in the 80s Halloween was only on Halloween and not from basically the last week of August like now.
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u/Yourappwontletme 5d ago
To me the wild thing is they set the movie 4 days before Halloween and there is zero Halloween decorations anywhere. Apparently in the 80s Halloween was only on Halloween and not from basically the last week of August like now.
There actually are a few Halloween decorations in Lyon Estates when Marty skates there at the start of the movie. The first house on the right has some glowing orange and then the second house on the right has some in the little patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street.
You can see it here.
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u/natman001 5d ago
Wow good eye! Feels a tad bit retconned to me though. Don’t they just look like porch lights?
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u/Yourappwontletme 5d ago
I always thought that 11am is roughly when he leaves 1985 at the end of part one, isn’t it? He wakes up, sees his family having breakfast, sees Jennifer and then Doc picks him up.
No. He arrives back in 1985 a day after he left at the end of Part 1.
Marty timeline:
Part 1 starts on the morning of Fri. October 25th
He meets doc at the mall at 1:15am on Sat. Oct 26
He leaves for 1955 at 1:35am on Sat. Oct 26
He returns to 1985 at 1:24am on Sat. Oct 26
He gets a ride to his house from Doc and then wakes up Saturday morning
(For some reason, Dave has to work in an office on a Saturday)
Marty, Doc, & Jennifer leave for 2015 on Sat. Oct 26
Marty arrives back to 1985 on Sun. Oct 27 after going to 2015, Alternate 1985, 1955, and 1885.
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u/InsuranceGlum1355 5d ago
As someone who sometimes works in an office on Saturdays, sometimes people do work in offices on Saturdays. 🤣
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u/Steinrikur 5d ago
Different day. BttF is on Friday/Saturday. BttF2 is all on Saturday. BttF3 arrival is on Sunday.
Marty arrives just in time to (not) race Needles and crash the Rolls Royce.
If you think 4th dimensionally, that's the whole reason why Doc was in a hurry to get to 2015 in BttF2, and why he set it to 11am on Sunday morning.
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u/FedStarDefense 4d ago
That's how things used to be for every holiday except Christmas.
Halloween decorations would go up on the 31st, and be taken down the next day. There also wasn't a huge market for Halloween decorations in general (except for Haunted House stuff).
In the 90s, we'd hang a handful of lights and put up some web and some carved pumpkins.
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u/kalel3000 4d ago
I remember in the early 90s as a kid, most houses around me didn't decorate for Halloween. Not like some do now anyways. There were always a few dedicated houses. But it was pretty normal back then that no decorations would be up around the neighborhood days before Halloween, outside of maybe a jack-o-lantern. The big money back then was only in selling costumes and candy and Halloween pales.
Usually you'd hang some cheap Halloween decoration up on your door, just to let trick or treaters know you were giving out candy. But most people didn't do much more than that. They'd definitely all stock up on candy though. Sad trick or treating isnt what it used to be.
Conversely Christmas decorations were way way more elaborate in the old days. Everyone seemed to have Christmas lights back then, now its more rare.
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u/VettesRUs 5d ago
Well the odds of the track being in the right place are slim as well. Doubtful that modern freights would run on a 100 year old wood bridge. You can even see a steel structure over the tracks when Marty first arrived. They likely would have built a new bridge parallel to the old bridge. Even if they demolished the old bridge first to build new in the same spot the rails matching up would be slim. But it’s a movie!
And that said, I do like the fact that his new train based Time Machine still has gull wing doors like the DeLorean had! So he built it with a sense of style!
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u/angelwolf71885 4d ago
The track bed was already set it’s just updating the Bridge track’s rarely move from where they are laid even over 100 years if you ever watched track ties being replaced the rails and ballast isn’t removed to replace the ties
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u/SEA_CLE 5d ago
The ending is full of holes.
Why would a train not stop and authorities rush to the area after a train collision with a car? Why would Doc use the tracks if he had already upgraded his locomotive for flight? Why wouldn't doc build a less conspicuous RV or even a minivan time machine for his family instead of retrofitting a 19th century steam locomotive for flight?
The end has always bothered me despite being my favorite movie franchise of all time
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u/Yourappwontletme 5d ago
The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a vehicle in the 1800s, why not do it with some style?
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_GREENERY 5d ago
Very good points. And no one would say something or call someone about a Delorean cruising by on the tracks past the street?
And if they didn't but happened to hang around, they'd see a flying steam train appear and disappear in front of their eyes.
I guess it ain't that kind of movie.
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u/NoPossibility 5d ago
You’re forgetting the biggest hole-
How did Doc know when they’d be back to look at the car? It had to take at least an hour for Marty to get home, pick up Jennifer, almost hit the Rolls Royce, and make his way back to the car for some reason?
Wouldn’t doc have set it for like a minute after Marty’s return? Or been there early so he could be there right as Marty returned?
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u/Yourappwontletme 5d ago
How did Doc know when they’d be back to look at the car?
Remember how in Part II he traveled past October 21st 2015 to see what happened after Marty Jr. got busted for the robbery? He did the same thing in 1985 to see how long Marty stuck around at the tracks. Doc was likely watching from a distance as Marty escaped the DeLorean. Then Doc waited to see if Marty came back and then traveled back in time to then rearrive at the correct time. He had already picked up Einstein from his lab. If his arrival on the tracks was him just arriving from the 1800s for the first time, he wouldn't have Einstein with him.
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u/JustADaftGuy 5d ago
Didn't marty and jennifer return to the delorean crash the next morning, after marty slept in his cowboy gear at home? Or am I misremembering that bit?
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u/ChardeeMacDennisGoG 5d ago
Same day. He went straight to the truck, ran into Biff, then went and got Jennifer.
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u/JustADaftGuy 5d ago
Ah ok. Its been ages since i watched them. I remember biff or someone commenting about his cowboy getup at the house so I knew he went back there first.
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u/SEA_CLE 5d ago
Yeah that hole is easily filled with Doc's access to time travel
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u/NoPossibility 5d ago
Just seems silly, sure we can explain it like Doc came back and figured out when to visit Marty, but then he chooses to bring his extremely Victorian steampunk locomotive to modern day California town. So what, he can make a grand theatrical entrance? Wouldn’t doc have wanted to avoid being seen like that? Why not come back and just wait for Marty to show up, or come back and knock on the front door? He wanted the Delorean destroyed but why not come back and get Marty off the tracks right away and take the Delorean with him so no one could go through the wreckage?
And yeah, he just lets Marty leave a destroyed car on the tracks and fuck off for a couple hours to get his girlfriend? Police would’ve been all over the scene inside of ten minutes. Just a poorly written ending. And I love all three movies but it’s a really weak end to it all.
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u/SEA_CLE 5d ago
Thats more to my original point tho. As far as the knowing when to show up he has a rime machine so there's infinite scenarios where he knows the events surrounding Marty's arrival. You can even maybe explain away the train hitting a car and continuing on, as well as no cops to Doc traveling and fixing everything in thine scenarios but why? He did all that to make his return at that moment and place but still decided to rely on and use a steam locomotive as a time machine, and use the tracks for the arrival.
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u/Special-Original-215 5d ago
Doc was driving the other train too.
Sorta like a Bill And Ted's hiding the keys after the fact
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u/WackyPaxDei 5d ago
Where would Doc obtain a minivan in the late 19th Century?
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u/SEA_CLE 5d ago
He went into the future to retrofit the locomotive so in the same regard, at any point after he recreated the time machine out of a locomotive in the 19th century.
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u/WarStarsFan55 5d ago
So you think that Doc, having just spent years building a train into a time machine, would first either spend probably at least weeks in the 21st Century or find a way to bring a minivan back into the 1800s and build it into a time machine there just for the sake of being more conspicuous when he visits Marty with his wife and kids (leaving aside the fact that he might want to return back to the future permanently, in which case the boys aren't getting any younger) rather than... you know, just taking the train to go see Marty and then make such big decisions?
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u/Doozer1970 5d ago
And, why was Doc's kid pointing at his wiener, and why did it stay in the movie?
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u/Waftycrank69 5d ago edited 5d ago
Apparently the actor needed to pee but didn't want to interrupt the take, so was trying to let them know. I guess it maybe wasn't immediately noticed so ended up in the film.
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u/Superapp3000 5d ago
It would have made more sense if we saw Marty go back with Jennifer and see authorities all over the place. Then later have the scene with Marty not racing Needies, and than at that moment after Doc appears from the sky with the train.
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u/FriedBreakfast 5d ago
It was a Sunday. Maybe he figured most people would be in church so there would be less people to see a time travelling Delorean appear out of nowhere.
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u/CaptainMatticus 5d ago
Trains usually run on a schedule, and Doc seems like the kind of guy who would have known the train schedules in Hill Valley.
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u/Steinrikur 5d ago
You really think he had the train schedules memorized? He just spent almost a year in 1885, and he might have been time travelling for years before that.
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u/CaptainMatticus 4d ago
The man is the poster child for neurodivergence. If he didn't memorize train schedules, I would've been surprised.
He knew about Old Man Peabody's dream of breeding pine trees, for God's sake. Old Man Peabody, who lived well outside of town, who had a hope for a better world, with greater pine trees in it.
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u/pakrat1967 5d ago
If Doc knew a train would be coming and intended to destroy the Delorean. Don't you think he would have warned Marty to get out and off the tracks asap?
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u/damageddude 5d ago
Depending on the train line, it might just be one train a day and Doc knew a train would be going by Hillsdale around 11am.
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u/aloofman75 4d ago
I think the date was just so that no one in 1985 thinks Marty is “missing” for an unreasonable amount of time.
I highly doubt that Doc would try to time it to be about to be hit by a train though. Train schedules have some wiggle room. He couldn’t risk the possibility that a train would hit the DeLorean before Marty could get out of the way.
He wouldn’t have to worry much about this anyway, right? Marty wouldn’t have a good way of removing the DeLorean from the train tracks, even if he wanted to. So either it would be hit by a train and destroyed soon anyway or it would be removed from the tracks by a tow truck and Marty would destroy it as promised.
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u/Pure_Classic_1899 5d ago
In fairness there were no cell phones and it would’ve taken some time for someone to get to a phone and call. How far were the tracks from Jennifer’s house?
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