Underthinking Back to the Future: The leftovers.

Okay you may have noticed over the last 3 weeks, that each Wednesday I have been commenting on the Back to the Future Trilogy (Doc Brown, Back to the Future II). The reason for this is Tuesday's in my flat are Trilogy Tuesday, where each week we watch a movie from a trilogy. Because let's face it 3 is better than 2.

Sure Double rainbow is impressive, but if it was triple that guy would have exploded.

So last night we watched Back to the Future 3, to conclude the first trilogy series, so today I will wrap up the Back to the Future Trilogy with some leftover points that were worrying me.

The Mcfly genes

Okay here is a photo of Marty eating dinner with his Great-Great grandfather.

"Thank god I didn't inherit the Ginger hair."

Apart from the moustache and the ginger hair, they are virtually identical so the McFly's have obviously got the world's strongest genes, seeing as all the features are passed down on their side. For example Marty Mcfly Jnr.

"What an Ugly kid."

Note again that Marty's son looks exactly the same as him, so the McFly genes are obviously very strong. The males in the family always look the same. Well.....

Maybe looking identical to your Father skips every 3rd and 4th generation

So that is strange, but the most concerning thing is not how all the males look the same, below is a photo of Maggie and Seamus McFly. Marty's great-great-grandparents on his FATHER's side.

Okay nothing too strange there, they look like a lovely couple. Now look at a photo of Marty's mother.

Lorraine BAINES (serious hottie)

WHAT?! How does Marty's mother look exactly the same as his paternal great-great-grandmother? What is going on here? Did Maggie McFly have an affair with a Baines and then adopt the child out, and it just so happened two generations later the families were rejoined? Or did Marty's family just interbreed for multiple generations?
Either way, I am pretty sure thats why Marty never takes his socks off......

This what happens when you breed with blood relatives.

Cheap Walkie Talkies

In Back to the Future II, Marty and Doc procure some cheap walkie talkies from the 1950's. We see them open the packet and immediately start using them so there is no evidence Doc somehow enhanced them.

High quality Walkie Talkies.

I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, the range of cheap walkie talkies was quite often a lot less than the distance you could actually just yell to the intended listener.

"Nah, I still can't hear you"

But in the movie Doc and Marty's walkie talkies appear to work through walls, across the city at least 5 km apart. How is this remotely possible? The second part that makes no sense is the volume coming out of the speaker of this walkie talkies, I am not sure if you have ever used them but normally the noise coming out is quiet and unintelligable.

"Oh go to Blenheim, I thought you said wear Denim"

Yet Doc and Marty manage to use the Walkie Talkies as Doc is wandering down the side of a steam locomotive, and with the the walkie talkie in his pocket no the less, he can hear every command Marty is giving him. So either they are on the world's quietest Steam Train, or Doc Brown has a hidden bluetooth headset.

"You can see my Bluetooth?"

I will leave you with this.....

Underthinking Back to the Future: Doc Brown

So last night I was watching the first of the immortal Back to the future trilogy. The basic premise is this scientist Dr Emmett Brown, invents a time machine, and then he and a local teenage boy he hangs out with (this is slightly weird right? How on earth did they meet?) and have adventures in it.

Marty just realised he is spending his teenage years playing remote control cars with a 60 year old man.

 The first thing that struck me about Doc Brown is he is not exactly good at keeping secrets. He stole some plutonium from some Libyan terrorists, this in itself is not too unusual, taking advantage of the Libyans prior theft of plutonium, and preventing a nuclear bomb, is probably a good public service. However once the plutonium has been stolen surely it would be a good idea to keep this secret. The first time we see Doc Brown on screen, he is wearing white overalls with a large radioactive symbol on the back, did he already own this? Or did it come in the box with the stolen plutonium. Probably be a good idea just to wear a nondescript set of overalls, to avoid suspicion.

"Hey Doc, did you steal that plutonium??"

While its on my mind, why do the Libyan terrorists need a crackpot scientist working out of a one room apartment to build them a bomb? They have somehow altered their Kombi van, so it can keep up with a Deloren until it reaches roughly 70 mph. It even can keep up with the cornering without rolling. Just for good measure he also installed a sun roof/gun turrent. They should have just got the guy in charge of their motor pool to build the bomb, he seems pretty gifted.

If he can turn this into a pursuit vehicle then a nuclear bomb would be simple.

They should however fire their arms dealer, they have sourced the only AK-47's in the world that jam.

"I am sorry, I don't do refunds"

But back to Doc Brown the next thing I noticed is that he is extremely confident in his work. The first, I repeat first experiment on his time machine, he decides that Marty and he should stand directly in the path of the oncoming time machine.
He didn't accurately measure the starting point of the Deloren (time machine) he kind of just drove it out an arbitrary distance, and then proceeded to race it towards him and his young companion. If he had got this slightly wrong the car might not have reached 88 mph, until a point after where they were standing which would have resulted in a rather shorter movie.

The surprise on Doc's face does not instil me with confidence he knew that was going to happen.

Also how did he know at exactly 88 mph the car would travel back in time? He just worked that out on paper, and as anyone who translates theoretical results to real experiments will tell you there is always slight variation from a unforeseen variable, or just rounding error, what if it needed to get to 90 mph?

"I just don't understand why two guys were standing in front of a speeding car in an empty car park?"

I am not saying he didn't know exactly what he was doing, but for the first experiment, I would probably just film from the side. And then you can show off in subsequent experiments, by playing chicken with the time machine.

After this first experiment it is apparent the time machine works, after it was tested on Doc's beloved dog Einstein. That's right where was PETA when this was going on?

Let's be honest PETA is never going to appear in a PG movie

But after it was established that the time machine work, Doc raves about all the wonderful times and events we could visit, the signing of the declaration of independence, the birth of Christ, or a day of glory in the scientific fields Nov 5th 1955.
Doc has just offered this date, as a turning point to visit in history, then as if he had forgotten why he was using this date, he feigns an epiphany that this was the day he invented the flux capacitor. Now there is pride in your work and then there is arrogance.

"Just like the Beatles, I am bigger than Jesus"

Also I am dubious of this description of inventing the flux capacitor on this day, most inventions like this begin with equations, and then the design comes last. Later in the movie when we are in the 1950's we see that Doc just did a doodle on this date of what the flux capacitor would look like. That's right what it would look like, not how it would work, or what components were needed, that's not really inventing or is it?

It's a Doohickey transistor, and it is going to solve world poverty