Time Machine to the Future

            There are some forces that can never coexist peacefully, that, when they meet, must play a zero sum game for power in which one will always be dominant.  The McFlys and the Tannens are such forces, drawn together again and again throughout history only so one can exert control over the other.  The Tannens were always more powerful and would have stayed so if a McFly hadn’t befriended Doc Brown who was able to retroactively aid the McFly clan.  Not only that, he went to the future to make sure that the McFlys had the upper hand in all future generations.

            Travelling across time and space in his flying train, Doc Brown aided the future generations of McFlys against the Tannens as their numbers grew.  Eventually, most of the world’s population was either a Tannen or McFly descendant, and those who weren’t had to pick sides.  There’s no way to tell how many times the final battle was fought, Doc Brown effectively rewriting any time stream in which the McFlys lost.  But eventually the brutish Tannens were vanquished and forced underground while the spritely McFlys and their allies enjoyed life on the surface during a technological golden age.  Satisfied that all was well with the world, Doc Brown flew off into the sunset.   

            Time passed, hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection changed the two societies so that those on the surface and those beneath barely resembled the men they once were let alone each other.  Eventually another time traveler arrived, in the year 802,701 A.D.   This time traveler had never heard of the McFlys and the Tannens or their war for supremacy; the traveler only saw the distant echoes of what they once were.  So he came up with his own names to describe the descendants: Eloi and Morlocks.

The Dark Truth About "Back To The Future"

Analyses of the dark implications of Back to the Future have been done to death.  But this is the internet, and if I see a dead horse, then I’m sure as hell going to beat it.  But I want to do something more.  Most of the aforementioned analyses only refer to the first movie, but I’m going to look at the trilogy as a whole.  If we pick up immediately after Doc Brown flies off in his time-travelling train, we find the epilogue is quite…unfortunate. 

But a word about the train first.  If it’s been a while since you’ve seen the movie, you probably remember that a train smashed the Delorean, then Doc Brown showed up on a flying, time-travelling train, with his wife and kids in tow.  You might have forgotten that right after the Delorean is destroyed, Marty says, “Well, Doc.  It’s destroyed.  Just like you wanted.”  The dangers of time travel and messing with the past was a constant theme in the trilogy, and Doc Brown realized the havoc his creation could cause if it ended up in the wrong hands.  So when he comes back in a new time machine, the best case scenario is that he is a huge hypocrite. 

But let’s put that aside.  Doc Brown flies off into the sunset, and Marty goes back home.  Until he is taken away be the government.  You remember the terrorists from the first movie?  Yeah, that storyline never really got wrapped up.  In fact, their van crashes into a film development booth, which probably wouldn’t kill them.  So the police get there and arrest the terrorists.  In exchange for leniency (this was pre-9/11) they give up the name of the guy who got stole the nuclear material: Dr. Emmet Brown.  They also mention that there was a kid with him.  It wouldn’t be hard to connect Marty with Doc Brown, as even the high school principal is aware of the friendship. 

So Marty is brought in for questioning.  And he can’t adequately answer any questions about his own past, because he didn’t grow up in this timeline.  He grew up in a world where his family was timid and unsuccessful.  The events and people that populated that life occurred differently in his current reality.  If he tried to answer their questions, he’d come across as delusional.  Even if he told them about the time machine, they wouldn’t believe him.  Except…

The only reason no one knew about the Delorean is because it was kept quiet.  Between 1885, 1955, 1985, and 2015, only one person found out about it that they didn’t want to.  Because a car, even a flying one, could be easy to hide.  But a train?  It’s impossible that no one would notice a flying train.  Which, might I add, was built only with parts that existed in the late 19^th century. 

So Marty would become a valuable asset to a government that now has to worry about a madman hurtling through time and space with his family in a flying locomotive.  Because Marty is the only person who has any experience with time travel at all (and is guilty of aiding and abetting Doc Brown), he would be held indefinitely and used to help capture his friend.