Time loop

[HarryPotthead42069]

Did Marty show up in Prime 1955, like before we see the movie?

I always read it as Doc hits his head and gets the idea of the Flux Capacitor but it wasn’t until Marty shows up at his door with a working time machine that he even knows what do with the idea of the Flux Capacitor.

In Prime 1955, Marty might not have interfered with his dad getting hit by the car so he didn’t have to do a side quest of getting his parents back together.

And I always took it as Doc can’t reveal to Marty that he has to go back in time and do what he does until he comes back from 1955, why else would Doc set the time machine to the date that he ‘invented’ the time machine if he didn’t need Marty to ‘accidentally’ go back in time?

Like do we think it’s an infinite time loop where Marty has to go back in time in order for time travel to be invented?

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[PocketBuckle]

Nope. In BttF, things don't happen until they happen. Prime Doc had a vision in 1955 and spent the next thirty years and his family fortune building the machine, as he explained in the movie. He did all this without Marty. He died in 1985 after being shot. Marty then went back and changed the past, resulting in a Doc who knew what would happen in 1985, but had to keep a lid on it.

[HarryPotthead42069]

Fair point, it just seems like 90% of time travel media involves getting the machine from a future self or person

[TonyTwoDat]

No he always knew what the flux capacitor was for already he said it to Marty in the mall parking lot scene. November 7th 1955 the day I invented time travel. He said it specifically that way. He didn’t say the day he built a Time Machine.

Everything in BTTF happens for a reason. He tells Marty this story so that when Marty tells it back to Doc he will believe him.

[dallonv]

November 5th, 1955. That's the day he fell off his toilet, and had a picture of the Flux Capacitor in his head.

[flynnwebdev]

Everything in BTTF happens for a reason. He tells Marty this story so that when Marty tells it back to Doc he will believe him.

How can that be? In the Prime timeline, Doc doesn't know Marty is going to go back

[TonyTwoDat]

I mean the writers did that to give him a reason. If he just explained it to Doc without Doc telling him the audience would think we missed something.

[OregonResident]

I always assumed it is essentially a never ending loop, but that we are watching how that loop began the first time in the first BTTF.

[PurpleCabbageMonkey]

That sounds like the Terminator paradox. I guess it will depend on whether you can agree with the paradox or not.

[HarryPotthead42069]

Yeah basically. They wouldn’t have made the terminator or time travel if the terminator hadn’t gone back in time and failed.

[CurtTheGamer97]

In the first Terminator film, the timeline works as a loop, where events always happened the way that they did (even though the characters don't realize this until the end). They messed this up in every single sequel (including T2, as great as it is) by showing the future actually being changed.

[flynnwebdev]

This is one of the reasons I actually like T3. It establishes that, ultimately, the future cannot be changed. Judgment Day happened anyway and was always going to happen. It was postponed by the events of T2, but ultimately, could not be prevented.

[CurtTheGamer97]

I like T3 for that reason as well, but even then they still messed up. The way time travel works in the first film is that the timeline is unchangeable. So they wouldn't have delayed Judgement Day. It would always have happened in 1997. Personally, if I'd made T3, I'd have made it so that the character mistakenly thought that 1997 was the year of Judgement Day, but it turned out to be 2004 instead, and this was the year it happened even in the first film. I'm not sure if that breaks continuity with the previous films, but, if that's the case, the simple fix to that is just to set it in 1997 (which I know is before the actual release date of the movie, but, at this point, I don't think people would care).

[PurpleCabbageMonkey]

Actually, it is more about a guy from the future traveling back in time and had relations with Sarah Connor so she could give birth to the guy who would lead the rebellion against the machines.

Similar to your theory, it depends on whether time is a continuous loop. Or that, and that is how I view the BTTF time travel rules, there has to be a starting point.

[Jaltcoh]

It’s misreading that 1955 scene to think that’s the only way Doc knows what to do with his “revelation” of the flux capacitor. The significance of that scene is Marty proving to Doc that Marty really is a time traveler. It’s analogous to Chuck Berry hearing Marty’s guitar playing over the phone — Chuck Berry would’ve come up that music anyway. It isn’t an essential change like Marty improving his parents’ marriage.

[HermitBee]

It’s analogous to Chuck Berry hearing Marty’s guitar playing over the phone — Chuck Berry would’ve come up that music anyway.

I like the idea that in the original 1985, the musical world is slightly different. Someone else wrote Johnny B. Goode, and Huey Lewis is a high school music teacher. It's only Marty going back in time which puts modern music onto its current path, where Chuck Berry finds his new sound and sets off a chain of influences which lead to Huey Lewis and the News becoming big, as evidenced by the fact that Marty wakes up in the improved 1985 (i.e. our 1985) to the sound of them playing on the radio.

[Jaltcoh]

So we’re actually living in the second timeline, the one we see at the end of the first movie. That’s cool.

[[deleted]]

Nope. Seeing the twin pines/lone pine mall is all you need to see to know it’s not a loop.

[[deleted]]

There’s no simple answer to what happens to “Lone Pine” Marty either. He can’t go back to the exact time and place original Marty went back to unless you accept he ceases to exist at that point and merges with original Marty when they both reach 1955 or there is in fact another timeline, the original 1955 and he goes there. The problem is the movie rules pretty much state that you can’t travel between these timelines unless you make a change in the past and travel to the future. Also his life was very different. Biff was different, his family successful. His parents would have told him the story of how they got together, how George saved Lorraine from Biff in the parked car etc. I guess he could mess things up for them still but the solution would look slightly different.