The Time Train started out as the engine for a circus train
It's as much a piece of attention-grabbing spectacle as it is a vehicle. Doc likely built it with the cover story of using it to pull a circus or carnival. The first trip into the future was accomplished as a magic trick: "I'm going to make this steam engine disappear!" Off he goes with a crowd-pleasing bang!
Seamus and Maggie McFly are Lorraine's great-grandparents, not George's.
The surname is just a coincidence. One of them looks like Lorraine, the other looks like Marty — not George, Marty. Marty didn't get his looks from his father's side, but from his mother's. (When you think about it, he looks more like her anyway.) This also explains why George and Lorraine are still happily married despite the implications of her having a son who looks exactly like her high-school boyfriend Calvin. She has photographic proof that that face runs in her family.- It makes more sense that George has photographic proof that Marty's face runs in HIS family.
- See also the inbreeding theory above.
- Of course, there is William "good-looking guy" McFly.
- Utterly and thoroughly Jossed in the Telltale games, where we meet an adult William and Arthur McFly; the former states that Seamus was his father and Arthur is his son. And George states that Arthur was his father (which, given that he's an Identical Son, didn't really need to be stated, but still...)
Doc got the time machine from the future.
He came up with the Flux Capacitor concept when he hit his head on the sink and was unconscious, right? Well, maybe Future Doc (or someone) came back and implanted the idea in his head using future neural technology, or old-fashioned hypnosis? The time machine has no origin, it just keeps going around and around...- He must have enlisted the help of Leonardo Di Caprio.
- The time machine still needs an origin.
- Consider that by the time Part III happened, Doc learned that the Flux Capacitor could actually work, he'd already had a week to study the original time machine, and even rebuilt the Time Circuit Control microchip with 1955 components. All that he really needed was to wait until 1981 (When the DeLorean DMC-12 was released) to start building it.
Doc and Clara had been traveling with Marty for years before they picked him up at the train crossing.
They already knew everything he did, and were just stopping by to say "Screw The Rules, I've Got An Awesome Time Machine And Know How To Avoid All The Problems I Was Worried About Before, so I'll be picking you up any time you want a ride back... to the future!"- They certainly had time to make two kids.
When Doc Brown and family visit Marty and Jennifer at the end of Part 3, Doc originally intended to destroy the DeLorean and, if necessary, kill Marty.
He had not foreseen that the train would destroy the flux capacitor, and, knowing Marty's irresponsible nature, predicted Marty would sell the technology. Not able to bring himself to harm Marty, he put it off, knowing he could always go back and do it later. But just in case it didn't come to that, he prepared the 1885 photograph to give to Marty as a gift.- Doc wouldn't partake in killing his best friend. Now, the idea that Marty would sell the technology is feasible, but I think that Doc knows that, considering how Marty essentially screwed over 1985 in "BTTF Part 2" with the sports almanac, which ended up in Old Biff's hands, Marty wouldn't do anything so stupid. Also, it was asked in Doc's letter from 1885 that when Marty returned back to 1985, he would DESTROY the time machine, and Marty (until it was revealed that Doc DIED in 1885) would honor his friend's wish. But then he had to go back to 1885 to get Doc, and he saw first hand that, thanks to the laws of time travel or some bull-honkey, Doc had his chance at love crushed. So, with Doc decided to, out of grief, reinstate his desire to destroy the time machine, Marty would go along with it for his firend's sake. ...sorry about that rambling there. Bottom line, I don't think Doc would even CONSIDER killing Marty.
- Why would Doc take Clara and his sons on a mission to murder Marty? Not only would it be emotionally traumatizing, especially for the children—seeing their father kill someone and seeing what the future has in store, Doc knows from experience how easily things can go wrong in the future. That he's taking his wife and sons around in time like it's a vacation is probably evidence that he doesn't care about timelines getting crossed any more, not that he wants to keep them in strict order.
- Not to mention, if he cared about the timeline enough to kill Marty to keep it pure, he wouldn't have married Clara and had Jules and Verne. He'd have thrown her off a cliff. She's even more of a threat to the timeline than Marty.
- A fan fiction written by Mary Jean Holmes offers an explanation. Doc had selected that specific date and time (October 27, 1985 11 A.M.) because he knew that was when a local train would be on that particular stretch of track and intended for it to demolish the DeLorean. He was confident that Marty would get out in time based on the train's schedule (which he commented was always late for its pick-up). It was Marty and Jennifer that cleared the wreckage and Marty junking the remains of the DeLorean (while salvaging critical components) at a scrapyard. When Marty eventually finds out, he is (rightly) upset with Doc for keeping him out of the loop but understood why. It's even lampshaded by Marty in another fic that the police never show up to investigate the wreck and he never found out why they didn't.
The Doc set an explosive on a timer in his blacksmith shop so no one would learn any new technologies from it.
But, after saving Clara they got back right in time to defuse the bomb and get to work on their time machine. Clara, building on Doc's explanation of the time travel circuit, was the one who figured out the principles they built the train on.
Doc couldn't have come up with it all on their own. Clara and Doc built a one-shot time machine and used it to go to the future first.
They were able to make only one trip, so they went to 2015 and could get all the parts they needed. Doc Brown is travelling through time in his train in order to keep paradoxes and deaths from occurring.
It's been covered many times before how the 1950s have tons of Martys, the 1985 that Marty ends up in at the end of Part I is completely different from the one familiar to Marty and therefore everyone there would be strangers to him, and all the weird things that happen that should change the timeline in numerous catastrophic ways.However, there's one way around all the headscratchers and fridge horror: Doc Brown traveled to various points in time to nudge things in various directions so the timeline Marty ends up in at the end of Part III is nearly identical to the one he started out in at the beginning of Part I, with minor changes in parts of history Marty would know little to nothing about. As far as Marty knows, the two timelines are exactly identical. Thus, Marty faces no problems with his memories not matching up with others' memories, and the moral Doc utters that Marty's destiny is only what he makes of it still rings true, as the only changes Marty can observe are those which me makes without the use of time travel. As far as Marty can tell, it's all mundane normality, but he knows about the other timelines and thus knows more about the possible consequences of his actions, good and bad. He's free to forge his own future, but with more insight as to the impacts of his actions. Doc did awaken the dead with that blast.
The sound of the blast itself was sent into the future where it awoke The Walking Dead, thus changing the 21st century. What happened to those Indians?!
Marty travels back to 1885 and smack into a small army of Indians on the war path, who just run past him. Um, that's a big matzo ball just hanging out there. I mean they straight up just saw him driving around, one of them even shot the car with an arrow, and then, from their perspective, he just disappeared. The cavalry did run past him to but they didn't really see anything. Clara was a Time Traveler even before Part III, or at least had contact to some
Claras reaction to Doc Browns claim, that he had build a Time machine and travelled with these from the future to her "now" (the year 1885) is like someone who was culturally exposed to popular science Fiction about Time Machines (e.g. she hears the Term, knows immediately what it means, and think it is something from science fiction). There is just one Problem with that: the Term "Time Machine" was introduced und popularised by H.G. Wells novel "The Time Machine", published in 1895, ten years after the supposed Time Period Clara is from. Even H.G. Wells short story "The Chronic Argonauts" (according to Wikipedia " the first well-developed use of a machine constructed to travel through time (a "time machine") in science fiction") wasn't published until 1888, three years after the 1885 setting. There is simply no way, that somebody from the year 1885 would know exactly what the Term "Time Machine" means, and treat it like some Science-Fiction stuff, since the Term wasn't introduced for several more years. That left just three possibilities: 1) Clara is a Time Traveller from sometime beyond 1895, 2) Clara already had contact to Time-Travel-Science-Fiction via real Time Travelers, 3) (possibly) due to further meddling with the Time Line, Time Travel-Fiction within the Back-to-the future-Universe exists at least a few years before it does in ours.- While it's not likely (given that it had only been a couple days since she got to town), it's possible that she - unknowingly - had just come into contact with an artifact of time travel. It wouldn't be out of character for Doc to have a copy of The Time Machine in the DeLorean, perhaps with the intention of eventually going to some point shortly after 1895 to get it signed. He could have loaned it to her without thinking about the possible ramifications of it being seen a decade early. Even if she hadn't started reading it, that would be enough for her to recognize the term.
The ZZ Top cameo in Part III means the members of the band had ancestors with an Uncanny Family Resemblance in frontier times.
Long after forming a band together, Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard were startled to learn they had distant relatives in frontier times who not only were all musicians, but also played together. They came into the possession of sheet music for an original composition written by their ancestors, and after learning to play it themselves, they turned it into their song "Double Back". Alternately, ZZ Top were also time travelers - they went back to the old west hoping the music scene there would give them some inspiration for new songs: They ended up traveling with musicians of the time and wrote what became "Double Back" there. Doc deliberately set up his passing out before Marty's fight with Buford in order for Marty to learn his lesson.
Hear me out. Also, if this isn't considered a WMG, I will remove it.
Doc wanted Marty to learn the lesson about not losing his judgement when insulted on his own, but he wasn't getting it. So, he decided to help his friend out.
We learn from Chester that Doc has had issues with alcohol in the past.
Doc, remembering this, decides to drink the shot of whiskey when Marty shows up. Aside from Chester and Joey's help, I believe Doc sobered up just as Marty learned his lesson for a reason as opposed to just coincidence.
Doc cared about his friend enough that he went to great lengths to teach him a valuable life lesson.
When Dave sarcastically asked Marty if he was dressed up as Clint Eastwood, he wasn't talking about the actor
.He was talking about the local town folk legend who showed up in 1885, took down local outlaw Mad Dog Tannen, and apparently perished in a train crash in the ravine, which was subsequently renamed after him. Of course, Dave has no idea that Marty and "Clint Eastwood" are in fact the same person.