(Belated)

Well, I just couldn’t help myself.  After my Über-Gedanken^TM experimental ramblings last week on some scientific caveats to time travel, I got to thinking–er–OverThinking^TM how the scientific process itself would play out after such a monumental discovery.  After all, while most people–even scientists themselves–see science as the abstract pursuit of truth, the elucidation of the workings of the universe, in reality it’s also a business.

Some thoughts and an original webcomic, after the jump…

Matthew Wrather hosts a panel with Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Jordan Stokes, and David Shechner to wrap up Back To The Future week on OverthinkingIt.com with the science of time travel, suspension of disbelief, and what a Jigga-Watt is anyway.

As always, call 20-EAT-LOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401) to leave a voicemail. (As of this post, email is still down.)

Download Episode 29 (MP3)

Over the past week, the Overthinking It team has subjected the Back to the Future trilogy to a level of scrutiny it definitely deserves, pointing out a wide variety of paradoxes, inconsistencies, and unanswered questions regarding the series. Because these analyses have focused on the logical, metaphysical, and technological aspects of time-travel within the plot of the three BTTF movies, they haven’t touched on what I consider to be one of the most interesting puzzles in the series:The Huey Paradox.

The Huey Paradox is jointly produced by two features of the BTTF trilogy: the overwhelming number of references to Huey Lewis throughout Back to the Future, along with his near absence in the other two films in the series. Songs by Huey Lewis and the News are the first and last music that you hear in part one of the trilogy: Marty listens to “The Power of Love” as he skateboards to school (and again after getting a kiss from Jennifer under the clock tower), and “Back in Time” plays on his clock radio the morning after he returns from 1955 (and is reprised over the end credits). In addition, Huey Lewis himself makes a brief cameo as one of the high school teachers who deems Marty’s band “too loud” to play at the school dance, cutting off their instrumental noise-metal rendition of “The Power of Love” after about 30 seconds. Huey also reappears briefly as a fedora-wearing man who briefly stares at Marty’s “life preserver” puffy vest in 1950s Hill Valley.

#10. Doc Brown, Back to the Future

We’ve seen a lot of discussion this week as to whether Marty McFly’s time travel was a good or a bad thing, the degree to which it was plausible, or what it might mean, and how it might work. Much seems obscured or inconsistent. There is plenty about the Flux Capacitor and its attendant DeLorean that is exotic and mysterious.

What is not exotic or mysterious is the method of its conception. Whilst changing a light bulb in the bathroom, Dr. Emmett Brown fell and struck his head upon the toilet. And then he saw it. The Flux Capacitor. Time travel.

A brilliant step forward in human progress, all made possible by what a great thing it seems to be to hit somebody on the head.

What nine other head injuries could possibly confer greater benefit to an individual or to humanity?

Head injuries are often wonderful things in the world of fiction, so there are a lot of choices. But the real top 9 are after the jump…

There come times, in the course of human events, whereby an official-unofficial OTI Staff Scientist such as myself feels compelled to write about pop-cultural issues which he or she (statistically: he) finds irksome on a professional level.  Back to The Future is a nearly endless font of these issues for me—from the obligatory complications surrounding causality in time-travel paradoxes to hoverboards which don’t work above water to the continued reminder of the sheer mathematical improbability of  Huey Lewis and the News.  But as my esteemed colleagues have already touched on these with great aplomb, I’ve got some another problem to Overthink™ today.

And oh yes, there will be math involved.

[Because what Overthinking It really needs is more Matts, we present this BTTF guest post from Matthew Silver. —Ed.]

Arguably, no movie involving time travel can ever actually make sense in the realm of continuity. I have to give tremendous credit to the Back To The Future writers for taking it on in the first place. This series has it all: paradox, parallel timelines, and altering history both past and future.

As an audience, we all cope with the discrepancies in different ways. Some of us rationalize the impossible because it’s the only way we can enjoy the reality presented to us. (Have you seen Heroes this season?) Some of us believe wholeheartedly in “suspension of disbelief” and are all too understanding of the limitations of Hollywood (Ross, Joey, and Chandler love the Die Hard films, yet they don’t hesitate to accept Bruce Willis when he shows up on Friends as a guest character). And then there are those of us who just unconditionally believe everything we see and hear. [Not on this site. —Ed.]

For those of us who will never be satisfied without a little digging, I present the following theories.

Presumably in 1985, the line quoted in this post’s title was hee-larious.  But while most of Back to the Future holds up remarkably well, this particular joke has become nonsensical.  For a generation of pop culture junkies, a DeLorean has been naught BUT a time machine.

Even then, the DeLorean looked more like a time machine than like a car.  And like the Flux-Capacitor, it is the product of one man’s crackpot invention.  The story of the DeLorean Motor Coorporation is a tale of hubris and excess, of human frailty and vaunting ambition, of police entrapment and suitcases full of cocaine.  In some ways, it’s just as compelling as Back to the Future, which is probably why it’s currently under development by a company called “Stainless Steel Productions.” Preemptive spoilers for the unmade film, after the jump.

Everyone is familiar with the classic “Johnny B. Goode” scene from Back to the Future and the accompanying controversy: how dare the filmmakers insinuate that a white kid (Calvin Klein/Marty McFly) actually invented rock & roll instead of a black guy (Chuck Berry)? Haven’t white people stolen music from black people enough already?

This sort of knee-jerk reaction completely disregards the evidence on hand. Once and for all, let’s put this myth to bed. Marty McFly did not invent rock ‘n’ roll. He did not give Chuck Berry the song “Johnny B. Goode.”

Don’t believe me? Watch the scene again:

Notice that when Marvin Berry holds up the receiver to allow Chuck Berry to listen (at around 1:19 in the video), Marty has already played the signature guitar lick and sung all of the lyrics. In fact, Chuck only gets to listen to the last parts of Marty’s performance: the shred metal breakdown.

If Chuck Berry actually took to this “new sound,” what effect would this have had on rock n roll history? See for yourself:

The video demonstrates two points:

1) The Jonas Brothers should reinvent themselves as an avant garde noise metal band. That would be awesome.

and

2) Chuck Berry took little to no inspiration from Marty’s performance.

Keeping in mind what Chuck Berry actually heard, we can fill in the gaps on Marvin and Chuck Berry’s phone conversation:

MARVIN: You know that new sound you’re looking for? Well, listen to this!

[Marvin and Chuck listen to Marty's wild shredding guitar solo.]

CHUCK: Marvin, what the hell was that? What’s going on?

MARVIN: Uh, sorry. Let me explain… You see, I cut my hand at that high school dance gig, and we got this white kid to fill in on guitar at the last minute. For the encore, he whipped out this smokin’ jump blues tune, somethin’ about Johnny do good…ah, never mind.

CHUCK: Great, just great. Thanks Marvin.

MARVIN: Whatever, Chuck. Just keep playing that “Maybellene” country crap. I’m sure it’ll go far.

Phew! Paradox averted!

Albeit at the expense of the Jonas Brothers as a noise metal band. A small price to pay for a healthy space-time continuum, I suppose.

“Your future is what you make it,” Doc Brown tells Marty, “so make it a good one!” Then he zooms off in his whimsical flying train. Happy ending!

Except no, no it’s not. Marty McFly has no future, because of two big issues hanging over his head at the end of the trilogy:

[This post begins Back To The Future Week. Fasten your seat belt... where we're going, we don't need roads. —Ed.]

Back to the Future was on last night, so of course I watched it.  It’s a genius movie.  Not only is the script super-tight, but every single scene is famous.  In that respect, it’s like Casablanca.  But with Christopher Lloyd.  Score one BTTF.

I know it’s probably ridiculous to nitpick Back to the Future – after all, this movie presupposes that time travel is possible and that Deloreans are cool – but this is Overthinking It ™, so I’m going to do it anyway.

The problem I’m having is with the famous photograph.  In case you don’t remember, the plot is that Marty McFly goes back in time to the 1950s but ends up screwing up his own life.  When his own mother (Lorraine) falls in lust with him, it means that she doesn’t end up with Marty’s father (George, aka “McFLYYY”).  That means that Marty and his brother and sister won’t be born unless Marty can get his mom and dad back together.  Marty’s photograph of him, his brother, and his sister in 1985 is his link to the future.  If his image disappears from the photo, it means he was unable to set up his parents and thus, in this new timeline, he was never born.

But the photograph makes no sense!  The first time Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown) realizes that Marty might have changed the timeline, he looks at the photograph and sees that Marty’s brother is disappearing from it.  The photo still has Marty and his sister, and it – weirdly – includes Marty’s brother’s torso, arms, and legs.  The only thing that’s lacking is Marty’s brother’s head.

The movie wants us to think that Marty’s siblings are slowly disappearing from the future, and audiences usually buy it.  But I don’t.  What the photograph actually means is that Marty changed the future so that his brother was indeed born—just without a head.