DOC BROWN SUICIDAL?

BACK TO THE FUTURE:

WHAT IF DOC BROWN WAS 

SUICIDAL?? 

1985: The first time we see scientist Doc Brown is when Marty goes to meet him in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. To Marty's surprise the back of Doc's van opens, sending out huge plumes of coolant gas into the air. 

A car reverses down the ramp. Some sort of souped-up Delorean. The door opens revealing the inside is also full of coolant gas from the rear vent ejectors. Toxic if you breathed it long enough. 

Doc appears a little flustered, out of it. But at sight of Marty regains his composure. After all history is about to be made. Literally. So begins an adventure of a life-time. Or several in fact.  

But heres what really bakes the noodle. What if Doc Brown was trying to gas himself in his own failed time machine? But then thought better of it? 

Think about it. He'd lost everything building a time machine in his garage and he wasn't even sure if it would work. 

He'd lost so much already: His mansion burned to the ground in a devastating fire, destroying family heirlooms and leaving no legacy. 

Was it arson? Biff? The real-estate agents? Who knows. But he lost his entire fortune, went bankrupt and had to sell the property to real-estate developers hungry to rip-up Hill Valley. That alone might have crushed lesser men. But not Doctor Emmett Brown. 

For the next three decades he resided in a tiny garage littered with furniture from his beloved mansion that no longer existed. 

Meanwhile the world around him changed radically. The 1980s had signalled the end of Mom and Pop businesses in the wake of corporate take-overs. 

Where grass and trees and fields once stood, now concrete and noise. Truckers roaring passed his window at all hours.  

The Hill Valley he once loved had traded its 1950's soul to modernity. Like many residents Old Man Peabody sold off his property. Miles of farmland as far as the eye could see - just gone. Now a huge carpark. 

 

The local hardware store became a Walmart. Chains like McDonalds killed-off the cool little teen hot-spots like Lous Cafe. 

The grassy Courthouse Square and war memorial removed and paved over for yet another parking lot. 

Motorways ripped-up the suburbs. The wholesome community dissipated under the grinding wheels of advancement. No more Howdy-Doody-Time. Just MTV and the stark reality of Reaganism. 

Hill Valley was no longer 'a nice place to live'. Just another truckers-stop. A place kids wanted to get away from as soon as they were old enough. Kids like Marty McFly.  

So all that time the Doc lived alone, no family, nothing but his dog. He'd sacrificed everything clinging to a hope that his Flux Capacitor would make time travel possible. 

If it did work he could see where all this advancement was going. View firsthand what future lay before mankind. 

Part of him was excited by the prospect while another part felt terrified. What if no blade of grass remained? What if the whole damned world had become one giant parking lot? 

Well maybe there was nothing for it but to go back into the past and be done with it. Find somewhere that made sense. And maybe peace of mind. 

That was the dream. 

But he had to overcome his own doubts first. What if he really was ...crazy? 

Then one day Marty McFly rocks-up into his life on something called a skateboard, listening to something called VanHalen on something called a walkman. Just some dumb kid from the rotting suburbs. But the only person in the whole world who believed in him. Marty gave him strength. So Doc finished the time machine.  

But maybe that fateful night a beleaguered Doc sat in the Delorean and doubted himself once again. What if his calculations were wrong? Jesus. This was insane. 

What the hell am I doing? I've just built a time machine - out of a Delorean?! Stolen nuclear pellets to power it and now Im in cahoots with Libyan terrorists!  

Maybe during that anxiety attack, he flicked some switches and filled the car with coolant gas? He breathed it in. Started feeling drowsy. To hell with it all. 

The voices were right. He was no inventor. He was sixty-five years old! Just another crazy crack-pot who'd wasted his entire life chasing windmills blowing in the American dream. A dream now made of asphalt and concrete. 

But then something stopped him. Maybe the fear of death. Maybe the buzz from the Flux Capacitor, fluxing. 

Maybe because Marty was coming to see him at 1:15am and the last thing that kid needed was finding his best friend dead from car fumes. All his doubts had to go. It was time to man-up and face the music. 

If his calculations were correct, at 88-miles per hour - they were going to see some serious shit. The rest as they say is history.