The Question
Eternal
So this morning I've been chewing on a favorite philosophical/intellectual nugget of mine: Back To The Future, and what's wrong with it.
So what's wrong with it?
We don't start off in the story's original timeline. There's no way we can. How do we know this? Here's how:
So in the original timeline -- pre- time travel, pre- Marty intervening and coaching George McFly -- who prevented Biff Tannen from making good on that?
Answer... nobody did.
And that answer leads in turn to a new premise: The "original" pre- time travel timeline we start with in Back To The Future isn't pre- time travel at all. It had all happened before, but it had happened differently, and George McFly wasn't the subject of the temporal intervention -- Lorraine was.
Almost the same events as seen in the film, except that in the original temporal intervention, Marty McFly is actually... Marty Tannen. And he looks like this:
And there's one other difference. Because Marty Tannen inherited Biff's lack of morality and intellect... well, Marty McFly reacted with horror and disgust when Lorraine tried to make out with him in the car at the dance. Marty Tannen... not so much. Marty Tannen went for it.
After which, having at the moment of his (alternate) own conception, having altered his own future, he vanished, leaving Lorraine in an inexplicably empty car.
That's when Biff showed up. Drunk, and in a fugue state brought on by shock, Lorraine kicked the living fuck out of Biff herself, which so demoralized Biff that he left her the fuck alone after that -- wouldn't even show his face if he so much as saw her. She then went on to marry safe, unthreatening, milquetoast George McFly. And when she discovered she was pregnant, she lied to poor George and told him the kid was his. They had two more kids -- unknown to anyone but Lorraine, Marty was actually the oldest, not the middle child. (A nod to Fox's actual age while filming the role.)
And that, kids, is how you use out-of-universe retcons to explain in-universe paradoxes.
So what's wrong with it?
We don't start off in the story's original timeline. There's no way we can. How do we know this? Here's how:
So in the original timeline -- pre- time travel, pre- Marty intervening and coaching George McFly -- who prevented Biff Tannen from making good on that?
Answer... nobody did.
And that answer leads in turn to a new premise: The "original" pre- time travel timeline we start with in Back To The Future isn't pre- time travel at all. It had all happened before, but it had happened differently, and George McFly wasn't the subject of the temporal intervention -- Lorraine was.
Almost the same events as seen in the film, except that in the original temporal intervention, Marty McFly is actually... Marty Tannen. And he looks like this:
And there's one other difference. Because Marty Tannen inherited Biff's lack of morality and intellect... well, Marty McFly reacted with horror and disgust when Lorraine tried to make out with him in the car at the dance. Marty Tannen... not so much. Marty Tannen went for it.
After which, having at the moment of his (alternate) own conception, having altered his own future, he vanished, leaving Lorraine in an inexplicably empty car.
That's when Biff showed up. Drunk, and in a fugue state brought on by shock, Lorraine kicked the living fuck out of Biff herself, which so demoralized Biff that he left her the fuck alone after that -- wouldn't even show his face if he so much as saw her. She then went on to marry safe, unthreatening, milquetoast George McFly. And when she discovered she was pregnant, she lied to poor George and told him the kid was his. They had two more kids -- unknown to anyone but Lorraine, Marty was actually the oldest, not the middle child. (A nod to Fox's actual age while filming the role.)
And that, kids, is how you use out-of-universe retcons to explain in-universe paradoxes.