sonneillonv:

I’m astounded by the people who cannot see that Marty and Doc Brown’s friendship exists because of the time loop.

At least two comedians I’ve seen have poked fun of how we never get an explanation for why Marty is friends with a disgraced nuclear physicist.  But we DO.  The explanation is all three movies.  Because Doc Brown didn’t go back to the future, he got there organically, by GROWING OLDER.

So one day this guy, who clearly has no friends and spends most of his time shut up in his house, has his home INVADED by this really cool teenager from the future.  And fuck knows why, but this kid acts like he’s his best friend, this kid is actually interested in his work, this kid BELIEVES that he will make the time machine work, offers him hope, PROOF, an ally… all things Doc was sorely in need of.

And y’all are telling me that after watching Marty go back to the future, Doc Brown wouldn’t be watching the birth announcements every day the year he was born?

You don’t think he’d PEEK?  I mean, maybe it even hurt his reputation.  Maybe he got caught ‘creeping’ on Marty when he was really little.  Dude wandering around wearing protective goggles and a white lab coat??  We all know Doc’s not a creeper, and it’s not for any nefarious reason, not for any unhealthy reason, but because “that’s my friend, there’s my FRIEND, he grows up to be my FRIEND, how does this happen? What do I do?  What SHOULD I do?  How do I friend???”  But the adults of Doc’s time wouldn’t know that.  They’d be very justified thinking he was a sketchy character.

Time passes, and he constantly sees things that remind him of Marty.  He has ‘aha’ moments the moment Darth Vader’s name is spoken aloud, the moment Spock explains he’s from the planet Vulcan.  He watches these things and thinks, “Someday Marty is going to see these things, and then he’s going to come back in time and tell me about these things.  I’m watching these things now, when they’re new.  He’ll watch them someday when they’re older.”  His timeline with Marty has a few huge branches, but their friendship is a stable, continuous loop that generates itself.

So maybe, when he thinks Marty’s about the right age to show some interest, he finally takes a few steps forward and says, “Hey kid, want to see my idea for a time machine?  This is called a flux capacitor.  I know exactly what it is and what it does.  Now I just have to make it work.”

And little Marty goes, “Whoa, that’s heavy.”

And Doc just GRINS because he waited ALL THIS TIME and now he’s about to start having his friend back.