DeLorean time machine
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- Marty: "You built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?"
- Doc: "Yes, the way I see it, if you want to build a time machine out of a car, why not do it with some style? Besides, the stainless steel construction aids in the flux dispersal...look out!"
- — Doc and Marty during the first test
The DeLorean time machine was Doctor Emmett Brown's most successful invention, a time machine comprised of a DeLorean DMC-12 sports car that had to reach 88 miles per hour in order to time travel. In 1955, after Doc slipped on his toilet while hanging a clock in his bathroom, he visualized the flux capacitor. It was constructed afterward and completed by 1985.
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[edit] History
[edit] The first test
Doc Brown revealed his creation to his friend Marty McFly at Twin Pines Mall, in the early morning of October 26, 1985, and for its first test, Doc sent his dog Einstein one minute into the future. The sequence of events that followed were as so; after Doc revved up the engine to 60 mph while braked, he released the brake sending the car towards Doc and Marty. A faint glow developed at the front of the car and then engulfed the vehicle. The coils lit up, internal circuits glowed, and the flux capacitor fired rapidly. Suddenly the car seemed to explode at the moment it reached Doc and Marty. Fire trails then scorched the pavement where the vehicle passed through, completing the temporal displacement sequence.
For Einstein, the trip was instantaneous, but to Marty and Doc they had to wait one minute to catch up to Einstein in the timeline. In the meantime, Marty asked why a DeLorean was used. Doc explained that it needed some style and implied that the stainless steel construction of the car helped it in temporal displacement.
The car suddenly appeared where Doc and Marty were standing and screeched to a halt as a frozen shell. Supercooled from traveling through space and time, the gullwing door was troublesome for Doc to open. Inside the car, Einstein was unharmed, much to the surprise of Marty. Doc then showed Marty the interior and its controls.
- "First you turn the time circuits on. This one tells you where you're going. This one tells you where you are. This one tells you where you were."
- —Doc Brown
While inputing dates on the keypad, Doc used July 4th, 1776 and December 25th, 0000 as examples, before inputting "a red-letter date in the history of science, November 5th, 1955". From there he left the cockpit of the DeLorean and reminisced about the past, particularly about Old Man Peabody and his pine tree farm.
[edit] Trapped in 1955
- "Let's see if you bastards can do ninety."
- —Marty McFly
With the last input still at 1955, the destination time remained unchanged once Doc was tracked down by the Libyan terrorists, whom he had tricked into stealing the plutonium that generated the necessary power for the flux capacitor. Doc was shot by the terrorists, who then gave chase to Marty in the DeLorean. Marty turned the time circuits on while shifting, and as he avoided being destroyed by a rocket-propelled grenade, he sped up to 90 and entered temporal displacement. Suddenly, Marty went from a mall parking lot in 1985, to a field in 1955, and the DeLorean crashed into the Peabodys' barn.
- "It looks like an airplane, without wings."
- —Otis Peabody
For a moment, Marty was stunned, and the Peabody family ran from their house to the barn to investigate. Believing that the vehicle was from another world, they screamed in horror as Marty lifted the gullwing door and stepped out, dressed in a radiation suit. Marty suddenly took fire from the buckshot of Otis Peabody's shotgun, and ran back to the safety of the time machine, floored the accelerator, and smashed through the doors of the barn. After escaping from Peabody's shotgun, the car ran over one of the two pines that Peabody had been growing. This was the first effect of Marty's trip into the past that would alter the future (the "Twin Pines Mall" would become the "Lone Pine Mall").
Marty pulled the DeLorean onto a highway that ran by the future site of Lyon Estates. He immediately stopped and viewed the undeveloped land stretch far out into the distance, questioning whether or not it was a dream. A meter in the DeLorean indicated that it was out of plutonium, and the car shut down. Marty hid the DeLorean behind the Lyon Estates sign and walked the two miles to town.
- "It works! Ha ha, it works! I finally invented something that works."
- —Doc Brown
After convincing the 1955 Doc that he was indeed from the future, Marty and Doc went back to the site to recover the time machine. Doc opened the door and turned on the flux capacitor which he had envisioned after his fall earlier that day. The DeLorean was driven back to Doc's garage where it was hidden under a dropcloth until the night of the thunderstorm, November 12.
On the 12th, Doc brought the time machine to Courthouse Square in downtown Hill Valley, and started working on the cable assembly that would harness the impending lightning strike. Arriving late, Marty was briefed by Doc, just as the storm moved in and took down a tree. Marty drove the DeLorean to the starting line at the Bluebird Motel, and inserted a tall connecting hook into the flux capacitor. He then waited for the alarm to go off while Doc reconnected the cable, and decided to reset the controls to arrive 11 minutes earlier than scheduled. With that, the engine suddenly died, and left Marty trying to restart it. Marty finally (and unexpectedly) succeeded in restarting the engine after head-butting the horn in frustration, and took off. The DeLorean reached the cable just as the lightning struck, and Doc made the connection, sending the time machine forward to 1985.
In 1985, Red the Bum was awoken by the sonic boom of the DeLorean, followed by the sound of a crash at the Town Theater. Marty jumped out of the icy time machine to check out downtown and to verify that he had gotten back to the future, and back to his normal year of 1985. Returning to the car to save Doc, Marty tried to drive off and the engine died once again. The Libyans passed him on the street, and Marty ran back to the mall. There, he saw the first DeLorean make the jump to 1955, with the terrorists' van crashing into a photo booth. Originally believing he was too late, Marty was in grief, then surprise. Doc recovered, and revealed that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, having read the warning that Marty had written 30 years earlier.
Doc returned to downtown to start the DeLorean up, and drove Marty back to his home in Lyon Estates. Doc told Marty he would go roughly 30 years into the future, "a nice round number". Doc backed the DeLorean up with enough room to reach 88 mph on the street and vanished in three sonic booms.
[edit] To the future
The next morning, Doc returned to the house. Marty had discovered that his life had changed for the better. His visiting girlfriend Jennifer Parker, and he, were interrupted by the sonic boom and wind blast. The newly upgraded DeLorean knocked over some trashcans, and a futuristically-garbed Doc emerged from the vehicle. Doc made use of his upgraded time machine by adding garbage to the Mr. Fusion as fuel. Plutonium was no longer needed after the trip to the future. Doc told Marty and Jennifer of their future family, and the trouble that occurred (or would occur) with their children.
- Marty: "Hey Doc. We don't have enough road to get up to 88."
- Doc: "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."
- — Discussion in the DeLorean before takeoff
The DeLorean, after having received a hover conversion in the future, lifted off of the ground and its wheels folded providing thrust. The rear louver then propelled it forward down the street, and Doc turned the car around to get the speed needed to make temporal displacement. This entire sequence was witnessed by Biff Tannen in the McFly driveway. The time machine entered October 21, 2015, then descended through the clouds into a busy skyway, nearly in the wrong lane of multilevel traffic. Doc pulled off onto an exit ramp to downtown Hill Valley. He landed the DeLorean in an alleyway, just outside Courthouse Square, then left while Marty completed his mission to save Marty, Jr. After Doc recovered Einstein from a suspended animation kennel, he pulled the DeLorean out into the open, where Old Biff saw it, and eventually put one and one together to realize that they were time travelers.
- "Flying DeLorean? Hadn't seen one of those in thirty years"
- —Old Biff
Biff followed Doc and Marty in a taxi cab, and while the DeLorean was parked outside Hilldale, Biff stole it and went back to 1955 to hand the Grays Sports Almanac (that Doc had thrown away) to his younger self, thus altering history. In a matter of minutes, Biff returned the vehicle in the same position; however, he was feeling the effects of changing history. In pain, he left the receipt stub (for the almanac), and the top of his cane, in the DeLorean. Getting out of view, Biff faded from existence. Doc and Marty, unaware that anything had happened, returned to the time machine with Jennifer and headed back for 1985.
[edit] An alternate history
By this time it was too late to prevent the changing of the timeline. Flying at a high altitude, the DeLorean was nearly hit by an airliner in the sky. The time circuits began to malfunction as well, indicating 1885 temporarily. After discovering the truth behind the alternate 1985, Doc and Marty left Einstein in Doc's garage, and Jennifer at her house, where time would alter around them pending a change in the past. They traveled back to November 12, 1955, the date that Biff revealed to have been the day he had gotten the almanac.
Doc parked the time machine behind the same sign that Marty hid it the first time in 1955. As Marty notified Doc of his status, Doc came to pick him up at Hill Valley High School. As Doc left Lyon Estates, the car had hooked onto some of the flags on the sign. Doc and Marty followed Biff in his car, and hovered over him, until Marty thought of using the hoverboard to get closer. Marty grabbed the almanac after some fighting, but was faced with being in the middle of a long tunnel from which to escape. At the end of the tunnel, Doc dropped the string of flags that he had hooked onto earlier, and Marty grabbed the rope in time to prevent himself from getting run over by Biff (who crashed, for the second time in a week, into a manure truck).
Returning to Lyon Estates to destroy the almanac, Doc lowered Marty onto the ground, but deemed it unsafe to land the DeLorean in the storm. Marty successfully burned the almanac in a pail, reverting all effects that had been created by Biff. The celebration was short-lived; lightning struck a tree close to Marty, who warned Doc about getting struck himself. In the next instant, however, lightning struck the DeLorean as feared, spinning it to upwards of 88 mph, scrambling the circuits, and sent Doc and the car back to January 1, 1885.
A minute later, a man, representing Western Union, appeared on the rainy street and handed Marty a letter. The letter, from Doc, had been held in their possession for over 70 years, with instructions for delivery to that exact position, at that exact moment, to that exact person: Marty. Marty ran back downtown, just as his other self was going back to the future, and after the temporal displacement, he encountered the 1955 Doc. The letter, read the next morning by Doc, stated that the DeLorean was buried in the Delgado Mine, and provided instructions on repairing the time circuits with 1955 parts. At the Boot Hill Cemetery, outside the mine, Marty and Doc stumbled onto older Doc's tombstone from 1885. It was now Marty's mission to save Doc in the past, and bring him back to the future as well.
Doc replaced the rotting tires with fresh whitewall tires, and replaced all the needed components with 1955-era vacuum tubes and other electronics. He also put gas in the tank of the car, since 1985 Doc had to drain all the fluids from the car, including the gas.
[edit] The Old West
1955 Doc and Marty set up at the Pohatchee Drive-In Theatre, far away from town, so that Marty's arrival would not be noticed by residents in 1885. Doc set the time circuits to the day after his older self had sent the letter on September 1. Marty hesitated to drive at the screen because of a wall with Indians painted on it; but as Marty reached 88 mph, the 1955 wall was gone, but was replaced with real, 1885, Pohatchee Indians, who chased after the DeLorean, which Marty hid in a bear cave.
Marty avoided the Indians, and the U.S. Cavalry that was chasing them, but discovered that the fuel line on the car had been ripped right open, leaving him stranded once again. Marty was chased out of the cave by the bear living there at the time, and fell down the hill and landed on the property of his ancestors. The DeLorean was recovered by Doc, but there was no gasoline available in 1885 to replace the fuel that had leaked out. When Doc hooked up the car to his horses to try to reach 88 mph out in the desert, they only made 30 mph.
Doc received a strong alcohol concoction from the town bartender (Chester), that he hoped would be similar to gasoline, but it blew the fuel injection manifold out. This left only one option for pushing the DeLorean up to 88, which came in the form of a locomotive. Doc and Marty's plan was to hijack a locomotive, and take it to an unused spur that ran to Shonash Ravine, where it would push the car before the end of the track. On the night of September 6, Doc placed the car onto the track itself awaiting the locomotive.
Their plan was enacted on September 7, and though Marty was sent back to 1985, Doc and Clara Clayton remained in the past. The DeLorean reached temporal displacement before hitting the buffer at the edge of the ravine; however the train crashed through and landed into the ravine in a large explosion.
Back in 1985, the DeLorean traveled along the railroad tracks for about a mile until it came to rest on the track outside Hilldale. Immediately, Marty was stunned to see a modern locomotive barreling towards him, and escaped from the DeLorean just before it was destroyed by the train.
Marty and Jennifer, who had remained on her porch, both went through the wreckage. Then, peculiarly, the railroad crossing's bells sounded and its gates went down. The Jules Verne Train appeared, and blew Marty and Jennifer back several feet. This was Doc's way to return without the DeLorean. After introducing Marty and Jennifer to new members of the family, Jules and Verne, handing Marty a gift, and giving some words of advice, Doc went to times unknown.
[edit] Rebirth of the DeLorean
Around 1991, Doc Brown and his family returned to Hill Valley in the Train and settled down in the present. Marty had, by now, been attending Hill Valley College, and he visited the Brown family regularly. The DeLorean was rebuilt with added features, including a new audio receptive series of time circuits, submersible capabilities, a pincer, and having the ability to fold into a compact suitcase-sized box (which still weighed as much as the car at 2,796 pounds[1]).
Soon after, Doc built additional DeLoreans for use by the Institute of Future Technology.
[edit] Behind the scenes
- In the animated series, the DeLorean is supposedly rebuilt, regardless of what Doc said about the dangers of time traveling.
- In the first script of Back to the Future the time machine was shaped like a refrigerator. The idea was scrapped, for fear of kids climibing into and becoming trapped in refrigerators. Because an abandoned refrigerator can become an inescapable trap for a small child, laws in most nations require that the door be removed when such an item is disposed.
[edit] Construction of the DeLorean for the films
The base of the DeLorean's nuclear reactor was constructed from a hubcap of a Dodge Polara. The engine was replaced with a faster Porsche engine. Aircraft parts and blinking lights were added for additional effects.
