Sibling Rivalry: The Continuing Back to the Future Debate

My sister and I have been carrying on a civil Messenger debate on the physics and ramifications of Time Travel in the Back to the Future movies for quite some time. In a war like this, there are no winners.

April: The jennifer in Back to the Future is a different actress from the Jennifer in the later movies.

Tommy: Yep. The one from the first one's Mom was dying of cancer. She couldn't shoot the second two movies, so the second actress (she's the chick from Adventures in Babysitting) took the role. [editor's note: Yeah, I know it's Elizabeth Shue, but there was beer and my brain kept saying Elizabeth Banks, and I knew only that Elizabeth Banks was wrong].

April: I now realize the fault in timelines for Back to the future. The Second one really shouldn't have happened, as the new 80's Biff was a doormat...so the 2015 they travel to would've been rewritten regardless of what Doc saw.

Tommy: You might be right. I've had a few, but I can currently find no flaw to that thinking.

Minutes later....Tommy: Wait...Doc doesn't travel to 2015 until after Marty has returned from 1955.

April: Ooh. Good point.

Tommy: It's a good thought though. Using my argument, Doc's very presence in 1985 when he says "where we're going, we don't need roads" altered the timeline. The future he left might not be the same when he returns.

April: True.

Tommy: Biff saw him travel back in time. Said "What the hell is goin' on here?"

April: That's my thoughts on it, and in fact, by taking Marty and Jennifer, he's changed it already. Really, all he had to do was give Marty a warning, as the future is constantly changing.

Tommy: I agree.

April: We are two relatively intelligent people, and we could be discussing China's influence on our econpomy, or comparing their rising middle class to our shrinking one. Yet we are discussing 1.21 jigawatts.

Tommy: You spelled economy wrong.