In Back to the Future, we know that Doc gets shot and killed by terrorists in the original version of time. We also know that Marty writes the Doc a letter to explain that his fate is doomed. This is an attempt to get Doc to take counter measures to save his life.
Doc unfortunately rips this letter up, but fortunately, even though Marty is unable to otherwise warn Doc of him getting shot, at some point after the events that we see in 1955, Doc goes back and finds the letter and reconstructs it to get Marty’s warning. Because of this Doc gets himself a bulletproof vest that saves his life in 1985.
However…saving Doc’s life is a bit of an ongoing theme throughout the series, as at the end of Back to the Future part 2, we learn that Doc has got himself trapped in the old west of 1885.
At the start of part 3 we then learn Doc has got himself killed by Mad Dog Tannen over a matter of $80. This may not matter though as something people don’t often talk about is that Marty actually has probably got Doc killed back in 1985.
Why do I say this?
At the very end of Back to the Future Part 2, Marty sees Doc Brown in the now flying Delorean which gets struck by lightning and sent into the past.
A letter is then delivered to Marty from Doc Brown to confirm that Doc is stuck in 1885.
Because Doc was sent back to 1885 alone, it leave Marty once again being stuck in 1955. Marty then rushes to the clocktower and arrives moments after the Marty we follow in Part 1 drives the Delorean back to 1985.
We see Doc celebrate as he has just seen Marty vanish and hopes that Marty has made it back to 1985. But then the Marty we have been following through Part 2 shows up to explain to Doc that he is back from 1985.
The Doc says ‘Great Scott’ before fainting and the movie ends.
At the start of Part 3 we find that Marty has taken Doc back to his home after fainting at the end of part 2, and then Marty shows Doc the letter to explain that his future self is now trapped in 1885.
Here is where a major plot hole and problem emerges for the future wellbeing of Doc Brown.
As Marty from Part 2 ran up to Doc and caused him to faint, the 1955 Doc had not yet had the chance to gather up the ripped up shreds of the letter that Marty wrote for him. The same letter that warned Doc that he would get shot by terrorists in 1985.
Therefore, the Doc from 1955 that woke up in his own home at the start of Part 3 would have no idea that in 1985 the terrorists are planning to shoot him, and therefore Doc would have no reason to get himself a bulletproof vest.
Therefore, Doc would end up getting shot and killed just as he did at the start of part 1.
Now, I expect many of you are thinking that that can’t be true, but oh yes, it can be.
After ripping up the letter that Marty gives it, it clearly is left on the grass in the rain and wind of the famously heavy storm. Immediately after it is ripped up, Doc has to try to reattach the cables that will carry the lightning form the top of the clock tower into the flux capacitor as Marty drives the Delorean.
We can see that Doc does not get the opportunity to gather the pieces of the letter until at least after Marty has successfully travelled back to 1985. We then see that Doc smiles and dances as he runs down the road to celebrate that Marty managed to travel in time.
So even if he believed that Doc immediately would realise that he should have retained the letter, that would be at least five minutes or so in which the pieces of the letter could blow away.
Miraculously as we saw at the end of part 1, the Doc did manage to find all the pieces of the letter to reconstruct it and get Marty’s warning.
But…after Back to the Future part 2 Marty shows up, the Doc now doesn’t have the chance to immediately gather the pieces of the letter, and instead Marty causes him to faint, and he wakes up at his own home a few hours later…at howdy doody time.
So, without the letter, how can the Doc possibly survive being shot when he doesn’t know to get the bulletproof vest?
And yes, I’m sure you’ll say that obviously Doc does survive because otherwise how would Marty be able to go back to 1885 and save Doc from being shot by Mad Dog Tannen?
Perhaps he doesn’t.
One thing that always struck me as what seemed like a mistake in Part 3 is that when 1885 Doc sees Marty, he asked what idiot dressed Marty in the bad cowboy clothes he is wearing. Surely if it was Doc himself, he’d know. He’d remember.
But the fact is he doesn’t. And for this there are one of two possibilities.
Either this is further confirmation that as well as time travelling, the characters are crossing into alternate dimensions as evidenced by the bad 1985 in Part 2.
Or, as I’ll delve deeper into here, the way time works in Back to the Future isn’t as instant as you’d expect it to be. We know that Marty and his siblings were slowly fading away in the photograph in part 1. We know that the tombstone didn’t immediately change in part 3. Most importantly, we know that old Biff was still able to get back to 2015 before he disappeared as time was rewritten.
So, from this evidence we know that changes in time don’t happen immediately and is instead like a ripple, and things take time to fade and change which are unique to the individuals affected.
From this, we can only assume that without a bulletproof vest that he had no warning of needing, the 1985 Doc would end up shot and killed after the events of part 3 just as he had at the start of part 1.
Once this ripple has caught up to 1985 Doc, it would soon mean that the 1885 Doc would vanish. And we know that in the case of Marty and his siblings, it took about a week after Marty changed time for him to start to disappear.
But is there anything that could have saved him? Certainly, if you need the story to have a happy ending, we can just assume that offscreen Marty was able to give Doc the same warning that he had written into the letter.
And how about this for a final thought.
Isn’t it strange that Doc was able to find all the pieces of the letter after several minutes in the storm and was able to put them back together as we see at the end of part 1?
What if Doc didn’t find the letter? Or didn’t find much of it at all. It’s possible from the whole ‘they’ve found me, I don’t know how, but they’ve found me’ moment that 1955 Doc could have realised it was the terrorists that he said he’d stolen the plutonium from, and maybe 1955 Doc just decided with that heads up that he should get a bulletproof vest anyway.
But then why would we still see the letter if I’m exploring the possibility that Doc didn’t find the letter? Well, maybe the part 2 Marty warned Doc that Doc had survived after reading the letter, and realised that without it he may get shot.
So…maybe part 2 Marty just warned him verbally and then wrote him a new letter and told Doc to rip it up and tape it together again just so the timelines would stay intact.
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