Underthinking Back to the Future: Doc Brown

So last night I was watching the first of the immortal Back to the future trilogy. The basic premise is this scientist Dr Emmett Brown, invents a time machine, and then he and a local teenage boy he hangs out with (this is slightly weird right? How on earth did they meet?) and have adventures in it.

Marty just realised he is spending his teenage years playing remote control cars with a 60 year old man.

 The first thing that struck me about Doc Brown is he is not exactly good at keeping secrets. He stole some plutonium from some Libyan terrorists, this in itself is not too unusual, taking advantage of the Libyans prior theft of plutonium, and preventing a nuclear bomb, is probably a good public service. However once the plutonium has been stolen surely it would be a good idea to keep this secret. The first time we see Doc Brown on screen, he is wearing white overalls with a large radioactive symbol on the back, did he already own this? Or did it come in the box with the stolen plutonium. Probably be a good idea just to wear a nondescript set of overalls, to avoid suspicion.

"Hey Doc, did you steal that plutonium??"

While its on my mind, why do the Libyan terrorists need a crackpot scientist working out of a one room apartment to build them a bomb? They have somehow altered their Kombi van, so it can keep up with a Deloren until it reaches roughly 70 mph. It even can keep up with the cornering without rolling. Just for good measure he also installed a sun roof/gun turrent. They should have just got the guy in charge of their motor pool to build the bomb, he seems pretty gifted.

If he can turn this into a pursuit vehicle then a nuclear bomb would be simple.

They should however fire their arms dealer, they have sourced the only AK-47's in the world that jam.

"I am sorry, I don't do refunds"

But back to Doc Brown the next thing I noticed is that he is extremely confident in his work. The first, I repeat first experiment on his time machine, he decides that Marty and he should stand directly in the path of the oncoming time machine.
He didn't accurately measure the starting point of the Deloren (time machine) he kind of just drove it out an arbitrary distance, and then proceeded to race it towards him and his young companion. If he had got this slightly wrong the car might not have reached 88 mph, until a point after where they were standing which would have resulted in a rather shorter movie.

The surprise on Doc's face does not instil me with confidence he knew that was going to happen.

Also how did he know at exactly 88 mph the car would travel back in time? He just worked that out on paper, and as anyone who translates theoretical results to real experiments will tell you there is always slight variation from a unforeseen variable, or just rounding error, what if it needed to get to 90 mph?

"I just don't understand why two guys were standing in front of a speeding car in an empty car park?"

I am not saying he didn't know exactly what he was doing, but for the first experiment, I would probably just film from the side. And then you can show off in subsequent experiments, by playing chicken with the time machine.

After this first experiment it is apparent the time machine works, after it was tested on Doc's beloved dog Einstein. That's right where was PETA when this was going on?

Let's be honest PETA is never going to appear in a PG movie

But after it was established that the time machine work, Doc raves about all the wonderful times and events we could visit, the signing of the declaration of independence, the birth of Christ, or a day of glory in the scientific fields Nov 5th 1955.
Doc has just offered this date, as a turning point to visit in history, then as if he had forgotten why he was using this date, he feigns an epiphany that this was the day he invented the flux capacitor. Now there is pride in your work and then there is arrogance.

"Just like the Beatles, I am bigger than Jesus"

Also I am dubious of this description of inventing the flux capacitor on this day, most inventions like this begin with equations, and then the design comes last. Later in the movie when we are in the 1950's we see that Doc just did a doodle on this date of what the flux capacitor would look like. That's right what it would look like, not how it would work, or what components were needed, that's not really inventing or is it?

It's a Doohickey transistor, and it is going to solve world poverty