Doctor Emmett Lathrop "Doc" Brown is the inventor of the DeLorean time machine. He is supposedly born in 1920 but also could have been born in 1914, in Hill Valley, California.
By 1985 his dog was named Einstein after Albert Einstein. Doc's role models were scientists, as evidenced by the names of his dogs and the portraits of Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein found in his laboratory (which were on his fireplace mantle in 1955).
Doc is best friends with Marty McFly.
Personality[]
Doc is a a highly intelligent, eccentric scientist who is passionate about science, but is quite nutty, almost to be a point of being pretty insane, as he has taken part in actually stealing plutonium, and having terrorist come after him. Despite his strangeness, Doc does care about those he's close to.
He's kind, supportive, encouraging and plays as a positive mentor to Marty McFly, to a point of actually being quite fatherly. Though Doc is incredibly intelligent and inventive, he could be absent-minded at times, and was regarded by many of Hill Valley's townsfolk as strange or as a crazy mad scientist. As such, he had few friends (the only known friends are his dog Einstein, Marty, and Marty's girlfriend Jennifer Parker). Because of this, Doc was often seen as a loner.
Prior to Back To The Future[]
On November 5, 1955, Doc came up with the idea of the flux capacitor (which is what made time travel possible) after slipping off his toilet while standing on it to hang a clock and hitting his head on the edge of the sink. Doc invented the brain-wave analyzer sometime before he created the flux capacitor, and tested it on Marty the same day.
The idea came to him in a vision he had after being knocked out. The time machine project suffered a setback on August 1, 1962 when Doc's mansion at 1640 Riverside Drive burnt down. After the fire, Doc moved into his former garage (which had been detached from the mansion and as such had survived the fire).
There were rumors that he had deliberately burnt it down to claim the insurance money to fund the time machine. Whether or not that was the case, Doc still had to use up most of his family's fortune to fund the creation of his time machine. Doc moved to his garage and sold the rest of his estate to developers, but he was soon back on track. On May 23, 1983, he was commended and won an award for unspecified reasons.
Back To The Future (1985)[]
Marty McFly plugs his electric guitar into a huge amplifier, pauses, and then plucks a string. The amplifier blows up, the impact throwing Marty back against a bookshelf, which falls, causing the books and papers on it to fall off and land on his head. Marty lifts up his sunglasses and we finally get to see his face.
"Whoa... rock and roll," he says, when a loud ringing fills the garage. It sounds like a fire alarm, but then turns out to be just the telephone. Marty scrambles off the ground and answers it. It's Doc, who asks Marty to meet him that night at the Twin Pines Mall at 1:15 a.m. Marty asks him where he's been all week. Doc says that he has been working. Marty tells him that his equipment had been left on all week. Remembering, Doc tells Marty not to hook up to the amplifier. "There's a slight possibility of overload," he says. Marty glances at the destroyed amplifier, and says that he'll keep that in mind.
Just then, every single one of the numerous clocks go off at once, chiming loudly, and Doc asks about them. Marty tells him that it's eight o'clock. Doc is elated at the information, as it means that his experiment has worked and all his clocks are 25 minutes slow... meaning it really is 8:25, and Marty is late for school.
Sometime after midnight, Marty is awoken by a call from Doc, who asks Marty to stop by the lab and pick up his video camera that he forgot. Marty does so, and heads to the Twin Pines Mall. When he gets there, he finds Doc's van sitting in the parking lot, with his dog, Einstein, sitting nearby. When Marty goes down to greet Einstein, the rear of the van opens up, and a heavily modified DeLorean DMC-12 sedan is backed down the ramp. The driver's door lifts up, and Doc emerges from the vehicle, greeting Marty, then instructs Marty to start recording.
Marty witnessing The DeLorean disappearing into thin air right in front of him
Doc places Einstein in the DeLorean and buckles him in, having Marty note the time on the watch around Einstein's collar, and in Doc's hand. Both are synchronized to the same time. Doc then closes the DeLorean's door, and pulls out a remote control, that he uses to maneuver the DeLorean around the parking lot. When the vehicle is a specific distance away, Doc puts its brakes on, and starts ramping up its speed, before turning off the brakes, sending the DeLorean streaking right towards him and Marty. Suddenly, a bright light is seen from inside the DeLorean, as additional fire and lights are set off around it, and suddenly, upon hitting 88 miles per hour on the speedometer, the car vanishes in a puff of light and electricity, leaving a pair of fire trails behind from the red-hot tires. Doc excitedly cheers, but Marty is in shock, as it seems that Doc has just disintegrated Einstein.
Doc excitedly exclaims that he actually sent Einstein into the future... one minute into the future, to be exact. He also remarks excitedly that he built the time machine out of a DeLorean because it has style and because the steel body panels were a good conductor for the flux energy that propels the car through time. As if on cue, exactly one minute later, the DeLorean materializes where it disappeared, still traveling at the same speed as it was before, and screeches to a stop, now iced over. As Doc opens the door, Einstein is revealed to be alive and well, with his watch now one minute behind Doc's. Doc explains that Einstein likely believes that the trip was instantaneous, unaware of any change in time at all. Doc shows Marty a device in the cabin called the "flux capacitor" which makes time travel possible. Doc explains that, after an accident in his bathroom in 1955 where he hit his head, he had a vision of the flux capacitor. Though it took 30 years of research and most of his family's fortune to develop it; the project is a success and Doc plans to travel through time. As he talks to Marty, Doc absently sets the vehicle's destination time to that date, November 5th, 1955.
When Marty asks what the DeLorean runs on instead of gasoline, Doc tells him it needs plutonium, explaining that a nuclear reaction is necessary to generate 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux capacitor. Marty is alarmed, asking where the Doc could possibly have gotten such a substance and Doc tells him that he hired a couple of Libyan terrorists to steal it for him with the promise of building them a bomb. Doc, however, cheated them, delivering a fake bomb.
Doc and Marty, clad in yellow radiation suits, load another pellet of plutonium into the DeLorean and Doc begins his farewell address to Marty and the camera.
Doc shot to death by Libyan terrorists
Just then, a Volkswagen van races into the parking lot. A man pops out of the roof with an AK-47 and begins shooting. Doc yells for Marty to run; in the van are the Libyans that Doc cheated. Doc tries to hide as well but that is when the Libyans' van comes to a stop in front of him. Doc throws away his revolver, showing that he intends to surrender, only for the Libyan to shoot him full of holes, which causes him to fall backwards, presumably dead.
Marty with Doc (1955 version of Doc)
Later on in the film (time period is 1955), Marty makes his way over to Doc's house (which will be destroyed in a fire sometime in the next 30 years, which is why Doc lives out of his garage in 1985). When Doc, who does not recognize Marty, answers the door, we see that he has a bandage on his forehead from where he hit his head trying to hang a clock above his toilet. Without saying a word, he immediately hooks Marty up to his newest invention - a thought reader. Doc determines that Marty comes from a great distance, and wants him to make a donation to the Coast Guard Youth Auxiliary.
Frustrated, Marty tells Doc directly that his time machine works and he is from the future. Doc is skeptical, even when Marty shows him his future driver's license and a family photo. Doc comments that the photo must have been forged as Dave's hair is missing from the picture. However, Marty is able to convince Doc of the truth by mentioning the wound on his head that prompted the vision of the flux capacitor. To prove that Doc has invented it, Marty has Doc drive him out to the place where he's hidden the DeLorean. Doc is overly delighted when he compares the drawing he made of a flux capacitor and sees the real device installed on the DeLorean.
After returning to Doc's estate, they manage to plug in Marty's "portable television studio" to see the video Marty had filmed in 1985. Doc becomes quite excited and panicky when they reach the point on tape where he will say that time travel requires 1.21 gigawatts of energy from the plutonium to power the flux capacitor. Doc explains that plutonium is very hard to come by in 1955 and that the only energy source capable of that amount of power is a lightning bolt. Predicting the strike zone of a lightning bolt is impossible and Doc tells Marty he may be stuck forever in 1955. But then Marty remembers the flyer the woman gave him about the lightning bolt that is going to strike the clock tower at exactly 10:04 PM next Saturday night and hands it to Doc.
Now that he knows a date, Doc begins working on a plan to harness the power of the bolt and send Marty home. When Marty says he can hang out in 1955 for a week, Doc objects, warning him that it could be detrimental to future history and jeopardize his entire existence. He asks Marty if he had any interaction with anyone in the last few hours and Marty drops the bomb about preventing the first meeting between his father and mother. Doc asks to see the photo of Marty and his siblings again; Dave's head is now completely gone. This means that in order to go back to 1985, Marty first needs to make his parents fall in love and have their first kiss within a week.
Marty and Doc at the high school, trying to spot George
Doc takes Marty to the high school the next morning. Marty is amazed to find that there is no graffiti on the building, unlike in 1985. After peeping through a classroom window and watching Lorraine Baines-McFly cheating on a test, they spot George McFly in the hallway during a passing period, seeing him being picked on (in part because of the large "KICK ME" note taped to his back). George is further demoralized when Strickland (who in 1955 is down to his last dregs of hair) appears and tells him he's a slacker. Doc is baffled that Lorraine could fall in love with someone like George, and Marty admits that his best guess is she originally felt sorry for him after her dad nearly killed him. Doc recognizes their relationship as a version of the Florence Nightingale effect, which happens when nurses develop romantic feelings for their patients.
Marty with Doc at the high school talking about the Enchantment Under The Sea dance
Back at Doc's shop, the inventor shows Marty how he'll use the lighting bolt to power the DeLorean. He'll string heavy cable down to the street, building a circuit. A long hook attached to the back of the car will channel the energy from the bolt directly into the flux capacitor. The timing will have to be precise. The demonstration goes well, though it sets a garbage pail on fire. As Doc uses a fire extinguisher to put out the flames, they are interrupted by a knock at the door. To Doc's shock, it's Lorraine, who has followed Marty. Doc and Marty quickly cover the DeLorean with a tarp before letting Lorraine in. Lorraine asks Marty if he wants to be her date to the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance. Marty attempts to back out, suggesting she go with George, but Lorraine balks at the idea, saying a real man stands up for the woman he loves, referring to the fight Marty just had with Biff.
Marty looking at Doc after Lorraine flirts with him (Marty)
Marty suddenly sees a way to get George to win Lorraine's heart. Marty approaches George while George is doing his parents' laundry, and tells him to find him with Lorraine in Doc's car in the school parking lot at a certain time, where Marty plans to appear to "take advantage" of her, which he believes will make her angry. George is to pull Marty out of the car and pretend to beat him up, proving that he's the bigger man.
The night of the dance arrives. George is already there, in a tux, waiting for his cue, as the all-black band known as the Starlighters performs on the stage. At Lou's Diner, Marty writes Doc a letter on a piece of stationary warning. He slips the note into the pocket of Doc's coat while Doc is in the middle of using $50 to bribe a cop who asks him if he has a permit for his "weather experiment".
At the town square, Doc waits impatiently for Marty. Marty arrives, saying he needed time to change back into his 1985 clothes. As they prepare for the event, Doc discovers the note from Marty in his pocket. Refusing to know too much about his future, he tears up the note without reading it. Just then, a falling tree limb disconnects the cable he has installed from the clock tower to the street. Doc climbs again to the clock tower and has Marty feed him the cable. Marty also tries to warn Doc about his death but is drowned out by thunder. Marty runs back to the DeLorean and races off to the starting point Doc has painted for him. While waiting for the timer to go off, he resets his destination time to arrive 11 minutes earlier than he left so he can warn Doc. Just then, the car stalls and Marty frantically tries to start it again. When it does restart, after the timer goes off, Marty begins speeding toward the town square. Despite some difficulty, Doc reconnects the cable just as the lighting bolt surges through the line and the DeLorean speeds off into the future, leaving behind a pair of fire trails. Doc celebrates joyously in the street.
Marty is forced to run to the mall where the initial experiment is taking place. As he arrives, we see that the sign now reads "Lone Pine Mall," another indication of how Marty has accidentally altered the past when he crushed Peabody's pine tree. He sees Doc get shot, again and watches from a distance as the Libyans chase his previous self around the parking lot. When the DeLorean vanishes and Marty's counterpart goes back to 1955, the Libyans lose control of their van, which and crashes into the photo kiosk & tips on its side, trapping the Libyans. Marty runs down to Doc. Marty is devastated that he couldn't arrive in time to save Doc. Doc, however, suddenly sits up. Marty is stunned until Doc opens his shirt, revealing that he's wearing a bulletproof vest. Marty asks him about the consequences of changing the future and the space-time continuum and the Doc admit, "Well, I thought, 'What the hell!'". Doc drives Marty home and tells him he plans to venture about 30 years into the future. He then ramps the DeLorean up to 88 mph and drives off into the night in a flash of light.
Suddenly there is a burst of electricity and the DeLorean screeches to a halt. Doc gets out, dressed in wild clothing and tells Marty he needs to come with him to the future; something is wrong with his and Jennifer's kids. Doc gathers "fuel" by rummaging through a garbage can and loads it into a new addition to the car's engine called Mr. Fusion. All three pile into the DeLorean and it backs out of the driveway. Marty tells the Doc he needs to back up further to get up to 88 mph, as they have no road. Doc replies, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!" Doc has converted the car to a hovercraft. The car takes off, and flies at the camera... and the words "To be continued..." flash on the screen.