This comment makes me very happy. Though, I have to say that I can’t believe I’m the only one who used this logic for travelling to the future. Time travel does work differently in each story it appears in (BTTF, Harry Potter, Interstellar, etc.) but given the rules that BTTF 1 already established, it only makes sense that there would not be a future version of Marty and Jennifer in the second movie. They exist, though, which I consider a continuity error.
As an example, Einstein did not exist in the one minute between his first time jump and him catching up with the timeline again. That initial experiment on the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall demonstrated perfectly that if you travel through time, the moment you jump to a different time, you cease to exist. And BTTF 3 shows that time jumps that haven’t happened yet also don’t exist yet in this timeline. Otherwise, Marty would have never found Doc Brown’s tombstone from 1885, since later he would go back in time to rescue him. Only once the ripple effect then catches up with 1955 did that tombstone actually change, well after Marty went back to 1885.
Now if we apply all that logic to what I’ve written, when Judy and Skippy were taken to the future, they did not yet return again. That means that they simply did not exist in the timeline between 1985 and 2016.
If this story were to follow the Judy from the next timeline, where all the time travel had already taken place, then sure, there would be two Judy’s in the future. But if we follow that line of thinking, every loop of going to the future and back would create a new and different timeline, which would break the scope of this story.
And as for Officer Brie, I did make a mention of her coming along very early on in this chapter, though without explicitly saying so. If you go back, you might figure it out, though you could also wait for a bonus chapter that is currently scheduled to release on the 26th of November as a mid-week chapter.
I only barely got into the question of what is part of the time machine and what isn’t. What gets to come along when the flux capacitor activates? In my logic, it’s just anything within the time machine. That’s why I gave the Jokemobile doors, when in Zootopia, it did not have any. I think there are only two instances where the definition of what does or doesn’t count as part of the time machine gets stretched.
In part 1, the flux capacitor got its power through a pole and connecting hook that would act as a sort of pantograph for the wire strung across the road. That connecting hook did not make it to 1985 and instead stayed in 1955. I don’t know why, it was like that in BTTF and I simply kept it.
The second example happens at the end of part 3. I gave a lacklustre explanation for why whatever ends up pushing the time machine up to 88 mp/h doesn’t travel through time too, though I did not actually explain anything in detail there. If I did, it would just be some arbitrary sci-fi mumbo jumbo.
But yeah, long story short, if someone holds on to the outside of the time machine while it makes a time jump, they’re not coming along to a different time, which means Officer Brie was inside the time machine, not outside.
I always thought of it as like a bullet moving in air the displacement wave creates a sort of safe zone in the hollow behind the leading edge of the time machine and the pantograph came off because it was punching to far through the displacement wave, but it's all conjecture either way I mean at what point does the inside of the vehicle become the outside as in where does the safe zone stop, is that bit of cloopy mud on the rear tyre part of the vehicle or not. That's why a lot of stories have the vehicle/ship create some sort of bubble around it within whom a temporary worm hole thingy joins "Now" and "then" allowing the vehicle to pass through between the too.
In Dr Who 2 characters in the series travelled on the outside of the TARDIS, but it was very very unhealthy for them, but they made it through the time jump in any case, but I think we are all agreeing that blueberries travel best inside of the vehicle to avoid spoiling the fruit, I mean making mousicles.
Comment on The Nick Of Time - Part 2: Hardly Recreational Reading Material
BenMH02 on Chapter 9 Sat 15 Nov 2025 04:34PM UTC
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RassyEyefur on Chapter 9 Mon 17 Nov 2025 11:57AM UTC
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BenMH02 on Chapter 9 Mon 17 Nov 2025 12:57PM UTC
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