TAS Ranting, Over Here!
May. 29th, 2006 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWell, I now have a more coherent version of this rant to put up. Keep in mind that I'm focusing mainly on those episodes that I did see and have on videotape. If anyone who's seen the other episodes wants to weigh in, I welcome your input.
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missnickers recently made a post in which she noted that she rather resembled the BTTF:TAS's Jennifer. That and the comments we traded (at the bottom) finally broke down my will.
Ladies and Gentlemen, a Rant about Back To The Future: The Animated Series.
DISCLAIMER: I actually rather like BTTF: TAS. I have a bunch of episodes taped off the FoxBox, along with one official tape and the related comic book series. They’re good for a dumb laugh or a quick Christopher Lloyd fix. And I’m willing to work in a few things mentioned in TAS (e.g., Doc and Marty’s middle names). I’m just noting here that TAS doesn’t quite mesh with the canon as well as it could.
A) Character Appearances
I’m not sure why they decided they had to change some character’s appearances in TAS. I can understand some cartoony exaggeration (Biff looking like a hulking gorilla, for example). But two characters go beyond that. . . .
1. Jennifer. Jennifer is the biggie. CanonJennifer had long, somewhat curly brown hair (or, if we’re talking Shue, orangey-hair) and brown eyes. TASJennifer has short, blond hair with what appears to be teal eyes.
That's not even FRICKING CLOSE. Someone suggested in Nicker's journal that they were patterning her on the current look of Elisabeth Shue. I don't know about that, but if they were, they made a mistake. They SHOULD have patterned Jennifer Parker on FREAKING JENNIFER PARKER! I don't care WHAT Shue looked like in 1991, she had long brown hair in 1989 as Jennifer! And I somehow doubt her eye color changed!
2. Doc. This is a little mistake, but it’s a very annoying one, given the circumstances. CanonDoc has very prominent brown eyes. These are even mentioned in canon by Clara. TASDoc has -- blue eyes.
YOU HAD CHRISTOPHER FREAKING LLOYD ON-SET AT ONE POINT! DID YOU NOT NOTICE HIS EYES ARE BROWN?!
Sorry, but that BUGS me. Christopher Lloyd did the opening and closing tags to each episode! You think that, at some point, someone would have noticed the eye-color discrepancy!
Nickers herself mentioned in her journal that sometimes people would change hair/eye color in the animated series of movies to keep an even color ratio. Uh, why is that important? Do people really care if more characters have brown eyes than blue? It just seems like a rather arbitrary change to me.
B) Character Personality
Along with warping looks, TAS really warped the canon characters’ personalities. Jules and Verne are automatically excused from this -- the canon versions got no lines. We don’t KNOW what they were like before. Similarly, Biff doesn’t seem that bad -- if a little rougher around the edges than he should be. (Or maybe not. As far as we know, Biff only sucks up to McFlys, and the only one of those we see is Marty.) The others, however. . . .
1. Doc. Oh, Doc. This isn't the same Dr. Brown we knew and loved from canon. He’s retained certain parts of his personality -- the inventive nature, the quest for knowledge -- but a few things have fallen by the wayside.
For one thing, he isn't all that careful about the space-time continuum anymore. For example, in "Brothers," one of the first episodes, Verne saves the lives of an entire contingent of soldiers in the Civil War. And instead of freaking out about this, Doc's PROUD. He doesn't give a thought as to what all these new lives mean for the space-time continuum. He didn’t feel that way after he’d saved his own WIFE!
In fact, Doc and company often get embroiled in rather historically-significant events, and Doc NEVER considers the effect on the space-time continuum! In fact, he almost seems to go out of his way to CHANGE history sometimes -- like starting a recycling service in 1600s Salem, or taking an extinct species back to the future from pre-conquistador South America. Plus, his security for the DeLorean sucks, judging by the number of times Jules, Verne, and Marty have swiped the machine for personal trips. I have no problem with Doc and company using the DeLorean as the occasional pleasure vehicle, but Doc isn't going to let everyone run around and muck up history! ESPECIALLY not after “Hell Valley.” Sure, I believe he might be more forgiving of slip-ups if only because of how he met Clara, but he’s going to damn well make sure any time travel for pleasure will be mostly observational and carefully controlled.
Second, there's his relationship with Marty. Sure, they're still friends. But things have definitely changed. There's one particular line that makes me cringe. It’s from "Swing Low Sweet Chariot Race," and it comes right after Doc agrees to let Marty come to Ancient Rome with him:
"Perhaps it's not too late to penetrate that rock-and-roll drenched brain of yours."
That gets under my skin. Just the way it’s phrased, the way he says it -- Doc is CONDESCENDING to Marty.
DOC DOES NOT CONSIDER MARTY STUPID. Yes, he's smarter than Marty -- it would be futile to argue that. But Doc treats Marty as a valued assistant and friend -- practically a colleague. He trusts Marty to do his part when it comes to their plans throughout the trilogy. And excuse me, “rock-and-roll drenched brain?” May I remind you WHO built that gigantic amplifier that Marty destroys at the beginning of BTTF? (The same principle applies with Marty’s rock and roll concert in “Retired” -- Doc likes Marty’s music enough to build him that amplifier!)
Thirdly, there’s Doc’s habit of talking with big words. I admit, this is rather cute at times. However, the producers of TAS went overboard with it. Doc doesn’t speak like that every second of the day. And it seems to be more of a Doc’55 trait than a Doc’85 trait -- the most memorable scene of Doc speaking like that is Doc’55 and his “rhythmic ceremonial ritual” in response to the “Enchantment Under The Sea” dance poster. Doc isn’t on a mission to confuse everyone around him.
2. Marty. Then again, perhaps TASDoc is right to condescend to TASMarty. TASMarty IS portrayed as stupid. His main functions in the series seems to be to provide lame jokes and to get into trouble so that someone else can get him out of it. In “Witchcraft,” he’s accused of being a witch. In “Roman Holiday,” he ends up a prisoner of Bifficus and is forced to race him. In “Clara’s Folks,” Clara’s mother falls for him. In “Mac The Black,” he gets on the wrong side of a pirate he’s impersonating. In “Marty McFly PFC,” he ends up in the Army, etc. I haven’t seen all of these, but in the ones I have, Marty basically relies on Doc and the other Browns to get him out of the situation. He seems to have little to do with the plan itself. Granted, in a couple of cases he’s helped out with a plan of his own -- “A Dickens of a Christmas” comes to mind, with his ghost act -- but Marty’s smarts seem to have been shoved aside for a lame sense of humor and an overblown sense of self.
CANONMARTY IS NOT STUPID. Yes, Doc comes up with most of the main plans, but Marty has a pretty good track record with them too. He was the one who came up with the plan for George to punch him out in the parking lot. He was the one who remembered Clint Eastwood’s “bulletproof vest” trick. And he was the one who realized he could help Doc and Clara with the hoverboard. Marty’s a pretty smart guy. Doc wouldn’t befriend someone who was stupid.
TASMarty also has a rather overinflated ego, which leads to a lot of conflict with Jennifer. I know we didn’t see much of Jennifer in canon, but I somehow doubt that she and Marty fought THAT much. Marty almost seems to bully her in a few episodes! In “Witchcraft,” he’s not willing to listen to her point of view when it comes to a situation involving her and a jock; in “Mac The Black,” he openly lies to her about getting into a concert; and in “St. Louis Blues,” he teases her about a haircut that he himself ruined! Appropriately enough, those episodes ARE all about taking him down a peg. But that just doesn’t seem to be Marty. CanonMarty isn’t the bullying type -- he’s a nice kid. He identifies a lot more with George McFly than he ever did with Biff Tannen. His problem is his rather hot temper, not an overinflated sense of self. In fact, the way he reacts to being called chicken almost seems to suggest he doesn’t have ENOUGH self-esteem. He doesn’t think himself worthy if people don’t see him as brave.
Thirdly, TASMarty seems to be a “skirt-chaser.” In “Witchcraft,” he goes ga-ga for Mercy Tannen (though he does back off immediately when he discovers who her dad is). In “Dickens of a Christmas,” he’s seen propositioning some girl in a shop. In “Mac The Black,” he impersonates a pirate to woo a pretty senorita. In “St. Louis Blues,” he makes a date with a girl named Liz after mocking Jennifer’s haircut. All this while he’s supposedly in a relationship with Jennifer! The extent of CanonMarty’s looking was glancing at some passing girl’s butts. He never actively seeks out any other girl throughout the series -- and God knows that would have been easy, given that Jennifer is unconscious during the sequels. The only indication of that I see from TASMarty is “A Friend In Deed,” where he goes back to help save the Parker ranch from the Tannens. A lovely gesture, to be certain, but mainly, TASMarty seems to be all about keeping his options open. (The really ironic part comes in “Witchcraft” -- Marty berates Jennifer for apparently making a date with a jock, but sees no problem in going for Mercy!)
A final note -- WHERE THE HECK ARE THE REST OF THE MCFLYS? Most of the trilogy focused around Marty and his relationship to his family, especially his Mom and Dad. So why the heck were his parents completely written out? I mean, Dave and Linda I can see, as he has almost no contact with them in the series, but George and Lorraine? They could have at least made a cameo at some point. (Even nonspeaking -- stick them in a crowd or something.)
3. Clara and Jennifer. I’m putting the girls together because Jennifer doesn’t appear all that often in the series, much like she did in the Trilogy. They also seem to suffer from the same canon rape.
Simply put, TAS turned Clara and Jennifer into bitches.
I mean it. Clara and Jennifer can be downright MEAN in TAS. In “Witchcraft,” Jennifer gives as good as she gets in that opening argument -- she shoves Marty into a water fountain. And in the opening to “Mac the Black,” she resorts to name-calling. And Clara -- she’s snapped at Doc a couple of times, but her big sin is in “A Family Vacation.” In “A Family Vacation,” Doc takes his family to the Middle Ages to get them away from electricity. Everyone eventually ends up kidnapped or otherwise taken to King Biffingham’s palace. Clara saves everyone from being beheaded and, after letting Marty’s ancestors go, takes them all to the car.
AND LOCKS DOC OUT UNTIL HE APOLOGIZES, NOTWITHSTANDING BIFFINGHAM AND HIS GOONS ARE HOT ON THEIR TRAIL!
No. That -- Clara slapped Doc in Part III, but I doubt she’d put him in a situation that might have led to his death! What if Biffingham had had an archer with him? That was CRUEL. I wanted to strangle her for that.
C) Historical Accuracy
I give the producers some credit -- apparently “Batter Up” was very accurate. But two of the ones I saw could have used some work.
1. “Witchcraft.” Geez, I reference this one a LOT, don’t I? Maybe I should make it the “Bad BTTF TAS Poster Episode.” Anyway, the main action of this episode is supposed to take place in Salem, around the time of the famous witch trials.
Except -- that the witch trial shown, Marty’s, doesn’t match up at ALL with what happened in Salem. I was a huge fan of the Salem witch trials, and I read damn near about every book written on them. The episode does fit the profile of a witch trial, but it DEFINITELY isn’t a Salem one.
First off, Marty’s trial isn’t right. Part of the evidence against him is that he’s “subject to fits.” In Salem, if you were subject to fits, you were the VICTIM of witchcraft. That’s how it all got started -- a group of girls started having strange fits, and blamed it on various outcasts in society. Marty only has a single accuser, and there’s no group of girls ready to scream and torture themselves if he so much as looks at them.
Second, Marty shouldn’t have been tested for witchcraft. In Salem, it was all about spectral evidence. If the girls put on a good enough show, you were presumed guilty. They didn’t bother testing to see if you were a witch -- the girls’ and their supporter’s claims were enough. The only time they “tested” anyone was when Giles Cory refused to testify about himself. And then he didn’t get the water treatment, like Marty did -- he was CRUSHED to death!
Third, they shouldn’t have been preparing a weenie roast with Marty as head weenie. Salem witches were hanged, not burned. (Yeah, I know, big comfort, eh Marty?)
The producers could have saved this episode if they’d made use of the DeLorean’s new ability to travel to different locations as well as different times. Marty’s trial would have made a lot more sense if the episode had been set in EUROPE. It was over THERE that they burned witches and performed the water test.
2. “Time Waits For No Frog/Einstein’s Adventure.” This rant primarily focuses on “Time Waits For No Frog.” Marty and Doc head back to the time of the conquistadores in South America to find a certain species of frog, the bufo marinus, that can help cure Marty’s athlete’s foot. The episode claims that this frog went extinct.
Nope. The bufo marinus is alive and well in the present day. And it’s eating Australia. The frogs are a worse plague than the rabbits! You think the producers could be bothered to do their research. . . . (Heh -- considering “Einstein’s Adventure” has Einy going to Australia, 1790, perhaps Doc and Marty are responsible for the bufo marinus plague there.)
I do understand that the series was aimed at little kids. But sheez, once you think about it, it's a pretty lousy show for anyone who loves the movies.
-D: And to think Bob Gale was involved with this. . . .-
Well, if you've read the early drafts of BTTF and BTTF II, you'll see that Bob Gale isn't a good writer -- he's a good REwriter. He came up with some pretty weird shit in the early drafts. (I dare someone to ask if he was drunk and watching "Taxi" when he came up with StonerDoc for that early version of Part II.) Perhaps that's what TAS suffered from -- a lack of rewriting.
-VD: What about your fics?-
Message received -- I am looking over "V.D." to see what parts I can more immediately revise. I seem to do better if I skip around in chunks.
-VD2: *shrug* Whatever works, I suppose.-
And I have been doing some stuff on "BTTX-2." Just that most of my time was taken up with the rant and watching Part III.
-OD: In a Trilogy mood, I assume?-
Yeah, I am, actually. Mmmm, sexy Western Doc. . . .
-TD: Just don't forget to do your written page on "Boy Genius."-
-H: Yeah, I need to steal Maxim's hat already!-
LOL. I'll get right on it.
-DW: I'll hunt down these plot bunnies for Sluggified TAS so you don't get distracted.-
Just to warn you, those are related to J.C. Jones.
-DW: Oh, thanks. MartyFox, we need to cook these! Fire up the barbeque!-
missnickers recently made a post in which she noted that she rather resembled the BTTF:TAS's Jennifer. That and the comments we traded (at the bottom) finally broke down my will.Ladies and Gentlemen, a Rant about Back To The Future: The Animated Series.
DISCLAIMER: I actually rather like BTTF: TAS. I have a bunch of episodes taped off the FoxBox, along with one official tape and the related comic book series. They’re good for a dumb laugh or a quick Christopher Lloyd fix. And I’m willing to work in a few things mentioned in TAS (e.g., Doc and Marty’s middle names). I’m just noting here that TAS doesn’t quite mesh with the canon as well as it could.
A) Character Appearances
I’m not sure why they decided they had to change some character’s appearances in TAS. I can understand some cartoony exaggeration (Biff looking like a hulking gorilla, for example). But two characters go beyond that. . . .
1. Jennifer. Jennifer is the biggie. CanonJennifer had long, somewhat curly brown hair (or, if we’re talking Shue, orangey-hair) and brown eyes. TASJennifer has short, blond hair with what appears to be teal eyes.
That's not even FRICKING CLOSE. Someone suggested in Nicker's journal that they were patterning her on the current look of Elisabeth Shue. I don't know about that, but if they were, they made a mistake. They SHOULD have patterned Jennifer Parker on FREAKING JENNIFER PARKER! I don't care WHAT Shue looked like in 1991, she had long brown hair in 1989 as Jennifer! And I somehow doubt her eye color changed!
2. Doc. This is a little mistake, but it’s a very annoying one, given the circumstances. CanonDoc has very prominent brown eyes. These are even mentioned in canon by Clara. TASDoc has -- blue eyes.
YOU HAD CHRISTOPHER FREAKING LLOYD ON-SET AT ONE POINT! DID YOU NOT NOTICE HIS EYES ARE BROWN?!
Sorry, but that BUGS me. Christopher Lloyd did the opening and closing tags to each episode! You think that, at some point, someone would have noticed the eye-color discrepancy!
Nickers herself mentioned in her journal that sometimes people would change hair/eye color in the animated series of movies to keep an even color ratio. Uh, why is that important? Do people really care if more characters have brown eyes than blue? It just seems like a rather arbitrary change to me.
B) Character Personality
Along with warping looks, TAS really warped the canon characters’ personalities. Jules and Verne are automatically excused from this -- the canon versions got no lines. We don’t KNOW what they were like before. Similarly, Biff doesn’t seem that bad -- if a little rougher around the edges than he should be. (Or maybe not. As far as we know, Biff only sucks up to McFlys, and the only one of those we see is Marty.) The others, however. . . .
1. Doc. Oh, Doc. This isn't the same Dr. Brown we knew and loved from canon. He’s retained certain parts of his personality -- the inventive nature, the quest for knowledge -- but a few things have fallen by the wayside.
For one thing, he isn't all that careful about the space-time continuum anymore. For example, in "Brothers," one of the first episodes, Verne saves the lives of an entire contingent of soldiers in the Civil War. And instead of freaking out about this, Doc's PROUD. He doesn't give a thought as to what all these new lives mean for the space-time continuum. He didn’t feel that way after he’d saved his own WIFE!
In fact, Doc and company often get embroiled in rather historically-significant events, and Doc NEVER considers the effect on the space-time continuum! In fact, he almost seems to go out of his way to CHANGE history sometimes -- like starting a recycling service in 1600s Salem, or taking an extinct species back to the future from pre-conquistador South America. Plus, his security for the DeLorean sucks, judging by the number of times Jules, Verne, and Marty have swiped the machine for personal trips. I have no problem with Doc and company using the DeLorean as the occasional pleasure vehicle, but Doc isn't going to let everyone run around and muck up history! ESPECIALLY not after “Hell Valley.” Sure, I believe he might be more forgiving of slip-ups if only because of how he met Clara, but he’s going to damn well make sure any time travel for pleasure will be mostly observational and carefully controlled.
Second, there's his relationship with Marty. Sure, they're still friends. But things have definitely changed. There's one particular line that makes me cringe. It’s from "Swing Low Sweet Chariot Race," and it comes right after Doc agrees to let Marty come to Ancient Rome with him:
"Perhaps it's not too late to penetrate that rock-and-roll drenched brain of yours."
That gets under my skin. Just the way it’s phrased, the way he says it -- Doc is CONDESCENDING to Marty.
DOC DOES NOT CONSIDER MARTY STUPID. Yes, he's smarter than Marty -- it would be futile to argue that. But Doc treats Marty as a valued assistant and friend -- practically a colleague. He trusts Marty to do his part when it comes to their plans throughout the trilogy. And excuse me, “rock-and-roll drenched brain?” May I remind you WHO built that gigantic amplifier that Marty destroys at the beginning of BTTF? (The same principle applies with Marty’s rock and roll concert in “Retired” -- Doc likes Marty’s music enough to build him that amplifier!)
Thirdly, there’s Doc’s habit of talking with big words. I admit, this is rather cute at times. However, the producers of TAS went overboard with it. Doc doesn’t speak like that every second of the day. And it seems to be more of a Doc’55 trait than a Doc’85 trait -- the most memorable scene of Doc speaking like that is Doc’55 and his “rhythmic ceremonial ritual” in response to the “Enchantment Under The Sea” dance poster. Doc isn’t on a mission to confuse everyone around him.
2. Marty. Then again, perhaps TASDoc is right to condescend to TASMarty. TASMarty IS portrayed as stupid. His main functions in the series seems to be to provide lame jokes and to get into trouble so that someone else can get him out of it. In “Witchcraft,” he’s accused of being a witch. In “Roman Holiday,” he ends up a prisoner of Bifficus and is forced to race him. In “Clara’s Folks,” Clara’s mother falls for him. In “Mac The Black,” he gets on the wrong side of a pirate he’s impersonating. In “Marty McFly PFC,” he ends up in the Army, etc. I haven’t seen all of these, but in the ones I have, Marty basically relies on Doc and the other Browns to get him out of the situation. He seems to have little to do with the plan itself. Granted, in a couple of cases he’s helped out with a plan of his own -- “A Dickens of a Christmas” comes to mind, with his ghost act -- but Marty’s smarts seem to have been shoved aside for a lame sense of humor and an overblown sense of self.
CANONMARTY IS NOT STUPID. Yes, Doc comes up with most of the main plans, but Marty has a pretty good track record with them too. He was the one who came up with the plan for George to punch him out in the parking lot. He was the one who remembered Clint Eastwood’s “bulletproof vest” trick. And he was the one who realized he could help Doc and Clara with the hoverboard. Marty’s a pretty smart guy. Doc wouldn’t befriend someone who was stupid.
TASMarty also has a rather overinflated ego, which leads to a lot of conflict with Jennifer. I know we didn’t see much of Jennifer in canon, but I somehow doubt that she and Marty fought THAT much. Marty almost seems to bully her in a few episodes! In “Witchcraft,” he’s not willing to listen to her point of view when it comes to a situation involving her and a jock; in “Mac The Black,” he openly lies to her about getting into a concert; and in “St. Louis Blues,” he teases her about a haircut that he himself ruined! Appropriately enough, those episodes ARE all about taking him down a peg. But that just doesn’t seem to be Marty. CanonMarty isn’t the bullying type -- he’s a nice kid. He identifies a lot more with George McFly than he ever did with Biff Tannen. His problem is his rather hot temper, not an overinflated sense of self. In fact, the way he reacts to being called chicken almost seems to suggest he doesn’t have ENOUGH self-esteem. He doesn’t think himself worthy if people don’t see him as brave.
Thirdly, TASMarty seems to be a “skirt-chaser.” In “Witchcraft,” he goes ga-ga for Mercy Tannen (though he does back off immediately when he discovers who her dad is). In “Dickens of a Christmas,” he’s seen propositioning some girl in a shop. In “Mac The Black,” he impersonates a pirate to woo a pretty senorita. In “St. Louis Blues,” he makes a date with a girl named Liz after mocking Jennifer’s haircut. All this while he’s supposedly in a relationship with Jennifer! The extent of CanonMarty’s looking was glancing at some passing girl’s butts. He never actively seeks out any other girl throughout the series -- and God knows that would have been easy, given that Jennifer is unconscious during the sequels. The only indication of that I see from TASMarty is “A Friend In Deed,” where he goes back to help save the Parker ranch from the Tannens. A lovely gesture, to be certain, but mainly, TASMarty seems to be all about keeping his options open. (The really ironic part comes in “Witchcraft” -- Marty berates Jennifer for apparently making a date with a jock, but sees no problem in going for Mercy!)
A final note -- WHERE THE HECK ARE THE REST OF THE MCFLYS? Most of the trilogy focused around Marty and his relationship to his family, especially his Mom and Dad. So why the heck were his parents completely written out? I mean, Dave and Linda I can see, as he has almost no contact with them in the series, but George and Lorraine? They could have at least made a cameo at some point. (Even nonspeaking -- stick them in a crowd or something.)
3. Clara and Jennifer. I’m putting the girls together because Jennifer doesn’t appear all that often in the series, much like she did in the Trilogy. They also seem to suffer from the same canon rape.
Simply put, TAS turned Clara and Jennifer into bitches.
I mean it. Clara and Jennifer can be downright MEAN in TAS. In “Witchcraft,” Jennifer gives as good as she gets in that opening argument -- she shoves Marty into a water fountain. And in the opening to “Mac the Black,” she resorts to name-calling. And Clara -- she’s snapped at Doc a couple of times, but her big sin is in “A Family Vacation.” In “A Family Vacation,” Doc takes his family to the Middle Ages to get them away from electricity. Everyone eventually ends up kidnapped or otherwise taken to King Biffingham’s palace. Clara saves everyone from being beheaded and, after letting Marty’s ancestors go, takes them all to the car.
AND LOCKS DOC OUT UNTIL HE APOLOGIZES, NOTWITHSTANDING BIFFINGHAM AND HIS GOONS ARE HOT ON THEIR TRAIL!
No. That -- Clara slapped Doc in Part III, but I doubt she’d put him in a situation that might have led to his death! What if Biffingham had had an archer with him? That was CRUEL. I wanted to strangle her for that.
C) Historical Accuracy
I give the producers some credit -- apparently “Batter Up” was very accurate. But two of the ones I saw could have used some work.
1. “Witchcraft.” Geez, I reference this one a LOT, don’t I? Maybe I should make it the “Bad BTTF TAS Poster Episode.” Anyway, the main action of this episode is supposed to take place in Salem, around the time of the famous witch trials.
Except -- that the witch trial shown, Marty’s, doesn’t match up at ALL with what happened in Salem. I was a huge fan of the Salem witch trials, and I read damn near about every book written on them. The episode does fit the profile of a witch trial, but it DEFINITELY isn’t a Salem one.
First off, Marty’s trial isn’t right. Part of the evidence against him is that he’s “subject to fits.” In Salem, if you were subject to fits, you were the VICTIM of witchcraft. That’s how it all got started -- a group of girls started having strange fits, and blamed it on various outcasts in society. Marty only has a single accuser, and there’s no group of girls ready to scream and torture themselves if he so much as looks at them.
Second, Marty shouldn’t have been tested for witchcraft. In Salem, it was all about spectral evidence. If the girls put on a good enough show, you were presumed guilty. They didn’t bother testing to see if you were a witch -- the girls’ and their supporter’s claims were enough. The only time they “tested” anyone was when Giles Cory refused to testify about himself. And then he didn’t get the water treatment, like Marty did -- he was CRUSHED to death!
Third, they shouldn’t have been preparing a weenie roast with Marty as head weenie. Salem witches were hanged, not burned. (Yeah, I know, big comfort, eh Marty?)
The producers could have saved this episode if they’d made use of the DeLorean’s new ability to travel to different locations as well as different times. Marty’s trial would have made a lot more sense if the episode had been set in EUROPE. It was over THERE that they burned witches and performed the water test.
2. “Time Waits For No Frog/Einstein’s Adventure.” This rant primarily focuses on “Time Waits For No Frog.” Marty and Doc head back to the time of the conquistadores in South America to find a certain species of frog, the bufo marinus, that can help cure Marty’s athlete’s foot. The episode claims that this frog went extinct.
Nope. The bufo marinus is alive and well in the present day. And it’s eating Australia. The frogs are a worse plague than the rabbits! You think the producers could be bothered to do their research. . . . (Heh -- considering “Einstein’s Adventure” has Einy going to Australia, 1790, perhaps Doc and Marty are responsible for the bufo marinus plague there.)
I do understand that the series was aimed at little kids. But sheez, once you think about it, it's a pretty lousy show for anyone who loves the movies.
-D: And to think Bob Gale was involved with this. . . .-
Well, if you've read the early drafts of BTTF and BTTF II, you'll see that Bob Gale isn't a good writer -- he's a good REwriter. He came up with some pretty weird shit in the early drafts. (I dare someone to ask if he was drunk and watching "Taxi" when he came up with StonerDoc for that early version of Part II.) Perhaps that's what TAS suffered from -- a lack of rewriting.
-VD: What about your fics?-
Message received -- I am looking over "V.D." to see what parts I can more immediately revise. I seem to do better if I skip around in chunks.
-VD2: *shrug* Whatever works, I suppose.-
And I have been doing some stuff on "BTTX-2." Just that most of my time was taken up with the rant and watching Part III.
-OD: In a Trilogy mood, I assume?-
Yeah, I am, actually. Mmmm, sexy Western Doc. . . .
-TD: Just don't forget to do your written page on "Boy Genius."-
-H: Yeah, I need to steal Maxim's hat already!-
LOL. I'll get right on it.
-DW: I'll hunt down these plot bunnies for Sluggified TAS so you don't get distracted.-
Just to warn you, those are related to J.C. Jones.
-DW: Oh, thanks. MartyFox, we need to cook these! Fire up the barbeque!-
