Trivia and In-Jokes
About the Story:
After moving back to New Jersey I happened to catch the Trilogy as it
aired on Encore and various similar channels. My computer didn’t have Internet
so I had to surf on Donna, my Samsung Omnia, and wound up on FanFiction.net
re-reading Flaming
Trails’ stories. My muse was beginning to awaken and don a Back to the
Future suit, causing me to try to come up with ideas of how AL met Doc. The
final idea bit me at about 2AM on a Monday morning. Originally, Einstein was
going to be run over but I decided against that for two reasons: 1) Einstein is
way too smart to run into the street or follow a stranger and 2) AL can’t heal
severe injuries. Also originally, Doc and Einie were going to be playing fetch
with a tennis ball, but when I realized that the fence around Doc’s house was
too high for a good bounce (even with TK), I changed it to Frisbee. I
deliberately made it ambiguous as to whether this is Twin Pines or Lone Pine
(and it wasn’t easy writing for Marty in that case).
Chapter One:
June 30, 1983 10:28AM: The exact day and time I was born. Now, I
really should’ve set it to 7:28AM since California is 3 hours behind New Jersey,
however AL, like me, doesn’t do breakfast and so would wait ’til later in the
day so she can get lunch. Besides, if I were Marty, even if Doc was my
best friend, I wouldn’t be visiting so early in the morning. :p Unless, of
course, he’d made a major breakthrough and needed my assistance. ^^
New York and Wisconsin: Before showing up in Hill Valley, AL had previously hung out with Richie Cunningham and Fonzie in Wisconsin and the Sweathogs and the Sunshine Cab Co. crew in New York (not at the same time).
The newspaper in the trash: Just a nod to the first Back to the Future.
Not remembering her birthday: The explosion that wiped AL’s memories happened a couple of decades before this. The unicorns have told her when her birthday was and she won’t argue since she doesn’t remember it.
The best friend: AL had been separated from the Doctor (Sixth, if you’re curious) near the end of “Mindwarp”, an installment of “The Trial of a Time Lord”, on the planet Thoros-Beta. He has an affinity for humans that no link could ever help AL to understand (never mind that a good portion of her guys were human).
Chapter Two:
How Marty met Doc: This was taken from page 14 of the 4th draft
(10/84) screenplay of the original Back to the Future by Robert Zemeckis
and Bob Gale as stated on Kristen
Sheley’s website: “A couple of years ago, he showed up at my house and hired
me to sweep out this garage of his. He pays me 50 bucks a week, gives me free
beer…and gives me total access to his record collection – he’s got this great
old record collection.” I just left out the “free beer” part.
Chapter Three:
1:21AM: For 1.21 gigawatts, of course.
Chapter Four:
The layout of Doc’s garage: Since my DVDs are buried in a trailer a
half hour away from my mom’s place, I had to find out about the interior of
Doc’s garage from the Internet. I found a lovely site,
http://www.backtohillvalley.com
(the site itself is in French, but there are pictures), that has little diagrams
of places around Hill Valley.
Chapter Five:
“You don’t look like an alien.” up to ‘Take me to your leader,
Earthlings’!: I’ll admit I lifted these lines from Race to Witch Mountain.
I had to. I’m sorry. :)
“Now you see me…Now you do.”: From the “Origin Story” serial of the ’90s The Tomorrow People.
Chapter Six:
2:21PM: The time I wrote it, but I wrote it at AM.
Entourage of humans, aliens and tin dogs: Paraphrasing Sarah Jane Smith’s line from “School Reunion”.
Zooming around space and time, saving planets, fighting monsters, and being…well, pretty sort of marvelous: The Fifth Doctor’s line from “Time Crash”. I just left out the “let’s be honest” part.
Saturn is the only planet with rings: This was an actual question from a science book my sister had in her youth. She’d put “false” and got the question wrong and my dad fought the school system due to the book being inaccurate.
The party: A lot of the dialogue and stuff was taken from V’s Best Friends Forever and Then Some. What else could be done?
12:27PM: The time I wrote it, ’cept at AM.
The clock Lisa found: I found it online on eBay. :)
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