When Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) receives the hundred-year-old telegram from Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) at the end of Back to the Future Part 2, telling him that he's alive and well in the Old West, it also has another tidbit of information - that he's hidden the time machine in an old cave outside of town. But Marty needs some help getting it running.
So he returns to town just in time to see himself leave to go back to the future for the first time, and he surprises the original Doc (the 1955 Doc), and tells him all about what's happening. Or at least, enough so that he doesn't know anything about his future, because Marty doesn't know that Doc has read the note that he gave him, telling him about the terrorists in the original Back to the Future.
With Doc on board, he gets some help getting the DeLorean back up and running, and using the Mr. Fusion to generate the power, Marty heads back to 1885 to see if he can rescue Doc and head back to 1985 - which will hopefully be the same as they left it!
When he gets there, Marty finds that his outfit doesn't exactly fit. But then, 1955 isn't the best place to buy authentic cowboy gear. Luckily Marty finds Doc quickly, and gets some local gear before someone else puts some holes in him that he can't recover from. Some damage has been done, however, because he introduced himself to his own ancestor as Clint Eastwood. This will come into play later.
It seems that Doc is living - mostly happily - as the town blacksmith, and this gives him plenty of leeway to do his experiments in the barn, and generally the townsfolk don't give him too much trouble about doing so. So he's only too happy to see Marty come and "save" him. The only problem that they have is that the car has run out of gas. Mr. Fusion can power the time circuits, but the engine itself runs on gasoline, and without it, they can't get up to 88 miles per hour in order to engage the flux capacitor!
Doc comes up with a plan where they can use his super-powered furnace logs to overload the boiler in the train to push the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour, but the next train doesn't come through for a few days, so they're going to have to wait. In the meantime, things should be quiet enough for them to enjoy the Old West. Like that will happen.
While they're waiting, Marty gets into trouble with old Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), ancestor of Biff. After Marty gives him some trouble, Mad Dog proposes a shootout for 8am the day that the train is coming. Marty thinks they should be safe, but it turns out that the train is sometime late, so it looks like it might go through.
Meanwhile, Doc is supposed to pick up the new schoolmistress, but when Marty says that he mentioned her name in the telegram, and that they were in love, Doc decides not to do so. When they are investigating the train route, and see her wagon heading over the cliff, they have no choice but to save her. It's then that they find out that the ravine into which she should have plunged was named after her in the future, so they may have just changed the future. Again.
As it happens, things do work out for Doc and Marty, but not quite as planned. A wild ride on the engine gets the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour, but when Clara (Mary Steenburgen) tries to pursue Doc, he has to rescue her again, and gets left in the Old West. The engine plunges off of the unfinished bridge in 1885, which leads the ravine to be named after the deceased man who was at the helm - Clint Eastwood.
Marty does make it back to 1985, and because Doc was "thinking fourth dimensionally" (something Marty has trouble with), the bridge was complete, and the time machine cruises to a gentle stop. Then a barreling locomotive destroys it on the tracks, which would appear to strand Doc in 1885.
With nothing else to do, Marty goes to pick up Jennifer on her porch, and finds her just where he left her. He explains what happens, and as they go to the bridge to find the remains of the DeLorean, another train seems to be coming through, but they don't see it - then a massive explosion occurs, and a huge train appears out of nowhere. It seems that the Doc has built a new time machine out of an old steam engine, so he wasn't trapped after all.
And with this, the trilogy concludes. The only real problem with this episode is that if the Doc could build a time machine out of a locomotive, why would he send a telegram to Marty that he and Clara were living happily in the Old West, and that he had left the time machine in and old cave? Surely he could have made some tires for it and put together something to get it going more easily than he could have built one from scratch. But nonetheless, it's an entertaining ride.
Rated PG.
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