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2. 1.21 Jigawatts!?!

Another quirky line and another quirky reason to place it on the list. The DeLorean time machine operates, as you know, on gasoline. But the “flux capacitor,” the central invention that Doc Brown came up with to permit time travel, requires 1.21 “jigawatts” of electricity - the equivalent of a nuclear reaction - to function.

The line is funny and a BTFF classic for a few reasons. First, it reflects the times in several hilarious ways. The script as written, of course, called for 1.21 gigawatts, with “giga” being the now well-known prefix meaning billion (which we now use commonly in computer speak, for the space of our hard drives and memories). But, back then, the term was not commonly used, and so neither the writers nor the actors knew exactly how to pronounce it. 1.21 jigawatts thus is classic BTTF lore in those ways: a quirky line, an accident of the past, a product of its time hopelessly trapped in the past (now) in a movie about the future (then).

More important, the expression keys off to many of the best moments in the movie. The first one is when Doc Brown explains the functioning of the DeLorean to Marty, and the need for that much energy. The exaggerated amount leads to a hilarious explanation by Doc regarding Libyan terrorists (another dated reference), it introduces Doc’s funny 1955 line about plutonium available at corner stores, and it is a key component of Doc’s wild explanation about how he can get the DeLorean back to the future - by striking the wire attached to the clock tower at precisely 10:04 p.m., at precisely 88 miles per hour, sending 1.21 jigawatts into the flux capacitor, and the time vehicle back to 1985.

Everything should be fine.

1. Great Scott!!

But it is without a doubt Doc’s trademark exclamation that deserves the top spot in a movie of top quotes. According to Wikipedia, “Great Scott” is an “interjection of surprise, amazement or dismay.” I would add to that, perhaps, bewilderment.

Of the quotes on the list today, this is perhaps the one that does make its way successfully into the sequels (in fact, it is the last line in the brilliant ending to Part II), and it is no wonder. Christopher Lloyd’s delivery of it, normally as a gasp, sucking for air as he utters the words, are a large part of what make it so memorable. Doc uses it sparingly but forcefully enough to elicit a chuckle every time. When he finds out that Marty’s siblings are being erased, when he encounters his own tombstone in Part III, when he is trying to save his contraption to take Marty back to the future in Part I, etc. The quote is as endearing as it is funny, and it rounds out nicely the overall feel of light-hearted but creative fun that the movie is all about.

What is most interesting about the Wikipedia entry for the expression is that it explains that it went into disuse in the first half of the 20th Century (its usage by Doc, then, is also a telling sign about the character - a nostalgic, brilliant scientist who adores the past but is somehow impossibly curious about the future). Well, when Zemeckis and Gale penned it into the Back to the Future script, when Christopher Lloyd delivered it, and when the movie became such a cultural landmark of the 1980s, they all assured that the expression would live forever.

Great Scott, indeed.

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