Back to the Future

Back to the Future was a popular 1980s film trilogy about time travel. A novelisation was made from the first film.

Possible allusions

 * In Blink, there was an allusion to Back to the Future Part II, as someone was told to give a letter to Sally Sparrow at a specific date and time, no earlier, no later. This relates to how Doc Brown sent Marty a letter at the conclusion of Back to the Future Part II.
 * Peri Brown and Erimem use the same method to get letters to the Fifth Doctor in The Kingmaker. Peri notes that she got the idea from a film. If she is referring to Back to the Future Part II, she must have seen the film during her travels with the Doctor as it was not released until five years after her native time.
 * The TARDIS drawing room has numerous clocks similar to the garage of Emmett Brown at the beginning of Back to the Future. (GAME: TARDIS)
 * The Scorpion King mentions that the Doctor's TARDIS has a flux capacitor. (AUDIO: The Boy That Time Forgot)
 * In Face the Raven, there is a poster on a wall in the trap street which displays something closely resembling a flux capacitor. There is writing next to it in Aurebesh, the alphabet prominently used in the Star Wars franchise, which spells out "Delorean" - the model of car central to the plot of Back to the Future.
 * In Back to the Future Part III, Doc Brown breaks his own rules of interfering with fixed points in time, to save the life of the woman who would become his wife, the schoolteacher Clara Clayton. This storyline is in many respects similar to the Twelfth Doctor's rescue of Clara Oswald. (TV: Hell Bent)

Invalid sources
The website whoisdoctorwho.co.uk had a list of sightings of the Doctor which people had ostensibly been submitting to Clive Finch, a conspiracy theorist character from Rose. In actuality, the submissions were from visitors to the website; one such submission, credited to "Marty McFly", simply reads: "I know that man, he stole my DeLorean!!!" The 2015 cross over game Lego Dimensions included Doc Brown and Marty McFly as playable characters in a Back to the Future Lego world. In advertisements for the game, shots of Doctor Who and Back to the Future elements intertwined were highly emphasised.

Other matters

 * The trilogy provided the name for the band McFly, which had a cameo in The Sound of Drums.
 * In 2012, Karen Gillan professed her love for Back to the Future Part II and her desire for a hoverboard.