The windmill that stood at the Point of No Return.
- " "She's [Clara] here!" Doc insisted [over the radio]. "In the cab! I've got to go back for her!" / Marty saw Doc climb back up to the top of the cowcatcher. / "What are you gonna do?" Marty asked. / "Hope there's enough time to stop the train," Doc's voice crackled back, "and get her off before we hit the bridge!" / Marty looked out the front windshield [of the DeLorean]. There, on the left, coming up fast, was the windmill, their failsafe point. Once they were past the windmill, there wouldn't be enough time to stop the train before they reached the ravine. / "Doc!" Marty shouted into the radio. "I see the windmill!" He glanced down at the speedometer. "And we're going sixty! You'll never make it!" / As Marty finished his sentence, he saw the windmill go past. / Now there was no way to stop the train before it plunged into the ravine. "
- —From Back to the Future Part III by Craig Shaw Gardner (quote, pages 192 and 193)
A windmill was a machine driven by sails turned by the wind, which was used for grinding grain or pumping water.
History[]
One of these, which was a windpump, stood at the Point of No Return, Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown's failsafe point along Carson Spur in 1885. Once past this point, there would be no way to stop Locomotive 131, which was pushing the DeLorean time machine, before it plunged into Shonash Ravine.
In 1993, one of the framed photographs on the walls of the queue line in Doc Brown's Chicken showed Doc in front of a windmill in La Mancha, Spain.
Appearances[]
- Paradox script
- Back to the Future Part III
- Back to the Future Part III novelization
- Doc Brown's Chicken (In the photographs in the queue line)
