: Re: "The flux capacitor--it's what makes time travel possible." When to keep world-building explanations short Gosh, I really think I'm quite clever sometimes. But what about those situations where

@Sent2472441

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I feel like the conciseness of the explanation of the Flux Capacitor was to point out both characters' personalities and the mysterious nature of the device.

Here we have Marty, who really doesn't have much of a head for science, despite hanging out with the town's resident mad scientist. Then we have Doc, who is established as an unstable, but more importantly, misunderstood scientific genius.

And lastly we have the Flux Capacitor, a device which did not emerge from carefully-developed theory but from head trauma. While Doc presumably spent a lot of time developing the device in the thirty years between his rather appropriate clock-hanging accident and the completion of the Time Machine, it would seem the basic theory came from the head trauma. As with many time travel stories, the time travel mechanic is mysterious in nature and almost feels brought about by destiny itself (which is a theme in the story).

It was important for Doc's explanation of the Flux Capacitor to be unsatisfactorily brief in order to accomplish all of those goals:

Marty doesn't really care how it works, and wouldn't understand if Doc tried. Hence his not asking for further clarification.
Doc remains misunderstood, as we aren't allowed to see any line of reasoning that brought him to the invention of the Flux Capacitor. In fact, there is no line of reasoning, which confirms the suspicions of the principal, Mr. Strickland.
The Flux Capacitor remains a mysterious device resulting from a freak happenstance rather than something rational that the audience can understand.

Compare and contrast with a scene from Batman Begins:

Lucius Fox: [Bruce Wayne is recovering after being poisoned by Scarecrow] I analyzed your blood, isolating the receptor compounds and the protein-based catalyst.
Bruce Wayne: Am I meant to understand any of that?
Lucius Fox: Not at all, I just wanted you to know how hard it was. Bottom line, I synthesized an antidote.

This scene also accomplishes the goal of making Fox's procedure sound beyond comprehension, but establishes Fox as extremely rational and competent instead of unstable.

So it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Think about what it means for the explanation to exist, what it means for a character to say it, and what it means for other characters to hear/react to it.

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