On a serious note, and as others in the thread have mentioned, going back to the day before MJ died would probably not have prevented his death. The most that could have hoped for is a delay of, what, days? Weeks?
You’d have to go all the way back to his childhood to have any real impact on his future.
An excellent suggestion. I’d use the device to go back and off the little creep as a kid, thus saving countless future children the traumatic experience of molestation by this pervert.
I’m saving my karma for John Lennon.
Rhymers do not joke, although they may reference events from a worldline which is currently not manifested.
I’d rather go further back and keep him from being abused, but I realize that’s not one of the choices being offered in the OP.
OK, a lot of negative responses here.
I’d give it a shot. Would it help? I don’t know, but I doubt it. Everything people said negatively is true, I don’t deny it. But I’d give him the chance. If he fails to take advantage of it, well, not ultimately my problem. I’m not his dad and I can’t control his fate, and I shouldn’t try. But he might get clean, he might choose a better way, and I can’t think of any better way of spending my time than that.
I have to agree with the conscensus, MJ was an addict and telling him he was going to die from it may only delay the inevitable.
I’d rather save someone else, like tell Phil Hartman to get rid of any weapons and commit his wife to a drug treatment facility.
Now here’s a project I can get behind. When you get the flux capacitor, give me a shout; I’ll arrange for the DeLorean and some plutonium.
How do I know the scooter isn’t booby-trapped?
It’s just that there’s this rumor going around that you’re evil.
Sure, I take the risk when you’re offering to send me somewhere exotic like Middle Earth. But just to go back a few years and save Michael Jackson? Forget about it!
What are you going to do? Shoot Joe Jackson in the face in 1970 or something?
Saving MJ’s sanity is a decades-long project beginning the late sixties, at the very least.
I wouldn’t save him. Why would I? Why does he deserve saving? I don’t know him personally and his life and death really meant nothing to me. I knew a little kid who got hit by a car and died when I was about 16. He was about 10. He’d be 23-24 now. I don’t remember his name. I’d save him.
I have ZERO tolerance for drug users. Nobody forces them to do drugs, and does anyone think the word wold be better if Jackson had lived?
His being MJ has nothing to do with it. If you put me in a postion where I can, with absolute certainty, save someone’s life, I will do it. I don’t care if he’s Michael Jackson or MJ’s accountant’s neice’s best friend’s brother.
Damn right, Skammer. Provided, given this is time travel, that doing it doesn’t create a horrible casual loop.
I think Michael was perfectly OK with dying when he did. He was, according all accounts, completely mortified by the idea of getting old.
So no, I wouldn’t.
Reading the OP carefully, I would:
Dump the two devices, travel back, load up as much jewelry and small, pocketable items as I could, then hightail it back (without saving MJ).
Well, he’s going to die anyway, isn’t he? It’s not like anyone will miss it…
I’d save anyone I could.
I’d give it a try.
I’d also use the loophole in the OP - stun and kidnap Murray, and drop him off someplace further back in time where I can use my knowledge of stocks and lottery tickets.
Hell, I might even go back to 1980, drop his inert body on Chapman and try for a two-fer
Nobody’s going to go back and stop me from dying, why should he get preferential treatment?
I might try to convince him to give up the oogy skeevy behaviour that got him into such a godawful mess (I am of the mind he is innocent of most charges, and was just behaving very close to a line he never actually crossed). But I wouldn’t interfere with his inevitable and already fixed-point-in-time death. I saw that Doctor Who episode.
This is an arguement FOR doing it. So I’m trapped in a pocket of time with the delectable Rose Tyler.