terminator time line question....

[LipSmack]

I just watched the new clips, and im curious as to why the resistance and john all know that kyle is the father, i mean john ok, but hes yelling about it infront of everyone, wouldn't this somehow affect the timeline?
and yes i can see how it fits into the cannon, but it just seems weird to me.
am i ontrack or just dumb?

 

[TerminatorMan]

I just watched the new clips, and im curious as to why the resistance and john all know that kyle is the father, i mean john ok, but hes yelling about it infront of everyone, wouldn't this somehow affect the timeline?
and yes i can see how it fits into the cannon, but it just seems weird to me.
am i ontrack or just dumb?

Kyle fought with the resisitance prior to going through the time machine to save Sarah connor. So the resistance knows about Kyle.

 

[uscmhicks]

I just watched the new clips, and im curious as to why the resistance and john all know that kyle is the father, i mean john ok, but hes yelling about it infront of everyone, wouldn't this somehow affect the timeline?
and yes i can see how it fits into the cannon, but it just seems weird to me.
am i ontrack or just dumb?

this is really complicated so I'm probably wrong and the fact that none of us have seen the movie doesn't help either but I think Because Connor says nothing ( probably says nothing ) to Kyle Reese and as long as he doesn't actually know I don't think there could be any problems.

So its as if John Connor didn't want to tell anyone but it gets to a point where he needs too to let everyone know..

By the way a mod may want to put possible spoilers in the title since its likely things will start to be mentioned from the new clips.

 

[LipSmack]

no i know he probably wouldn't want kyle to know, but hes yelling it around people we dont know or care about, so i thought something might get back to kyle like a rumour floating around or something?

 

[a-dev]

Its left me puzzled too. The original Terminator film very much gave the impression that Kyle himself didn't know - so he really shouldn't know at any point in the new trilogy. However he should have enough contact with Connor for Connor to give him the photograph. Subsequently Kyle should become infatuated with Sarah connor and thus volunteer himself once the time comes that he has to travel into the past. And there should be a certain seperation of time between when John gives him the photo and when the time travelling takes place. Kyle has to build up this yearning or whatever for Sarah connor so it can't be Kyle volunteering to go back for no apparent reason and John connor only then handing him the photo for identification purposes. That would be a Lucas-esque >>>>up of the continuity.

Anyway that was a bit of a tangent. Yes it seems John is letting other people in on the fact that Kyle is his dad. Perhaps its tied in to the line we've all heard ''this isn't the future my mother warned me about''. Maybe his hand is forced - maybe Skynet has somehow found out and thus Kyle has become as much of a target as John himself.

 

[laudanum09]

hmmmm I don't think it necessary meant that he was his son. I wouldn't infer that, especially if I was there and had no clue of any of the happenings in the other films. I would just either take it that A.)Connor has snapped or B.)Connor is right and there's something special about Reese, whatever that may be. Note that connor says 'were ALL dead', not 'I'd be dead.' I think, and i'm just guessing here since I dunno the context, that the folks surrounding Connor would realize that he knew something that no one else does, somehow.

 

[EVILFACE]

The original Terminator going back in time must have created a new timeline. In this timeline, John knows Kyle is his father and he knows he must send him back in time. They also know the Terminators will be coming and what to expect, until Marcus.

A new timeline had to be created, because even back in the day I remember thinking we know the Terminator failed in his mission at the begining of the film, because he is sent back. If he succeeded in his mission, he would not need to be sent back to begin with.

 

[tylerdurden]

i've got another point of view on this.
who SAYS john connor told everyone reese is his father?

in that scene where he confronts marcus, maybe he's alone.

or maybe the only other people in the room are those who ALREADY knew that fact. like his wife kate, who was exposed to the whole time-travelling connor family conundrum back in T3.

there's another clip with michael ironside and some russian-sounding dude. they were talking about who's number 1 on skynet's hit-list. and judging by the way the russian could barely remember reese's name, i don't think the resistance knows the significance of this person.

 

[CSM1976]

The original Terminator going back in time must have created a new timeline. In this timeline, John knows Kyle is his father and he knows he must send him back in time. They also know the Terminators will be coming and what to expect, until Marcus.

A new timeline had to be created, because even back in the day I remember thinking we know the Terminator failed in his mission at the begining of the film, because he is sent back. If he succeeded in his mission, he would not need to be sent back to begin with.

The problem with what your saying is that this is not back to the future.. Remember "the future is not set". So the future does change a little with the terminators coming back. Skynet knows that they failed, and try again.

Thats the only problem I have with the movies, and I hope they explain this..

T1- kyle says that the 800 is new and that they had lost and as a last chance they send a terminator back but nobody else can come through.

T2- Another 800 and now a "prototype" T-1000. I can buy this for the most part. Why send a prototype to 1984 if it hasnt been tested and had all the bugs worked out? Now Skynet is desparate and may know that an 800 has been sent as a protector.

T3- Well now we have a T-850 (ok fine) but the T-X? How can the T-1000 be a prototype and skynet has a more advanced terminator?

So I get my head around this by figuring that skynet learns from the past too and that the time that the terminator(s) are sent back is the always the same (2029), but the past is always different from the failed attempts, so they learn and try something new, a new terminator, a new time in Johns life.

Next thing I need to know is why keep coming back as John gets older? Do things need to happen to ensure that skynet is still born even if it fails to kill Connor? eg. T1- the terminator being crushed at Cyberdyne.

Why not go futher back in time? Kill Sarah when she was a kid, Kill her mom or her dad. you get the idea. The further back you go, the better your chances of success for many reasons.

Any ideas?

I spend too much time thinking about this stuff.

 

[laudanum09]

T3- Well now we have a T-850 (ok fine) but the T-X? How can the T-1000 be a prototype and skynet has a more advanced terminator?

So I get my head around this by figuring that skynet learns from the past too and that the time that the terminator(s) are sent back is the always the same (2029), but the past is always different from the failed attempts, so they learn and try something new, a new terminator, a new time in Johns life.[/QUOTE]

Yeah this is an interesting way of putting it. Surely the first failure, by virtue of the weird time-paradox trope these films utilize, put into the play the conditions of possibility for the future to have been. Instead of failing
to simply kill the Connors, they in fact intervened in such a way that they wrote into the past the seeds of their own eventual demise.

So, once again, from 2029, the T-1000 is put back in time. Fails. Then, from presumably the same year, they send back the T-X. You're right, it's weird that they keep getting sent back, all new and improved, especially with the weird time delay. First its sent back to 1984, then 1991, then 2004. Well, apparently the events of T-2 prevented the apocalypse from happening in 1997 like when it was supposed to, so instead it happens seven years later.


I guess the proper reading is to say that from each failure, the future is altered and they are able to learn from their mistakes rather quickly. Or maybe there's some weird time relativity like one minute of future time is one month of past time (kind of a bad theory on my part). I think the most interesting way of seeing it is that there are multiple futures, multiple possibilities of how the present might turn out. This present is that revolving around the Sarah and John connor of the first three films. Each time a terminator fails, a different future is created, one that already has the past failure inscribed within it since these futures are created posterior to the failure in question. That way there's no need to really resort to any time relativity and it can simply be a different 2029 from which the T's are sent back, each being the outcome of a respective failed intervention into the past.

Next thing I need to know is why keep coming back as John gets older? Do things need to happen to ensure that skynet is still born even if it fails to kill Connor? eg. T1- the terminator being crushed at Cyberdyne.

Yeah I tried touching on this above. Why the weird time delay?

This is getting wayyyyy too confusing and I don't think there's any definite answer when it comes to these time paradoxes.

Like, doesn't all this imply a meta-time?

So there is one instant time-line where in the past there is john connor yet to be born, the terminator not yet sent back. In the future at this same time the terminator has yet to be sent back, lets say 2029 a few minutes before the first T is sent.

Then this means the John Connor they are fighting against can't be the son of Kyle Reese because Reese hasn't been sent back yet!!!! So in order to resolve this contradiction then we have to say that although he hasn't been sent back yet at this moment in question, he WILL be sent back so that his buddy John Connor can actually still exist for him to send him back.

So there is some notion of fate or inevitability at work here. Not to mention that Judgment day is naively fought against by John and his mother, but if judgment day is prevented, then won't John cease to exist because Reese will not be there in the future with a reason to go back in time to be John's father? It seems like everything is meant to be in this universe, its only the how, when and why that keeps changing.

I think we can go on ad infinitum. No pun intended.

Why not go futher back in time? Kill Sarah when she was a kid, Kill her mom or her dad. you get the idea. The further back you go, the better your chances of success for many reasons.

Because we wouldn't be able to see T-4 at the end of this month. And we wouldn't have any sweet hot toys figures either.

 

[creature4000]

The time line changes everytime someone messes with it! It's not a path written in stone... it's ever changing.

 

[a-dev]

My problem with the multiple futures idea, if I'm understanding it right, is it renders time travel pointless. Why bother trying to change the past if all it does is set up an alternate future that you will still have no experience of. In other words, if Skynet tries to kill John connor in the past and happens to succeed - then if all it does is create an alternate reality in which Skynet wins - yet is still already defeated (according to T1) in its own reality - why would it bother even trying? Kinda like if I was dying and decided to clone myself...I'd still be dead.

For me the idea of linear time, where something changed in the past will affect the one single future is more apt for Terminator. But this presents its own problems - for example - in T1 Reese follows the T-800 through time. Would this not mean that from their point of view in the future the T-800 should already have been successful in killing Sarah connor since the past has already happened and by being the first to go back in time the T-800 became part of the past instantaneously? To quote Sarah 'a person could go crazy thinking about it' and John 'messes with your head'.

Back to the Reese issue - yes I saw that clip where a guy says that Skynet has a hitlist and Reese is on it. Well thats proof of what I was saying earlier, that maybe Skynet has found out that Reese is John's dad in which case if they kill him in 2018 it should theoretically have the same effect as killing Sarah in 1984. Thus Reese has taken on an elevated importance in the future.

 

[Shropt]

The time line changes everytime someone messes with it! It's not a path written in stone... it's ever changing.

No, you can't change what's already happened. You can try but time won't let you.

 

[creature4000]

No, you can't change what's already happened. You can try but time won't let you.

then wouldn't Skynet know this??? So why send a T-800 back to kill Sarah?

 

[A.L.I.E.N]

then wouldn't Skynet know this??? So why send a T-800 back to kill Sarah?

Skynet, being a Machine of logic should understand this but you can't alter the past! This is true, so for argument's sake lets say the "PAST" is 1904. If where the AVP Predators land to hunt humans and Aliens in Antarctica. If you were to send a T-800 back and kill all the humans, there could be no serious challenge for the Predator killing Facehuggers. So the Predator next gen would not be blooded, this may have changed the outcome of the first AVP. So you can change a set point in past by going further back into the past!

So what I'm trying to say is: Future (A) 2029 sends a Terminator back to 1984 in hope of changing 1984's future, 2029. So if they were to succeed Future (B) Would be altered so I hope this answers your question.

 

[CSM1976]

Skynet, being a Machine of logic should understand this but you can't alter the past! This is true, so for argument's sake lets say the "PAST" is 1904. If where the AVP Predators land to hunt humans and Aliens in Antarctica. If you were to send a T-800 back and kill all the humans, there could be no serious challenge for the Predator killing Facehuggers. So the Predator next gen would not be blooded, this may have changed the outcome of the first AVP. So you can change a set point in past by going further back into the past!

So what I'm trying to say is: Future (A) 2029 sends a Terminator back to 1984 in hope of changing 1984's future, 2029. So if they were to succeed Future (B) Would be altered so I hope this answers your question.

And I thought my post might be hard to understand

 

[A.L.I.E.N]

Yer, but I've rationalized it for myself which is handy as T-salvation will be here soon!

 

[laudanum09]

My problem with the multiple futures idea, if I'm understanding it right, is it renders time travel pointless. Why bother trying to change the past if all it does is set up an alternate future that you will still have no experience of. In other words, if Skynet tries to kill John connor in the past and happens to succeed - then if all it does is create an alternate reality in which Skynet wins - yet is still already defeated (according to T1) in its own reality - why would it bother even trying? Kinda like if I was dying and decided to clone myself...I'd still be dead.

Well, in the situation where intervention into the past/present (the present of John Connor and Sarah we have been following) alters the future, then it would make sense to go into the past to change things since your future is the future where you have yet to send things into the past. If you successfully altered the past, then another future (one in which skynet wins) would be created, but it was created out of a different future, it was created out of a future where they didn't win. So that's what I meant about there being alternate futures, not so much like parallel universes.

For me the idea of linear time, where something changed in the past will affect the one single future is more apt for Terminator. But this presents its own problems - for example - in T1 Reese follows the T-800 through time. Would this not mean that from their point of view in the future the T-800 should already have been successful in killing Sarah connor since the past has already happened and by being the first to go back in time the T-800 became part of the past instantaneously? To quote Sarah 'a person could go crazy thinking about it' and John 'messes with your head'.

Yeah, I like this, but at the same time its confusing since it's more of an instant time that's happening at once. I'd rather think about one big time line where everything is happening at once from our perspective, like a meta perspective, but for the participants involved, time progresses as it does in everyday experience, moment by moment.

I think the best way to think about it is what Skynet suggested. There is the future (A) where they loose and in that future they send Terminator back to potentially create a future (B) where they do not loose.


This is all really crazy though, but I find it fun to think about rather then maddening. For instance, the whole question of Kyle Reese in future (a). Who the hell is John Connor's father if Kyle Reese hasn't been sent back in time yet (from the perspective of future a, lets say before they even send him back)?? I suppose the future Reese, the one who does get sent back in time. But what if Reese goes back in time to see himself before he gets sent back in time, tells him to go back in time to create John with Sarah while he himself stays there in that version's place. Then he would be John's father and not John's father at the same time. fun!

 

[Starkiller]

My brain just exploded.

 

[LipSmack]

Yeah so the connors and reeses lives are all one giant loop, neverending in any future we know of, kinda crappy.
thats why you can or will be able to watch all 6 termy films over and over in a loop, lol
I garuntee the last scene in termy 6 is reese goi through the machine after arnold, i put 100(canadian) bucks on it