The "All things TERMINATOR" thread.

[a-dev]

Man it's hard to talk about Terminator.

I'm trying on one hand to make a structured and cogent point by point response to ajp (great post by the way, would've repped) while at the same time constantly having my brain short-circuited by the franchise's time-travel head-***kery. Add in my general difficulty in maintaining concentration even on things I like and enjoy

 

[ajp4mgs]

Sounds like T:SCC, minus the older Sarah.

If it seems that way, then it's only because I did a horrible job of explaining what I thought Dark Fate could've been. Yes, terminators getting sent back to kill John after the events of T2 is the similarity between Dark Fate and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. However, killing John as the prologue for what happens throughout the rest of Dark Fate is the point where a true distinction is created. And that's why the act itself could've been purposeful and worthy of being written.

In T:SCC, Sarah is confronted with the continued need to eliminate terminators that will keep threatening John. In DF, however, they would exist without a primary mission to fulfill. Had they not used Carl to "grow a conscience" and aid Sarah, I'd love to see what would've played out between the time of John's death and the modern day. For me, it would've been cool to have the machines move beyond only their assassin protocol and somehow try to restart their "culture" and superiority. And then I would've enjoyed seeing Sarah ultimately scrubbing that possibility (probably with her own group of mercenaries) because, in a way, she'd be finishing future John's resistance for him with the advantage of much more favorable odds than he had in his era.

But instead of Dark Fate exploring the differences of a timeline without a John Connor, and terminators existing there simultaneously with their version of Skynet having been undone, it was just used to retell John's story with someone else taking his place. The same plots as before but just replacing John with Dani, Skynet with Legion, and the "guardian" role with Grace. That's so lazy, and doesn't really add anything worthwhile as far as actual story goes. All just to say that destiny and determinism make certain fates unavoidable. Yuck; that ain't for me.

Take the Dark Fate prologue scene where John gets gunned down in Mexico, but discard the Legion storyline and Carl's self-generated "Uncle Bob" turn, and I think the franchise could've extended its relevancy by going back to basics: man vs. machine with a return to the theme that you *can* indeed change destiny. Not just some inevitable Judgment Day that will arrive no matter what (albeit under a different name). A story where John Connor dies, but his legacy doesn't. Most importantly, a story where survival of the fittest between man and machine is decided by determination rather than determinism.

Man it's hard to talk about Terminator.

I'm trying on one hand to make a structured and cogent point by point response to ajp (great post by the way, would've repped) while at the same time constantly having my brain short-circuited by the franchise's time-travel head-***kery. Add in my general difficulty in maintaining concentration even on things I like and enjoy

The T1 and T2 time travel (and resulting alternate timelines) is streamlined enough not to be a problem. I think it only becomes a head**** if you start trying to weave in what came after.

One thing I'll give Dark Fate credit for is how it didn't structurally mess with the T1/T2 timeline. As the third part of a trilogy, it would've at least accomplished that much. But I just don't find the story worthwhile enough to consider it the trilogy-making entry it was meant to be. Had potential, though.

 

[Khev]

You know what would have been crazy? If in response to John's death Sarah hunted down the Terminator that killed him and flatlined it. Then she takes its CPU and right arm and delivers it to whomever the next highest ranking guy at Miles Dyson's company was so that they could resume their work, *reinstate Judgment Day*, and then she lives through the hell of nuclear holocaust and the war against the machines just so that she can find that one T-800 that kills John in Mexico and destroy it *in the future* so that it never goes back in time.

Then she immediately gets kicked out of the loop because the first T-800, Reese, Uncle Bob, and the T-1000 all still go back in time, Judgment Day is averted *again*, and she reappears on that beach with John sipping pina coladas and living happily ever completely oblivious to what her alternate self did. Or they pull a DOFP and just say that she remembers everything for whatever reason and has this super big smile on her face as John walks back to her table, totally unharmed.

 

[ajp4mgs]

You know what would have been crazy? If in response to John's death Sarah hunted down the Terminator that killed him and flatlined it. Then she takes its CPU and right arm and delivers it to whomever the next highest ranking guy at Miles Dyson's company was so that they could resume their work, *reinstate Judgment Day*, and then she lives through the hell of nuclear holocaust and the war against the machines just so that she can find that one T-800 that kills John in Mexico and destroy it *in the future* so that it never goes back in time.

Then she immediately gets kicked out of the loop because the first T-800, Reese, Uncle Bob, and the T-1000 all still go back in time, Judgment Day is averted *again*, and she reappears on that beach with John sipping pina coladas and living happily ever completely oblivious to what her alternate self did. Or they pull a DOFP and just say that she remembers everything for whatever reason and has this super big smile on her face as John walks back to her table, totally unharmed.

Very cool "what if" type of alternate scenario! But it could all backfire on her if Skynet just sent some other Terminator to the same point and she wasn't aware of what to expect. The endless type of head****ery (to borrow a-dev's phrase) consequences are dizzying. Isn't it gonna be great when SW gets into these sort of alternate timeline "say what!?" scenarios?

 

[a-dev]

So ''No fate but what we make'' is preserved as long as the story stays in the present - it doesn't involve any new time travel machinations by Skynet 2.0 or a ''Legion''. Jumping to the future like that is what so blatantly contradicts the theme of T1/T2 because it's saying ''oh look, there's the post-apocalypse wasteland, there's Skynet and its army of machines, it all happened anyway, we immediately know Sarah, John and Uncle Bob failed and oh here's the new T-800 just saying it out straight - Judgement Day was inevitable, it couldn't be stopped''.

In the story you're proposing Skynet remains gone as far as we're concerned but its past plans - and this is where time travel head-****ery and the Dark Fate retcon comes in* - are still in play. The Skynet we knew from T1 and T2 had in fact sent many more Terminators back in time than those films let on. Your version of Dark Fate would deal with those machines trying to be proactive in restoring their own creator because they've reasoned that its origin has been severely disrupted with the destruction of all Cyberdyne research and the death of Miles Dyson in T2.

*My problem with the idea - and it applies to Dark Fate even as it stands - is A) T2 was quite specific about 2 Terminators having been sent back in time (the 1984 T-800 and the T-1000 to 1995) - so you're forced to ask questions about how much did the Sarah narrator of T2 know, how much did Uncle Bob know and if they didn't know certain things, why didn't they know them. At the end of T2 couldn't Uncle Bob have anticipated that there might still be threats to come and thus stick around etc.

And B) once T2 has occurred, how can Terminators still appear in the timeline after those events? I'll allow for the T1 T-800 and the T-1000 not being retroactively erased but shouldn't what was achieved in T2 erase any Terminators that were not scheduled to appear until a few weeks or months or a year later? If in fact they arrived earlier then what were these other Terminators doing? Shouldn't John & Sarah have been facing multiple threats simultaneously and where was the corresponding multiple protectors sent by the resistance? Why didn't any of these other Terminators intervene at Cyberdyne in the first place? Like Uncle Bob said about the T-1000 - ''it has the same files that I do. It knows what I know. It might anticipate this move''.

So there's a heck of a lot of questions raised. Seems like an absolute minefield to answer them all.

 

[ajp4mgs]

So ''No fate but what we make'' is preserved as long as the story stays in the present - it doesn't involve any new time travel machinations by Skynet 2.0 or a ''Legion''. Jumping to the future like that is what so blatantly contradicts the theme of T1/T2 because it's saying ''oh look, there's the post-apocalypse wasteland, there's Skynet and its army of machines, it all happened anyway, we immediately know Sarah, John and Uncle Bob failed and oh here's the new T-800 just saying it out straight - Judgement Day was inevitable, it couldn't be stopped''.

Bingo! In order to validate that people in these stories can construct their own fate, you have to verify their achievements. The only way to do that is to leave the audience with the impression that John and Sarah *did* fix their future in T2 by preventing Judgment Day.

That's the one thing that Dark Fate could've accomplished had it not introduced Legion. The future was fixed (no Skynet, so no Judgment Day), but there were still remnants introduced (Carl and the others that he guided Sarah to destroy) as leftovers from the erased doomsday future. Those would need to be cleaned up in order to prevent a potential alternate delayed version of Judgment Day. But movie decided to have that cleanup happen offscreen and then just introduced Legion to replace Skynet. So round and round we go.

In the story you're proposing Skynet remains gone as far as we're concerned but its past plans - and this is where time travel head-****ery and the Dark Fate retcon comes in* - are still in play. The Skynet we knew from T1 and T2 had in fact sent many more Terminators back in time than those films let on. Your version of Dark Fate would deal with those machines trying to be proactive in restoring their own creator because they've reasoned that its origin has been severely disrupted with the destruction of all Cyberdyne research and the death of Miles Dyson in T2.

Exactly. And when I answer your questions below, hopefully you'll agree that it's actually not really too much head****ery.

*My problem with the idea - and it applies to Dark Fate even as it stands - is A) T2 was quite specific about 2 Terminators having been sent back in time (the 1984 T-800 and the T-1000 to 1995) - so you're forced to ask questions about how much did the Sarah narrator of T2 know, how much did Uncle Bob know and if they didn't know certain things, why didn't they know them. At the end of T2 couldn't Uncle Bob have anticipated that there might still be threats to come and thus stick around etc.

I think I can explain this best using a hypothetical. Let's say that *you* are Skynet. At two points last week, you sent a T-800 to 1984 and a T-1000 to 1995 in a desperate move. You were desperate because you knew that some John Connor dude had led a movement that defeated you. Those two models that you managed to send out will have all the same knowledge that you had last week when they arrive in the past.

Your desperation plan seems flawless as far as you can calculate. However, unbeknownst to you, Kyle Reese gets sent to 1984 to disrupt your T-800's mission. And an "Uncle Bob" terminator gets sent to 1995, and could potentially disrupt your T-1000's mission.

Now let's say that today you anticipate being shut down for good by John (who obviously still exists) and you run a new set of algorithms to detect any possible way to survive. You realize that you still have a handful of terminator models. You program a T-800 (Carl) to send itself back to 1998, and the others to send themselves back to different points beyond 1998.

This second batch of terminators will have knowledge of your latest algorithms that you produce today, but the 1984 and 1995 terminators did not (and could not) possess that knowledge last week when you sent them to the past. Likewise, Kyle Reese and Uncle Bob could have no idea about the new plans you came up with today.

Make sense?

And B) once T2 has occurred, how can Terminators still appear in the timeline after those events? I'll allow for the T1 T-800 and the T-1000 not being retroactively erased but shouldn't what was achieved in T2 erase any Terminators that were not scheduled to appear until a few weeks or months or a year later? If in fact they arrived earlier then what were these other Terminators doing? Shouldn't John & Sarah have been facing multiple threats simultaneously and where was the corresponding multiple protectors sent by the resistance? Why didn't any of these other Terminators intervene at Cyberdyne in the first place? Like Uncle Bob said about the T-1000 - ''it has the same files that I do. It knows what I know. It might anticipate this move''.

I hope my hypothetical above already answers some of these questions about how terminators can still appear after T2. Skynet gets defeated by John's resistance in one future, and Skynet ceases to ever exist in an alternate future. In the future where they get defeated, I think there's still enough wiggle room to have a believable scenario where a follow-up batch of terminators gets sent after T2 in a way that doesn't mess with T2 logic.

The John who dies in Dark Fate would not grow up in a world with Skynet. So he wouldn't ever need to lead any human resistance against a machine takeover. That's why it works! The second batch of terminators (Carl and the others) would arrive in a world where the "future war" they came from doesn't happen. To me, that's the more interesting scenario that I'd want to see. I reject "drapery Carl" helping Sarah annihilate the remnants *offscreen* (FFS!) just to introduce Legion anyway and replace John with Dani. So frustrating!

You know more about Terminator canon than I ever will, so please point out whatever I'm getting wrong. My fidelity to the franchise took a major hit with Genisys, so lots of what I used to know has been steadily slipping away for the last 5 years.

So there's a heck of a lot of questions raised. Seems like an absolute minefield to answer them all.

For me, T1 and T2 (and DF if need be) make perfect sense together. Everything that Linda Hamilton appears in works out logically without anywhere near the minefield you'd have by trying to make the other movies work. That's because we'd only have to account for the three timelines: 1.) Kyle Reese timeline, 2.) Kyle Reese *altered* timeline, and 3.) Skynet gets erased timeline. It all works if you're willing to accept that the three timelines have different versions of John Connor.

Timeline #1: In the original Kyle Reese timeline (seen only briefly in T1 "flashforwards"), Kyle can't be the father of his era's John Connor. So, John would not only look different, but his personality would be influenced by his anonymous father. Conceivably, that might be what drives him to be leader of the human resistance in his era.

Timeline #2: In the second timeline (seen briefly only in T2 flashforwards), John's dad is Kyle. This John would end up fighting what would likely be a different version of Skynet (resulting from the reverse engineering of the CPU and arm). Also, this John wouldn't send Kyle Reese back in time (the 1984 T-800 would've been taken care of to set up this timeline), but does send Uncle Bob to meet up with his 1995 self. Maybe there's no younger version of Kyle at all here because of time paradox issues, or maybe John meets one and keeps him safe (doesn't really matter).

Timeline #3 - the "Prime" timeline: Same as #2 up until 1995. Whatever happened with the T-1000 in #2 (who the **** knows) gets changed here because of the arrival of Uncle Bob. This is the timeline we are left with after the T2 triumph. It's the same one that we see throughout Dark Fate (if you want to accept that film).

The key is always John. When he exists in a future with no Skynet, all versions of him have succeeded. Dark Fate still allowed that to happen (even when killing him), but totally crapped on it (imo) by then introducing Legion. John's triumph is erased by that story decision. The future war scenario becomes inevitable, thus making John and Sarah's efforts in T1 and T2 pointless. And *that* is why I would've preferred the version of Dark Fate that I described in my last few posts.

 

[e30ernest]

If it seems that way, then it's only because I did a horrible job of explaining what I thought Dark Fate could've been.

Ah my comparison with T:SCC came from the story thread about Terminators sent to various points in time to help ensure that Skynet was built, and the Sarah, John and Cameron trio jumped to the future to attempt to stop that. I thought it was an interesting premise too, and felt that series died too soon.

 

[a-dev]

Bingo! In order to validate that people in these stories can construct their own fate, you have to verify their achievements. The only way to do that is to leave the audience with the impression that John and Sarah *did* fix their future in T2 by preventing Judgment Day.

That's the one thing that Dark Fate could've accomplished had it not introduced Legion. The future was fixed (no Skynet, so no Judgment Day), but there were still remnants introduced (Carl and the others that he guided Sarah to destroy) as leftovers from the erased doomsday future. Those would need to be cleaned up in order to prevent a potential alternate delayed version of Judgment Day. But movie decided to have that cleanup happen offscreen and then just introduced Legion to replace Skynet. So round and round we go.

Very good. It's regrettable how the writers of all the films after T2 couldn't seem to appreciate how meaningless everything becomes if you do not allow any possible definitive victory for the heroes - that no matter what they do, no matter what they think they've achieved all the same bad ***t goes down anyway.

And of course, when money is the objective for whatever studio is holding the rights to the series, that suits them down to....hah - a T. If thematic consistency gets in the way of making loads of money, throw out the thematic consistency.

Exactly. And when I answer your questions below, hopefully you'll agree that it's actually not really too much head****ery.



I think I can explain this best using a hypothetical. Let's say that *you* are Skynet. At two points last week, you sent a T-800 to 1984 and a T-1000 to 1995 in a desperate move. You were desperate because you knew that some John Connor dude had led a movement that defeated you. Those two models that you managed to send out will have all the same knowledge that you had last week when they arrive in the past.

Your desperation plan seems flawless as far as you can calculate. However, unbeknownst to you, Kyle Reese gets sent to 1984 to disrupt your T-800's mission. And an "Uncle Bob" terminator gets sent to 1995, and could potentially disrupt your T-1000's mission.

Now let's say that today you anticipate being shut down for good by John (who obviously still exists) and you run a new set of algorithms to detect any possible way to survive. You realize that you still have a handful of terminator models. You program a T-800 (Carl) to send itself back to 1998, and the others to send themselves back to different points beyond 1998.

This second batch of terminators will have knowledge of your latest algorithms that you produce today, but the 1984 and 1995 terminators did not (and could not) possess that knowledge last week when you sent them to the past. Likewise, Kyle Reese and Uncle Bob could have no idea about the new plans you came up with today.

Make sense?

I hope my hypothetical above already answers some of these questions about how terminators can still appear after T2. Skynet gets defeated by John's resistance in one future, and Skynet ceases to ever exist in an alternate future. In the future where they get defeated, I think there's still enough wiggle room to have a believable scenario where a follow-up batch of terminators gets sent after T2 in a way that doesn't mess with T2 logic.

The John who dies in Dark Fate would not grow up in a world with Skynet. So he wouldn't ever need to lead any human resistance against a machine takeover. That's why it works! The second batch of terminators (Carl and the others) would arrive in a world where the "future war" they came from doesn't happen. To me, that's the more interesting scenario that I'd want to see. I reject "drapery Carl" helping Sarah annihilate the remnants *offscreen* (FFS!) just to introduce Legion anyway and replace John with Dani. So frustrating!

You know more about Terminator canon than I ever will, so please point out whatever I'm getting wrong. My fidelity to the franchise took a major hit with Genisys, so lots of what I used to know has been steadily slipping away for the last 5 years.

The problem with that is I don't think Skynet had enough time to have this multi-phase use of the Time Displacement machine. It was supposed to be Skynet's last roll of the dice as the Resistance overcame the facility. And if the Resistance now controls the facility, sends back Reese and Uncle Bob, how can Skynet respond to that when it's no longer in control?

So it seems like Skynet would have had to send everything at once, which would be fine, except it would raise the question of why John only responded to the 1984 and 1995 threats.

For the idea to work John cannot know about the other threats - it will follow from that, I suppose, that Uncle Bob wouldn't know about them, answering that question. So how do you get a scenario where Skynet manages to send Terminators that John won't know about?

Well here's my answer - another Time Displacement facility. Bit of a Jurassic Park The Lost World ''Site B'' scenario but it's the only option I can think of that might allow our alternate Dark Fate...or even the Dark Fate we got for that matter because the same question can be asked of the existing movie - why didn't future John know about the Carl Terminator? Why was there thus no protector against him?

So it's gotta be a second Time Displacement facility - possibly with its own independent log - i.e. not on a shared network where John could have detected the existence of the other facility and what had been sent from it.

And the reason Skynet can't use this other undetected place over and over again is because the Resistance brings Skynet down during that final battle. It managed to get the Carl Terminator and maybe a few others sent before its final defeat. Then the 1995 events change the future anyway.

After that - my other question about how Terminators that were sent to a point in time after 1995 can still arrive despite that the future has now been changed....I guess you just have to put that down to time travel paradox head ****ery because how can any of it happen. If the movie is good you accept it, if it isn't, you don't.

For me, T1 and T2 (and DF if need be) make perfect sense together. Everything that Linda Hamilton appears in works out logically without anywhere near the minefield you'd have by trying to make the other movies work. That's because we'd only have to account for the three timelines: 1.) Kyle Reese timeline, 2.) Kyle Reese *altered* timeline, and 3.) Skynet gets erased timeline. It all works if you're willing to accept that the three timelines have different versions of John Connor.

Timeline #1: In the original Kyle Reese timeline (seen only briefly in T1 "flashforwards"), Kyle can't be the father of his era's John Connor. So, John would not only look different, but his personality would be influenced by his anonymous father. Conceivably, that might be what drives him to be leader of the human resistance in his era.

Timeline #2: In the second timeline (seen briefly only in T2 flashforwards), John's dad is Kyle. This John would end up fighting what would likely be a different version of Skynet (resulting from the reverse engineering of the CPU and arm). Also, this John wouldn't send Kyle Reese back in time (the 1984 T-800 would've been taken care of to set up this timeline), but does send Uncle Bob to meet up with his 1995 self. Maybe there's no younger version of Kyle at all here because of time paradox issues, or maybe John meets one and keeps him safe (doesn't really matter).

Timeline #3 - the "Prime" timeline: Same as #2 up until 1995. Whatever happened with the T-1000 in #2 (who the **** knows) gets changed here because of the arrival of Uncle Bob. This is the timeline we are left with after the T2 triumph. It's the same one that we see throughout Dark Fate (if you want to accept that film).

The key is always John. When he exists in a future with no Skynet, all versions of him have succeeded. Dark Fate still allowed that to happen (even when killing him), but totally crapped on it (imo) by then introducing Legion. John's triumph is erased by that story decision. The future war scenario becomes inevitable, thus making John and Sarah's efforts in T1 and T2 pointless. And *that* is why I would've preferred the version of Dark Fate that I described in my last few posts.

There's stuff in here that's a whole other kettle of fish. I'm not going to go into it now because my brain is fried after like 6 drafts of my above response alone over the past few days. Don't ask. Tangents upon tangents, and subtangents within every tangent

 

[ajp4mgs]

Very good. It's regrettable how the writers of all the films after T2 couldn't seem to appreciate how meaningless everything becomes if you do not allow any possible definitive victory for the heroes - that no matter what they do, no matter what they think they've achieved all the same bad ***t goes down anyway.

And of course, when money is the objective for whatever studio is holding the rights to the series, that suits them down to....hah - a T. If thematic consistency gets in the way of making loads of money, throw out the thematic consistency.

Regrettable indeed. But to be fair to the writers (and the studios), I was very eager for more movies after T2 and was slow to realize just how futile sequels would be until I actually watched. Only then did I start to think that a worthwhile sequel story that keeps the T2 victory in place might not be possible. So sure, the recycling of Judgment Day scenarios might've been because money was the only objective, but maybe there were better intentions initially.

Fans often default to how they should've only followed up with a Future War "prequel." But even showing the future events that John and Sarah were able to erase in T2 lacks some of the hallmark qualities that made the first 2 films so great. Telling a story in the present day, but with a futuristic component as either the protagonist or antagonist (or both) is undeniably appealing.

The second wave of terminators in Dark Fate is the first time I've seen an idea that could've made a worthy sequel set in the present day while still protecting the victory from T2 where Skynet never gets to unleash a Judgment Day. And that's why we've been discussing the logic of that second wave of terminators. And to that end...

The problem with that is I don't think Skynet had enough time to have this multi-phase use of the Time Displacement machine. It was supposed to be Skynet's last roll of the dice as the Resistance overcame the facility. And if the Resistance now controls the facility, sends back Reese and Uncle Bob, how can Skynet respond to that when it's no longer in control?

So it seems like Skynet would have had to send everything at once, which would be fine, except it would raise the question of why John only responded to the 1984 and 1995 threats.

For the idea to work John cannot know about the other threats - it will follow from that, I suppose, that Uncle Bob wouldn't know about them, answering that question. So how do you get a scenario where Skynet manages to send Terminators that John won't know about?

... A very reasonable and fair objection. Thankfully, you came up with a better alternative rationalization...

Well here's my answer - another Time Displacement facility. Bit of a Jurassic Park The Lost World ''Site B'' scenario but it's the only option I can think of that might allow our alternate Dark Fate...or even the Dark Fate we got for that matter because the same question can be asked of the existing movie - why didn't future John know about the Carl Terminator? Why was there thus no protector against him?

So it's gotta be a second Time Displacement facility - possibly with its own independent log - i.e. not on a shared network where John could have detected the existence of the other facility and what had been sent from it.

And the reason Skynet can't use this other undetected place over and over again is because the Resistance brings Skynet down during that final battle. It managed to get the Carl Terminator and maybe a few others sent before its final defeat. Then the 1995 events change the future anyway.

...And this totally works for me! The specifics surrounding Skynet's desperation (as presented in T1 and T2) were vague enough for me to buy into this scenario you created. So yes, the second wave of Terminators could've worked without undoing or undermining the achievements in T2.

After that - my other question about how Terminators that were sent to a point in time after 1995 can still arrive despite that the future has now been changed....I guess you just have to put that down to time travel paradox head ****ery because how can any of it happen. If the movie is good you accept it, if it isn't, you don't.

Yeah, you nailed it: if we accepted that a T-1000 and Uncle Bob would go on existing at the end of the movie in the same timeline where Skynet had failed to evolve the same way (after the Miles Dyson sacrifice), then it's the same logic for the second wave of terminators.

The easiest explanation (and most accepted scientific theory) is that time travel cannot exist without creating parallel timelines/realities. Every one of those time travel events (first T-800, Kyle Reese, T-1000, Uncle Bob, and Carl and the second wave) created a variant that built on the timeline that had been progressing up until that event, no matter what future they came from.

There's stuff in here that's a whole other kettle of fish. I'm not going to go into it now because my brain is fried after like 6 drafts of my above response alone over the past few days. Don't ask. Tangents upon tangents, and subtangents within every tangent

I have to admit that when I first posted those timeline summaries, and tried to simplify things as much as possible, I ended up oversimplifying the Kyle/John aspect to a point that was absurd. Hence the edited version.

All movies that use time travel to change past events run into logic flaws. The only one that gets the "science" and logic right is Primer. But the head****ery in the first two Terminator films is easily overlooked due to the overall quality. None of the subsequent films managed to achieve that, and the nonsense in some cases goes well beyond any rational effort to overlook it.

The Terminator films tried to have one single linear timeline where characters could make changes to the past in order to alter their future. That just doesn't work. Alternate/parallel timelines is really the only way to have it all make sense. And for me, T1 and T2 make enough sense when I apply that approach. Mileage will vary for other people, though.

 

[a-dev]

Regrettable indeed. But to be fair to the writers (and the studios), I was very eager for more movies after T2 and was slow to realize just how futile sequels would be until I actually watched

True, so was I. I couldn't wait for Terminator 3. I've always been a real Captain Hindsight on these matters.

Fans often default to how they should've only followed up with a Future War "prequel." But even showing the future events that John and Sarah were able to erase in T2 lacks some of the hallmark qualities that made the first 2 films so great. Telling a story in the present day, but with a futuristic component as either the protagonist or antagonist (or both) is undeniably appealing.

I'm one of those fans - while it might seem a bit redundant now after so many tidbits sprinkled throughout the existing sequel movies I'd liken it to say, Rogue One if it could have been done well - not strictly necessary but a decent prequel film that doesn't ***t all over canon.....unless Kyle Katarn was your canon

The second wave of terminators in Dark Fate is the first time I've seen an idea that could've made a worthy sequel set in the present day while still protecting the victory from T2 where Skynet never gets to unleash a Judgment Day. And that's why we've been discussing the logic of that second wave of terminators. And to that end...



... A very reasonable and fair objection. Thankfully, you came up with a better alternative rationalization...



...And this totally works for me! The specifics surrounding Skynet's desperation (as presented in T1 and T2) were vague enough for me to buy into this scenario you created. So yes, the second wave of Terminators could've worked without undoing or undermining the achievements in T2

This discussion with you is the first time I've thought it could have been possible since those naive pre-T3 Rise of the Machines days.

The film would have to be really good though. Terminators 1 & 2 make such a neat duology that any 3rd movie purporting to be the true continuation was always going to be up against it. It'd have to avoid all the other things I dislike about Terminators 3 through 6. Namely the insistence on a 'goodie' Terminator, questionable humour, stupidly OTT CGI stunts and action, a music score inconsistent with the first two movies. This would all probably be asking too much.

Yeah, you nailed it: if we accepted that a T-1000 and Uncle Bob would go on existing at the end of the movie in the same timeline where Skynet had failed to evolve the same way (after the Miles Dyson sacrifice), then it's the same logic for the second wave of terminators.

The easiest explanation (and most accepted scientific theory) is that time travel cannot exist without creating parallel timelines/realities. Every one of those time travel events (first T-800, Kyle Reese, T-1000, Uncle Bob, and Carl and the second wave) created a variant that built on the timeline that had been progressing up until that event, no matter what future they came from.



I have to admit that when I first posted those timeline summaries, and tried to simplify things as much as possible, I ended up oversimplifying the Kyle/John aspect to a point that was absurd. Hence the edited version.

All movies that use time travel to change past events run into logic flaws. The only one that gets the "science" and logic right is Primer. But the head****ery in the first two Terminator films is easily overlooked due to the overall quality. None of the subsequent films managed to achieve that, and the nonsense in some cases goes well beyond any rational effort to overlook it.

The Terminator films tried to have one single linear timeline where characters could make changes to the past in order to alter their future. That just doesn't work. Alternate/parallel timelines is really the only way to have it all make sense. And for me, T1 and T2 make enough sense when I apply that approach. Mileage will vary for other people, though.

Well you said it here. It's intended to be a single linear timeline. In fact I remember Cameron and Tim Miller talking about that when Dark Fate was first announced. They felt that this is what created the 'stakes' of the movies. So it's what I've always tried to go with in my readings of the films but boy is it difficult to figure out the paradoxes that arise. You can never be sure you're accounting for everything and being consistent in your understanding of the time travel rules across the board.

Maybe I'd just forget about it all and move towards what you seem to be talking about with the variant parallel timelines for every individual use of the Time Displacement machine but I have one big issue with it - and this might be what Cameron and Miller had in mind - what's the incentive for Skynet to use Time Travel as a method of winning the war if the reality it occupies doesn't change, if all it has done is set up a parallel reality that it will have no experience of while in its own reality it will still be defeated? And from John Connor's perspective, is there any real danger? Does he even need to send back Reese or Uncle Bob? We humans typically want to get direct benefit from our own actions or at least be able to bear witness to the results of them. I guess altruism could account for the human side, for why John Connor would still take action to preserve the human victory in an alternate parallel timeline...then again it's also possible he would act without himself knowing how time travel is going to work. He would act ''just in case''. <- the films do give the impression that John is assuming if Skynet succeeds in the past it will directly erase him and the Resistance victory. John (or whatever science guy he has) could be completely wrong about how it works though. Skynet surely has a better idea. Perhaps it has already run some benign tests of the Time Displacement machine and established what changing the past actually does. You'd kinda think it would have.



Now, I don't think I've seen this Primer film that you praised so it's possible there's stuff I haven't considered and flaws in my logic below but here goes.......imma put this in spoiler tags because it's dauntingly long.....

Spoiler

Lets say Skynet runs a small, short-term experiment. Maybe it sends a Terminator 5 minutes into the past with the instruction to smash the table in the corner of the room and to immediately report back. This is how I see that working - Skynet begins the experiment. The moment the Terminator completes its task all of reality has changed into the one where he appeared and smashed that table. It's like a rewinding of time to a certain point and a do-over taking place, an over-write. This Terminator alone carries and retains the memory of the timeline before it was altered. If you zipped forward in time again by the 5 minutes the table is already smashed so what becomes of the experiment? It doesn't need to go ahead I guess because Skynet, knowing that it was planning to run this experiment is now communicating with the Terminator that teleported in. The Terminator - an exact duplicate of one they have lined up and ready for use in this experiment incidentally (interesting implications) - is able to confirm that the experiment took place and his memory is reintegrated back into Skynet. Skynet now knows that it successfully altered the timeline from what it had been previously.

So is there incentive for Skynet to use time travel in this scenario? I would say yes, definitely, but with a caveat. In this controlled experiment involving a mere 5 minutes and no change in geographical location Skynet could act with precision, get precise results and be made aware of what happened. However in a broader scale this would not necessarily be the case, not where Skynet really wants it to count. Because when Skynet sends a Terminator back to a point before it planned to do this, before it had even constructed the Time Displacement machine, heck before Skynet itself even existed - as per the films - it will first be deprived of the ''waheyyy!'' moment of immediately knowing that the experiment it hadn't even enacted yet - but was about to - actually worked. But additionally, the further back into the past you go the greater the time and space for unpredictable variables to come into play. This is perhaps where we have to consider Skynet's ''desperation'' just as it is about to be defeated by the Resistance. It knows it can't guarantee anything at that point but it deems it to be the most likely course of action that would prevent its own destruction in whatever new way the timeline is going to play out thereafter. Presumably the plan would be if the Terminator succeeds and lives to tell the tale then it will be around long enough for Skynet to emerge and it will report to Skynet then, restoring Skynet's memory of what would otherwise have been.


What about the alternate, parallel timeline. Unless I have a fundamental misunderstanding of this idea then time travel to the past will not change anything in the timeline of origin - it won't be erased and it will carry on as it was. Change will only occur from the new branching off point of the timeline - meanwhile no one in the timeline of origin will experience it nor will they have any confirmation that it happened. As said, they continue as they were and the Resistance wins no matter what happens. T1 and T2 don't give the impression that the characters believe this...because if they did, there'd be no real sense of anything being at stake. As I suggested earlier I also just don't think this was ever the intention from Cameron or William Wisher or indeed Tim Miller. However lets run with it for a little bit anyway.....

Returning to my hypothetical 'Skynet sends Terminator 5 minutes into the past to smash the corner table' experiment - supposing Skynet discovers after performing the test that the table is not smashed and the Terminator is nowhere to be found. Time passes and Skynet is still there waiting for anything to happen but nothing does. What would it deduce from that? Couldn't have been that the Resistance sent back someone to protect the table. It might speculate - without any ability to confirm - that it had just set up a parallel reality in which some 5 minutes previously that table was destroyed but in Skynet's own reality the table is fine and now it has one less Terminator in its arsenal



So my wondering is this - when Skynet enacts its time travel shenanigans of sending back the T-800 to 1984 and the T-1000 to 1995 does it know what time travel mechanics to expect? (And does it leave a convenient guidebook for John Connor and the Resistance to peruse? ) And significantly to the point about incentive - if it's the parallel timeline scenario why would Skynet bother with time travel at all? Does it make sense for an AI to care about preserving itself in an alternate parallel timeline knowing that it will still expire in its own timeline? I mean, I dunno, maybe it does. Perhaps it didn't create the Time Displacement machine for this explicit purpose but now, since it's in this desperate situation, it just says ''well, what's left to lose''. When its options are 'do this and die' or 'do nothing and die' it chooses the former. Hmm, I've kinda convinced myself within a couple of sentences that yes, it would go ahead with the time travel strategy even if it knew its own game was up. And I guess the time travelling Terminator will also report on its mission and what occurred in its timeline of origin to its Skynet overlord in the new timeline branch it has created. The defeated version of Skynet in the prime timeline might consider this a route to survival. OK, From here on I'll drop the discussion of incentive. Either way there's incentive enough.




If all of the above was one can of worms, here's another.....how does the Resistance even have the opportunity to send back its protectors and can it fit with either of the above two concepts of time travel mechanics? You would think when Skynet sends the T-800 and T-1000 back to the past - having done so first - they should arrive there completely uncontested and thus succeed in their missions by default. However the movies present to us that John, Reese and company take over the Time Displacement facility and discover after-the-fact that a T-800 was sent to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor and a T-1000 to 1995 to kill John. Should those Terminators and their actions not instantly become part of the past from the 2029 perspective? Heck the T-1000's mission should have been completely moot since Sarah would have been killed in 1984. So how does future John Connor still exist?

Well, if changing the past only creates an alternate parallel reality then sure, Sarah Connor was only murdered in some other timeline and, yes, in that timeline John and his resistance squad would no longer be there. But here in the prime timeline the past was never changed so here they still are. As I've already talked about this would really make it such that the stakes for the heroes aren't all that high. For the purposes of an exciting story they have to believe that there's a real danger here with a need to act urgently. There wouldn't be if they knew they were dealing with the Parallel timeline scenario. They'd know they could probably afford to sit on it and ponder whether to do anything at all.

OK, so then how do the good guys have time to respond to Skynet's time travellers in the single, linear timeline scenario? That's where we have to be inventive in our thinking. There's two existing movie theories that might permit it - one is that it's like Back the Future where the characters seem to have a certain unspecified amount of time before the changes to the past ''catch up'' on the future. So the T-800 could have gone back to 1984, killed Sarah Connor without opposition but then because of this 'delay' it allowed the resistance time enough to find out what Skynet had done and send back Reese. From there it plays out like we see in the movie. This is purely speculative and has never been mentioned by Cameron or William Wisher to my knowledge.

Another idea is maybe the Time Displacement facility temporarily generates a localized protective field - perhaps as far as anyone is concerned outside of that field there never was a John Connor - the timeline was changed. But inside the field the original timeline remains, at least for a while. And luckily John Connor and his resistance forces were already within the bounds of this protection, enabling them to act. Star Trek First Contact uses this idea. The Enterprise is pursuing a Borg ship which opens a portal into Earth's past - unimpeded, they assimilate Earth. This instantly changes the ''present''. The Enterprise crew scans Earth and discovers its population is entirely Borg. So how are the crew of the Enterprise still there? Well they happened to be travelling through the temporal 'wake' of the Borg ship which prevented them from being erased. They continue on course and follow the Borg through to the past where ultimately they're able to stop them.

If we're going with the single linear timeline concept, which - after all the above contemplation - I am, we must assume one of these theories is the case because otherwise, yes, John should have been erased as soon as the Terminator was sent to 1984 to kill his mother. It's all nonsense but we need the movies to be able to happen as they do.

Christ, I'm gonna leave it there for now.

TLDR? I'm sending the cliff notes back through time. Let me know if you receive them.

 

[ajp4mgs]

I'm one of those fans - while it might seem a bit redundant now after so many tidbits sprinkled throughout the existing sequel movies I'd liken it to say, Rogue One if it could have been done well - not strictly necessary but a decent prequel film that doesn't ***t all over canon.....unless Kyle Katarn was your canon

I agree that a Future War "prequel" could've been worthwhile if done well, but the inevitability of exact outcome lowers the stakes enough where I'd always prefer a well-made sequel set in whatever present day it'd be released in. Plus, I love the future-meets-the-present dynamic. And Dark Fate solidified for me how much more invested I am if Linda Hamilton is involved, even when I hate the direction the story is going in!

This discussion with you is the first time I've thought it could have been possible since those naive pre-T3 Rise of the Machines days.

The film would have to be really good though. Terminators 1 & 2 make such a neat duology that any 3rd movie purporting to be the true continuation was always going to be up against it. It'd have to avoid all the other things I dislike about Terminators 3 through 6. Namely the insistence on a 'goodie' Terminator, questionable humour, stupidly OTT CGI stunts and action, a music score inconsistent with the first two movies. This would all probably be asking too much.

I am 100% with you on all of those requirements. And yes, I guess they've proven that it is indeed too much to ask... even though we know it shouldn't be by any stretch.

With respect to the "goodie" terminator, the fact that this has been used so much as a staple of the sequels could've actually served an alternate version of Dark Fate in a way. The story could've used a fake "guardian" terminator to protect Sarah and/or John, only for us to find out that it was only a ruse to gain trust and access to whatever Connor resources or network of allies may exist in the post-T2 reality where they both survived the previous terminators.

It could be like enemy intel/espionage so that the handful of "second wave" terminators wouldn't be caught off guard by unknown variables. Once they assess that Skynet had been scrubbed in 1995, the terminators could demonstrate a pre-programmed multi-level strategy if they'd encounter such a scenario. In that case, maybe they even let John live long enough to manipulate him into trusting one of them as a guardian. When the terminators get the intel they need, then John gets truly targeted for termination. Whether he dies or not could be written either way.

Well you said it here. It's intended to be a single linear timeline. In fact I remember Cameron and Tim Miller talking about that when Dark Fate was first announced. They felt that this is what created the 'stakes' of the movies. So it's what I've always tried to go with in my readings of the films but boy is it difficult to figure out the paradoxes that arise. You can never be sure you're accounting for everything and being consistent in your understanding of the time travel rules across the board.

Maybe I'd just forget about it all and move towards what you seem to be talking about with the variant parallel timelines for every individual use of the Time Displacement machine but I have one big issue with it - and this might be what Cameron and Miller had in mind - what's the incentive for Skynet to use Time Travel as a method of winning the war if the reality it occupies doesn't change, if all it has done is set up a parallel reality that it will have no experience of while in its own reality it will still be defeated? And from John Connor's perspective, is there any real danger? Does he even need to send back Reese or Uncle Bob? We humans typically want to get direct benefit from our own actions or at least be able to bear witness to the results of them. I guess altruism could account for the human side, for why John Connor would still take action to preserve the human victory in an alternate parallel timeline...then again it's also possible he would act without himself knowing how time travel is going to work. He would act ''just in case''. <- the films do give the impression that John is assuming if Skynet succeeds in the past it will directly erase him and the Resistance victory. John (or whatever science guy he has) could be completely wrong about how it works though. Skynet surely has a better idea. Perhaps it has already run some benign tests of the Time Displacement machine and established what changing the past actually does. You'd kinda think it would have.

Even in your scenario for a single linear timeline, I just keep recognizing how you're hitting key points as to why alternate timelines actually work better for this franchise. I'll go into how the alternate/parallel timeline theory still achieves all the same story goals, but first a simplified reason why the single linear timeline is a nonstarter: Sending a terminator back in time to change the past would mean that a successful mission would result in *never having needed* to send the terminator back in time in the first place. It's a paradox, and it just can't work logically. If Skynet successfully changes 1984, then the need for a time travel mission in that same timeline's 2029 will never materialize. It's incompatible as a singular reality.

As you pointed out, Skynet only used time travel out of desperation. That's a big key to resolving the logic that you're questioning. That version of a future Skynet was going to be wiped out no matter what. An autonomous Skynet would (imo) be sophisticated enough to understand that alternate/parallel timelines can still be used to "save" them. And you identified precisely why: It'd be because a successful mission would result in a terminator being intact to "catch up" to the date he was sent back from to be able to reintroduce his CPU/AI back into an *alternate* Skynet. If need be, the alternate Skynet (having no John/resistance to deal with) could incorporate the AI of the original Skynet that was losing to John. This would effectively achieve what James Cameron seems to have thought only a linear timeline could achieve. Skynet *would* pursue this, especially as a desperate last resort.

If the original T-800 was successful in killing Sarah, then he'd continue existing (maybe in hiding/hibernation) until his future arrived. At that point, his CPU could be used to "merge" the AI of his Skynet that he traveled from with the AI of whatever version would exist in the timeline with a dead Sarah and no John being born. The machines would be back to their exact same level of "living" awareness as when they sent the T-800 back, but with the benefit of no John Connor around to form a resistance and stop them.

Same would be true of the T-1000 in 1995. If John exists by then, the T-1000 should kill him and then wait to "merge" AI in a way that brings that first Skynet back to where it was before losing to John's resistance. The same machine "consciousness" from one timeline can exist in other multiple parallel timelines by way of downloading and merging data. Human consciousness can't do it, but Skynet would be able to. That's all the story needs in order to make Skynet's logic work.

Now, I don't think I've seen this Primer film that you praised so it's possible there's stuff I haven't considered and flaws in my logic below but here goes.......imma put this in spoiler tags because it's dauntingly long.....

There's no way anyone else besides the two of us is reading this discussion, so I'm gonna untag your spoiler text to make it clear what I'm specifically responding to. And you should know me well enough by now to understand that the concept of "dauntingly long" posts doesn't register in my brain.

What about the alternate, parallel timeline. Unless I have a fundamental misunderstanding of this idea then time travel to the past will not change anything in the timeline of origin - it won't be erased and it will carry on as it was. Change will only occur from the new branching off point of the timeline - meanwhile no one in the timeline of origin will experience it nor will they have any confirmation that it happened. As said, they continue as they were and the Resistance wins no matter what happens. T1 and T2 don't give the impression that the characters believe this...because if they did, there'd be no real sense of anything being at stake. As I suggested earlier I also just don't think this was ever the intention from Cameron or William Wisher or indeed Tim Miller. However lets run with it for a little bit anyway.....

It definitely wasn't the intention of Cameron, or any other writer/creator, but alternate timelines make sense of the story logic in a way that the single linear timeline simply can't. It's not a matter of one being better than the other as far as I'm concerned, it's that the latter just can't sustain itself from a logic standpoint. I'll try my best to explain precisely why. And I know that your instinct is to reject the alternate timeline rationale, but it actually achieves the exact aims that were intended by framing the movies with the single/linear approach. Let's see if I can succeed to convince you.

So my wondering is this - when Skynet enacts its time travel shenanigans of sending back the T-800 to 1984 and the T-1000 to 1995 does it know what time travel mechanics to expect? (And does it leave a convenient guidebook for John Connor and the Resistance to peruse? )

Yes, a sophisticated AI should understand the logistics. And 2029 John, having studied his AI enemy, could reasonably be expected to understand the same logistics that Skynet would be relying on. But he doesn't have to. He might be under the impression that time travel could alter his 2029 existence. That would probably better explain the efforts he went through with Kyle and Uncle Bob.

And significantly to the point about incentive - if it's the parallel timeline scenario why would Skynet bother with time travel at all? Does it make sense for an AI to care about preserving itself in an alternate parallel timeline knowing that it will still expire in its own timeline?

As long as a piece of itself (via the T-800 and/or T-1000) would exist in the alternate timeline, then the original Skynet would have a chance to re-establish itself in a timeline other than its original one.

I mean, I dunno, maybe it does. Perhaps it didn't create the Time Displacement machine for this explicit purpose but now, since it's in this desperate situation, it just says ''well, what's left to lose''. When its options are 'do this and die' or 'do nothing and die' it chooses the former. Hmm, I've kinda convinced myself within a couple of sentences that yes, it would go ahead with the time travel strategy even if it knew its own game was up. And I guess the time travelling Terminator will also report on its mission and what occurred in its timeline of origin to its Skynet overlord in the new timeline branch it has created. The defeated version of Skynet in the prime timeline might consider this a route to survival. OK, From here on I'll drop the discussion of incentive. Either way there's incentive enough.

I'm glad you convinced yourself without my input. Hopefully I added more support, and maybe some new wrinkles, to your conclusion.

If all of the above was one can of worms, here's another.....how does the Resistance even have the opportunity to send back its protectors and can it fit with either of the above two concepts of time travel mechanics? You would think when Skynet sends the T-800 and T-1000 back to the past - having done so first - they should arrive there completely uncontested and thus succeed in their missions by default. However the movies present to us that John, Reese and company take over the Time Displacement facility and discover after-the-fact that a T-800 was sent to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor and a T-1000 to 1995 to kill John. Should those Terminators and their actions not instantly become part of the past from the 2029 perspective? Heck the T-1000's mission should have been completely moot since Sarah would have been killed in 1984. So how does future John Connor still exist?

What you're describing and questioning here is part of the reason why the idea of alternate/parallel timelines is critical to having these movies actually make sense. By using that theory, the events in the original 2029 timeline would not be erased or altered in any way, nor would any events of that timeline's past have changed. Skynet would still lose there, and that John Connor would act the exact same way - making the exact same decisions based on the same set of factors. Skynet would be depending on an *alternate* timeline to re-emerge in; one where John was not a threat to their ongoing takeover because he would've been eliminated there.

Well, if changing the past only creates an alternate parallel reality then sure, Sarah Connor was only murdered in some other timeline and, yes, in that timeline John and his resistance squad would no longer be there. But here in the prime timeline the past was never changed so here they still are. As I've already talked about this would really make it such that the stakes for the heroes aren't all that high. For the purposes of an exciting story they have to believe that there's a real danger here with a need to act urgently. There wouldn't be if they knew they were dealing with the Parallel timeline scenario. They'd know they could probably afford to sit on it and ponder whether to do anything at all.

The stakes stay just as high for John if he didn't know about the alternate timeline logistics. Skynet would/should know, but I'm not convinced as to why John would need to have the same understanding. So maybe he just thinks time travel would work in the same logically impossible way as in the Back to the Future series. In that case, he'd have the same urgency that Marty had throughout BTTF.

And even if John knew that parallel timelines meant that his would be unaltered by the time-travelling terminators, I'd like to think that he'd be the kind of person to still want to help those alternate versions. It'd still be alternate versions of himself and his mother, and so many potential *real* human casualties if he doesn't do something to try to intervene. And from a certain point of view, that awareness would make Kyle Reese even more of a selfless hero if John shared the details with him.

OK, so then how do the good guys have time to respond to Skynet's time travellers in the single, linear timeline scenario? That's where we have to be inventive in our thinking. There's two existing movie theories that might permit it - one is that it's like Back the Future where the characters seem to have a certain unspecified amount of time before the changes to the past ''catch up'' on the future. So the T-800 could have gone back to 1984, killed Sarah Connor without opposition but then because of this 'delay' it allowed the resistance time enough to find out what Skynet had done and send back Reese. From there it plays out like we see in the movie. This is purely speculative and has never been mentioned by Cameron or William Wisher to my knowledge.

Another idea is maybe the Time Displacement facility temporarily generates a localized protective field - perhaps as far as anyone is concerned outside of that field there never was a John Connor - the timeline was changed. But inside the field the original timeline remains, at least for a while. And luckily John Connor and his resistance forces were already within the bounds of this protection, enabling them to act. Star Trek First Contact uses this idea. The Enterprise is pursuing a Borg ship which opens a portal into Earth's past - unimpeded, they assimilate Earth. This instantly changes the ''present''. The Enterprise crew scans Earth and discovers its population is entirely Borg. So how are the crew of the Enterprise still there? Well they happened to be travelling through the temporal 'wake' of the Borg ship which prevented them from being erased. They continue on course and follow the Borg through to the past where ultimately they're able to stop them.

If we're going with the single linear timeline concept, which - after all the above contemplation - I am, we must assume one of these theories is the case because otherwise, yes, John should have been erased as soon as the Terminator was sent to 1984 to kill his mother. It's all nonsense but we need the movies to be able to happen as they do.

I can't go there. I can't get onboard with the single linear timeline pretext. It doesn't work.

BTTF was fine because its intention was to provide more of a superficial, suspend-all-logic kind of entertainment. Star Trek was fine because they tried to use complex rationalizations that most wouldn't bother to question. With Terminator, I care more about T1 and T2 actually making sense and having enough real plausibility to enhance my enjoyment. By using alternate timelines to make sense of the plot, that plausibility is achieved for me.

If you want to construct a scenario where a single linear timeline works for you, I won't try to dissuade you. If it helps you enjoy the films more, then by all means go with it. But since the foundations can't support the weight of actual logic for me, I have to go with the alternate/parallel timelines.

Christ, I'm gonna leave it there for now.

TLDR? I'm sending the cliff notes back through time. Let me know if you receive them.

Again, you're forgetting who you're dealing with. The deeper the dive, the more I enjoy taking the plunge. I really dig this sort of discussion; I'm just wired that way. And part of why I love the franchise is because I enjoy thinking about how these scenarios would work in order to be plausible. Discussing it all with a fellow fan who is willing to indulge the deep dives and provide me with plenty of food for thought is something that I greatly appreciate.

 

[Khev]

There's no way anyone else besides the two of us is reading this discussion,

Nope I enjoy each and every post between the two of you and can read you guys going back and forth for hours on end so I hope neither of you stops any time soon.

I personally fall on the side of the Terminator story following one single timeline.

Here are my reasons:

1. Sarah's polaroid. That's a big one right there and IMO Cameron's shorthand to the audience that we are to take all the events shown on screen as existing in one singular timeline and universe. It's the measurable constant that bridges the reality of what we see take place in 1984 with Reese's flashbacks in 2029. The fact that that photo is exactly the same in both periods shows that the Reese who grows up in the ashes of nuclear fire and witnesses the first T-800 being sent through time is indeed the same Reese who fathers the John Connor of that same reality. It's a loop that circles in on itself, not a parallel reality.

I *do* subscribe to the notion that there was an original timeline that was erased however, that is the timeline where the machines rose independent of Cyberdyne studying the CPU of the first Terminator and with a John Connor that was originally fathered by another man. That timeline doesn't exist in a parallel reality in my mind, it is simply gone forever. Which of course opens up the super morbid notion of Skynet actually successfully wiping out the original John Connor from existence. They did, but Kyle's son replaced that John and won the war anyway, also creating a never-ending circle within the one ongoing timeline as a result.

2. In addition to the polaroid there's also the fact that T1 and T2 together show the same woman (Sarah Connor) witnessing not one, not two, not three, but *four* separate time travelers all enter her same reality (first T-800, Reese, Uncle Bob, and T-1000.) If you subscribe to the multiverse theory then what she saw should have been impossible because each time traveler should have created a new parallel reality when they went back in time, totally distinct and separate from one another.

So you'd have one reality with no time travelers appearing from the future. Another reality where the first Terminator appears, kills Sarah Connor, and the machines win. A third reality where Reese appears but there is *no* killer Terminator hunting Sarah, he simply appears in a new universe totally confused about what to do from that point on, and then a fourth and a fifth reality where the T-1000 appears and kills John's original son at age 10 (not Reese's son), with the final parallel reality being the one where Uncle Bob appears where there was never a first Terminator, no Reese, no T-1000, just an oblivious Sarah and her son (again, not Reese's boy) just living out their lives until Judgment Day.

But with all four time travelers entering the same Sarah's reality when all four entered the Time Displacement facility separately at different future times themselves (even if it was just seconds or minutes apart) PLUS the same photograph (which statistically simply could not have been the exact same image if you take the butterfly effect of events that would have kicked in between parallel universes leading up to the taking of said photo in each universe) then IMO you simply have to allow that it's all one singular reality.

3. I do agree that having these fragmented battles taking place across parallel universes does indeed diminish the stakes and impact of *all* of those battles.

4. And lastly I just don't like the idea of a multiverse in a semi-realistic setting because it demands an atheistic world view. No way in a universe with an all-powerful and infinite God and an eternal heaven and hell surrounding a finite physical universe confined by the bounds of time can people just develop technology, no matter how advanced, that let's them create entire universes, thus duplicating not only all of creation and all living beings' "souls" but God Himself! And yes I realize that that is simply a personal preference based on my own world view and would be a moot issue for many on this forum.

 

[a-dev]

Damn good stuff. I've been working on my reply to ajp in another tab, with him having almost convinced me of his ideas - but meanwhile khev replies with some nailbiting counterpoints and I'm in doubt again.

Just wanted to get in a quick acknowledgment because knowing me I might not have a meatier response till the day after tomorrow

 

[a-dev]

I'm definitely satisfied about Skynet's motivations and incentive to carry out its time travel plot no matter which scenario we're talking about

I started out not believing Skynet would have any investment in aiding a parallel version of itself but I came around mid-post and rather than going back and exhaustively adjusting the rest of my post I decided to just leave my thought processes in - I was wrecked at that stage. Now I'm fully persuaded that it would indeed proceed with the time travel plot even if it knows it's dealing with a parallel timeline scenario and I don't know how I doubted it before. For an AI, reuploading all its memory to a parallel version of itself would absolutely constitute survival. I wasn't thinking like a machine, I was thinking like a human. Even the currently sci-fi prospect of being able to transfer our human consciousness into some digital form on a computer isn't satisfying to us - we identify so completely with our physical bodies that it might still seem like death. But to an AI it's all same same.

The details of the Parallel timeline's concept I'm still a bit iffy on, especially after Khev's post and need to see ajp's reply to that.

 

[ajp4mgs]

Khev weighs in!

Nope I enjoy each and every post between the two of you and can read you guys going back and forth for hours on end so I hope neither of you stops any time soon.

I can do this forever if at least one of you wants to keep any aspect of the discussion going.

1. Sarah's polaroid. That's a big one right there and IMO Cameron's shorthand to the audience that we are to take all the events shown on screen as existing in one singular timeline and universe. It's the measurable constant that bridges the reality of what we see take place in 1984 with Reese's flashbacks in 2029. The fact that that photo is exactly the same in both periods shows that the Reese who grows up in the ashes of nuclear fire and witnesses the first T-800 being sent through time is indeed the same Reese who fathers the John Connor of that same reality. It's a loop that circles in on itself, not a parallel reality.

The polaroid is definitely proof that Cameron was going for a single timeline. But it's a flawed and impossible premise that gets destroyed by the movie plots themselves. The polaroid can't technically make any sense the way you are suggesting because Kyle would be staring at (and falling in love with) a pregnant woman carrying his baby before he was even born.

To me, the photo would not be the same one. I know that Cameron *wants* it to be, but it just can't work. I'll allow the movie to bend the rules of science, but not the rules of fundamental logic. Kyle spends a lot of time in the 21st century looking at that polaroid. But when he's doing so, he's in the middle of a future war that would be playing out differently if some version of him had ever been in 1984. His future war was with machines that were developed without a T-800 CPU and arm being reverse-engineered. So, the polaroid makes no sense unless you handwave it away as "only appears exactly the same, but is actually different (somehow)."

I *do* subscribe to the notion that there was an original timeline that was erased however, that is the timeline where the machines rose independent of Cyberdyne studying the CPU of the first Terminator and with a John Connor that was originally fathered by another man. That timeline doesn't exist in a parallel reality in my mind, it is simply gone forever. Which of course opens up the super morbid notion of Skynet actually successfully wiping out the original John Connor from existence. They did, but Kyle's son replaced that John and won the war anyway, also creating a never-ending circle within the one ongoing timeline as a result.

Hey, you're cheating! You can't have an alternate timeline branch in a closed-loop timeline reality. It can't be erased, otherwise the timeline you see in the movie could never happen. That alternate future *needs* to continue existing until at least 2029.

The single timeline that Cameron wants us to accept, and that you say exists in a closed loop, *cannot* happen without Cyderdyne first developing machines without the benefit of re-engineering a CPU and arm from the time-travelling T-800. Without that timeline progressing to 2029, there'd be no T-800 that eventually gets sent back in the first place.

In other words, in your closed-loop timeline, Sarah Connor will *always* encounter a T-800 in 1984. But that machine got sent there from a future that no longer exists in your scenario. That's impossible; the very definition of a paradox that cannot be resolved. The original timeline can't be erased since it will still be needed to branch off the hunted Sarah timeline. Instead, it's a parallel timeline that continues running parallel with an alternate post-1984 future.

2. In addition to the polaroid there's also the fact that T1 and T2 together show the same woman (Sarah Connor) witnessing not one, not two, not three, but *four* separate time travelers all enter her same reality (first T-800, Reese, Uncle Bob, and T-1000.) If you subscribe to the multiverse theory then what she saw should have been impossible because each time traveler should have created a new parallel reality when they went back in time, totally distinct and separate from one another.

That timeline we see in T1 where Sarah encounters the first T-800 in 1984 is actually the *second* branched timeline that was created, but is the only one we ever see on screen. Skynet sending the T-800 started one 1984 branched timeline (that we never saw). And John sending Kyle (using the same Time Displacement Equipment) to a point in 1984 just before that creates the second one. It's this second one that we continue to watch throughout T1, T2, and even Dark Fate (if you count it).

Then, every subsequent time travel mission inititiated by Skynet (T-1000) and John (Uncle Bob) from the same 2029 is being directed at the same "coordinates" from the TDE tech. But again, there [EDIT: add a "may be" here] a branched timeline in 1995 that we never see (where T-1000 arrives before John had sent Uncle Bob). The Uncle Bob timeline is the same one that was created by Kyle Reese in 1984.

Dizzy yet? [EDIT: this whole section is now seeming unnecessary. I'm leaving it in, but am becoming more convinced that the T-800 and T-1000 wouldn't be creating additional timelines because Kyle and Uncle Bob would arrive first in those cases. The terminators arriving after might not be creating any new timelines. I hope that's the case, because it'd be far cleaner that way.]

So you'd have one reality with no time travelers appearing from the future.

Yep. The one from which Skynet eventually sends the first T-800 back in time when it's 2029.

Another reality where the first Terminator appears, kills Sarah Connor, and the machines win.

Not necessarily. The relevant timelines could theoretically be branched off by who arrives first, not by who was sent first. The order of sending from 2029 might not actually dictate anything if they're being sent to the same timeline. The T-800 arrives *after* Kyle arrives, so it's possible there is no branch where the Terminator appears without Kyle already there.

A third reality where Reese appears but there is *no* killer Terminator hunting Sarah, he simply appears in a new universe totally confused about what to do from that point on,

Again, just like with the previous scenario, Kyle Reese gets sent to a timeline that *will* have a T-800 arrive there because Skynet did that earlier in the original 2029 timeline. So, Kyle creates the only timeline that *needs* to get branched off because he arrives first.

and then a fourth and a fifth reality where the T-1000 appears and kills John's original son at age 10 (not Reese's son), with the final parallel reality being the one where Uncle Bob appears where there was never a first Terminator, no Reese, no T-1000, just an oblivious Sarah and her son (again, not Reese's boy) just living out their lives until Judgment Day.

I think maybe only one of those needs to exist. Uncle Bob was sent from the same original 2029 timeline as all the others, and was sent to a timeline that the T-1000 would be arriving in. So, Uncle Bob's arrival would be the branching off point since we know that there's no scenario in the 2029 timeline where John doesn't send him to be there in advance of the T-1000. I got this wrong in one of my earlier posts, so it's actually a cleaner multiverse than I thought.

But with all four time travelers entering the same Sarah's reality when all four entered the Time Displacement facility separately at different future times themselves (even if it was just seconds or minutes apart) PLUS the same photograph (which statistically simply could not have been the exact same image if you take the butterfly effect of events that would have kicked in between parallel universes leading up to the taking of said photo in each universe) then IMO you simply have to allow that it's all one singular reality.

Sorry for repeating myself so much, but the order of using the TDE in 2029 might not matter. I haven't given it enough thought, but I'm inclined to believe that it can work if branched timelines are limited only to being generated by who arrives first.

3. I do agree that having these fragmented battles taking place across parallel universes does indeed diminish the stakes and impact of *all* of those battles.

But we only know of one timeline where battles are taking place with time-travelling terminators. And in the multiverse theory, there's still only one timeline that we see in T1 and T2 with a future war taking place in 2029.

It's really only two timelines with really heavy stakes in each one.

4. And lastly I just don't like the idea of a multiverse in a semi-realistic setting because it demands an atheistic world view. No way in a universe with an all-powerful and infinite God and an eternal heaven and hell surrounding a finite physical universe confined by the bounds of time can people just develop technology, no matter how advanced, that let's them create entire universes, thus duplicating not only all of creation and all living beings' "souls" but God Himself! And yes I realize that that is simply a personal preference based on my own world view and would be a moot issue for many on this forum.

Real-life quantum theory has already identified a multiverse as being a logical and credible explanation for the nature of reality. The "many-worlds interpretation" is one of the three most believed-in interpretations of reality among the entire community of quantum physicists and their research.

Even though the Copenhagen interpretation is probably more popular, I believe that many-worlds will someday prove correct (but I'll be long dead and gone). And I believe in this theory while simultaneously believing in God. To me, God is infinitely capable. As such, He could create an infinite universe with infinite realities.

By believing in God's infinite capacity, I've never had a problem with reconciling the notions of God and a multiverse in the same reality. No problem for me whatsoever.

Awesome, well-thought-out post, Khev. We approach and interpret the logistics of the first two Terminator films differently, yet we both seem to dig the **** out of them anyway. Can't beat that.

 

[ajp4mgs]

I'm definitely satisfied about Skynet's motivations and incentive to carry out its time travel plot no matter which scenario we're talking about

I started out not believing Skynet would have any investment in aiding a parallel version of itself but I came around mid-post and rather than going back and exhaustively adjusting the rest of my post I decided to just leave my thought processes in - I was wrecked at that stage. Now I'm fully persuaded that it would indeed proceed with the time travel plot even if it knows it's dealing with a parallel timeline scenario and I don't know how I doubted it before. For an AI, reuploading all its memory to a parallel version of itself would absolutely constitute survival. I wasn't thinking like a machine, I was thinking like a human. Even the currently sci-fi prospect of being able to transfer our human consciousness into some digital form on a computer isn't satisfying to us - we identify so completely with our physical bodies that it might still seem like death. But to an AI it's all same same.

The details of the Parallel timeline's concept I'm still a bit iffy on, especially after Khev's post and need to see ajp's reply to that.

When it comes to the parallel timelines, I think I can summarize the necessity of it by describing Skynet's point of view.

When Skynet used the Time Displacement Equipment to send a terminator to 1984, the Skynet AI would be way too sophisticated to believe that their 2029 reality would change as a result. That's because John's very existence in that 2029 reality would be all the proof Skynet would need that their time travel machinations would *never* alter that timeline.

No matter what point in the future the TDE would be activated, any change in the past would've already prevented that future from ever happening. John's continued existence would be all Skynet needs to know in order to understand that their eventual use of the TDE to prevent his existence will not change their timeline that he's already in. Skynet would have to be banking on alternate timeline fixes.

The past *must* always set up the future in a single linear timeline. In other words, any present circumstance means that no future time travel to the past ever altered anything. By having the 2029 reality that Skynet was operating from, it means that no time travel scenario would change things in *that* timeline.

 

[Khev]

Damn good stuff. I've been working on my reply to ajp in another tab, with him having almost convinced me of his ideas - but meanwhile khev replies with some nailbiting counterpoints and I'm in doubt again.

Just wanted to get in a quick acknowledgment because knowing me I might not have a meatier response till the day after tomorrow

 

[Khev]

Khev weighs in!

Outside of Star Wars the Terminator franchise is probably the one I've given the single most thought to and had the most enjoyable conversations about both with friends in real life and online.

The polaroid is definitely proof that Cameron was going for a single timeline.

I wish that I had clarified right from the beginning what I meant by "singular timeline and universe." To me it meant one single "reality" but I also see it as a single reality that can be erased and rewritten so to speak.

Maybe a better way for me to have described it would have been for me to say that the Time Displacement Equipment allows those placed inside to temporarily step outside of time itself while the rest of the universe "rewinds" apart from them. Then when the "rewinding" is done they get to re-enter the one single physical reality and manipulate things however they see fit. Maybe the process of Time Displacement clones only the *traveler* and not the whole universe.

Whoa, hang on a second, Reese himself stated that he felt as if traveling through time was "like being born."

And so what if what the technology actually does is to create a brand new living entity that essentially contains precognitive "memories" of a future and a life that doesn't actually exist. So that according to the universe 1984 Reese springs into existence as something akin to Rachael from Blade Runner with memories of a life that the universe itself does not recognize. Or rather "no longer recognizes" as it pertains to time travelers in Terminator.

And since Reese is a fully formed new creation that was "born" out of bright light and pain he therefore cannot create a paradox by killing his own parents before he is born because technically they are *not* his parents. Nu-Reese is a day old man with 25 years of fake memories while original Reese "died" the moment he stepped into the TDE and for all intents and purposes got vaporized. Holy crap I don't know if anyone is still with me but this discussion has forced me to consider elements that haven't occurred to me in decades of pondering these films, lol.

Now I'm thinking that the secret of TDE is that it rewinds the universe while simultaneously killing whoever enters it and then projecting those individuals' memories/programming into new "3D printed" clones of said individuals that then appear the moment the universe stops rewinding. With the end result allowing beings to spring out of the air that are *not* from the future but only have *visions* of "one possible future." How interesting that aside from the prologue with the opening text that the only times we see the "future war" in the first Terminator film is through the perspective of Reese imagining it in his head and always from his point of view. And even the prologue footage is reused in one of his big "flashbacks" (which isn't really a flashback at all but a planted "memory.")

So in short TDE is a big universal "rewind machine" that does NOT send *anyone* back in time but only creates clones of future beings with the memories/programming of the latter transposed into the former. And what if, just what if (forgive me, I'm really going off the rails here) the TDE "rewind machine" was invented in...1984??? And the machine itself can't undo anything prior to its *own* existence and Skynet merely discovered the device but didn't really invent it. So it had a bit of a contained timeframe that it could rewind events to and chose the farthest back it could go for the first Terminator (1984) and then systematically picked 1995 as a contingency. And the device itself has some sort of energy field around it that allows itself to download an awareness of the universe around it that it can then rewind as if it were a glorified VHS tape, lol.

Awesome, well-thought-out post, Khev.

I really hope that you say the same about this latest one, lol, though I fear that my whole line of thinking may just be too "out there" on this one. But it might be the best scenario I can come up with that allows a singular universe with one alterable timeline and no paradoxes. I look forward to what you see as the pros and cons of my thoughts and logic on this one.

We approach and interpret the logistics of the first two Terminator films differently, yet we both seem to dig the **** out of them anyway. Can't beat that.

Absolutely!

And I so appreciate being able to disagree on aspects of the story while still respecting the other person's appreciation and perspective on said story. If only more people in the SW threads could be so capable, lol.

 

[a-dev]

Skynet sends the T-800 back to 1984. This can have no impact on the present 2029 reality of the prime timeline and instead it instantly sets up a new branching off point. Without intervention from the Resistance he kills Sarah Connor in this timeline. This becomes the new reality of that timeline, it is the thing that happens.

What confuses me though relates to what Khev said about each time traveller setting up his own unrelated timeline - how and why is it a given that Kyle Reese will reach the same branch timeline that T-800 went to...or more accurately 'created' with his presence? Why wouldn't Reese merely be going back to the original unaltered 1984 (which still exists, it didn't get erased or overwritten) where Sarah Connor was in no danger and then setting up another branching timeline of his own? (so 3 timelines - the original/the T-800 going to 1984/Kyle Reese going to 1984) He has to reach the particular one the T-800 went to otherwise his going back in time is pointless.

Then, every subsequent time travel mission inititiated by Skynet (T-1000) and John (Uncle Bob) from the same 2029 is being directed at the same "coordinates" from the TDE tech.

Seems to me what you're talking about here is a requirement right from the off, not just with the T-1000 and Uncle Bob. The technical workings of this fictional Time Traveling invention has to enable zoning in on a particular timeline branch. Most particularly from John and the resistance's POV. For Skynet it doesn't matter so much because as we've already been talking about it will be satisfied with erasing John Connor and propagating itself in whatever timeline and as many timelines as possible. For example it wouldn't care if the T-800 and T-1000 were operating in completely separate timeline branches from eachother..the more the merrier really.....right? But JC has to care. He has to know Reese and Uncle Bob are getting where and when they're supposed to.

 

[ONEYE]

"Whoa, hang on a second, Reese himself stated that he felt as if traveling through time was "like being born."

And so what if what the technology actually does is to create a brand new living entity that essentially contains precognitive "memories" of a future and a life that doesn't actually exist. So that according to the universe 1984 Reese springs into existence as something akin to Rachael from Blade Runner with memories of a life that the universe itself does not recognize. Or rather "no longer recognizes" as it pertains to time travelers in Terminator.

And since Reese is a fully formed new creation that was "born" out of bright light and pain he therefore cannot create a paradox by killing his own parents before he is born because technically they are *not* his parents. Nu-Reese is a day old man with 25 years of fake memories while original Reese "died" the moment he stepped into the TDE and for all intents and purposes got vaporized. Holy crap I don't know if anyone is still with me but this discussion has forced me to consider elements that haven't occurred to me in decades of pondering these films, lol. "

Kyle vaporized... I can't buy into that theory. The TDE creates "new Kyle" out of what exactly?

"So in short TDE is a big universal "rewind machine" that does NOT send *anyone* back in time but only creates clones of future beings with the memories/programming of the latter transposed into the former."

I can't buy into this idea. It doesn't explain a Terminator's travel back in time, or are you implying that they too are "cloned." Not logical. Not trying to fight you on this, your thoughts just don't cover the non-living elements that go through the TDE. Also, if Kyle was "cloned", his body wouldn't have scars from the future. His body would be perfect, undamaged. Maybe, but I still can't swallow it, future Kyle's "vaporization" allows the "clone" to be reconstructed from those "vaporized" atoms?