Terminator-201 "Samson & Delilah" - Discuss/Grade <Spoiler>

Do any of the characters ever talk about how, if they succeed in preventing Skynet from coming into existence, then Michael Biehn's character never would have gone back in time to save John Connor from a Terminator. And therefore John Connor wouldn't exist. UeberMommy is trying for a retroactive abortion!

 

^ So far on this show: no. However, this has been explored in other Terminator media.

 

Thank you.

 

With a son like John, I can't blame her.

I suppose some time travel laws might protect John's existence. When you think about it, pushing Judgment Day off several years should have led to John's existence being wiped out. In the first movie, Kyle tells Sarah he was born after the war. After Judgment Day. But in SCC, with Judgment Day being delayed, Kyle was born when everything was normal and lived a normal life for several years.

 

I think considering that Kyle's son can grow up to be a senator in a world with out Skynet or Judgement day in the extended edition of T2, that either pastward travellers are protected by editing to the future points in the timeline or it's all just stepping sideways into parallel futures and pasts.

Have these guys done a con yet? Gonna been nerded on worse than Xena that time on Simpsons.

 

It seems like in the Terminator universe certain things are set in stone- like Judgment Day. They can delay it, but it has to happen. I would imagine John Connor's birth is also set in stone (and possibly that he will lead the resistance, which is why older terminator models/humans have been able to defeat newer terminator models).

 

No one would actually "fade" out of existence like in BTTF. John was born, he's flesh and blood.

His fathers future just wouldn't exist anymore. A erased alternate future. All that exists of it is in the mind of Cameron, other terminators and what sarah and john heard.

 

Something interesting I found about the different continuities.

The ones I knew about:

Spoiler: Movie continuity

The movie continuity is the most set in stone. John Connor is the son of Kyle Reese (a man from the future) and Sarah Connor - his mother.

Spoiler: Terminator: End Game

Sarah Connor is not the mother of John Connor nor is Kyle Reese his father. Instead Sarah gives birth to Jane Connor.

Spoiler: The one I DIDN'T know about

There is another continuity in which John discovers that his father is not Kyle Reese. Instead he is the son of Sarah Connor and Dan Moresky - the man who stood Sarah up in the events of The Terminator.

 

In the capacity of this show and the movies though? I don't think so... which is why it's pointless to go on about it.

Bad programming would be the fact that terminators are capable of so much strategically, but just not killing the protector (or other numerous problems). If they were programmed by the almighty Skynet, that tells you how stupid Skynet really was. A neural network that programmed its robots made a mistake.

Um, what I mean is that when robots are sent back to the past to do a mission, there most certainly are nations. For there to be any worry that turning on a chip would have such a radical outcome would be ridiculous. That was the point.

I already gave you the reasoning. I shouldn't have to explain this again. Go back and read what I've written.

You clearly don't understand. The future is changeable by sending back time travelers according to T2, T3, and SCC. If the future is changeable, it's possible that at one point there never was a Kyle Reese as John's father. Yes, T1 presented it as a paradox, but you can't reconcile that with T2, and especially not with SCC or T3.

Wow. Doesn't that negate the whole idea of time being changeable? A paradox cannot exist if time is changeable, because events around that paradox can change, and they have. Take SCC for instance. Judgment Day happens like 15 years later, and Kyle Reese is a totally different person. Even if he is still sent back through time to protect Sarah, he can't tell Sarah he was born after the war. His personality would probably be different. Chances are that even though he has the same name, he is not the same sperm and egg.

Consider the original ending for T2 where Judgment Day was stopped, but John was still alive. The way things go is that if they stop Skynet, John won't suddenly vanish or the universe won't explode. T2, T3, and SCC all seem to follow this.

 

No, you're being ridiculous. Sending them back to time has nothing to do with it. Skynet has them not learning anything in the future as well. And indeed, send them back through time, and things get entirely dicey. Cause that Terminator can decide to make sure Skynet never rises and works to put himself in essentially its position. In the future it would be a lot less dangerous, whee Skynet itself can deal with a wayward Terminator than in the past where it doesn't even exist yet.

That also means that that John Connor is not the John Connor that won the war, which means that Skynet may very well have already won - after all, just because the John Connor born from some other guy defeated the machines, doesn't mean this John Connor born of Kyle Reese will, or even can. And indeed, if some completely different guy can beat the machines, then John Connor's death doesn't matter one way or another - there's no point in killing him, nor is there a point in protecting him "or the humans lose". The machines will lose, if the resistance isn't lead by John Connor, it'll be some other guy or girl that does it.

Of course I can, and anyone can. Let me repeat that line again: Just because time can be changed when you do time travel, doesn't it HAS to, nor does it mean that a pre-destination time paradox cannot occur.

No.

Wrong. AGAIN: just because they CAN change, does NOT mean they will change.

And there's even a change that he doesn't like her at all, and won't have sex with her, and then John Connor is really screwed, cause he never gets born, just like according to you the first John Connor never got born. Which would rather mean Skynet has already succeeded, and the war is lost, or the machines will lose the war regardless of the existence of a John Connor. Anyone could lead the war to victory over Skynet.

Which all doesn't matter. Again: just because things CAN change, does NOT mean they will change. The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

Let's get back to what the original point was here... you were saying that one reason for John not turning on the switch of one of the terminators is because there is a possibility for terminators to take over like Skynet did. A lone terminator which is not "hooked into everything" and at best could raise a militia has a very limited chance, unlike Skynet. The two are not even comparable.

Only when they're sent out alone. But we weren't talking about Skynet, were we?

Not necessarily. Kyle coming back and telling Sarah about the leader John may have forced Sarah into making him such a person. A sort of strange destiny. That was one of the things I liked about T3 was John not wanting to accept his destiny. Perhaps that specific John really wasn't meant to be the leader, but found himself thrust into the role.

The only thing John Connor really did in the future was teach the others to resist, and he educated them on how to fight the machines. Anyone could really fit this role, and perhaps without John something like this still may have happened. Skynet could only go with what it did know, which was that a man by the name of John Connor was the one who led the resistance that crippled it. In the context of T1 alone, it didn't matter what Skynet did because it would not be successful in killing Sarah. In turn, the paradox was that it created John and created itself. But everything after T1 nullifies that it was truly a paradox.

I never said it has to, so you need to stop implying that. I said that because it has changed, and clearly it has, the events surrounding the paradox changed, no longer actually making it a paradox by our perception. Can you honestly say with all the changes to Kyle that it can still be a seamless loop?

I never said John wasn't born, just that he wasn't born by Kyle initially. This is a possibility if the future is changeable.

 

Which isn't true. It can do the same things Skynet did, it would just need more time.

No, it doesn't, not at all.

You have, when you keep saying that just because time can change, the paradox didn't happen.

That doesn't matter. The events of T1 MAKE it a pre-destination paradox. Whatever time travel happened later to change the future from then on, has nothing to do with that original time travel event. Whether or not it is such a paradox only matter with that first event. Because again, just because time CAN change, does NOT mean it has to. The first time was simply a full on paradox, and then more time travel happened to muck it all up. But that doesn't mean the first (and second aka the T-1000 and T-800 because they were sent at the same time as the T-800 and Kyle) weren't part of that very first paradox - even if the second one also allowed Sarah, John and the Terminator to throw a monkey wrench into the system.

And just because it is possible (which I doubt if you check the time table: 1984 to 1997) doesn't mean it is so.

 

You really think a T-800 could find its way into controlling the entire arsenal of the US army including warheads, stealth jets, etc? Wow, just wow.

Where did I explicitly say that? I didn't say that. I said time did change. Certain events specific to the supposed paradox also did change, no longer making it a paradox in the context of the franchise.

Plus, a mutable and immutable timeline are mutually exclusive.

Do you even know what a pre-destination paradox is? It is a causality loop that is unbroken. T2, T3, and SCC all broke time, including the events of T1, making it not pre-destination. You cannot have both.

Well no shit! But it's probably the best speculative theory to explain the differences between T2 and T1 in regards to how the time travel is supposed to work. I'm not the one who invented the theory either.

 

So, yeah, just watched it

I give it an Excellent, I was a little spoiled already, knew she was gonna go bad, but it was fun to watch. Didn't see Shirley Manson being a Terminator though, should prove interesting. I wonder about all this, she is a Terminator in the past, creating Skynet? Like a self fullfilling paradox? The terminators were sent back by Skynet to create itself?

Anyway, loved the premier, looking forward to the next ep.

 

I never said anything of the sort, but eh.

Whatever later events were changed, has nothing to do with the birth of John Connor.

Indeed, they are, BUT again - this time in your terms - just because a timeline is mutable, doesn't mean it also gets mutated.

Of course you can have both! That's the thing with time travel. The birth of John Connor is a pre-destination time paradox in T1, John Connor was born, because humanity won the war, Skynet sent a Terminator back to kill his mother before he was born, the resistance sent Kyle Reese, Kyle Reese became the father, picture gets taken, John Connor gives Kylre Reese the picture for him to fall in love with. T-800 and Kyle get sent back in time.

End of discussion, there it is. That's a pre-destination time paradox. There is no if, and, or when about it, that's how it happened.

Now, in the future, things will change because there's more time travel, that does change the past. But all that subsequent time travel and change, has no impact on the fact that the first event was a closed circle. It's just that subsequent events break that circle open. This does not mean that the circle never existed.

But there is no difference! Neither T1 or T2 tells us anything about how time travel is supposed to work, other then "it's a big glowy, very hot ball", and that only things that are covered in an electric field in the same range as organic matter generates survives the trip unscathed. Other than that there's "no fate" according to Kyle Reese, it tells us nothing.

 

I wanted to thank everyone who took part in the Discussion and Grading Thread for Samson & Delilah. I hope that you enjoy the next episode: Automatic for the People.

The Discussion Thread is now available.

 

You didn't say that the terminator could basically do what Skynet did? Haha, ok...

Yes, they very much do! When it comes to time travel of a pre-destined nature, if say, something were to happen to Kyle, he could no longer give birth to John. And something did happen to Kyle. He wasn't born after the war. What are the odds of it being the same sperm and egg?

Ugh. Using my terms, but saying the exact same thing you've said a hundred times. And that still doesn't make it what I said! Hey though, straw man is great fun, isn't it?

It would be the end of discussion if it stopped there, but it didn't. T2 went and changed several things that T1 established, such as Kyle saying that he and the T-800 were the only ones sent back. Sure this can be retconned or fanwanked in a million different directions, but it was a change from the storytelling POV. Then the in-world changes started happening. Cyberdyne's headquarters was destroyed and was a major setback. The original ending was that there was no Judgment Day at all. How could Kyle come back and be the father now? But that was changed in favor of a c.2003 delayed Judgment Day in T3, which Kyle still could've been born after, except things have changed! For the exact same Kyle to be born when Judgment Day was delayed 6 years is insane! And then we see things like John's lieutenants being killed, which would definitely change Kyle's future. But SCC ignores T3, so let's focus on that. Skynet is now formed about 15 years later than originally planned, well after Kyle's birth. How this could be the same Kyle does not make any sense. Throw in things like Andy Goode dying and you have a future which is totally different than the one in T1. It is not a loop.

Haha, a time reference to an outside time event.

If a pre-destination paradox can be broken, it was never a pre-destination paradox to begin with.

 

it's a viscious circle, every time John stops skynet before Judgement Day, the timeline reverts to the one where John was fathered by the guy Sarah was supposed to go out with in T-1, and reverts back to the original Judgement day

 

^ Good theory.

 

it's the only real feesable one