the first "Terminator" makes NO sence

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

...and since the sequels including T:S depends on it, I though I'd point it out.

In the first Terminator Kyle specifically says that "the Terminator had already gone through...' so, uh, even if Kyle had gone through one minute later, it would still be forty years or so of difference.. with time travel it's first come first to win. The Terminator would've altered time from 984.

So then Kyle would never have gone back to become John's father

 

[Sephiroth]

it doesn't work like that, Supposedly, Kyle Reese & the Terminator's presence only affected the timeline in that Sarah's paranoia had a basis

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

you are wrong. Kyle is John's father but if he went back after the Terminator, the Terminator would've already changed the future from 1984 on.

 

[Sephiroth]

ah, yes, but Kyle can still go back, because that particular timeline still exists, and John had the coordinates to where the Terminator was sent back, you see, Terminator time travel does not actualy move an object from one point in time to another, it takes an existing timeline and injects a person into it, thus creating a branch timeline

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

uh no. It's the whole BTTF part two thing. in that film, if doc and marty go to the future to get the book its the future of the alternate 1985. same with this. if kyle waited even one minute later to go back, the timeline for the last forty years would have been already corrupted by the presence of the terminator

 

[Sephiroth]

ah, but thats the thing, there is more than one timeline, John was wrong when he said that the future is not set, life goes on status quo for that John after the Terminator & Kyle went back, John & the resistance mop up whats left of SKYnet, they rebuild, just that an alternate timeline has been created, If you want a more Vauge, more sci-FI answer, than the energy field of the time displacement equipment created a temporal bubble around the area of the device for a few moments, or perhaps Kyle jumps through the portal before it closes, John & Kyle chase the 800 in to the time device, John sees a acontrol panel, exclaims "SHIT! My mom in 84, Kyle go through, now before it closes, you have to save her" kyle jumps through, the timeline changes as the portal disipates

 

[Guy Gardener]

uh no. It's the whole BTTF part two thing. in that film, if doc and marty go to the future to get the book its the future of the alternate 1985. same with this. if kyle waited even one minute later to go back, the timeline for the last forty years would have been already corrupted by the presence of the terminator

That's what we call "branch theory".

Tree branches springing off the trunk y'know.

What happened in the first movie was not the first iteration of the past flipping back into history trying to predestin itself, since someone had already gone back in time to have John and create the present in which Kyle was chasing the Terminator back to 1984.

Some say that old timelines are not demolished, and some insist that that only a fool would build a time machine without some eye of the storm like quality that the they're not comitting suicide everytime they use the machine.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

the problem with that theory.. among many other problems with it, is that Kyle volunteered because he had fallen in love with her based on her picture. it was a planned mission

 

[Shurik]

My problem with the whole time travel part of this movie is that in order for John Connor to be born, become the leader of the resistance, capture the time machine, have Kyle fall in love with Sarah and travel back in time, Kyle has first of all to travel back in time, meet Sarah, sleep with her and tell her that their son will be the leader of the resistance in the war with the robots. This is sort of a chicken and an egg problem - what started this loop in time?

 

[Klaus]

[janeway]"My advice in making sense of temporal paradoxes is simple - don't even try."[/janeway]

Ever read Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps"? The hero becomes his own father AND mother.

Although my favorite take on the issue is David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself.

 

[nx1701g]

This was addressed in the novelization of the first film and then in another novel called T2: Future War. Kyle Reese (and John Connor himself) were in the temporal chamber when the Terminator jumped through time which meant they were protected from the changes. This is similar to what happened to the Enterprise-E in Star Trek First Contact when it was caught in the wake of the Borg Sphere.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I THOUGHT ABOUT THAT BUT kYLE SPECIFICALLY STATES THAT "THE tERMINATOR HAD ALREADY GONE THROUGH."

pLUS WHY WOULD jOHN AND kYLE NEED TO BE IN THE MACHINE UNLESS THE tERMINATOR HAD ALREADY GONE THROUGH

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

sorry for caps lock

 

[nx1701g]

I THOUGHT ABOUT THAT BUT kYLE SPECIFICALLY STATES THAT "THE tERMINATOR HAD ALREADY GONE THROUGH."

pLUS WHY WOULD jOHN AND kYLE NEED TO BE IN THE MACHINE UNLESS THE tERMINATOR HAD ALREADY GONE THROUGH

They were trying to stop it before it could jump back. The temporal chamber was described as being circular and around the size of a football field. ON a platform in the center the machine stood watching as Connor and Reese came in through a main door to stop it. Right as they entered it crouched and the energy sphere grew around it. Kyle tried to fire on it but the energy sphere just absorbed it and the machine disappeared. Connor programmed the equipment and sent Kyle back himself at that point.

No worries about the CAPS. I think we've all done that once or twice.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I got the impression that the mission had been planned, that Kyle studied the picture of the woman he would protect

 

[nx1701g]

I got the impression that the mission had been planned, that Kyle studied the picture of the woman he would protect

Kyle Reese volunteered for the mission.

 

[captcalhoun]

i think you're getting muddled up with Star Trek time-travel and Terminator time travel. i don't think anything in the Terminator movies or show says that the passage of time between two people departing the present has any bearing on their arrival in the past.

 

[TrekGuide.com]

I think the original "Terminator" was more like the predestination paradox depicted in TNG's "Time's Arrow," not "ST: First Contact."

The events in the past were caused by the events in the future, which were caused by the events in the past (aka, chicken-and-egg).

In the first movie, nobody was CHANGING the past; both the Terminator and Reese were fulfilling their destinies. Maybe they thought they could change the past from watching too many "Star Trek" re-runs, but they actually couldn't change anything.

As a stand-alone movie, "The Terminator" is a perfect depiction of a causality loop.

However, with "T2," the concept of free will is introduced, where the characters start to believe that, with knowledge of the future, they can actually CHANGE or PREVENT the future from happening. That shoots the whole causality loop from the first movie to hell.

Then in "T3," the concept of "Fate" is introduced, where even with knowledge of the future, and the characters trying to change the future, time (or God, or the Fates) corrects itself, and Judgment Day becomes inevitable, even if delayed.

At the same time, the two Terminators in "T3" are on contradictory missions. The T-X has come back in time to kill her future enemies while they are still teenagers. She is clearly CHANGING her own past. But at the same time, the T-800 follows her back, and seems to know her from his own future, but his mission is to allow Judgment Day to happen, and help John and Kate survive, exactly as he already knows it will happen. In other words, the T-800 is there to fulfill his destiny, and keep everything exactly the same as he remembers, while the T-X is trying -- and succeeding -- to change her own past.

So it's the original "Terminator" that is the only movie that makes sense on its own, as a self-contained causality loop. It's the sequels that go off the rails, completely negating everything established about time travel in the first movie.

Then throw in "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," which introduces the concepts of both FORWARD time travel (vanishing from the timeline, then reappearing years later), plus the concept of alternate timelines, where every time someone goes to the past and changes stuff, their future is gone and is replaced with an alternate future.

So yes, using "TSCC" logic, then Reese could not have followed the T-800 back into the past in the original "Terminator" movie, since he would be in a different alternate future than the one the Terminator was creating. But that is a comment on the sequels and the TV series, not the original movie's logic.

 

[miraclefan]

Damn temporal ''COLD-WAR'' messing up another franchises plotline.

 

[Checkmate]

The events in the original Terminator were already an altered timeline, one in which the terminator had already gone back in time and one in which Reese had already been sent back to stop him. It was a self-perpetuating loop, one triggered sometime in the past (from our perspective, not theirs).

We never got to see what the original timeline was. It was one in which there was no John Conner, but it was one where a Reese had been sent back in time. There may or may not have been a terminator involved; he could have simply been sent back to pull the plug on Skynet before it went online, or maybe it was a timeline in which there never was a Skynet and he was simply a scientist who helped develop time travel. Actually, Reese may not have been in the very first timeline, but he was involved in one of the timelines that existed before the loop. Or in other words, he was the one that came first if you look at him as the Egg and John/Sarah as the Chicken.

But it doesn't really matter. By the time we're introduced to what's going on, the loop had already begun and was continuining to perpetuate itself endlessly. It's only until later movies that the tail-end of the looping timeline began to branch down other avenues, all of which we're struggling to keep track of as the franchise and story continue.

But again, that's all irrelevant to your original question/problem with the show. It was okay that the terminator went back in time before Reese did, because in that looping timelline, that was always the case. The terminator had zero impact on the events in that timeline, but instead helped perpetuate it. Just as Reese's jaunt to the past did. The loop was already created by that point.

The fascinating part about the original movie is precisely that: That somehow a steady timeline had been created from all the fiascos that took place. It doubtlessly took many, many jaunts into the past for such a steady loop to have been created, and those are some stories that I'd love to hear about at some point. I doubt we ever will, though.