I know there were a lot of these a couple weeks back, so if this question was already discussed, forgive me.
Anyway, in watching the trailer for the third one, it reminded me of a question I had from the second one:
How did the T-1000 and Terminatrix travel back? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but the time travel device will only allow organic matter (or something covered in organic matter) threw. Both the newer terminators were/are able to look like skin and bone, but they’re still just liquid metal. So, how’d they get threw the system?
Just as an out-of-my-a** guess, I would say that inertmatter can’t be sent back in time. The material has to be either organically alive, or something like a nanite-based self-repairing machine.
Well, in T2 Ahnuld identifies the T-1000 as being made of “mimetic poly-alloy…liquid metal.” It can mimic human skin well enough to fool humans so presumably it can mimic it well enough to get through the time machine. Although if it can mimic human skin well enough to fool a time machine one would think it could mimic “complex chemicals” and “moving parts” well enough to make a gun or a bomb.
I don’t know anything about the Terminatrix so I have no idea. If she has the same properties as the T-1000 then the same explanation could apply.
In T1, Reese told the police it had something to do with “the energy field of living tissue”. He also admitted he wasn’t a tech, so his understanding in this area was limited.
Maybe the newer Terminators are able to mimic this “energy field”. If so, it’s still an open question as to whether it’s because of their liquid-metal nature, or if an Arnold model could be fitted with the same technology.
Once again, a bizarre coincedence falls upon me as I peruse the SDMB. Just this very evening I received, as a gift, a new DVD.
T2: Extreme Edition
[sub]With this nifty metal case, to boot.[/sub]
There’s a “pop-up video” feature on this one, similar to the one used in the Mad Max SE DVD, and the Spider-Man disk; little text blurbs all throughout the film pop up, with behind the scenes info, trivia, and whatnot.
During the scene where the T-1000 arrives in the present, the trivia track asks just that question. The three prevailing theories on the set of the film were:
The T-1000 was, in fact, encased in a “skin-suit” for his trip, which he shed off-camera, at the same time that he duplicates the cop’s uniform. (The uniform bit was done off-cam to make you think he was the good guy, of course.)
The more sophisticated machine did, in fact, emit the bioelectric field needed, without actually having any flesh.
Shut up and keep that camera rolling!
I’m willing to suspend my disbelief enough to buy either 2 above, or some similar version of the idea, as Lumpy said earlier, or that Kyle Reece didn’t know tech stuff, and he wasn’t 100% right about how the thing worked.
[sub]I’m both dreading, and looking forward to the explanation of just how Skynet will still come to be, despite the events of the second flick, m’self.[/sub]
various terminator variants get sent through time by being encased in cloned flesh. My money is on the later model terminators simply being encased in a blob of flesh for the trip.
Go and read the comics. Although it isn’t “canon,” it does offer a good story and answer some of the lingering questions.
Of course, if Skynet covered the advanced terminators with a blob of flesh, it begs the question - “Why didn’t they send the T-1000 back with all sorts of advanced projectile weapons and other useful equipment, using the same method?”
The explanation to Skynet’s continued existence just smacked me in the forehead.
(Note, this is not an “official” spoiler, as I know nothing about the script for T3 yet, but I’ll hide it on the off chance that I’m right.)
Three words: Off Site Backup.
What kills me is I know I posted about this in some other Terminator thread not all that long ago, and completely forgot about it until earlier this evening.
I imagine that the “only living things can get through the time machine” thing was told to Reese just to make sure that he didn’t try to bring back a futuristic plasma rifle and fuck up the timestream. And I’m sure that Skynet was well aware that any other obvious future technology sent back to the present could also jeopardize its chances of ever coming to power, as well.
That would explain - assuming that Reese was just plain wrong about the “living tissue only” thing - why the Terminators came back looking like humans, AND why they didn’t bring any spiffy gadgets with them.
It’s also possible that Skynet, with its defenses smashed and a horde of humans invading its last stronghold, was too busy sending terminators back to twelve different points in time to have the requisite days or weeks of time needed to grow hunks of living flesh, just to stick guns into…
One of the comic books alluded to this, when a Terminator, its own skin already in place, grabs a human prisoner, dashes off to the time machine, shoves a pistol of some type into his guts, and takes the dying man back with him, so that it can retrieve the weapon in the “past.”
Did Skynet develop the time travel technology? Because I’m thinking (and really reaching here) that if humans developed it, they put that limitation in the technology to hopefully try and keep the machines out, or at least make it difficult for them to get back in time. In order to protect this secret (after all, you wouldn’t want the machines to know that it was easy for them to go back in time and slaughter humans en masse), humans spread the BS that you can’t take inorganic matter through the portal. The machines, being stupid, are too dumb to piddle with the settings (like rerouting it through the main deflector dish or reversing the polarity) and simply go through the trouble of wrapping the machines in masses of human flesh.
I always just assumed it was the machines, because if humans had done so, why wouldn’t they just keep sending back people to stop Skynet from ever being built?
I had read the comic where the terminator pulls the gun out of the human host, and often wondered “Well, why didn’t they do that to begin with?” but I guess it makes a better storyline without it, plus, there really shouldn’t be a need. I do like the “Advanced terminators are able to emit the same type of energy field” concept, but I honestly don’t think they ever really thought that far. Then again, how did the T-1000 already have a human form if it wasn’t sent back inside some kind of human casing (I can just imagine them pouring liquid metal into some poor bastard and tossing him threw the machine to have a very violent “Day after” experience).
