Also, didn’t that one prisoner, Wisher, confess that he was Andy Goode? So was he lying? Did someone else get killed in our time frame who was mistakenly identified as Andy Goode? It’s going to be interesting to see how this develops in the following weeks.
Maybe he was Andy, but since Derek hadn’t gone back to kill him, yet, he’d have still been alive.
Kinda wonder if they’re setting up future appearences for Kyle in upcoming episodes, though…I mean, if T1’s Reese came from a different timeline, there’d be no reason to send him back from the altered “Judgement-Day-2011” timeline, would there? Maybe John sent him back this time to do something completely different. Like wait around somewhere in New Mexico circa 2005 with a cancer vaccine ampule shoved up his sinus, wondering why the hell John and Sarah haven’t shown up on schedule. :smack: Or maybe to go back and keep Perry’s ancestor from being murdered by Leonidas.
Depending on your interpretation of Terminator time-travel mechanics, of course.
I try not to think about all the time paradoxes. After all, if John and Sarah keep Judgment Day from ever happening, Kyle Reese won’t get sent back and John will never have been born. Which means Judgment Day will occur, John will send Kyle back in time, John will be born, etc., etc.
My head is spinning.
To the OP, it’s far from perfect, but I’ve been enjoying the show quite a bit. I also had no problem with wiping the third movie away (you had to, right?) to make a series.
I recently re-watched the first episode, and I’m not so sure this is a legit gripe. She seemed pretty strange in that High School setting. Are you worried that she was there for some time before John arrived? Why would she be? She knew when he was going to show up, right? She would have had to have passed for a normal kid for a day or two.
Of course, she kind of looks like she’s in her mid-twenties, so that’s a problem, but I don’t have a problem with the ‘fitting in’ point.
The Terminator was posing as a high school teacher. He called roll and established that John was in class. Rather than trying to shoot John from a distance, he could have, in his guise as a teacher, gotten physically close enough to John to ensure the kill.
That sort of thing happens in the movies, too, though. For instance, the T-1000, upon first encountering John in the mall, doesn’t get close to him and stab him with an arm blade. It fires its stolen police pistol at him. In in the first movie, the Terminator rarely went after someone with its robohands, but preferred to shoot from a distance.
That can be easily fanwanked away though.
If a Terminator gets up close and personal with a person that needs terminatin’, that gives any other humans in the vincinity a free shot. Enough humans with enough guns can take down a Terminator in the future, it’s probably not programmed to act different in the past.
Only the reprogrammed Terminators (Arnie in T2 & T3 and Cameron in SCC) seem to prefer hand-to-hand over gunplay.
Oh, no doubt.
Just saying that this isn’t a “flaw” in the Terminator TV series.
You see, in the future, Terminators are expert marksmen – but their aiming software is calibrated for an atmosphere loaded with fallout and dust, and for guns that may be clogged with post-apocalyptic dust and stuff. When they come back to our present, they are calibrated incorrectly for clean guns and clean (well, Los Angeles “clean”) air, but still act as though shooting is the most effective way to kill someone… :rolleyes: :dubious:
Which leads me to my major gripe about both this series and the movies. Why would a terminator ever miss a shot with a gun? I mean, the ballistics calculations are well known. A terminator has access to all the variables needed to figure out a perfect firing solution under any circumstances. When a terminator fires a gun, the outcome should be a foregone conclusion, the bullet will strike where it was aimed. The only exception might be the very first shot with a particular gun never previously used. The first shot would give the T all the correction information needed and all subsequent shots should strike exactly where aimed. Even on full auto, a T should be able to correctly aim every round because they are strong enough eliminate all muzzle rise. Yet, the substitutionator has a clear shot at JC in the classroom and misses? This one fact alone stretches my ability to suspend disbelief past the point of breaking.
Yes, but the targets are always moving. John was suspicious of the substitute when he first showed up and was hesitating answering the role call. So when the terminator brought up the gun he was already in motion in the second it took for him to aim.
Please stop doing this, or save yourself some grief and stop watching. First of all, have you ever built a robot? By your logic, no human snipers would be needed today, since we already have the technology to do what you describe. Second, the series would be pretty dull if all the main characters got their heads snipered off from three miles away in the first five minutes. Third, they’re trying to produce an entertaining series that’s actually produceable. Fourth, why don’t you go to the Star Wars threads and complain why Darth doesn’t use the force to crush Luke’s heart like a grape in the first three seconds of their first encounter? Or go read a Superman comic…
But if he did that, people would complain that the terminators are thinking too much like humans. Terminator AI minds are supposed to be “alien” and not behave like humans, right?
As already established, my ability to suspend my disbelief has bounds.
But this leads to my point. From a human perspective, terminators should never be seen to hesitate in any way. Especially not long enough to get hit by a truck.
Why not? Terminators can think fast, but they can’t think instantaneously. The more unexpected (to them) a situation, the longer they will need to think about it.
Why would any targeting computer miss? Something obscures or obstructs the target. It doesn’t have enough time to calculate a full firing solution. Something gets in the way after the projectile has been fired. There are errors inherent in everything from the mechanics of the weapon (which is being held by a fleshy hand, not a fixed weapons mound) to the optics to the sensors and calculations.
But thats going to be a problem with the series. How many times can you get lucky escaping from an unstoppable killing machine with a computer for a brain that doesn’t eat, sleep, has no mercy or pity, can’t be reasoned with and won’t ever ever stop until you are dead or out of the scene.
Also, the T-8x series terminators aren’t that fast. Remember young John beating Arnold in the “Gimme five, up high, down low, too slow!” game in T-2?
msmith537, that was a well thought out response that, sadly, will be completely ignored by the crowd of complainers who love to complain too much to let logic get in the way of their complaining.
All of the variables concerning a terminator’s grip, sensors, and optics would be corrected for before the mission began. It its, after all, a terminator with a mission. Mission prep and planning can be taken for granted. As for obstructions or lack of time, if there is no firing solution in either case, why take the shot at all? It would just move on to the next most promising kill solution at whatever it’s processor speed is, which by 2025, is an order of magnitude greater than today’s speeds.
I don’t mean to spoil anyone else’s enjoyment of the series. Hell, I was 18 in when the original Terminator came out and thought it was the greatest, most ass-kickinest movie ever made. Still do for the most part. It’s just that, as a computer professional and electronics technician by trade, some things set off my bullshit detector.
Now, I am genuinely curious… does the subsequent jump through the window set off your detector? After all, no real school would use sugar stunt glass in an exterior window, yet our hero jumps through with nary a scratch. :rolleyes:
Oh, don’t worry there Connie my bullshit detector was already fully saturated well before then.
Don’t get me wrong, I can sit down and watch the show. I can laugh at the funny parts and appreciate the attempts at the timeline tie-ins. It’s just that I wish the writers would make more of an effort with the technical aspects of what a terminator is and what they should be able to do.
The operating condition of an individual weapon obtained in the past, heat and humidity (and air pollution) factors of the past, and even the effects of time travel on a Terminator’s systems all can’t be corrected for before the mission begins.
Say it calculates that any individual shot only has a 20% chance of hitting. The target is fleeing…by the time the chance of hitting increases, the target may have escaped. Better to fire multiple shots at that 20%, and take the chance that at least one will hit, than wait and hit nothing.
Actually, we can’t say that it’s all that faster. According to T2, Terminators (and Skynet) are neural-net processors, not superfast standard processors. Neural nets have the advantage of being extremely adaptible and able to learn, but they aren’t necessarily faster than normal processors, depending on what it is they’re trying to do.
A neural net could figure out an advantageous chess move faster than a standard processor, for instance, but only because it’s learned how to play better and can jump right to an almost “intuitive” solution, where the standard processor has to crunch through every single possible move before it even begins to decide on the best one. But if you ask the computers to give you every possible good move, the standard processor will output them long before the neural net does.