What I’ve never understood, and I guess it’s just one of those “just because” things…
If they can send back a Terminator because its outsides are made out of living flesh, couldn’t they just grow a big skin bag, stuff it full of Future Goodies, and send that back?
-Joe
I finally watch the first two episodes last night. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great.
I was annoyed by several weak plot points and some poor writing, but I think I watch another episode or two.
Summer Glau was better as a cyborg than she was as River. Most of the actors were as bad or worse than her, so this should work out fine for her.
None of the timeline stuff bothered me, I guess, I just enjoyed the first two movies without investing any real care for them. Terminator was great, but it was a Schwarzenegger movie for Og sake.
Jim
Missed the edit window, but thought of another fanwank explanation. Since the metal head was encased in living flesh right before the time jump, maybe it was sent through as the flesh was being burned off. I can sort-of swallow that, if we allow that the special effects team just didn’t do a good job conveying it onscreen.
As for the big skin bag (aka “let’s shove a phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range up the ass end of a cow and beam it”), presumably Skynet’s factory did the bio-engineering and it only made Terminators. The time travel device is new technology, so Skynet didn’t know it needed big skin bags beforehand to plan for producing them.
The humans stopped Skynet right as the first Terminator(s) were sent, and they took care to only send enough help to not alter the timeline for the worse. Trying to send a bag of goodies could actually *cause * Judgement Day.
And it’s possible another event stops them from using the time machine further. As for why they didn’t send a cow, there probably aren’t any around thanks to Skynet.
At this rate, I’ll have to change my username to Master Fanwanker.
I’m curious if these explanations are at all satisfying to the complainers crowd?
Can you explain why a terminator hesitated before pulling the trigger in the parking lot? That was an infuriatingly weak moment of lazy writing.
Sure, here’s three:
It figured it had John cornered and had plenty of time. Since previous shots were missing, it correctly deduced its targetting system was misaligned or malfunctioning. The hesitation was for the recalibration algorithm to complete.
It heard a noise from the truck and the hesitation was caused while its internal menu system was displaying possible responses [Turn head to look at noise, Shoot target, “Class Dismissed”, "Fuck you, assho…]
After shooting a lot of footage, the post-production team wanted to put together the scene with maximum entertainment value. They wanted some dramatic tension in the scene, without the payoff revealed too soon. So, they inserted a pause to let the audience digest what was happening and realize the danger that John was in.
Well 1 is illogical, 2 is a good solid fanwank, I don’t like it, but excellent defense of 3, lazy writers treating the audience as idiots. 
My problem is that I assumed these terminator units that were sent back to kill John had 1 overriding direction; **“Kill John Connor”. ** That should clear up the menu issues easily and additionally a terminator diagnosing a targeting error, would probably shoot and drive the gun through John’s head, ripping out his brains and ending the threat to Skynet. I really have to go with #3.
Jim
Eh, I’m not complaining, I’m just wondering. Good explanations, though. Your best one is simply “want to alter the timeline as little as possible” though. Most believable by far.
-Joe
If the substitute-teacher Terminator (the Substinator) travelled back in time with a gun hidden beneath the flesh of his thigh – why not make it a more futuristic weapon? Why a gun, anyway; why not a bomb that would wipe out the whole building? The machine doesn’t care about its own survival, or (of course) bystanders, as long as John Connor gets good and dead.
All this stuff made more sense with the original movie. One Terminator, one human soldier, and that’s it. No more time travel. Great self-contained story, perfect ending (with Sarah’s pregnancy neatly answering the question about what kind of sf time travel theory the story operates under).
The show’s premise seems to suggest that there’s going to be Terminators running hot and cold. There gonna end up porting the whole future back to 2007 and just have the war right here.
Heck, I’ll even let them posit that going forward in time is somehow different, or that once a machine has gone back in time, going forward doesn’t affect it. Although the “going forward in time” theory falls down when you realize that clothes and weapons obeyed the normal time travel rule.
I’m just wondering how inclusive the “covered by flesh” rule is. Because it would suck to arrive in the future with all your fillings missing.
When Skynet was sending Terminators back, they were sent through carrying guns and equipment, which vanished on the other side. The Glauminator stated she spent 73 days tracking them down, so the Substinator also had to prep after arriving. It stands to reason that a modern handgun could be procured, but not a futuristic weapon. If it thought it was the only Terminator assassin, it wouldn’t want to blow itself up if uncertain that John also died.
You’re putting your own human motivations in place of the alien terminator thought process. And why couldn’t a futuristic AI’s thinking pauses be different than a humans?
This is one of biggest mysteries in the series for me. In the first movie, Reese says that there was one time machine, the Terminator went through, then he went through, then the resistance destroyed the facility. Since the first movie though, there’s been another four bad Terminators, three good Terminators, a human engineer sent back to the '60s, an unknown number of additional human resistance fighters, and who knows what else. How is all this other stuff getting back?
I can’t wait unitl they start searching for the Army of the 12 Monkeys.
Easy: after the first movie, the timeline was changed. The junked T-101’s right hand and CPU was studied by Miles Dyson, whose research led to Skynet V2, which sent back the T-1000 (and T-800 protector). After the events of the second movie, the timeline was again changed. The date at which Skynet comes online changes, as does Judgement Day. (Which leads to another question of how did John know which Judgement Day date to use for the combination safe?) Out of that timeline, the Glauminator and Substinator were sent back. Since the future appears to change each time, it seems to prove that it is possible to change the future, but unclear if only subtle superficial changes can occur, or of Judgement Day can be prevented outright. If so, either there are parallel universes or a single universe that reconciles itself via time ripples that overwrites history.
My guess is he used the “original” date for judgement day - the one that is the only ‘constant’ at this point. (The one known in the first movie, as told to Sarah by Reese and relayed to John by Sarah).
Well, presumably Reese can’t know that the facility was destroyed, only that he was told that’s what the plan was. Maybe they lied to him, knowing he’d be more motivated if he thought he was alone. Or maybe something happened that prevented the destruction.
That’s actually very easy. What ever he used would be right. In the future, he would remember what he used back then and make sure that’s the combination.
This was exactly my thought as it was happening. I figured that she purposely avoids saying that for just this reason. (Maybe she says “ditto” instead.)
Re: time-travelling and metal:
Let’s face it - this show inherited a ridiculous premise, that the laws of physics/time-travel could be “tricked” by a thin layer of flesh.
It’s like a cartoon where a barbell is made to weigh less by covering up the last few zeros. It’s like an episode of Scooby-doo where the criminals dipped jewels into gravy and then fed them to venus flytraps (who now thought that they were meat… because of the gravy). It’s stupid, and has been stupid since the beginning. It was just an excuse to show Arnold’s muscles, and add a little more drama to the first movie by having both guys have to procure clothes and weapons.
[/rant off]
The rule for science fiction has always been you get one massive jump, then the rest has to be consistent with the rules of the real world (and it must also be internally consistent). I’m trying very hard to like this show, and I mostly do, but when tv wants to muck around with sci fi, they need to learn the rules and follow them. We can give you the occasional deus ex machina, but you have to earn it (like Buffy being brought back to life because hers wasn’t a natural death, and she re-animated in a coffin and had to claw her way out, and felt like shit on toast for the next year).
I think my husband gave up on the show when the metal robot head came through the time warp. You can’t just ignore your own rules, and they should know that (or at least know that sci fi fans will ALWAYS notice things like that).
Agreed; I watched it in slow-mo to make sure. You see the Terminator in closeup, looking at John cowering in fear on the ground. Then the T. glances to its right, reacting to the sound or peripheral-vision-sighting of the approaching truck. Then you see the T. from John’s perspective, still looking forward. The truck races by, knocking the T. off its ass.
I liked the first two episodes well enough; they’re doing about as well as they can given all the “continuity” (if you can call it that) issues from the three movies. I mostly liked T3, FWIW. I agree it’s gonna get a bit silly if other terminators are showing up all the time… I almost imagine a SkyNet conveyor belt carrying them directly from the assembly room to the time machine in a never-ending procession.
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