# So ... about The Terminator (1984)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** movies
**Created:** [December 23, 2022, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017 "2022-12-23T19:59:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Dodgy\_Dude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dodgy_Dude)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/1 "2022-12-23T19:59:51Z")
Reese dies in 1984, so how was he alive in 2029 for John to send him back?
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/2 "2022-12-23T20:07:38Z")
This isn’t a “go back and kill baby Hitler” scenario. The Reese that was sent back was, say, 30 years old. He spends a couple of weeks in 1984, has some laughs, meets a nice lady, sires a child, kills a robot, and then dies at 30 years and 2 weeks old. Him dying in 1984 doesn’t make the life he’d already lived vanish like Marty McFly’s family picture.
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### Author:  [@Folly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folly)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/3 "2022-12-23T20:08:00Z")
He’s born in 2003, so whatever he did in 1984 apparently didn’t screw up his own birth. Plus, you know, time travel (spoilers).
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### Author:  [@Folly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folly)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/4 "2022-12-23T20:14:30Z")
There is a paradox of course. Why would he have to go back to save someone who was only conceived because he went back in time.
Does this plot have to be spoilered? I have no idea.
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### Author:  [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/5 "2022-12-23T20:21:29Z")
> [@Folly](#):
>
> Why would he have to go back to save someone who was only conceived because he went back in time.
The actual mission was to go back and have sex with Sarah Connor, they just didn’t know it.
> [@Folly](#):
>
> Does this plot have to be spoilered?
Nope.
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/6 "2022-12-23T20:22:38Z")
Presumably the “original” John Connor in Reese’s timeline was the son of some other man and he changed the future by sleeping with Sarah.
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/7 "2022-12-23T20:23:56Z")
I never got that impression. In one of the other Terminator projects (I think T2), John explains that he spent years manipulating Reese to fall in love with Sarah Connor.
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/8 "2022-12-23T20:31:39Z")
> [@Folly](#):
>
> There is a paradox of course. Why would he have to go back to save someone who was only conceived because he went back in time.
>
> Does this plot have to be spoilered? I have no idea.
For the same reason that he has to go back in time to save her from a robot built by an AI that was developed by studying the components of said robot, which were also sent back in time.
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/9 "2022-12-23T20:35:08Z")
I still haven’t seen Rise Of The Machine, Salvation, Genesis or Dark Fate. I have seen Terminator, T2, and all the episodes of the television series. The tv series was great.
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/10 "2022-12-23T20:40:22Z")
I was basing my reply on the original Terminator alone - the sequels complicate matters, but with the original movie only, you have a completely stable time loop.
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/11 "2022-12-23T20:44:34Z")
You seem to be making the false assumption that killing, say, a 30 year old Reese in 1984 somehow makes a 1 year old Reese in 2000 (or whenever) not exist, because 1984 comes before 2000. But that doesn’t really make sense. 30 year old Reese does not become 1 year old Reese 20 years later. Unless Reese changes something in the past that would prevent his own birth, why would killing 30 year old Reese make newborn Reese not exist? Reese has his own personal timeline that is independent from the universe’s chronological timeline, that’s what happens when you start playing around with time travel.
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/12 "2022-12-23T20:46:50Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> that’s what happens when you start playing around with time trave
Apparently, I have mastered time travel in the future. As a result, the ghost of my future self haunts my current apartment. He sometimes yells at me in Yiddish. I don’t speak Yiddish. Apparently, I break the laws of time and space and master a second language before I die.
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/13 "2022-12-23T21:42:08Z")
> [@Babale](#):
>
> you have a completely stable time loop.
If you take Terminator by itself, it is.
You bring in T2, and you have BTTF divergent-fracturing timeline scenario.
You bring in T3 and the divergent-fracturing timeline is still there, but it becomes apparent that Skynet is getting better every iteration.
(I never saw the next two)
You add Dark Fate and the divergent-fracturing timeline now allows time travelers from _different futures_ to exist in the same timeline!
You add the TV series, and it becomes obvious there are Skynets from different futures that are fighting each other!
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/14 "2022-12-23T21:45:51Z")
Minor Spoiler- That was one of the things I loved about the tv series. A couple from the future have a fight because he can’t remember details on how they met. Eventually, they realize they are from different futures.
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### Author:  [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/15 "2022-12-23T21:49:28Z")
> [@Folly](#):
>
> There is a paradox of course. Why would he have to go back to save someone who was only conceived because he went back in time.
“So _Back To The Future_ is a bunch of bullshit?”
Stranger
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### Author:  [@Folly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folly)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/16 "2022-12-23T22:09:11Z")
Interestingly (well, to me anyway), the harry potter time travel in the 3rd book is fairly self consistent. This has been analyzed elsewhere on the internet, but I don’t think anything happens the 2nd time around that hadn’t already happened the first time around (and vice versa). It was mostly a plot device to have duplicates of two of the characters running around doing their own things.
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### Author:  [@caligulathegod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caligulathegod)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/17 "2022-12-23T23:30:20Z")
[ ](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/764/810/42c.png)
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/18 "2022-12-23T23:30:33Z")
> [@Folly](#):
>
> Interestingly (well, to me anyway), the harry potter time travel in the 3rd book is fairly self consistent. This has been analyzed elsewhere on the internet, but I don’t think anything happens the 2nd time around that hadn’t already happened the first time around (and vice versa).
Yes - the characters think they are changing the future because they have incomplete information, and with the benefit of hindsight once they go back in time they are able to ensure that they never reveal anything their past selves didn’t already know.
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### Author:  [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/19 "2022-12-23T23:41:22Z")
Yes.
_PoA_ and _Terminator_ (1984) are both examples of closed time loops where causality works retroactively and free will is (by the omniscient reader/viewer) an illusion. Things that happen in the time loops have always happened and will always happen - they are fixed, as it were, in time, and anything that looks like it was an attempt to break out of the loop ends up keeping the loop in place. It’s kinda like a classical Greek tragedy, in a way.
This kind of time travel causality works very well dramatically when kept for a twist ending. However, the lack of free will causes sequels which include time travel (_Harry Potter and the Cursed Child_ or _T2_, to cite the examples) to generally abandon this type of deterministic time travel in favor of a many-worlds or branching-futures type of model - something where the audience can feel tension about what will happen next, because once you’ve seen behind the screen you know that any time travel machination can only reinforce what’s already been happening - which can be played for laughs, as in _Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure_’s “remember a trash can” scene.
_By His Bootstraps_ is a classic SF example of multiple time loops which encompass one another, in one of which the protagonist attempts (in his second or third time through the loop) to do something that he didn’t do in previous iterations, but finds he cannot do so. Basically, after that moment he ends up “going with the flow” and by the end even ensures that the causal loop closes.
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### Author:  [@rippingtons\_fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rippingtons_fan)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2022, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-about-the-terminator-1984/977017/20 "2022-12-23T23:58:41Z")
One thing I don’t understand. Wasn’t it John Connor himself who sent Reese back to protect Sarah Connor? And if Reese mated with Sarah Connor to produce John Connor, wouldn’t Reese be John Connor’s biological father?
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