The T-1000 itself. Does every drop of liquid metal have full programming? That is, where is the ‘brain’ of the machine? I would have found it easier to believe if there was some central computer deep within the T-1000 that controlled all the individual bits of liquid metal. If every piece can reassert itself individually, then all Skynet needs to kill Connor is one drop that burrows into his head and destroys his brain. Or, maybe, divide up the T-1000 into a hundred little Terminators.
Of course, THAT machine would have been destroyed by the liquid nitrogen. But what’s wrong with that?
Because we’re talking about science fiction. Just because it includes some things that are impossible (now), doesn’t mean you have to hand-wave away everything. It should still create a believable word. When it’s science fiction set in the real, current (or in this case 1980s) world, you can critique their use of the real world.
Not that I think any of nex’s complaints have any merit. The terminator’s method of finding Sarah Connor obviously worked since he found her on third go, which isn’t bad going when you only have firstname/surname/large city. Even if he’d known her own home address and never gone to the other women, she would have been at work and then out, and Kyle Reese found her first. Knowing her full name and home address wouldn’t have made any difference; knowing her place of work might, but this was 1984 and hers was not the kind of job you could look up easily even now.
Fanwank: the T-1000’s intelligence is basically a function of its volume. Each individual nanite that makes up its body isn’t intelligent, but working in concert, they can create a sophisticated neural net that functions as an artificial intelligence. But it takes a significant amount of the machines to build that net - probably somewhat more than 50% of the total mass of the T-1000. Individual droplets have enough sentience to seek each other out, but can’t do anything more sophisticated than that.
What fanwank? That was shown on screen at least twice.
First when the T-1000 uses its hook to grab the car. After Arnie blasts him, John tosses the, now inert, piece into the road. It only gains sentience to rejoin the mass when its near the T-1000. Later, when the T-1000 is shattered, the pieces can only seek each other out and are unable to form complex human forms until more than half of them have rejoined the mass.
T1 and T2 are a lot more internally consistent than people give them credit for.
We see the bits running together to make the whole T-1000, sure. The fanwank is to explain why they do that, instead of turning into dozens of little homicidal Robert Patricks.
If the T-1000 had a separate processor that controlled the individual bits, that also can explain how the individual bits can reform-because it is sending radio signals and telling them to ‘come home’. Maybe there is a range limit, which is why it can’t form individual “little homicidal Robert Patricks”.
But, Miller, I do like your FW about the ‘volume intelligence’. It fits what we see in the movie better. It explains why they can survive the liquid nitrogen attack.
But, since we are on the subject of nitpicking: while I enjoy the idea of a liquid metal terminator, and I feel the movie was for the most part internally consistent how it would work, the question I have is, where do the individual bits get their power? Is every nano-terminator nuclear powered? Because they need a lot of power to stay attached to each other (as we see in the movie, the power is not limitless. Shotgun blasts can over come the ‘joining’ force.).
I agree with your point, and I’ve said similar things as well - science fiction or fantasy is allowed to ask us to accept certain basic premises and then the rest should really flow logically. (Though I’m not sure all four of the points that I cited do flow logically.)
But to attack the movie on the technique used by the terminator to find Sarah Connor is just silly. Not only is a actually a pretty decent technique given what we know of both the 1980s and of the future, but if you’re going to accept the elephant in the room, why pick nits off its back?
Well, I’d say that Terminator trying to find Sarah Connor is the basic premise that you have to accept, but from then on it’s quite reasonable to critique his choices of search. However, we’re agreed that none of the particular alternate ways of finding Sarah Connor were any better than the one he chose.
Didn’t that I was “Ok” with anything.
It’s a work of fiction and in fiction you can do ANYTHING.
So why limit yourself to using methods which weren’t even state of the art when the film was made?
There may not even have been a Sarah Connor or a John Connor. They could have been fictional characters created by the human resistance simply to f*ck with Skynet. So sending a cyborg back in time to kill someone seems to be a rather stupid for human beings, much less an advanced AI.
And yes…DNA is a far better method of finding an exact person than looking in a phonebook ever was. After all even the film shows using the phone book was a dismal failure twice and would have been has Sarah Connor left the bar instead sitting and waiting for the plot to catch up to her.
[hijack][flag on the play!]I have always hated this attitude, for the simple reason that you can *not *do anything in a book just because it’s fiction, at least not if you want to write *good *fiction.
If all you’re interested in writing is crap, then sure, go to town. Have as many amazing coincidences, McGuffins, and inexplicable black boxes or deus ex machinas as you like. But if you want to write good fiction, you have to establish your world and then work within its parameters in a logical, consistent way.
There’s a reason for the cliché that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction can’t be all that strange or it will never be accepted. Truth just is.
[/hijack]
No, there had to be a “Sarah Connor”. The leader of the resistance had to have a biological mother. Now maybe the name, address and other details were false information fed to Skynet, but there seems to be no possible way that you could know what quality of intelligence Skynet had on the individual. So how can you possibly proclaim that it was a rather stupid plan?
Can you explain how? How would Skynet have any idea what Sarah Connor’s DNA was like? And even if it somehow had her entire genome sequenced perfectly, how exactly would that allow it to find her in 1985?
Even in 2014, police are utterly unable to use DNA to find someone with no criminal record of any sort. So how the hell could a machine accomplish that in 1985?
Your comment here doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.
So explain to us what technique you think would work better. And don’t just handwave about “DNA”. Tell us the actual steps the machine should have taken that would have worked so much better.
Ummm, the 911 operator told her to wait in the bar where there were lots of witnesses. That wasn’t “waiting for the plot to catch up to her”, that is standard emergency procedure when someone calls in saying they are being followed.
As far as plans go, the Terminator’s actually seems utterly foolproof based on the information the machine had. By killing Sarah Connors one by one, he either kills his target, or he forces her to seek police protection. As soon as she seeks police protection, she will become locatable via police records and the Terminator only needs to get access to the files of the detectives working on the case to locate and kill her. Even Sarah Connors with no phone number or any other sort of record will make themselves known as soon as he killings start. It’s the optimal plan.
Can you actually see any way at all for the Terminator’s plan to fail in the absence of Reece? If the only flaw in a plan is due to a lack of information about an apparently impossible eventuality that in itself has only a tiny chance of ruining the plan, that’s a damn good plan.
I’ve worked for 3 companies in the early to mid/late 90’s that used an off-site mainframe for processing (all 3 mainframes were actually located in other cities), and did off site backups, as well as “disaster recovery plans” in the event that something happened to our site or our processing site. Plus at least 1 of them was required by law to maintain archived records dating back so many years. I don’t know if these archives were stored on or off site, but they had to be physically retrieved and loaded into the system.
So I’d say it was fairly common for at least medium to large companies to have off site backups back then.
It was (and is) a stupid plan as according to the narrative, Skynet had only one shot to send something into the past. Instead of sending a Terminator lie dormant in the distant past until it could revive itself or even a few years back to let Skynet know how to build the time machine earlier and this bypass the whole “John Connor” affair, it send a Terminator to the past to kill someone that may or not even be a real person.
How could Skynet possibly know that Sarah Connor was "real” if it lacked the necessary information to find her?
What if her name wasn’t “Sarah Connor” in the past? Film’s over
What if she didn’t live in Los Angeles, but a suburb? or even another city,entirely? Film’s over
What if she was out of town when the Terminator came back? Film’s over
What if she was John Connor’s adopted mother, not his bio-mom? Film’s over.
As I said…stupid plan.
Are the police a highly advanced AI which has managed to almost completely wipe out humanity and has the technical ability to construct a working time machine? Probably not, as they can’t even solve who broke into my neighbor’s car last week. And that person left a blood trail and fingerprints.
Even a relatively slow HUMAN would tried to discover if John Connor was a real person or a legend. Sending a Terminator back in time to kill a legend makes even less sense than sending one back without enough information. Considering that there few human beings left alive, searching for John Connor or proof his existence (hence the DNA) would have been paramount (No…not the film studio) as…wait for it…the plan fails before it begin
Handwave what?
DNA was discovered in the 1950s. Certainly an AI which had conquered the planet would know that to track humans it would need a unique identifier to do so. Perhaps it could use quantum tracking…but that’s beyond our technology now 30 years after the film was made.
DNA seems to be the most obvious choice as it would ensure that Terminator actually DID kill the Sarah Connor that it was seeking. The writers in 1983 when the film was made simply didn’t know about DNA and they compensated ( rather sloppily) by using the phone book to track her.
Even when people used the phone book regularly, people still had unlisted numbers or simply no phone in their name. Or they used a first initial instead of their entire first name;especially if they were a woman.
Actually the Captain (played the late Paul WInfield…great actor) told her to wait there, not the operator.
You did see the film,right?
“Optimal plan?”
I take it that planning isn’t part of your skill sets as it was plan that was doomed to failure before it began.
The Terminator killed two wrong women before it accidentally uncovered the REAL Sarah Connor. And it alerted the authorities (and women named Sarah) that someone was hunting women with the same name. Exactly how long was it supposed to continue this killing spree before they managed to disable it or destroy it?
Kyle Reese temporarily disabled it using a 12 gauge. The police and the military have access to bigger and.armor-piercing weapons. The Terminator probably would have killed one or two more Sarah Connors before the police or military caught up to it and captured or destroyed it.
The “plan” was never going to succeed. I just pointed out four reasons above how it could have failed and that’s just using the fact that it wasn’t sure that A Sarah Connor even existed.
Here are four more:
The humans in the future send someone into their near past and destroy the time machine when its being built.
Sarah Connor leaves California after the shootout the police station, changes her name and never goes back. Would a single Terminator be able to kill 3+ billion people (the world’s female population) to find her?
The humans send Kyle Reese into the past BEFORE the Terminator arrives and he waits at the spot where the Terminator will appear. He disables it with the shotgun or piece of heavy equipment…or…anything.
The humans send Kyle Reese to a time period before the Terminator arrives, he meets Connor and moves her away from LA or marries her and changes her last name to Reese. Movie’s over.
It’s been three months and you’re still coming up with lame criticisms. It’s a sad day when you’re routinely out-logicked by a 1980s Arnold sci-fi action movie.
I don’t think s/he really understands how these things function, for example quoted from post above:
“Are the police a highly advanced AI which has managed to almost completely wipe out humanity and has the technical ability to construct a working time machine? Probably not, as they can’t even solve who broke into my neighbor’s car last week. And that person left a blood trail and fingerprints.”
They left a blood trail and fingerprints, so what? If the person who did it has never been in trouble with the law before they won’t have fingerprints on record and they certainly won’t have DNA. Best they can do is keep it on file in the hope said person comes to police attention again.
But then television has made the general public think the police routinely function in a kind of Minority Report clairvoyance crossed with 27th century technology and magical fairy-dust.
