Well, you’d probably want to do the DNA testing on the corpses if it was possible, because if you kill all the best guesses in LA and still haven’t gotten her you might want to go a bit deeper there before you start killing other Sarahs.
But pretty much, yeah. Why would Skynet care about collateral damage or killing extra Sarah Connors or anything of the sort? Actually, if the Terminator has not been destroyed after a certain time period it would make sense to start also killing infant John Connors of any description as well, whether or not it’s already killed the right Sarah Connor (or knows it has.) I mean, what else is it gonna do? Deactivate itself?
My family had a PhoneMate answering machine in the 70s for my Dad’s business. Just like the VCRs of the day, it was expensive. By the time I was out of school in the early 80s, I had a PhoneMate, a VCR, and a CD player all of my own. Prices had gone down.
I didn’t get my own time machine or Terminator until 1999, and they were pretty buggy. Constantly ending up going back to 1945 Germany to kill Hitler. I can’t tell you how many dead Hitler DNA swabs I still have in storage somewhere…
I still don’t see how the Term could have found her using DNA in 1984. I don’t see how it could do it today. Unless it just went to the phone book looked up every Sarah Conner and killed her and then took a DNA sample. But for that to work the Term would have to have a DNA sample to compare to and it obviously didn’t as it was never mentioned in the movie.
Which to me actually makes the movie better, the Terminator has some degree of advanced intelligence but is not omnipotent or omniscient. Much like any machine running with a well constructed algorithmic search routine it goes to the methods that are the best combination of: fast, reliable, and likely to succeed. If those methods all fail to pan out he uses other techniques. In the 1980s the phone book was a very good way to find people. Everyone I was friends with almost was in the phone book. I wasn’t, but I’ve always been an outlier–having an unlisted number was enough that it would often be remarked on back in that time. It also wasn’t considered weird to be looking someone up in the phone book. Many times I remember new friends, acquaintances or coworkers would mention to me “hey, I had some people over and you aren’t in the book so I couldn’t call you, what’s your #?” Back then you had to specifically request not to be in that book, and truth be told the phone company did a pretty damn good job of having accurate listings and new ones came out like every year.
The phone book was an important tool in the 80s and there were good arguments to be made against unlisting yourself, and since it required deliberate action by a phone subscriber most people by default didn’t bother.
Given all this the phone is the most likely fast and reliable method to finding Sarah Connor. It makes perfect sense a machine would go to such a simple method and use a brute force tactic. If he had found 800 Sarah Connors in the phone book it’s likely he would have considered an alternate tactic. But other suggestions like using DMV records or court records only make sense IMO after the phone book selection doesn’t pan out–at least assuming the phone book isn’t filled with dozens of Sara Connor entries–and as we know from the movie it wasn’t.
I’m sure since the T-800 was programmed with enough knowledge of 1980s human society to know about phone books he would have known about how to get court records or even DMV records if he needed to, but none of those make sense as a first choice.
Then of course DNA is just a nonsense option that would be useless in tracking Sarah Connor. We know that the T-1000 in T2 has the ability to actually identify DNA through scanner technology in his eyes, and can match it against known persons. But the rules of movies say we can’t use things only known from the 2nd film to make arguments within the universe of the first film, and in the second film it’s a deleted scene only seen in extended editions and it’s also only shown to be used by a different model terminator. For all we know a T-800 would need to take a sample fluid/tissue and take it to a lab just like a human would, and would then need to know how to use the lab equipment to actually get the DNA information, and then would need something to compare it to (assuming he was sent back w/Sarah Connor’s DNA somehow.)
I think it might be argued, and that might be nevadexile’s argument, that since we, in the 2000s, know about DNA and instant biometrics it wouldn’t make sense for a futuristic machine to not build it into its death machines. But the thing is, the Terminators are not *designed *to be hunter-killers and investigators. The whole concept is to pass for a lone human survivor for a couple days at most, until the local La Resistance takes it into a hidden bunker, whereupon the Terminator suddenly loads murder.exe.
Sending one of the first Termie models back in time to find one lone, *specific *person falls far outside of these operating parameters, which explains why Arnold’s not necessarily a) good at it, b) bothering to blend in or c) equipped with all the latest whizbang search chrome. It was a hail mary pass all along.
The events of T1 changed the timeline some, which in turn informed SkyNet of a working strategy to pursue *before *he’d been reduced to that hail mary pass. So it gets the opportunity to send a better, meaner, infiltratier Terminator. And sending it later in time (instead of even earlier) means less of a butterfly effect, so that makes sense via frantic handwaving and fanwankery
The thing is, though, the whole premise is flawed in that it hinges on the fact that nobody BUT John Connor could possibly lead the Resistance to win against SkyNet.
Even assuming SkyNet kills Sarah, John and everybody looks even remotely like 'em, it’s extremely unlikely nobody else would step up to the plate. The world is full of people who know guerilla tactics, explosives and computers.
For one, since we haven’t invented time travel, we don’t know what the limitations are for changing the past. Maybe it’s real easy. If Skynet succeeded in killing Sarah, and someone else stepped up, from the new future’s Skynet POV, they’d just do the same thing, going back in time and killing THAT guy’s mother. They wouldn’t know that they’d done the same thing before, or even how many times before. Eventually, there wouldn’t be anyone that succeeded in uniting humans against the machines, and the machines win, now and forever.
The other reason I don’t think it is a flaw, is that Skynet might just not have the imagination to think about the scenario you mentioned. Maybe they are very linear thinkers. We can wrap our minds around four dimensional timey-wimey possibilities, but maybe they can’t. Maybe they freeze up when the consider paradoxes. Time paradoxes are not logical. So they did what they thought would work, because that’s all they could do.
The movies back this up. Skynet DID lose the war, after all! Losing to a rag-tag bunch of humans with no infrastructure left.
I think we have to assume that it’s not that easy and/or “free” (in terms of resources and/or time units), else there’s really little point in finding Connor at all. SkyNet could just send an infinity of terminators to a point in time about 5 seconds after it first became operational or self-aware and punch everybody through walls, everywhere at once, all the time, forever.
Besides, I mean, time travel involves telling the laws of physics to sit down and shut up, it can’t possibly be as easy as shoving a nuclear reactor inside a sports car
In one timeline, possibly, but if you consider the implications of time tr-oh god I’ve gone cross-eyed :p.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the future where everyone has their own flying car, entire meals come in pill form, and the Earth is run by DAMN DIRTY APES.
I think we have to assume that it’s not that easy and/or “free” (in terms of resources and/or time units), else there’s really little point in finding Connor at all.
[quote]
I meant that Skynet only does it “once”, but in several sequential alternate timelines. No matter how hard or expensive, they’re only doing it once per timeline.
The spice helps me see the alternate timelines. The future’s so fuzzy, I gotta wear shades.
Skynet is winning, or at least branching off timelines in which they will win eventually.
In T1, the machines were losing and the time travel was a last-ditch effort. The machines themselves were not particularly sophisticated.
In T2, the machines suffer an early defeat (the bombing of Cyberdyne) but this only pushes judgement day back. The events of T1 have caused a stronger Skynet to emerge as we see with the T-1000.
In T3, we find out that judgement day is inevitable and that pushing it back further is a terrible idea. Skynet is developed by the military in the 21st century and has all kinds of capabilities it never had before. We also find out that in the future, John Connor has been assassinated (by his own sentimentality) and he has to face this future without a few of his lieutenants.
Although T4 is in between the present and the far future, we see that it’s not going well for the resistance. Their base is destroyed, the Terminators are everywhere and the T-800 is ready to rock twenty years early. We also find out that Skynet can develop a Terminator so sophisticated it does not even know that it isn’t human.
So I would guess the real pivotal person is Sarah Connor, not John.
Let’s call our normal time sequence “A”, this is one in which SkyNet is developed organically, starts a nuclear war, and enslaves mankind but is ultimately defeated by John Connor–the son of Sarah Connor. We don’t know who fathered this John Connor.
When SkyNet sends the T-800 back in time, it immediately branches us off onto a new time sequence from the moment of the T-800s arrival in 1984. Depending on your view of movie time travel it creates an “orphan” time sequence that continues on in the future from that point, never knowing the consequences of its actions, or that future is immediately overwritten by the ripple effects of its changes which are instantaneous from the perspective of someone in that point in the future. The new sequence we can call “B.”
In “B”, it is Kyle Reese that fathers John Connor. Since it couldn’t have been Kyle Reese that fathered John in “A”, it means that genetically John Connor isn’t the same John Connor from A any longer but a new distinct one. The only thing they have in common is Sarah Connor. This suggests to me it’s more Sarah herself and the way she raises John that is important, and in a sense also makes eliminating her the far more important goal of SkyNet than later eliminating John in T2.
Don’t forget the alternate theory - the predestination (fixed future) one. Taking only the original Terminator, it isn’t known whether the events are nothing but a predestination loop. Maybe time cannot be changed. Skynet, being computers, might not be able to conceive of that.
T2 also could be a predestination loop. (One has to assume that the T1000 was sent back first, then the T-101 to 1984, so that can fit.)The movie watchers wouldn’t know, but the characters would know in 1997.
This theory doesn’t fit the third movie, and definitely doesn’t fit the Sarah Connor Chronicles.
“Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words ‘I have a cunning plan’ marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation?”
