Right, this is the same reasoning for Arnie driving the cop car into the police station and killing everybody in the place in hopes of killing Sarah. Realistically, he could have gone and hung out in a gravel pit for a couple months at least, then shot her in her sleep. John wasn’t even conceived yet, after all.
That’s certainly an arguably reasonable objection, although it’s possible that the terminator’s mission was not simply “assassinate the governor” but “assassinate the governor at this time and place”. Why would that be the mission? Well, it might be the mission because doing so would cause particular political or cultural repercussions that would have ripple effects that SkyNet (assuming it’s SkyNet who sent back this particular terminator) was interested in… ie, the very public assassination of the governor led to a general increase in security at public facilities, which led to increased funding for computer security software, parts of which ended up being crucial to SkyNet, etc. Or that might have been the mission because it was just phrased overliterally.
I think the episode is much better that way. It ties in with your first objection. If we know that the governor is going to be one of John Connor’s supporters in the future, and we know that the terminator’s mission was simply to kill the governor, then all your objections above are reasonable, and the terminator was doing all that neat stuff for totally idiotic reasons. If, on the other hand, we don’t really know what the terminator’s local objective was, precisely, nor how that fit into SkyNet’s overarching strategy, then it makes much more sense for the terminator to have gone to the rather extreme lengths it went to.
Having some sort of City Hall library full of useful information is the least contrived thing they’ve done.
The original plan was not to build a building and wait in it. The plan was to arrive on New Year’s eve and assassinate the governor. Temporal error. Wrong New Year’s eve, and to make matters worse, the time bubble started a fire that killed the guy who would have built the building where the assassination was to occur. It’s just Cameron’s conjecture. The terminator could have been waiting to kill someone in 2020, or 2030 for all we know. We don’t know exactly how terminators think, but Cameron was basically thinking, “if I were him, what would I do?” We’ve seen terminators go into long-term waiting mode.
What did Cameron do this episode that displayed any more feelings than she already has in past episodes? She told Eric his cancer is back and he should see a doctor, which makes perfect sense since he’s her source of nighttime learning. Learning about people and emotions has always been part of her programming.
On preview, what SenorBeef said. Although there was a one-liner, sort of. When the evil developer said he was going to squash Stark like a bug, his answer was “we’ll see.”
But how could the Terminator know that everything would continue as normal if he just did all that stuff he did to get the building built? I mean, buterfly’s wing and all that stuff.
It was the best shot he had. And it appears time wants to keep mostly the same. The computer system is still skynet even though it jumped developers.
Never mind that the reason behind the construction of a particular building is probably in the realm of background noise. If it ends up looking the same with the same name, people will likely use it for the same reasons.
They mentioned how the building was an architectural landmark, so it was notable in and of itself for some reason. I agree that the butterfly effect may have rendered the whole thing moot, but most TV shows dealing with time travel/fate have some stupid “fate will find a way” message like there are magical fate fairies reconstruction the universe at all times (this was the main reason Terminator 3 shit all over the franchise).
Edit: I think it’s plausible, given how far back the changes took place, and that the exact same building was designed anyway (the terminator would’ve had access to the original blueprints and could’ve designed the building himself to be exactly the same, have the same architectural significance, etc).
Well, every time Skynet or the Resistance sends someone back they know it’s a gamble what’s going to happen. I try not to over-think the paradoxy stuff, it’s kind of hard to enjoy the show otherwise. I mean, the whole show is about tossing things back in time and hoping things work out.
I will admit I am overanlayzing something that is always going to be full of contradictions. But for some reason this episode just really made me too aware of these things.
And I still think that is some sort of Super-Library.
The super-library is like the internet, but the hot sexy girl REALY IS a hot sexy girl!
Or in this case an robot.
yeah, but a GIRL robot!
giggidy giggidy giggidy!!
Good point I’d forgotten about the fact that Jessie & Derek seem to have come from different futures.
Let’s all agree to call them fembots, m’kay?
With machine gun gazongas?
-Joe
Or as I like to call them, gunzongas!
Consider yourself banned. From everything. Ever.
God, I hate puns.
-Joe
No, actually it was a very good one. Most of your objections made no sense at all, to be honest.
No, it was actually a very bad one. Most of my objections made perfect sense, to be honest.
No you!