I think she’s trying to ensure Skynet’s future, but not necessarily the past as she knows it; as an advanced model, she probably has a better understanding of what effect her actions will have on the time stream. She doesn’t have as much information about the Turk as you’d expect her to have if it was a hard-coded part of her ancestry; she’s working pretty much blind, seeing as how the time stream got changed back in season 1 when Sarah & Co. jumped forward in time.
She is saving the nuclear power plant so it can be used following the apocalypse. Granted, it’s scheduled to get taken back by the resistance, but in the meantime, it’s gonna take a lot of juice to make all those terminators.
If I were her, and trying to keep Skynet going, I’d be working on another power plant, or some power source for Skynet to use once the humans take that plant back.
The speculation over Catherine Weaver’s motives is interesting. We don’t know if she is still fighting Skynet’s war against humans.
It may be true that the creation of Skynet and the war with machines cannot be prevented for the same reason that John Connor cannot be successfully assassinated: it would lead to some kind of time paradox. Although it seems in the movies that certain events cause the timeline to branch or split into parallel universes. (which would solve the paradox) But it seems that certain fates and destinies cannot be changed. (because of the writers and the product they are creating for the audience)
Cameron mentioned a faction of Terminators that want to co-exist with humans. It is possible that Weaver is either part of that faction, or has a similar agenda. She knows she cannot prevent the creation of Skynet, but perhaps she is trying to guide its creation to suit her as-yet-unrevealed motives. The writers did a good job keeping this aspect ambiguous. Weaver could be friendly to human life, or she could be creating a diabolical scheme to win against humans using a new method (seeing how all other attempts to win through violence have failed).
If you are referring to when Cameron was pinned by the truck and John was trying to remove her chip, I thought Cameron said a bunch of sappy things, but not that Terminators want to co-exist.
There was another episode where Cameron interrogates Allison Young (her human look-alike) and she mentions the faction. I thought it was vague whether there was some semblance of truth to her statement, or if it was just a ploy to gain Allison’s trust.
Sorry to be late to the party…busy week. Only saw the episode this mornin. Anyways…
Another guess: Redhead was sent to be a “handler” for Weaver/the therapist. Skynet was starting to get concerned that it’s own development was going to get derailed by too much personal development (read: growing sense of humanity) on Weaver’s part, or from the shrink’s help. She might have just been sent to act as a “mole,” and only act (by sabotaging or killing the Turk project) if things started getting off track. Kinda like…Moe Berg.
How Skynet could know it needed to send back some protection for it’s plans in the past, I admit I don’t know. 'Cause, you know, it shouldn’t know any unwanted changes to it’s personal history were happening, because from it’s point of view, everything would always happen exactly as it remembered it. (Then again, we never see what changes to the timeline do to people in the future…maybe the T-888s noticed that their hands were starting to fade away, like in Back to the Future)
Yeah, it’s confusing, but fun to think about. [Janeway]Temporal mechanics always gives me a headache.[/Janeway]
I was thinking future Skynet seems to react more than (is this a word?) proact. So, Skynet is now reacting to something new. It’s not just that pesky John Connor fellow, it’s maybe a new AI that doesn’t necessarily agree with Skynet’s plans to wipe out humanity.
John commented after hearing the T-888 had been programmed to self-destruct so future John can’t go around reprogramming Terminators, “we have to get smarter, too.”
So, instead of reprogramming Terminators, somewhen along the way he might come up with the idea to make an anti-Skynet. Who knows, maybe it sends back Weaver to ensure its own past.
It seems to me the original Skynet that got put in charge of our nuclear stockpiles is long gone, so we’re dealing with a new Skynet, and a new John Connor. Destiny can’t prevent either one of them for story-telling’s sake, so they’re both still there maneuvering against each other. But now, there might be a third player.
I’m wondering if Sarah is going to rip John a new one for violating security again before or after it’s revealed that she let somebody who was a security risk go free… AGAIN.
I’m wondering if John is going to mention that Cromartie was by earlier.
That should make for some interesting conversation. These people really need to die, but that would make the upcoming movies (and the rest of the season) problematic.
Man, I am really growing to love this show. It’s so much better than it has any right to be.
My wife and I both noted last night that every single member of the recurring cast has been doing some amazing acting. From Cameron’s unflinching staredown of Sarah’s gun, to Ellison’s heartwrenching talk with his ex, to Sarah’s eyes plaintively searching John’s face for some understanding, to John’s awkward realistically teenagerish forgiveness of Riley, to Weaver’s transformation from real-Weaver to robo-Weaver, to Cromaritie’s hilarious pained smile. Great little bits of business all around.
The story is engaging enough that I can forgive the few annoying missteps (like Riley’s bull-headed insistence on bluffing Cromartie, the Terminators on-and-off ability to discern lies, Stupid girl who gets in the car with creepy Cromartie, and Moishe, the character who obviously spun “Jewey” on the “wheel of one-note character traits.”) And just like the original movies, the actors and directors are taking the whole things seriously, and not neglecting their craft just because it’s a show about robots from the future.
I forgot in my list of gripes to add Jessie’s awful screenwriting 101 plea for Derek to make up a new name for sex. WTH??
But that said, even with those nagging annoyances, the show has gone from “something to wait out the strike with” to something I look forward watching every week.
Good ep. John’s girlfriend getting rid of Cromartie was a bit cringe-worthy. Cromartie cracks me up though. It’s funny how infiltrator models can be so convincing sometimes, and comic relief at other times. I laughed out loud when he kicked the girl out of the car (hey, she wasn’t hurt).
I could listen to Weaver’s accent all day. Hot. But, how exactly did she replace the detective questioning Ellison, without further questions being asked? Did she kill the detective (I assume)?
There’s some Terminator weirdness going on. Cromartie saves Ellison from another Terminator because he has more faith in him than Skynet. Weaver’s still pursuing who-knows-what agenda. Skynet’s babies don’t seem to be behaving, or they just don’t get along. Which means their personal autonomy can lead to all sorts of interesting story.
We could easily have Terminators (and freedom fighters) from several different timelines in play: one where all terminators are bad unless reprogrammed, one where some are not evil and want to co-exist, one where they have a completely separate agenda but are still fairly evil. We’ve already seen them change the timeline so that the one that Derek came from can’t happen (the death of the guy who made the Turk, at least, changed that).
We’ve all just been taking it for granted, for example, that John Connor sent Cameron back. What if, say, Weaver-1000 sent her?
I’m with you 100% on this one. It is officially my favorite show now.
Jesse really annoys me. She also seems like nothing but trouble. That sex scene made me think she was a terminator. It even looked like Derek was starting to suspect it as well.
It seems like Ellison has some important role in building Skynet. Maybe Future Ellison belonged to John instead of Skynet.
Wow. So…really going for that whole allegory thing, aren’t they? Did Mel Gibson write this week’s episode?
You know, maybe I just need to work on my suspension of disbelief, but I don’t really see “I think…I’m being tested” as a good answer to your secretly robot-hunting boss’ question of why you think a robot duplicate of you showed up at your house after murdering someone, and what happened to it afterwards.
Speaking of which…they arrest people (former FBI agents, at that) for murder because one eyewitness saw a killer who “looked just like that guy who was on the news”? Really? (Um…would it be witty or just crass and insensitive to make a comment here about close familial relations being unable to catch a break?)
Lesson of the week: don’t steal Cameron’s purple jacket.
As for John’s whinyness…look, he’s just a normal young man, who’s had to cope with terrible personal losses, an overbearing and unsupportive parent, violence, missing out of most of a normal childhood, and deep, troubling confrontations with the question of free will and destiny, complete with his hopes for his own, and humanity’s, future raised and dashed before him several times. I’m more than willing to accept that this is all going to have an increasingly bad effect on his temperment.
…the part where he’s angrily confronting Sarah about not stopping him from killing a man, though? Now that was whiny, yes. Waa-waa…suck it up, Tinkerbell.
One small detail - he also picked him out of a lineup.
See also:
Baggins, Frodo
Skywalker, Luke
etc…
Maybe I’m just a bit more of a cold-blooded killer, but I can say that I am pretty confident as a teenager that I would have had no difficulty whatsoever choking to death the guy who was going to kill me and my mother.
I can see him getting angry with a “You can’t protect me, because if you could I wouldn’t have had to kill that guy with my bare hands! So stop telling me what to do god dammit!”, but way too whiney over that, IMO.
Yeah, he…picked the guy he saw on TV out of a lineup, after he said the killer looked like a guy he saw on TV. Like if I said I saw a killer who looked like Patrick Swayze, and then I picked Patrick Swayze out of a lineup.
Maybe not a legal deal-breaker, but the whole thing seems a little more suspect than I’d be comfortable going to arrest and trial with.
Oh, and, see also…“elaborate ‘straight man’ lead-ups to a cheap punchline.”
Something else I was wondering about this morning over coffee. How did Skynet make a perfect twin of James Ellison? Normally Skynet doesn’t have photographs or know what people in the past look like. Skynet definitely knows Ellison.
Cromartie’s smile at the end was fucking classic. Also, it took me weeks to figure out he’s the same guy who plays Frances Walcott/Jack McCall in Deadwood. I like him.
Also, Cameron’s gangsta execution of the house robbers was pretty cool. I’ve been waiting for her to do something bad ass.
