For me, one of the best and more interesting characters was James Ellison.
Yeah, until they forgot he was there and quit writing for him, just like Derek. Because god knows what I want to see out of this show is flashbacks to John’s childhood in the jungle.
I still think the actual weakness of the show was Sarah herself. I don’t know if it was the Lena Heady or just them not being able to write for her, but looking back, pretty much all of the Sarah-centric episodes were terrible.
-Joe
Well that stinks. I didn’t see season one, but I was into season two …well as much as I can be into a television series, which ain’t saying much, but I liked it.
Funny considering it would likely get mega-hyped by the new movie coming out.
The writers made the mistake of making Terminator boring. And then the lines were half muttered. They just didn’t know what they were doing. The finale completely screwed things up IMO.
I think the finale was really good, as well as the end of the first season. They just totally botched a tremendous amount in between them. Kind of like Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books - the first three of the last four (confused?) consisted of the main characters pretty much shuffling around in circles. Then most recent one was pretty much “holy shit, I’m running out of time and I pissed away three whole books on nothing! Advance plot at WARP SPEED!!!”
-Joe
For the same reason Peter’s girlfriend in Heroes stopped existing. If you get sent to the future and the past changes, the future you were sent to no longer exists and neither do you. John was sent to the future but his mother wasn’t. Because he was sent to the future from the past, he entered a new alternative where he had disappeared in the past and never was around to lead the resistance. It’s sort of like if two people take boats down a river, and one person speeds a few miles ahead, and the first person drops a huge boulder diverting the river. The person further down the river sill soon be stranded on dry land and be permanently cut off from the other person.
Although this works better in the Peter scenario because he went back in time and made the changes himself after already visiting the future. In the Terminator scenario, John is already in the future in which he disappeared and Sarah was left alone - there’s nothing she could do to avert this future since whatever she did already happened by the time John got there, barring her use of a time machine herself. If she had averted doomsday, then John would have travelled to a future where there was no doomsday.
Am I the only one who noticed hints of Sarah following John into the future? There was Sarah’s “I love you too” line accompanied by, if I’m not mistaken, bubble activity.
Doesn’t John only exist because Judgement Day happened anyway? John is the son of Sarah and Reece. Reece doesn’t go back in time and impregnate Sarah unless future General John sends him back to protect her. General John doesn’t send him back to protect her unless future Skynet, knowing it’s about to lose the war, sends a terminator back to kill her.
I quit watching mid season because it was so slow. There wasn’t enough action. Every episode was a cliff hanger. Also, the single long thread we had going made it difficult to catch up if I missed an episode. It was moved to Friday, where suddenly it was competing with various Sci-Fi shows I watch. I kept having to manipulate the DVR to tape on the right TV or else my wife would shut it off to watch Ghost Whisperer.
It’s been established that they aren’t in a ‘whatever happened happened’ time loop method of time travel story. When Derek comes back in time, he changes the future so that his girlfriend had a relationship with a different version of him. It’s entirely possible for John to avert doomsday without affecting his own past.
Kyle came from a future where Judgement Day happened on such and such a day. In T2 they pushed it back, so Derek came from a future where JD happened on a different day.
Sending John forward means our Sarah could alter the present so that the future she sent John to is inaccessible.
At least that’s how the rules in the Terminator franchise seem to work.
Thanks, jackdavinci. I guess that explains the problem. If Sarah does her thing, John is in the future he created by skipping to the future, not the future Sarah creates.
Yeah, this is very confusing.
Ah, but remember, I’ve got no idea who Derek is. I watched the first movie, liked it, thought it was one of the better time travel movies out there, and then watched the second movie, couldn’t stand it and had nothing to do with the franchise since. 
And remember, in the first movie, they were in a “whatever happened, happened” time loop story.
It’s called a predestination or an ontological paradox. And it had a certain elegence to it in that everyone was more or less fullfilling their role in history. But then they kept moving Judgement Day around and coming up with all these different story lines and whatnot.
I enjoyed the show, but I wasn’t thrilled with the murky plot points and slow pace (at times). My only real question, however, is: so, what happens next?
I hate when shows end on a cliffhanger. What happens next?
Crap.