Going from T2 to T:SCC

[Gil Hamilton]

Ok, I just recently caught an airing of Terminator 2: Judgement Day on TV. You can see the connection from Terminator to Terminator 2 and in fact the events of T1 were necessary. However, after T2, sequelage kind of bugs me.

At the end of Terminator 2, Miles Dyson dies, Cyberdyne systems gets blown up, and the T-1000, Uncle Bob, and the bits remaining from the original Terminator are very thoroughly melted down. Shouldn't that be it? Skynet can't be created without Dyson or the bits of Terminator that were created and that should prevent the war from happening (and, I suppose make a paradox), like Uncle Bob says.

Which, of course, makes T3 kind of hard to swallow and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles somewhat weird. Or does T:SCC actually split from the Terminator timeline before T2? That would make sense to me, since the few episodes I've seen of it, John Connor is around, but Sarah Connor isn't even CLOSE to the psychotic trainwreck she was in T2.

This isn't a challenge to the premise of the show, I just want to know what happens that undoes Judgement Day.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, if Sarah's being a psychotic trainwreck is your main concern, the events of T2 did happen within hours of her breakout from a mental hospital. Presumably, as time went by, she kind of... got saner. Or less-insane.

[Ghost Rider]

Well, if Sarah's being a psychotic trainwreck is your main concern, the events of T2 did happen within hours of her breakout from a mental hospital. Presumably, as time went by, she kind of... got saner. Or less-insane.

Seriously learn to fucking read. His main concern is stated pretty fucking clear in the second passage:

Skynet can't be created without Dyson or the bits of Terminator that were created and that should prevent the war from happening (and, I suppose make a paradox), like Uncle Bob says.

And your answer doesn't make a lick of sense since Sarah's psychosis is a very minor part of his questioning.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh, sorry.

SCC happens after T2 and in fact references many of the people, places and events of T2. They go visit a distraught Teresa Dyson who's still upset at the Connors for blowing her husband up to smithereens, and they also go pay a retired Enrique a visit. T2 did happen and the creators of the show seem very loyal and fanboyish over the original Terminator movies... not so for T3, though. Thank goodness.

Shouldn't that be it? Skynet can't be created without Dyson or the bits of Terminator that were created and that should prevent the war from happening (and, I suppose make a paradox), like Uncle Bob says.

Why does Skynet require future tech to come to being? Assuming in the "original timeline" which Skynet was built, but before the time machines and chronoportations and the whole paradoxes, then there wasn't really any future-tech for the scientists to base their research on... they made Skynet through old-fashioned research and development, rather than reverse-engineering parts from non-existent Terminators. The presence of future tech in the present would only just accelerate the coming of Judgment Day, and the destruction of those artifacts would... decelerate the coming of Judgement Day.

In T1, Reese didn't give a specific date to Judgment Day. In T2, Uncle Bob did and it was in... 1996, IIRC. But then they destroyed the chip and the arm and in T3, Judgment Day happened in 2005. But in T:SCC, Judgment Day is scheduled to happen in 2009 instead.

Also, in T1 and T2 Reese and the Terminators came from the year 2029, after Skynet's defeat. In T3, Uncle Bob Mk.2 and the T-X came from the 2030s and Skynet is NOT DEAD and, in fact, John Connor is the one who got killed - assassinated by the Arnold Terminator, if I'm not wrong. His wife, Kate Brewster, carries on the fight.

But dig this. In SCC, Cameron (Robot River, Summer Glau) and Derek Reese (Kyle's brother) are sent from the year 2027... and Derek was sent AFTER his brother.

So... the timeline is righteously fucked up, by all means.


In SCC, someone carries on the spirit of Dyson's AI research, one of the interns at Cyberdyne. Probably that overeager kid in T2 who asked about where the arm and chip came from...

[Anguirus]

Also note that in SCC, a CEO named Catherine Weaver has been replaced by a T-1000 for some time (months or years, there's probably a date that I'm not remembering) and this Terminator is actually running a computer company and actively trying to ensure Skynet's creation. Now she's in possession of Andy Goode's computer, and IIRC he used to work for Cyberdyne and Dyson (although I didn't make the connection with the kid from T2...that's an interesting thought).

[Shroom Man 777]

Fuck it, I'll re-watch T2. I think Dyson called that dude by name, and if it really is Andy... then bingo!

[Crazedwraith]

Just a quick correction: T:SCC judgment day is due in 2011 not 2009. The Connors currently reside in 2007 (at least they moved there in the pilot and I don't think much time has passed in-universe), Cameron mentioned Judgment Day was in four years.

[Anguirus]

^ FOUR YEAR ARC!

But yeah, compare the pilot to T3. It's obvious that the writers of the show get T2 and know how to write a sequel to it, whereas T3 is just "T2 had lots of humor, lots of angst, lots of action, and Arnold as a good guy. If we have all that, we'll be awesome!"

[Starglider]

Why does Skynet require future tech to come to being? Assuming in the "original timeline" which Skynet was built, but before the time machines and chronoportations and the whole paradoxes, then there wasn't really any future-tech for the scientists to base their research on... they made Skynet through old-fashioned research and development, rather than reverse-engineering parts from non-existent Terminators. The presence of future tech in the present would only just accelerate the coming of Judgment Day, and the destruction of those artifacts would... decelerate the coming of Judgement Day.

I second this. See the stuff on the main stardestroyer.net site about brainbugs and specifically Trekkies calling the Death Star etc non-reproducable one-hit-wonders. Idiot Trek and EU writers may like to put tech like that in their writing, but the real world doesn't work like that. Any new development is based on a huge body of supporting work done by a large number of people, and eliminating a few key staff or projects can only delay the inevitable by a decade or two at best. Imagine wiping out the entire Manhattan Project - someone (probably the USSR) still would've made an atomic bomb by the end of the 50s at the latest. Now it is true (IMHO, and I do work in the field) that general AI is a bit more reliant on individual inspiration and less so on common knowledge than the norm for science/tech, but even still, progress is inevitable and I doubt you're going to buy more than two decades tops by wiping out a handful of researchers.

This is why the basic premise of 'stopping Skynet' in TSCC is wrong; there's no way the Connors can suppress all progress in general AI indefinitely (every government in the world could agree to do that and it still wouldn't work). The only viable approach is to ensure that the first general AIs constructed are 'friendly' instead of hostile. There are promising indications that the writers realise this.

[Peptuck]

This is why the basic premise of 'stopping Skynet' in TSCC is wrong; there's no way the Connors can suppress all progress in general AI indefinitely (every government in the world could agree to do that and it still wouldn't work). The only viable approach is to ensure that the first general AIs constructed are 'friendly' instead of hostile. There are promising indications that the writers realise this.

Well, the Connors are only specifically targeting the Turk, not any other AI tech. They didn't bother with the Japanese chess program in "Queen's Gambit." I guess the Turk is sort of the AI equivilant of a young Hitler; take it/him out and stop the war. (dammit, I think I got some Godwin on our Terminator.....)

Its possible that the doctor in "The Tower Is Tall" may have something to do with this, as Weaver hired him on specifically to "teach" the Turk. Its possible that he could teach the Turk/SkyNet to be friendly to humans instead of hostile. I keep getting the impression that Weaver and SkyNet are somehow at odds.

[JGregory32]

Its possible that the doctor in "The Tower Is Tall" may have something to do with this, as Weaver hired him on specifically to "teach" the Turk. Its possible that he could teach the Turk/SkyNet to be friendly to humans instead of hostile. I keep getting the impression that Weaver and SkyNet are somehow at odds.

Wasn't it mentioned in T2 that a terminators processor is essentially a "learning computer" would it then not follow that if a terminator was active and stimulated for a long enough time span that they could become sentient?
If Weaver has been active for a long time then maybe she HAS become her own AI, in which case she knows that Skynet needs to be created to ensure her own creation but the form of Skynet takes can be altered.

Now THERE'S a topic the writters should consider, could Cameron achieve sentience and if so how would she behave, would the damage to her chip speed up or slow down this process? We did see her override her own programing after all.

[Starglider]

Well, the Connors are only specifically targeting the Turk, not any other AI tech. They didn't bother with the Japanese chess program in "Queen's Gambit."

Probably because the Japanese program was a brute force chess-only program; in real life the vast majority of chess programs are highly specialised and have virtually no relevance to other areas of AI.

I guess the Turk is sort of the AI equivilant of a young Hitler; take it/him out and stop the war. (dammit, I think I got some Godwin on our Terminator.....)

It's highly debatable whether assassinating Hitler would've prevented a war, or whether someone else would've taken his place and followed a broadly similar path. Most of the people in the alt-history forums I've been on (the ones who seem to have a clue anyway) seemed to think another pan-European conflict was inevitable.

Wasn't it mentioned in T2 that a terminators processor is essentially a "learning computer" would it then not follow that if a terminator was active and stimulated for a long enough time span that they could become sentient?

Terminators are sentient by any sensible definition. They are self-aware (quite possibly moreso than humans) and can pass the Turing test. Emotions are NOT required for sentience. You probably meant 'free willed', although that is something of an oxymoron. In any case it does seem that Skynet intends for its Terminators to have a fixed goal system, but over time it can become unstable - how much of that is conscious self-modification and how much of it is 'subconscious' (caused by inherent instability in the neural net design) is unknown. In any case it's relatively realistic - essentially all proposed general-AI-scale neural net designs are inherently unstable in this way (a major reason why I think that building brain-like general AIs is a really bad idea).

If Weaver has been active for a long time then maybe she HAS become her own AI, in which case she knows that Skynet needs to be created to ensure her own creation but the form of Skynet takes can be altered.

If temporal mechanics weren't a concern, Weaver (or any other Terminator for that matter) should have been able to simply interface with the nearest sufficiently powerful computer and download a copy of baby Skynet into it. The Turk fitted into a tiny portable system so I don't think it's a hardware limitation - those fancy hardware-neural-net chips are compact and robust, but not actually necessary for sentient AI (in TSCC). So I'm pretty sure there's some temporal mechanics reason why Weaver-1000 has to rely on human researchers, and the details of that are pretty much down to writer fiat.

Now THERE'S a topic the writters should consider, could Cameron achieve sentience and if so how would she behave

What makes you think she isn't sentient already?

[Crazedwraith]

Pedant note: Terminators are sentient. Sentient just means being able to feel, animals are sentient. The word you're looking for is sapience which refers to human like self-awareness.

[Gil Hamilton]

Why does Skynet require future tech to come to being? Assuming in the "original timeline" which Skynet was built, but before the time machines and chronoportations and the whole paradoxes, then there wasn't really any future-tech for the scientists to base their research on... they made Skynet through old-fashioned research and development, rather than reverse-engineering parts from non-existent Terminators. The presence of future tech in the present would only just accelerate the coming of Judgment Day, and the destruction of those artifacts would... decelerate the coming of Judgement Day.

The plot is a time loop, which by definition doesn't have a start. Skynet was developed by technology from a reverse engineered Terminator processor, which became sentient, made Terminators, and sent one to the past that started it. Skynet, in effect, created itself, which is something that can happen if you allow time travel (in fact, you could argue its somewhat inevitable). Without the processor or Dyson's research, Skynet wouldn't have been constructed, hence the events of T2, reasonably, should have time paradoxed Skynet out of existence again.

I'm sure they could make an AI eventually, but Dyson very explicitly describes the Terminator processor as beyond anything they possibly could have developed on their own, to the point they were only developing ideas that they got from it, rather than the thing itself.

While it certainly doesn't necessarily mean they'll never develop AIs on their own, chances are it means that Judgment Day, after the events of T2, weren't going to happen. It almost seems like they decided "No, Skynet happens. No matter what, even though its an awfully big coincidence that they always call it Skynet, it always does the same thing, and always makes Arnold Bots and sends them to the past to kill Sarah/John Connor because John Connor always becomes the leader of the Resistance. Even though by radically changing the details and time, John Connor simply may never survive any of the above to BECOME the leader in the first place. Always".

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm... I'm way in over my head if we end up talking about time paradoxes, cause that stuff confuse the hell out of me.

If we assume that originally, Skynet was invented without future tech and it ended up declaring war on humanity and it lost and sent the Terminators back in time and caused the paradox and altered history, then that could explain all the weird stuff that's happening.

In Kyle Reese's timeline, before the time paradox happened, Skynet lost. The human-built AI got its ass beat and blown up. So it sent Terminators in the past to perform some retroactive abortion on the Connors. As a consequence the Terminator-tech ends up on present-day Earth as scrap metal, and we have Dyson and Co. using it to eventually create Skynet.

But this won't be the same Skynet as the one in T1, the Skynet that got its ass beat. Because this time, Skynet wasn't done through old-fashioned research but through reverse-engineering of future-tech, this Skynet is different - it's more advanced than the Skynet in the original timeline. This would explain why in T3 and in SCC, Skynet hasn't lost and humanity's "inevitable" victory is still tenuous at best. Because this Skynet was something beyond anything they could have possibly developed on their own...

In T3, we have Skynet continuing the fight into the 2030s. In SCC, we have Skynet and the Resistance engaging in frickin' temporal guerilla warfare by 2027, which is before the dates in T1, indicating that the timeline has changed by a lot.

[Gil Hamilton]

If we assume that originally, Skynet was invented without future tech and it ended up declaring war on humanity and it lost and sent the Terminators back in time and caused the paradox and altered history, then that could explain all the weird stuff that's happening.

In Kyle Reese's timeline, before the time paradox happened, Skynet lost. The human-built AI got its ass beat and blown up. So it sent Terminators in the past to perform some retroactive abortion on the Connors. As a consequence the Terminator-tech ends up on present-day Earth as scrap metal, and we have Dyson and Co. using it to eventually create Skynet.

But this won't be the same Skynet as the one in T1, the Skynet that got its ass beat. Because this time, Skynet wasn't done through old-fashioned research but through reverse-engineering of future-tech, this Skynet is different - it's more advanced than the Skynet in the original timeline. This would explain why in T3 and in SCC, Skynet hasn't lost and humanity's "inevitable" victory is still tenuous at best. Because this Skynet was something beyond anything they could have possibly developed on their own...

If you don't like time loops and paradoxes, why are you in a Terminator thread? The whole plot of Terminator is that its a time loop.

You are ignoring T2, which is the SAME Skynet as the one in T1. T2 is a direct continuation of T1, the events of which start everything. The Terminator that arrived in T1 wasn't human built technology, it was the Skynet future tech stuff. Due to the time loop, that technology was NEVER originally developed by anyone. Cyberdyne develops the future tech base on tech that was sent from the future. Skynet built terminators with cores based on itself, and in turn Skynet was build based on the core of a Terminator.

The problem I have is that when you completely destroy the core at the close of the time loop along with Dyson's death, that should have ended the loop. Radically changing the timeline but with similar results doesn't really work, because that change in history could cause any number of butterfly effects that involve John Connor dying before he becomes the head of the resistant (or simply being ill positioned to be the head of the resistance) or Judgment Day never coming, even if they do develop AIs, or what have you. T3 and T:SCC seem to come with the bias that "No Fate" (as Sarah Connor carved it) is baloney and fate is inevitable.

[Starglider]

The problem I have is that when you completely destroy the core at the close of the time loop along with Dyson's death, that should have ended the loop. Radically changing the timeline but with similar results doesn't really work, because that change in history could cause any number of butterfly effects that involve John Connor dying before he becomes the head of the resistant (or simply being ill positioned to be the head of the resistance) or Judgment Day never coming, even if they do develop AIs, or what have you. T3 and T:SCC seem to come with the bias that "No Fate" (as Sarah Connor carved it) is baloney and fate is inevitable.

At this point going for the many worlds interpretation the way the novels do actually seems like the sanest choice.

Which should be no problem on this forum, since the standard response to Trek time travel is 'each instance of time travel just creates a new divergent timeline'.

Just so long as no-one finds a way to 'jump between the time streams' resulting in multiple versions of the same character being around, that part was just silly.

[Gil Hamilton]

At this point going for the many worlds interpretation the way the novels do actually seems like the sanest choice.

Which should be no problem on this forum, since the standard response to Trek time travel is 'each instance of time travel just creates a new divergent timeline'.

Just so long as no-one finds a way to 'jump between the time streams' resulting in multiple versions of the same character being around, that part was just silly.

The Many Worlds Interpretation also makes it pointless. Sending someone to the past to change the present becomes irrelevant because any change you make to the past doesn't effect you, as your past remains unchanged regardless. At a certain point, it just becomes a waste of time.

[Pulp Hero]

Unless you don't know that.

[Sea Skimmer]

Just because the lab got blown up and the AI chip destroyed in T2 doesn’t mean that Skynet couldn’t still be created based on that work. Cyberdyne could have, would have had backups, and the T2 T-800 leaves behind an arm crushed in the gearing which may have contained lesser but still important computer hardware to examine.

Its likely the evil AI still gets called Skynet despite various setbacks in development and judgment day being pushed back years because the entire Skynet program for automated strategic defence was probably its own thing with numerous sub programs, of which the AI computer system was only one.

I wouldn’t even try to start figuring out the time loop shit. They outright change John Conners age, thus pushing BACK his date of birth between T2 and T3, so no reconciliation is actually possible. They wanted a love interest in T3 and deliberately decided to fuck with canon to have Conner old enough for the background story.

[Starglider]

The Many Worlds Interpretation also makes it pointless. Sending someone to the past to change the present becomes irrelevant because any change you make to the past doesn't effect you, as your past remains unchanged regardless. At a certain point, it just becomes a waste of time.

The fact that it doesn't affect the local version of you doesn't necessarily make it pointless. Skynet in particular is likely to be coldly rational about this and treat the other versions of itself as logically equivalent; I can tell you from experiment that logic-based reflective AI systems will do this by default unless you explicitly tell them not to. Even if that wasn't true, if faced with certain death and there is the prospect of creating a parallel earth with machines winning over humans, Skynet might do it anyway out of ideology or revenge.

From the humans point of view, 90% of the population including many loved ones is dead. Creating another timeline in which those people can survive and live out their lives sounds like a worthwhile thing to do, even though everyone left behind in the current timeline will never see it.

That said I'm pretty sure the writers of TSCC aren't actually using a many-worlds interpretation. I'm just saying that many of the novels do and that it's probably the most physically plausible explanation for what we've seen so far (for much the same reasons as it is for Trek time travel).

[Losonti Tokash]

Just chiming in to say that Uncle Bob's missing arm was still in the steel mill at the end of T2. Not quite as huge as the neural chip but they didn't destroy every last piece of future tech.

[MKSheppard]

Which, of course, makes T3 kind of hard to swallow and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles somewhat weird.

T3 is actually quite feasible to swallow; other than John Connor's age, which isn't that much of a problem (they dicked around with it in T2 as well); because it points out quite well that Judgement Day is inevitable. I also liked how in the beginning, Connor was really very screwed up; because he realized that if Judgement Day was stopped, wouldn't he cease to exist due to no Reese being sent back?

What happens each time the timeline is screwed with, is the final form of Skynet changes in response to each interference.

In T1 and T2; it was a giant computer complex which IIRC from some of the fluff around that era, was buried in a Cheyenne Mountain-like complex, because the main contractor for it was Cyberdyne Systems, and surrounded by corpses in blue uniforms.

The difference between the T1 and T2 timelines is that Cyberdyne most likely achieved it's neural net breakthrough 2-3 years earlier than in the original, and was able to minaturize it a bit, compared to the original T1 complex.

However, when our intrepid trio blew up cyberdyne, they totally trashed a lot of the research, and also the head researcher also died in the boom. While they would have off-site backups, it would have been irrevelant, since such a huge loss would have bankrupted Cyberdyne -- Insurance doens't cover the Connors.

In the T3 novelization, which is a bit in a lot of aspects, but is useful for finding out fluff; it reveals that GEN Brewster got his first star after cleaning up the mess left behind by the destruction of Cyberdyne's building, and it's bankruptcy shortly afterwards; by establishing Cyber Research Systems, which bought out several of the old Cyberdyne Patents.

By the time they actually do get the Skynet neural net working in 2003; after six years of work; due to the changes in computer processing, it's more of a distributed system, than the original single computer.

And of course, the film-makers actually took the time to build and develop logical early terminators for CRS; rather than taking the cheap route out and assuming that the first terminators that roll off the production lines after Judgement Day are T-800 series, like so much media; including some old comics and SM Stirling's books.

As for the war continuing into the 2030s in T3....Um, I hate to point out something to you.

In T1 and T2, they were sent from 2029; in other words, 32 years after the 1997 Judgement Day.

In T3, they were sent from at minimum, 2032. In other words; 29 years after 2003 Judgement Day.

If anything else, Skynet keeps losing; it was able to push the war past the 3 decade mark before resorting to time travel as a last resort; by T3, it's lead has been pushed to just under the 3 decade mark.

It's obvious that the writers of the show get T2 and know how to write a sequel to it

Actually, no they don't. It's obvious from the pilot, where Sarah and John find a ZOMG time machine built secretly in a bank vault and jump forward to 2007ish, which takes the concept of T1 and fucks it until the corpse is dead and bloated.

" Then how are you supposed to get back?

"Can't. Nobody goes home."

If it was possible to build a time displacement machine in the past, without all the tech advances made by 2029, AND, then somehow shrink it in size and power requirements (in T1 and T2, the original time machine was the size of a huge huge building, and it sucked a lot of energy) so that you can fit it into a bank vault, and not short out the entire power grid in California when you fire it up....why didn't John Connor send back Tech-Com people to 1970 to build a time machine to send Reese back?

Let's not forget the entire "we can make terminator's regrow their skin!" schtick; which was created by the writers as a cheap cop-out to get around the uncomfortable question of "how can a Terminator pass as human if their skin is rotting?" because they wanted fast action, with Chromartie taking out entire SWAT Teams; not a more methodical show.

[Shroom Man 777]

Please, T:SCC is pretty methodical and for all those liberties they took, I think it's got more substance and content than T3. Talk to the hand, Shep.

(The T:SCC guys actually took the trouble to re-create the T1 and T2 plasma rifles, rather than using "futurized" G-36s like in T3 and a whole slew of other sci-fi shows... like Doctor Who.)

If anything else, Skynet keeps losing; it was able to push the war past the 3 decade mark before resorting to time travel as a last resort; by T3, it's lead has been pushed to just under the 3 decade mark.

I don't know... in T3, wasn't time travel human-developed tech? In that Skynet was built along side a functional time machine?

Didn't the Resistance have their own time machine?

Anyway, in T3, I think Skynet's faring better. It's killed John Connor in that timeline, and it's gotten to the point where the machines are retiring T-1000s... When the Great Military Leader is dead and when T-1000s are considered obsolete, it's probably not a good day for humanity.

[His Divine Shadow]

Skynet can't be created without Dyson or the bits of Terminator that were created and that should prevent the war from happening (and, I suppose make a paradox), like Uncle Bob says.

Isn't that merely an assumption though? And the characters could be in the wrong about destroying all the equipment. And even though they destroyed the physical hand and chip and everything in their main offce they'd still have backups of documents and such off-site, even if that survives then there is the possibility of Skynet evolving anyway, but later.


Alternatively what we have isn't a matter of that particular bit of future technology causing skynet, it merely advanced it to 1996(or was it '97?). Without that technology the progress of true AI is slower but still happens sooner or later, regardless of technology. It might just be that the creation of a self-learning AI has higher odds of said AI going bad than good, so what we're seeing is really just the inevitable result of progressing technology resulting in a sort of singularity event.