Terminator: Dark Fate (Go See It!)

[FireNexus]

Yes. There are no indications in any other movie that there was any meddling in the timelines prior to the events of that movie. You can speculate all you want, but there is no evidence of it.

We know that John Connor existed. We know that he sent back his unwashed, malnourished militiaman when he could have sent a reprogrammed T-800. The unwashed, malnourished militiaman who also happened to be his father.

If Skynet was always a product of future influence, then there surely would have been more care put into ensuring that chip made it where it had to besides randomly surviving the hydraulic press and being discovered.

Skynet does not have to know that Skynet was bootstrapped. There is no indication that it does know this, in fact. And, again, something like skynet didn’t happen for decades after the original judgement day without the bootstrapped tech. Assuming legion itself wasn’t bootstrapped. Skynet itself didn’t come from contemporary tech. Maybe skynet resulted from a meta stable loop that collapsed in T2, but of it came from organic technological development then somebody else would have filled the vacuum left by Cyberdyne’s destruction.

There is no need to wait until the last second to send the T-800 back either. If the answer to why Skynet waited to send the Terminator into the past was that it extremely dangerous to itself due to any number of accidental timeline alterations above and beyond the specific one it desired, it can't also be entirely dependent on a timeline alteration that is completely tangential to its agent's mission.

It can if Skynet is not aware of the details. If skynet thinks it developed organically, or can’t piece together the specifics enough to be sure it’s doing the right thing, the smartest decision is to do what it would have done without any paradoxes. Skynet also may well have simply not considered the very possibility until it knew time travel was a possibility with very little time to spare before it was destroyed.

Even if you think the first movie is part of a loop, there still has to be an unaltered timeline that yielded the first iteration of that loop. The inital divergence may be a timeline change that was completely unrelated to anything on-screen but eventually stabilized on the circumstance we see, but thats conjecture. Also, T2 proves they are not stuck in a loop.

I don’t think it’s a consistent loop. I think it’s a continuously evolving series of iterations of different potential futures, of which skynet and John Connor represented a temporary metastable loop in which Reese first created John Connor due to time travel and then John Connor, at least once, sent Reese back to ensure his own birth.

[Broomstick]

Carl didn’t switch sides. Carl was a machine without a country, and didn’t just decide that this random other machine was its master because it was a machine.

I have little doubt that Carl would have been unable to oppose Skynet just from base programming. But Skynet wasn’t the opponent, so Carl was not programmed to give a particular shit one way or the other.

First, I just want to say I like the "machine without a country" phrase. Not sure why, but it sort of resonates with me.

I'm wondering if Carl took up the cause of protecting Dani/opposing Rev-9 because ite didn't have a mission - sure, it had a purpose of sorts with Alicia and Mateo and the drapery business, but it was built to kill people and basically fight in a war. It hadn't done that for a long time. Maybe taking up this cause was its way of getting a new mission.

Or maybe it didn't want to explain bullet holes in its torso to Alicia and that was its way of getting out of it?

(Yes, I am descending into silly with that last bit.)

Regardless, Carl actually DID give a shit. Why I have no idea, but if it really didn't give a shit it had zero reason to help Sarah, Grace, or Dani. For that matter, if Carl really didn't give a shit it wouldn't have helped Sarah hunt other Terminators all those years. For whatever reason, Carl actually gave a damn.

Again, maybe the T-800 was superseded because it was too good at imitating humans when isolated among them without other machines like it around. They start developing their own notions and maybe even acquiring something like empathy or a conscience. The T-800's we see have no malice - sure, they're killers but it's strictly business, they have no hatred, malice, or really any emotion towards their targets, no more than a hole punch has towards a sheet of paper. The T-1000, though, seems to have malice, to actually not like humans at all. Rev-9 is more of a question in my mind, not sure about that one.

But, as T-2 shows, a reprogrammed T-800 can go from assassin to guard dog just fine. I'm not sure how you'd even hold down a Rev-9 long enough to try reprogramming, much less how to go about it. The T-800 still has recognizable bits and pieces we can identify as chips - the T-1000 and Rev-9 are liquid, how the fuck do you even identify the CPU in that? The T-1000 and Rev-9 are, presumably, much harder to hack.

Makes me wonder if in the SkyNet future(s) other T-800's had been captured and subverted. Hell, they had to have captured at least one to make Uncle Bob, possibly more than one. Consider that Uncle Bob was also undamaged when sent back. How the hell did FutureConner get ahold of an undamaged T-800 and reprogram it?

[Galvatron]

How the hell did FutureConner get ahold of an undamaged T-800 and reprogram it?

After he sent Reese back in time from Skynet's LA complex, John found a cryogenic storage room containing hundreds of dormant T-800s. They were arranged in rows of ten for each model and he went through them all until he found the 101 that he remembered from childhood...

[Proletarian]

Scope out M.J. Young's timeline theory for Genisys. The whole thing is rather long, but I want to quote it at length because trying to describe it is rather difficult - it's basically constructed on the idea that every time you send two people back through time, history has to play out where only one arrives until history again reaches the point where the pursuer is sent back (so e.g. there is a timeline where the T-1000 is sent back, but Uncle Bob doesn't arrive). Effectively you have many timelines not only before the first movie but between each scene of both films.

I consider it easily the most convincing theory about the sequence of events leading up to the original movie. I'll only post the parts relevant to the first several films; some of the information is informed by Rise of the Machines.

http://www.mjyoung.net/time/TermGen.html

Original Unaltered Timeline:

Almost certainly on May 12, 1984 Sarah meets someone in Los Angeles and becomes pregnant; we know nothing else about that relationship but that she has a child prior to 1997. Of this child we know only that it will eventually become a problem for Skynet, and that it is born probably in the early winter of 1985 probably in Los Angeles.

In or about 1994, Sarah Conner is diagnosed with cancer; she dies three years later in 1997. This might not happen, but we know that it happens in a later history, and have no reason to suppose it does not happen in this one.

In or about 2004, a virus crashes the Internet. There is no effective response.

Someone named Kyle Reese is born sometime in the early aughts. We know very little about him.

Sometime after 2017 but well before 2029, perhaps around 2020, an artificial intelligence seizes power and begins destroying humanity.

Sarah Conner's child survives and becomes a significant leader in the resistance.

In 2029 Skynet is losing, and on an unspecified date that year activates its experimental time machine to send a Terminator back to May 12, 1984, creating a new history.

First altered timeline - a Terminator arrives:

Everything from the original history happens as given up to May 12, 1984. On that date, a Terminator arrives from 2029 programmed to kill Sarah Conner, in order to prevent the birth of her child. It is not the T-800 we see in the film, which has not yet been developed, but an inferior infiltration model. Sarah meets the father of her child and avoids being killed by the Terminator long enough to recognize that it is seeking her and to flee. She gives birth to the child somewhere away from Los Angeles in early winter 1985, but eventually the Terminator catches and kills her, then shuts down, its mission complete. The child survives.

Again a virus crashes the Internet in 2004, and someone named Kyle Reese is born probably in October after the war begins. Again Skynet launches around 2020. Sarah Conner's child again becomes a significant leader in the resistance; it is probably a boy named John.

In 2029 Skynet again sends the same Terminator model to the same date, confirming this first altered history.

A few hours later, Sarah Conner's child selects someone to send to protect Sarah. That selected individual is named Kyle Reese. He travels back to May 12, 1984, not long after the arrival of the Terminator, creating another new history.

Second altered timeline - Kyle Reese arrives

The inferior terminator which created the first altered history is already seeking Sarah Conner when Kyle Reese arrives late on May 12, 1984. Since Kyle knows more about Sarah than the terminator does, he immediately locates her, and incidentally interferes with her meeting with the father of her child. He rescues her from the terminator and explains to her what is happening, but this time before they can escape the city he becomes the father of her child, leads the terminator to the Cyberdyne factory, and is killed by it while protecting her. It is destroyed there, giving Cyberdyne pieces it never admits to having.

The Conner child is born in early winter 1985; it is a boy named John.

Sarah survives and raises John for a while, telling him about Kyle Reese and what she knows about the future war. She does not know the date. She is ultimately hospitalized as delusional. She is diagnosed with cancer and treated (as a mental patient she would probably have been ruled incompetent to make her own medical decisions and so treated without her consent), and so she is still alive but hospitalized in 1997.

Cyberdyne studies the pieces of the terminator found in its machinery, and starts developing a superior technology. They develop a software/hardware system called Skynet, which launches on or about August 4, 1997, and on or about August 29, 1997 it responds to efforts to deactivate it by launching a nuclear attack and beginning the eradication of humanity.

Because of the Cyberdyne connection, Skynet now has a hardware component that functions from a central core. Sometime in 2029 the resistance has discovered this core and destroys it, but Skynet is already sending a terminator to the past. This is a superior terminator, because Skynet has the benefit of Cyberdyne's examination of the previous terminator parts in creating a more advanced system sooner. Because this is not the same terminator, it changes history.

Sawtooth snap - the original film in bold.

Again a terminator arrives on May 12, 1984; this is a superior model to the one that arrived in the first and second altered histories.

Kyle Reese having already been sent arrives hours after this terminator and again manages to save Sarah, father John, and get killed; Sarah manages again to destroy the terminator in the Cyberdyne facility, and Cyberdyne takes over the parts to begin work on Skynet.

Because the parts are superior to those in the previous history, Skynet is superior, and the terminators it develops are superior; however, the launch date will stay pretty close to the same time in 1997, there will still be a central core, and in 2029 Skynet will again send a further improved terminator back to 1984.

This history will repeat with an escalating terminator until it becomes the T-800 model 101, at which point history stabilizes as Cyberdyne cannot learn more from the parts of the new model than they could from the previous incarnation. Kyle always fathers John and gets killed saving Sarah, leaving terminator parts at Cyberdyne.

Once the sawtooth snap stabilizes and the T-800 is the model sent back, history again reaches the point at which Kyle Reese is sent to the past. This version, though, now knows more--he knows more about the T-800. He prepares Sarah to prepare John, fathers John, dies, and leaves T-800 parts in the past for Cyberdyne to study.

John is born. Sarah is hospitalized.

Again Skynet goes online in August, 1997, and begins destroying humanity.

Again someone named Kyle Reese is born, and because John Conner knows that his father is Kyle Reese, John assumes this Kyle Reese is his father and sends him back to protect his mother. The second history stabilizes, and time continues for an unknown number of months, probably not a year, to the moment when Skynet manages to complete the T-1000 and send it to kill a young John Conner, creating the next history.

Third altered timeline - a T-1000, but no Uncle Bob:

Sometime between 2029 and 2032, probably early 2030, Skynet decides to send its newly-developed T-1000 back to kill the young John Conner, to a very unspecified date, which according to our calculations must be not later than 1994 but not earlier than 1997. Yes, that's correct--the earliest possible date is later than the latest possible date. For convenience, we overlook this discrepancy and choose 1996 as the target year.

At this point the history has included Sarah's visit to Bear Lake in 1973, the arrival of a T-800 and of Kyle Reese in 1984, the birth of John Conner and his early education, and the incarceration of Sarah Conner in a secure mental facility. The new history diverges from this in or about 1996 with the arrival of the T-1000.

The T-1000's mission is to kill John Conner; its fallback is to capture Sarah Conner to use as bait, but ultimately it will kill her. It tracks John to the mall, but ultimately John manages to evade and escape, so it takes Sarah, and kills her, but then one of two things happen. The less likely is that it reveals itself sufficiently that forces are mobilized that are sufficient to stop it, and it is destroyed without completing its mission. The more likely is that it continues searching for John Conner in the city until, in August 1997, judgment day comes and it is destroyed in the nuclear attack.

Someone named Kyle Reese is again born sometime after 1997, who is probably a different person with the same name. History continues through the 2029 sending of the T-800 and of Kyle Reese to early 2030, when the same T-1000 is sent on the same mission. This timeline stabilizes and history advances a matter of a few hours or less, at which point John Conner sends a repurposed T-800 and creates the next history.

Fourth altered timeline - T2:

Sometime again in what is probably early 2030, hours or possibly mere minutes after the T-1000 has been sent to kill John but has only succeeded in killing Sarah, John sends a reprogrammed T-800 back. His motivation for doing so is to save Sarah, but he recognizes the danger that in saving Sarah he might end his own life, so he programs it to protect and obey his younger self, hoping that his younger self will take the steps to save Sarah. This actually works, but the incidental consequences are significant.

History again is rewritten from that uncertain date which we have made 1996 despite the impossibilities. The T-1000 is already here looking for John Conner, but John knows that it found him at the mall, so it sends the T-800 there and manages to rescue himself. From there he rescues Sarah, so that she is not killed, but this puts the T-1000 on their trail. They manage to destroy it.

At that point, Sarah obtains as much information as she can from the T-800 concerning the origin of Skynet, and proceeds to pursue a plan to destroy it. All of Cyberdyne's research and the parts of the old T-800 are demolished, and lead engineer Miles Dyson dies in the process.

Skynet does not go online in 1997. Fortunately, the T-1000 was destroyed by the Conners and the T-800, so the fact that it is not destroyed in the nuclear attack does not matter.

Even if a lot of this is fanfiction, it still makes sense to me, even if I lack the ability to really explain it.

Essentially, if Skynet sends a T-800 back and the Resist sends Kyle back to stop it, there will be one timeline separating the timeline where neither were sent back and the one where both arrive: one in which there is only the T-800 active in the past, and Sarah must survive and conceive John with another father.

This makes discussion of time travel much more difficult, I think, but it does help to clear up a lot of the inconsistencies in the film.

[Broomstick]

For that matter, why doesn't the "living tissue" encasing T-800 Terminators show bruising? It does show some minor bleeding when cut/abraded, so why doesn't it bruise.

In a lot of fanfic and such; the authors assume that T-800s can run in "infiltration mode" settings which limits a whole bunch of things (maximum punch force, maximum joint rotation, etc) to avoid damaging tissue during long term missions to prevent the disguise from being blown.

I can see where that makes sense, but does a machine like that actually need a limiter? How about just not exerting itself beyond human norms outside of combat (or some other circumstance that would require it)? Terminators seem to like efficiency and it's just not efficient to exert more force than necessary to get something done.

Chinese film-goers abandoned Dark Fate (as well as Gemini Man); so no chance of it recouping losses at all. Meanwhile, Joker made as much profit as Infinity War.

::: shrug ::::

Not every attempted blockbuster is going to actually be a blockbuster. The fact that there are failures does not negate that there is a still a big global market for this sort of movie.

Personally, I enjoyed Dark Fate and I'm glad I saw it... but I think I'm easier to please than a lot of other audience members. I figured that out a long time ago.

I'd also like to take a moment to point out a key moment that had me rolling my eyes -- the air battle/crash sequence.

Oh yeah - but I gave up expecting realistic aviation in movie decades ago. I think the most recent movie I saw with anything like real aviation was Dunkirk. Before that.... Flyboys in 2006, and even that one, despite some very well done sequences, took some liberty with physics during one battle scene. Either I was going to stop expecting the movies to get this right, or just give up movies. It's like how every car crash in Hollywood ends in a gigantic explosion for no damn good reason.

For those of you following us, basically, the Rev-9 steals a USAF KC-10 Extender, killing everyone on board; then runs over a pair of what appears to be F-35s causing them to explode in mid air, with little damage seen to the KC-10; before jumping out of the cockpit towards the C-5, moments before the two planes collide in mid-air.

The C-5 eventually breaks up, but not for about 3-4 minutes of CGI action sequence inside the cargo bay, as our heroes battle Rev9 while the C-5 goes down in flames, before jettisoning a parachute rigged humvee with them in it.

There's a lot to unpack in that, from:

A.) Theft of a strategic heavy refuelling asset from a USAF base; destruction of two stealth fighters pursuing a stolen strategic heavy airlifter, and once they find the bodies of the crew in the crash site as well as the black box on the KC-10; things will get very spooky.

I'm not sure what you're expecting to find on the black box - up until the time Rev-9 "runs over" the other planes the flying isn't unusual. Grace isn't following a checklist so the procedures are likely to be different than with a fully staffed airplane but it's already known the airplane was stolen so they aren't going to expect completely normal. It's not until the Rev-9 takes over and starts ramming other aircraft anything gets whacky.

Sure, the CVR might be curious, but honestly, neither black box is going to be found until after the fact. There's just not enough time to get the Spook Squad involved. They go from battling it out with Rev-9, to stealing the airplane, to crashing, to the scenes in the dam in at most a couple hours, and certainly for the flight time they're moving pretty fast just because they're in an airplane. The spooks are going to show up after the fact, clearly after Sarah and Dani have time to get away.

B.) There's 'turn your brain off a bit' and then there's "turn it off so much that you're functionally retarded". I'm sure, as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on aviation, you know precisely how long it takes for even a heavy cargo aircraft to distengrate following a mid-air collision with another aircraft of the same general weight class.

No, actually I don't know "precisely" how long, but it's a general rule of thumb that aircraft are NOT "crashworthy" in the sense you can ram them into something and expect to have a working airplane afterward. That scene is treating airplanes like two pickups trading paint in a chase scene on the ground and aircraft just don't work like that. It's awesome, but completely unreal. Then again, we're in a movie with time travel, a human super-soldier, and AI murder machines including one that is freakin' liquid. Real world physics left the room at least an hour before that scene.

In reality, the ONLY realistic damage is that airplanes will continue to fly decently with the cockpit windows smashed. In reality, once the airplanes collided BOTH would start coming apart immediately and land in pieces scattered across the landscape. An empty C5 weighs in at over 172,000 kg and flies over 800 kph. Find the weight and speed of the pursuit craft. Now figure out the forces involved in a collision. All that force is going to go somewhere. Shit is going to just go to pieces. Being "run over" by a C5 is not like two cars bumping each other in a chase, it's more like a fucking building falling on top of you. No, not just "a building", a fucking skyscraper. Add in that none of the aircraft involved was built to withstand collisions and honestly, if that really happened everything involved would just self-disassemble. Including anyone inside, as people being ripped apart is not uncommon in airframe failures of any sort while in flight.

That mid-air collision sequence is as ridiculous as a man in blue tights and a cape flying unprotected through space. It's comic book physics.

But, like I said, virtually ALL movie aviation is that level of stupid.

n the Terminator franchise as a whole it's fairly well established that you can have "time orphans" - the future a character comes from can be eliminated without eliminating that character in the past. If you kill your own grandfather you don't vanish, never having existed in the Terminatorverse. You remain, in the past, standing over grandpa's dead body. Timelines don't "heal". So if you kill your creator you still exist, even if the future you come from no longer exists.

What's Skynet/Legion's goal? To ensure the preservation of it's own existence in the future. Leaving behind a "time orphan" of a Rev9 unit doesn't check off that goalbox.

If the "time orphan" doesn't cause a problem for the future AI it doesn't matter. From the first movie, you'd have a Terminator wandering around post-mission, you think that wouldn't matter? It's well established that Terminators can't self-terminate (though you'd think having that capability would minimize post-mission timeline changes). You'd always have at least one stranded in time with no way back to the future other than taking the long way. Apparently SkyNet/Legion gave no thought to this, otherwise it would have ordered Carl to just go sink himself in an ocean trench or something once John Conner was dead. Ditto for a Rev-9 - once Dani is dead it doesn't matter what happens to Rev-9 because there's no time machine to return him to his origin.

From that, it's a short jump to having time orphans.

Yeah, I know that. I'm questioning your premise that the ICE mooks we seen in this movie would be carrying cutting-edge weaponry.

We can see two types of CBP mooks:

Those wearing basic bulletproof vests like the Rev9's disguise is wearing, and tactical teams with more comprehensive armor. Tac Teams would be the ones with the carbines.

Right now, Dark Fate is so new, the internet firearms database hasn't updated it's entry beyond what's seen in the trailer(s); but when it moves to home video, we'll know more.

OK. Get back to me then.

Now in THAT case small arms having super-ammo does make sense. You've just pointed out how arms change over time, so why are you assuming that future side arms aren't optimized (as mush as feasible) to take out Terminators?

Well, there are physical limits to how fast you can push bullets with small arms technologies, etc.

Uh-huh. And there are limits to energy weapons, too. I'm not a weapons expert (that's more your area) but don't energy weapons take more... well.. energy than bullet-slingers?

Our civilization uses lasers in a lot of applications, hell, I use one at work every day. They're common as dirt. But oddly enough we don't have all those "laser guns" featured in early SF movies and TV. We're still using bullets. Why is that?

Sure, SkyNet/Legion future must have some kick-ass batter/power cell/energy storage technology to power the Terminators - not only do the damn things have impressive abilities but we never see them plug-in, recharge, whatever. So maybe having a portable battery for an energy weapon is less of an issue, but even so, bullets, like blades, are a pretty simple and reliable weapon tech and we know the AI's of the future like efficiency so maybe Legion decided bullets were more efficient in use of resources than "phased plasma rifles".

We're more advanced than the 19th Century but we're still using bullets, too.

So in this universe:

*) Most of the 1984 Terminator's remains were recovered from the hydraulic press.

Yeah, but in what condition? In T2 it was mentioned that the chip was damaged, presumably quite a bit of the rest of the thing was, too. Cyberdyne didn't get a pristine, fully functional device, they got a smashed alarm clock and were trying to re-assemble the pieces.

*) A significant portion of insanity occured "on video" at Cyberdyne in 1991/1992 and in front of hundreds of cops as witnesses.

They'd also have Reese's videotaped interview from 1984, plus whatever interviews that Sarah gave at Pescadero (we saw one such interview on screen in T2).

Key word here is "insanity". There may be an inner core of spooks that are in the know, but for a lot of other folks "insanity" is exactly how it's going to be dismissed. Only a small core of people will REALLY be in the know, and those aren't the folks at the ICE center, or EMT's in a random ambulance. By 2019 the shoot-out survivors from 1994 will largely be retired and not involved at all. The big shoot-out with a future murder-machine will have joined all the other legendary weirdness stories any cop can pass on to others.

The Cyberdyne stuff and the Reese and Conner interviews, if believed, will be deeply classified and thus not known to the vast majority of people. If not believed, it's crazy talk from a psychiatric patient. The movie audience, like Sarah and Dani and Grace and Reese and Carl, are in the know but the rest of the world isn't whether they're random street people, cops, or most of the government.

Do YOU have a number for The Spooks? Because I sure as hell don't. I could be contacted by aliens in the next five minutes and I wouldn't have a fucking clue who to call. How about you?

After a few minutes of searching on the internet; I'd be calling the CDC Rabies Duty Officer at 404-639-1050.

Then I'd call the Battalion Duty NCO for the USMC Cryptological Support Battalion at Fort Meade at (301) 677-6990.

I may not have the top spook's number(s), but the guy(s) at CDC and Fort Meade would.

OK. Call those guys and start talking about aliens, time-traveling killer robots, or whatever - why would they believe you? Do you think those folks don't get crank calls? What proof do you have? How do you make the person on the other end of the phone believe you instead of hanging up on you as some sort of nutball?

An example from real life: The Larry "Lawnchair" Walters Incident.

In 1982 this guy Larry Walters took an ordinary lawnchair, attached 45 helium-filled weather balloons, and launched it. He went up to 15,000 feet and drifted into LAX airspace where, needless to say, he caused some disruption. But initially the pilots - who could clearly see this dude sitting in a lawnchair in mid-air with a fucking gun across his lap (he had a pellet gun to shoot out balloons to allow a descent) - did not report this unusual sight. When one did (being asked by ATC why he wanted a course change) the ATC tower was, understandably, skeptical and told him to report to the tower for questioning after landing, clearly thinking this guy had snapped. Whereupon a bunch of other pilots confirmed that yes, there was a goddamned redneck sitting in a lawnchair with a gun across his lap in controlled airspace being a traffic hazard. Nevermind that helium ballons, lawnchairs, and crazy white guys are all known items in our lives, the combination in that location caused disbelief even if the combination was, with a minute's though, at least plausible. How much more insane would be a report of a shape-shifting killer AI from the future? We don't have any of that shit in our lives.

People are going to be delayed in reporting bizarre incidents because

1) In the case of Terminators they have to survive long enough to make a report
2) There is going to be initial disbelief and denial at something so weird
3) There will be hesitation for fear of being seen as crazy
4) When making a report the person on the other end is VERY likely to disbelieve the tale even when related by a "trained professional"

Call the CDC rabies hot line to report a murderbot what do you think the reaction is going to be?

WHY is the Battalion Duty NCO for the USMC Cryptological Support Battalion going to believe YOU? How do you convince him there really is a murderbot loose? You've got 10 seconds to convince that person you're NOT some drunk or high idiot. Go. Seriously, how do you convince him? (Or her)

It may take some time to get my information up the chain of command. It would go faster if there was some abnormal incident with widespread regional attention going on at the time; like the aliens crashed after causing a sonic boom that blew out every window for 50 miles.

True. Although going by what happened with the Chelyabinsk meteor the local fortune hunters are STILL likely to beat the government representatives out to the scene.

Speaking as someone with some experience in aviation, including reporting problems - this takes time. There is not a direct hotline to Spook Central. You report a crash to 911, or the FAA, and it gets passed along the lines of communication. Someone goes out to investigate the crash which takes time. NO response is instantaneous, or even especially quick.

Except that this wasn't a crash by an unconnected aircraft, but one with a corporately owned CBP heavy drone. When your organisation (CBP) "owns" the drone, things move faster.

Really? And why is that?

You do realize that evidence collection and analysis takes longer than what you see on TV, right? Even if the spooks are involved they'll want to be sure that this is a murderbot related crash and not just ordinary equipment failure, human error, human sabotage.... all of which are a hell of a lot more common than Terminators.

Yeah, they go out and find four dead guys but it's not like Rev-9 left a note stapled to their foreheads saying "Bwa-ha-ha! I'm a killer robot from the future here to slaughter you all, bwa-ha-HA!" It's going to take time for someone to figure out this shit is weird.

Going back to 'spookiness', I'd like to remind you that it's 2019.

The moment someone enters CONNOR, SARAH and her biometric data (fingerprints or eyescans) into the CBP database and hits SUBMIT; alarm bells are going to start ringing at whatever spook group got assigned the "Sarah Connor file" about 30 seconds later.

If Sarah has been off-grid for as long as stated they won't have "eye scans". Probably do have fingerprints. And you're assuming those government databases are all connected. Why do you assume that?

The Terminator files are going to be classified. What makes you think that law enforcement computers everywhere are going to be programmed to alarm anything? It will get mixed in with the thousands of other wanted fugitive files. Sure, eventually the spook squad will be notified but not nearly as quickly as you assume. The government just isn't that efficient.

About 10 minutes later, the duty officer for the Spook Group is dialing the call tree for whatever alphabet agency (ATF, FBI, DEA, etc) is closest to the CBP Detainee Facility and telling them to send a full tactical team to pick up Sarah Connor and transport her immediately to Fort Whatevername as a very high priority individual.

Uh-huh... and how long do you think that will take?

Let's go back to real life for a moment. On September 11, 2001 not one but FOUR airliners were hijacked and used to attack targets in the US. Not one of them were intercepted by the US military. During that time we learned that it takes a minimum of 15 minutes to scramble a jet, and even that is dependent on the jet being fueled and absolutely ready to take off and the pilot likewise.

And hijacked airliners are a known thing, having happened before in the past, so you don't have to convince the authorities such a thing even exists. Murderbots? Not so much.

Nowadays the military might be more on alert, and might have the jets ready to go and the pilots on stand by, but it will STILL take 15 minutes for them to get in the air. For every scenario there is a minimum time required to react. Look at the timeline in Dark Fate - yes, they separate Sarah from the rest of the prisoners so clearly her file is tagged somehow and they call for a pick up, which presumably is on its way when all hell breaks loose. There is not enough time for the government to get a response team in place, although the principals involved surely assume one is on the way. That's why Rev-9 leaves the scene. Then Grace, Sarah, and Dani escape in a stolen helicopter. Grace clearly knows how to fly, she comes from a military background, and will know how to minimize their profile on radar (again, trivially easy and she could the exact same technique used by the 9/11 hijackers). It's night, so ground observers won't be able to identify the helicopter or the tail number. Fly off, ditch it, steal a ground vehicle and get to Laredo to meet Carl.

There is zero reason for the spooks to connect the fugitives with a drapery-hanger in Laredo.

When they steal the C5 the time between that theft and the crash into the dam is too short for the authorities to catch up with them.

Assistant Duty Officer puts down phone and looks at Duty Officer. "Hey Bob; we've got a Chromejob."

"Fuck, I'll start calling in the tactical groups from Bragg and Pope."

Uh-huh.

And they send the squad(s) to the ICE detention center, where they find more dead people and that the wanted woman has stolen a chopper along with two accomplices. Where did they go? Fuck if we know. Trail has gone cold.

[Admiral Valdemar]

They basically drove the van into an already prepped C-5 and the colonel they had give them the EMP, said they had immediate clearance to taxi. There’s no way anyone was catching them, given the Rev-9 only just got there in a chopper as they were rotating out.

[FireNexus]

First, I just want to say I like the "machine without a country" phrase. Not sure why, but it sort of resonates with me.

Thanks. I was proud of it.

I'm wondering if Carl took up the cause of protecting Dani/opposing Rev-9 because ite didn't have a mission - sure, it had a purpose of sorts with Alicia and Mateo and the drapery business, but it was built to kill people and basically fight in a war. It hadn't done that for a long time. Maybe taking up this cause was its way of getting a new mission.

I think he did it for the same reason he sent Sarah Terminators to kill. He felt “bad” about what he did to her by killing John and wanted to make amends. His whole story was about how he grew a theory of mind, after all.

Or maybe it didn't want to explain bullet holes in its torso to Alicia and that was its way of getting out of it?

He’s a learning computer. Perhaps he learned that some arguments are best avoided.

(Yes, I am descending into silly with that last bit.)

I’m on the forum that taught me to think critically with engineers and scientists debating if Captain Picard can beat up Darth Vader. I’m comfortable with silly.

Regardless, Carl actually DID give a shit. Why I have no idea, but if it really didn't give a shit it had zero reason to help Sarah, Grace, or Dani. For that matter, if Carl really didn't give a shit it wouldn't have helped Sarah hunt other Terminators all those years. For whatever reason, Carl actually gave a damn.

I don’t disagree. I just meant he has no directive to care about Legion, so he’s free to decide how he wants to approach it.

Actually, I think his caring and lack of skynet-relevant action after he killed Connor is evidence that Skynet is smart with its programming. Since these are learning computers and can develop unpredictably on missions, you make their missions simple, measurable, and closed-ended. No three laws of robotics shit where they can start interpreting orders. Their directive is “kill this guy” rather than “stop the resistance from defeating skynet, kill this guy as primary objective”.

Again, maybe the T-800 was superseded because it was too good at imitating humans when isolated among them without other machines like it around. They start developing their own notions and maybe even acquiring something like empathy or a conscience. The T-800's we see have no malice - sure, they're killers but it's strictly business, they have no hatred, malice, or really any emotion towards their targets, no more than a hole punch has towards a sheet of paper. The T-1000, though, seems to have malice, to actually not like humans at all. Rev-9 is more of a question in my mind, not sure about that one.

We’ve never seen a T-800 deviate from its mission, though. We’ve seen it develop notions post-mission. But it’s important, I think, that Carl killed John after it could have figured out there was no skynet. Uncle Bob started learning and growing a conscience, sure. But that, if you’ll recall, was because he was ordered to. It was a mission directive.

But, as T-2 shows, a reprogrammed T-800 can go from assassin to guard dog just fine. I'm not sure how you'd even hold down a Rev-9 long enough to try reprogramming, much less how to go about it. The T-800 still has recognizable bits and pieces we can identify as chips - the T-1000 and Rev-9 are liquid, how the fuck do you even identify the CPU in that? The T-1000 and Rev-9 are, presumably, much harder to hack.

I’m not totally sure the Rev 9’s liquid part is fully independent. It joined back up in combat in ways that are tactically stupid several times during the film, so I suspect it can’t operate alone for long. If the T-1000 novel characterization is right, I’d say pairing it with a chipped terminator that it has to sync with every so often to avoid mission creep is how Legion solves the “Polyalloy terminators are unstable” problem.

Makes me wonder if in the SkyNet future(s) other T-800's had been captured and subverted. Hell, they had to have captured at least one to make Uncle Bob, possibly more than one. Consider that Uncle Bob was also undamaged when sent back. How the hell did FutureConner get ahold of an undamaged T-800 and reprogram it?

In the original screenplay, and with a shot or two in the trailer mirroring the idea, there’s a scene where Connor finds a rack of them after skynet is shut down.

[tezunegari]

The Rev9 liquid part reminded me of these ferromagnetic liquids but with a semi-solid state.
Or this:


It could be possible that the "programming" of the liquid comes from the endoskeleton in some sort of impression on the liquid that requires constant reinforcement (similar to RAM that will lose the information if the power supply is lost, or rather SSDs when no recharge of the cells is applied over some time)

[Galvatron]

FWIW, the T2 novelization indicates that John seeing "No Fate" etched into the table is where the divergence occurred.

The New John Connor Chronicles series of books seem to be predicated on this as well. It opens up with the ending of T2 that we're familiar with, then chapter two rewinds a bit and switches over to another reality where Judgment Day wasn't prevented. Here's an excerpt:

Sarah had drooped over the picnic table, with her cheek on the back of her hand. While the T-800 went on working, John walked over to her, quietly, thinking she was asleep. She looked up—she must have sensed his presence, perhaps his shadow falling over her. "I was thinking about Judgment Day," she said.

"It's okay, Mom," John said. "We'll get through all this. We've just got to tough it out."

She sat up, giving him a tired smile. "We have to be strong." Her jaw clenched and she picked up her knife, toying with it. Then she drove it point-first into the surface of the picnic table. She'd carved there the words: NO FATE. "We can stop them," she said.

"Mom? What are you talking about? If it's what I think you're thinking, don't even go there. Not now. This isn't the right time."

"Cyberdyne," she said. "This guy Miles Dyson, the guy who invents Skynet—we can stop it happening. We can blow up Cyberdyne, or take out Dyson, make sure no one can follow his research."

"You tried that before," John said, "with that government lab last year. They put you away, remember? The cops will be expecting you to try something like that."

Her jaw was set firm. "We have to keep trying."

"You only just got out of Pescadero. You don't want to go back."

"We can't just wait for Judgment Day."

"Okay, okay. But we can try later, or try something else. But we can't just kill people, and we can't attack Cyberdyne just when the T-1000 could be expecting it."

That struck home. Obviously, Sarah was weighing it all in her mind.

"There's got to be another way," John said.

Sarah lit a cigarette and drew back on it. She chewed her lips, then took another drag on the cancer stick. "All right," she said grimly. "We'll wait." She sounded resentful, like she knew better, but then she went quiet and her face softened. She stood and stepped close to him, opening her arms. She hugged John to her tightly, not saying anything, just sobbing. "I love you," she said. "I always have."

And he realized: he'd always known. "I know. It's okay, Mom... I love you, too."

Three hours later, they were in Mexico. The two of them, and "Uncle Bob."

I can't say the rest of the novel series doesn't take its own liberties with the story, but at least it handles the divergence point pretty well.

[Broomstick]

I'm wondering if Carl took up the cause of protecting Dani/opposing Rev-9 because ite didn't have a mission - sure, it had a purpose of sorts with Alicia and Mateo and the drapery business, but it was built to kill people and basically fight in a war. It hadn't done that for a long time. Maybe taking up this cause was its way of getting a new mission.

I think he did it for the same reason he sent Sarah Terminators to kill. He felt “bad” about what he did to her by killing John and wanted to make amends. His whole story was about how he grew a theory of mind, after all.

Carl also says he/it did it to give Sarah's life purpose and meaning. Which sounds a lot like having a mission to me.

It's an interesting sort of puzzle - what does a killbot AI do when its mission is over and it doesn't receive further orders? "Get a new mission" sounds like a logical outcome. Carl did do that - helping Alicia to raise Mateo. Helping Sarah kill other Terminators. Helping Grace, Sarah, and Dani against Rev-9. Doesn't rule out a theory of mind at all. There are humans that function sort of like that, too. Carl was a nonhuman finding a niche for him/itself in a human society. Did a pretty good job, probably.

Or maybe it didn't want to explain bullet holes in its torso to Alicia and that was its way of getting out of it?

He’s a learning computer. Perhaps he learned that some arguments are best avoided.

I think a lot of intelligent, self-aware entities learn that. Certainly those of us who have been married!

Again, maybe the T-800 was superseded because it was too good at imitating humans when isolated among them without other machines like it around. They start developing their own notions and maybe even acquiring something like empathy or a conscience. The T-800's we see have no malice - sure, they're killers but it's strictly business, they have no hatred, malice, or really any emotion towards their targets, no more than a hole punch has towards a sheet of paper. The T-1000, though, seems to have malice, to actually not like humans at all. Rev-9 is more of a question in my mind, not sure about that one.

We’ve never seen a T-800 deviate from its mission, though. We’ve seen it develop notions post-mission. But it’s important, I think, that Carl killed John after it could have figured out there was no skynet. Uncle Bob started learning and growing a conscience, sure. But that, if you’ll recall, was because he was ordered to. It was a mission directive.

True. I don't think a T-800 is able to deviate from a mission given by SkyNet or some other entity (such as John Conner) giving it an equivalent sort of programmed directive. It doesn't matter how a Terminator might feel about the directive, it doesn't have a choice. Uncle Bob couldn't self-terminate, but it COULD allow itself to be destroyed in order to protect John Conner because that was its mission directive at the time.

Once the directive is fulfilled, though, it's free until the next such directive.

I'm assuming, though, that a self-chosen directive isn't as locked in as a programmed on. Sure Carl can decide to sacrifice himself in order to achieve a self-chosen objective but he doesn't have to - which actually makes Carl genuinely heroic in this story.

[Patroklos]

If the "time orphan" doesn't cause a problem for the future AI it doesn't matter. From the first movie, you'd have a Terminator wandering around post-mission, you think that wouldn't matter? It's well established that Terminators can't self-terminate (though you'd think having that capability would minimize post-mission timeline changes). You'd always have at least one stranded in time with no way back to the future other than taking the long way. Apparently SkyNet/Legion gave no thought to this, otherwise it would have ordered Carl to just go sink himself in an ocean trench or something once John Conner was dead. Ditto for a Rev-9 - once Dani is dead it doesn't matter what happens to Rev-9 because there's no time machine to return him to his origin.

From that, it's a short jump to having time orphans.

If they succeed howerver Skynet does exist in the future. No matter what the Terminator does the Skynet that sent it back is gone as the change of killing John is too much to expect a divergence not to rewrite the future even if it is a future Skynet wins in. Skynet knowing this would still want the revised iteration to be helped. The T-800s shoudl be programmed to do so even if it is "stay hidden and turn yourself over after the apocolypse so we can reverse engineer you".

From the beginning, the time alteration was a suicide option for that Skynet. If it wasn't willing to help another iteration there was no point in sending it back in the first place.

But, as T-2 shows, a reprogrammed T-800 can go from assassin to guard dog just fine. I'm not sure how you'd even hold down a Rev-9 long enough to try reprogramming, much less how to go about it. The T-800 still has recognizable bits and pieces we can identify as chips - the T-1000 and Rev-9 are liquid, how the fuck do you even identify the CPU in that? The T-1000 and Rev-9 are, presumably, much harder to hack.

I’m not totally sure the Rev 9’s liquid part is fully independent. It joined back up in combat in ways that are tactically stupid several times during the film, so I suspect it can’t operate alone for long. If the T-1000 novel characterization is right, I’d say pairing it with a chipped terminator that it has to sync with every so often to avoid mission creep is how Legion solves the “Polyalloy terminators are unstable” problem.

If the thing can receive input, and has a memory to store it, and has a program to use it, it doesn't matter what the form it takes. Skynet/Legion programs them somehow. It can be as easy as a spoken password, and then a signal it can detect. In all of these scenarios, T-800 or T-1000, the issue here is not how Terminators receive and use programming. Skynet solved this. The question is how Skynet does it, and capturing those tools and procedures.

What I have always wondered is why Skynet would ever have done so via a user interface that is even understandable by a human, let alone intuitive. It's not like Skynet is restricted to C++ or something. Or that humans decades after a nuclear apocalypse are still teaching code at a level you are going to need hack a sentient supercomputer even if it was. The whole point is the experts at its origin couldn't stop the thing via those means.

[MKSheppard]

I can see where that makes sense, but does a machine like that actually need a limiter? How about just not exerting itself beyond human norms outside of combat (or some other circumstance that would require it)? Terminators seem to like efficiency and it's just not efficient to exert more force than necessary to get something done.

It's more of a wish to see the decision trees behind a Terminator's motives; as witnessed by the famous janitor scene in T1:

NO
YES
I DON’T KNOW
PLEASE COME BACK LATER
GO AWAY
FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE

Plus the self-care the 1984 Terminator does following the initial battles with Reese; where it dynamically comes up with alterations to avoid "an unacceptable social-attention index", from sewing shut the incision made in it's elbow to fix the damaged wrist to prevent accelerated gangrene and necrosis; and adopting the shades to hide it's robotic eye.

This, BTW is what a lot of later movie writers and comic writers fail to understand -- they all go for the meme of Terminators wearing sunglasses, just because rule of cool (TM).

At least Cameron and Wisher in T2 had a plausible reason for the sunglass wearing -- Arnold's primary transportation was a motorcycle; so it made logical sense for Uncle Bob to wear it even at night -- prevent damage of ocular components of infiltration covering from road debris, even if it was out of character in the dead of night.

Oh yeah - but I gave up expecting realistic aviation in movie decades ago. I think the most recent movie I saw with anything like real aviation was Dunkirk. Before that.... Flyboys in 2006, and even that one, despite some very well done sequences, took some liberty with physics during one battle scene. Either I was going to stop expecting the movies to get this right, or just give up movies. It's like how every car crash in Hollywood ends in a gigantic explosion for no damn good reason.

The thing I can't get is this. It's 2019. We have the internet, and linked-in and huge vast social networks compared to the olden days.

So it's relatively easy to find subject matter experts (SMEs) on almost everything. The writer(s) could simply call them up or ping them on facebook and go:

"Hey, how long would a large plane last if it was hit by another plane in midair?"

Which would let them significantly improve quality of their movies.

The spooks are going to show up after the fact, clearly after Sarah and Dani have time to get away.

The reason I'm focusing so much on the Spook Squad is that the entire Terminator franchise is built around the premise of time travel, and attempting to change the future via changing the past, etc.

While our heroes (and the Rev-9) are operating way ahead of the reaction cycle of the Spook Squad; TIME isn't.

Crazy ass shit happening makes the lunatic rantings of Sarah Connor (and later Dani) more plausible to the Spook Squad; which in turn feeds forward to a plausible future in which as they're about to bring SkyNet/Legion online; the Spook Squad shows up and shuts everything down [tm].

Congratulations, Rev-9, in your attempt to kill Dani, you played yourself, becoming so blatantly high profile that people noticed.

That mid-air collision sequence is as ridiculous as a man in blue tights and a cape flying unprotected through space. It's comic book physics.

But, like I said, virtually ALL movie aviation is that level of stupid.

I basically was willing to let that pass, if the cargo bay sequence was only about 10-15 seconds -- long enough for Carl to and Grace to grab everyone and toss them into the Humvee and launch it with their super speed(s); instead of the minutes long battle we got.

From the first movie, you'd have a Terminator wandering around post-mission, you think that wouldn't matter? It's well established that Terminators can't self-terminate (though you'd think having that capability would minimize post-mission timeline changes).

In 1991, Bethesda Softworks (yes Elder Scrolls and Fallout) made a game based on the first Terminator movie. It was an open world Grand Theft Auto style game with a lot of strategic thinking.

Anyway, since it was released without any input from the T2 movie makers that same year; the end if Sarah Connor's killed has this final line:

"Mission accomplished. Self destruct mechanism now engaged."

In the original T1 novelization there was some thought given to post-mission activities:

With conditions like those so far encountered on this mission, Terminator could operate indefinitely, plow through all opposition, and complete the target elimination, then stagger programless through the nuclear devastation caused by Skynet and walk up to its machine masters to be programmed anew.

Our civilization uses lasers in a lot of applications, hell, I use one at work every day. They're common as dirt. But oddly enough we don't have all those "laser guns" featured in early SF movies and TV. We're still using bullets. Why is that?

Energy Storage and materials science issues -- we're starting to move into the first combat applications -- the big limiter is that for really high powered lasers, you needed chemical fuel to power the shots. Solid state (like the lasers in DVD players) needed no fuel, but had weak power levels.

Solid state lasers are getting there now.

AI's of the future like efficiency so maybe Legion decided bullets were more efficient in use of resources than "phased plasma rifles".

SkyNet likely decided that the thermal transfer characteristics of Plasma weaponry were optimum for the counter-insurgency battles it was facing -- in addition to the primary physical damage (getting a hole punched in you), there's massive burns associated -- the resistance in the future doesn't have access to top grade hospitals with burn units.

Yeah, but in what condition? In T2 it was mentioned that the chip was damaged, presumably quite a bit of the rest of the thing was, too. Cyberdyne didn't get a pristine, fully functional device, they got a smashed alarm clock and were trying to re-assemble the pieces.

They got something recognizable as a killer robot -- looking at the T1 "you're terminated" sequence on Youtube, the T-800 got compacted into a 3~ inch high mass. Large parts of it remain recognizable, including servos, the eye, etc.

....The Cyberdyne stuff and the Reese and Conner interviews, if believed, will be deeply classified and thus not known to the vast majority of people. If not believed, it's crazy talk from a psychiatric patient.

But like I said earlier, the more crazy shit happens, the more deeply documented it gets by the spooks; particularly if they all happen around/near the nexus of Sarah Connor.

The Spook Squad can't react (unless they get lucky) within the timeframe (hours) of a lot of the action, like you said; but they can change the timeline themselves with what they find out.

OK. Call those guys and start talking about aliens, time-traveling killer robots, or whatever - why would they believe you? Do you think those folks don't get crank calls? What proof do you have? How do you make the person on the other end of the phone believe you instead of hanging up on you as some sort of nutball?

I suppose it works better if you're within their chain of command. So I guess I'd have to ask for directions to get there.

"Yeah, you won't believe me over the phone, but um, I'll just show up at Fort Meade main gate with this half-dead alien."

Except that this wasn't a crash by an unconnected aircraft, but one with a corporately owned CBP heavy drone. When your organisation (CBP) "owns" the drone, things move faster.

Really? And why is that?

You do realize that evidence collection and analysis takes longer than what you see on TV, right? Even if the spooks are involved they'll want to be sure that this is a murderbot related crash and not just ordinary equipment failure, human error, human sabotage.... all of which are a hell of a lot more common than Terminators.

Well, CBP drones are marked with the DHS Logo and "U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION" on the nose. They also have a broad blue 'racing stripe' going down their midsection, along with the DHS logo on the underside of their tail stabilators, and other identifying marks on their lower rudders.

They're going to recognize within the first 30 minutes that it was a CBP owned drone.

"Wait, this is one of ours."

That's where corporately owning the drone makes this massively faster. They already have access to the phone tree to get them connected to what section of CBP runs the drone operations.

It's not a chance of calling every airport within a 100 mile radius asking them if they lost a plane; it's more of calling the CBP Drone duty desk and saying "Hey, one of your drones just crashed right in the middle of a takedown of some cartel dudes."

"The fuck?"

CBP Drone guys start calling their own operators to get them to respond back.

Eventually, one won't call back.

From there, it's a short skip to calling the duty desk for that base to have the operators physically checked; at which point they'll find four people inside there, dead.

Connecting it to a murderbot...well, that wouldn't have happened...

BUT for one thing.

CONNOR, SARAH.

The moment her prints hit the CBP databases as she's being processed; the Spooks are gonna get alerted. From there on, it's just a matter of piecing together the details.

That CBP facility is going to have video cameras everywhere, to prevent claims by lawyers of mistreatment of detainees; so a lot of the weirdness will be captured on video.

And you're assuming those government databases are all connected. Why do you assume that?

It's 2019. Lots of post 9/11 reforms to "un-silo" certain things.

The Terminator files are going to be classified. What makes you think that law enforcement computers everywhere are going to be programmed to alarm anything? It will get mixed in with the thousands of other wanted fugitive files.

The Spook squad can simply place notices with every major federal agency for automatic forwarding of certain persons of interest.

If she was caught by a podunk Texas police department, I could buy the "gets lost in mass of detainees and arrestees each year" excuse.

But she ended up in federal (CBP) custody; and her prints will be flagged via the general post 9/11 anti-terrorism initatives to identify persons of interest if they're detained at the border.

And they send the squad(s) to the ICE detention center, where they find more dead people and that the wanted woman has stolen a chopper along with two accomplices. Where did they go? Fuck if we know. Trail has gone cold.

Then the whole C- 5/KC-10/F-35 mess happens, plus the entire fight at a hydroelectric dam, during which they use a power generation turbine to try and kill Rev-9; blowing it up in the process -- do I have to remind you that dams have gotten extra attention since 9/11 as possible terrorist targets?

Like I said earlier:

While our heroes (and the Rev-9) are operating way ahead of the reaction cycle of the Spook Squad; TIME isn't.

Crazy ass shit happening makes the lunatic rantings of Sarah Connor (and later Dani) more plausible to the Spook Squad; which in turn feeds forward to a plausible future in which as they're about to bring SkyNet/Legion online; the Spook Squad shows up and shuts everything down [tm].

Congratulations, Rev-9, in your attempt to kill Dani, you played yourself, becoming so blatantly high profile that people noticed.

But that'd require that the writers be a bit more self aware of the universe, plus the implications of time travel.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There does seem to be this emphasis more on fun action visuals over doing the horror and stalking slasher aspect that made T1, and to a lesser extent T2. There’s a YouTube video by a guy named Captain Midnight that brings up these issues, where the most effective play is in the unstoppable slasher approach. The big action sequences of T2 accommodate the dual Termie nature of the film, much like how Alien and Aliens are horror and action, respectively.

I would have preferred them follow what Serena in the Infiltrator novels did. Focusing more on having someone go back and try and bootstrap Skynet, with a secondary objective of killing the Connors and lieutenants on the side.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Shep, did you see this?

So, they got the plasma rifle sounds right... then fucked up what the bolts looked like. Also, Aerial HKs are electric ducted fans, not afterburning anything. And more T-800 throwing a human about rather than put fist through chest stuff.

I’m also getting Bethesda vibes from the character interactions. Not in a good way.

https://youtu.be/QEpsMbck-8I

[Galvatron]

I would have preferred them follow what Serena in the Infiltrator novels did. Focusing more on having someone go back and try and bootstrap Skynet, with a secondary objective of killing the Connors and lieutenants on the side.

Now that you mention Serena...

It occurs to me that Skynet's reason for sending the T-1000 back may have primarily been to mitigate any alterations in the timeline resulting from the T-800's actions in 1984. Although Skynet was confident that the T-800 would accomplish its mission, the T-1000 had to verify it and then prioritized the termination of John Connor when it discovered that its predecessor had failed.

With John (and Sarah) terminated, the T-1000 could then resume its primary objective. It could even assume the identity of anyone from POTUS to Cyberdyne personnel that were historically crucial to Skynet's development and installation at NORAD. A regular T-800 could never do all that, which may have been Skynet's reason for creating the T-1000 all along.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Now that you mention Serena...

It occurs to me that Skynet's reason for sending the T-1000 back may have primarily been to mitigate any alterations in the timeline resulting from the T-800's actions in 1984. Although Skynet was confident that the T-800 would accomplish its mission, the T-1000 had to verify it and then prioritized the termination of John Connor when it discovered that its predecessor had unexpectedly failed.

With John (and Sarah) terminated, the T-1000 could then resume its primary objective. It could even assume the identity of anyone from POTUS to Cyberdyne personnel that were historically crucial to Skynet's development and installation at NORAD. A regular T-800 could never do all that, which may have been Skynet's reason for creating the T-1000 all along.

I had always assumed, as with the end of The Future War, that Skynet had sent back all the Terminators at that last point before the time displacement lab was taken by the Resistance. I vaguely recall a scene in the book that mentioned the T-800, T-1000, then Serena going through, all with varying missions that complement one another.

[Galvatron]

Going by the T2 novelization, the resistance detected only two events coinciding with the telltale signs of the time displacement device's activation (IIRC, "energy pulses" or some such). If we stick to that, as I tend to do, then Skynet only used it twice before it was captured.

Of course, one could speculate that Skynet had been using the time displacement device for weeks or months before the resistance captured it. It could have therefore sent any number of things back in time, but that would seem to be at odds with the notion that it only dared to use time travel as a desperation tactic.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Going purely by the Cameron canon, I’d say the two excursions back are all that happened, Skynet hedging it’s bets. It makes sense that it was a Hail Mary by Skynet that the Resistance got wind of and went to quickly put the kibosh to, but arrived a tad too late.

[Galvatron]

Yeah, I tend to think Skynet regarded any time travel as highly dangerous to its own existence and so it waited until it was certain of its own doom before risking any potential causality violations.

Which goes back to my theory about the T-1000.

[Patroklos]

Going by the T2 novelization, the resistance detected only two events coinciding with the telltale signs of the time displacement device's activation (IIRC, "energy pulses" or some such). If we stick to that, as I tend to do, then Skynet only used it twice before it was captured.

Of course, one could speculate that Skynet had been using the time displacement device for weeks or months before the resistance captured it. It could have therefore sent any number of things back in time, but that would seem to be at odds with the notion that it only dared to use time travel as a desperation tactic.

Every time Skynet sent one back in sequence like that (if that’s how it went) and it’s circumstances in the present remained the same Skynet would have known it failed miserably (and also that the timeline was not alternatively altered). We can assume the based on the events of T1 and T2 that each time Skynet did so is ceased to exist in its current iteration due to its Terminator’s mission failure coupled with unintended alterations (altering its own origin in the first instance, stopping its invention in the second). This is also means Carl had to be sent back prior or simultaneously to Uncle Bob, by the same iteration of Skynet.

The other result of this is that the resistance never had to send a protector back. The fact that they had an opportunity to do proves the Terminator they were responding to didn’t do anything to invalidate their timeline’s existence by killing John or otherwise. The events of the past would reconcile instantly in the future if the future is alterable in this fashion (as opposed to nuTrek splinter universe fashion, in which case nothing Skynet or the Resistance did mattered to their situation time travel wise).

On a separate note:

1.)How did Carl know when/where other Terminatos would show up to tip off Sarah? Maybe in a simultaneous send back scenario all of them were told of each other’s missions. But in the case of Legion’s minions that’s an entirely different timeline.

2.) In T2 Uncle Bob self terminated in order to destroy his CPU because it’s mere existence made a new Skynet iteration or analogue inevitable. But now there is Carl, but no Skynet. Uncle Bob’s heroic and famous sacrifice has been made unnecessary and irrelevant. Worse, it is probably responsible for John’s death.

[Galvatron]

2.) In T2 Uncle Bob self terminated in order to destroy his CPU because it’s mere existence made a new Skynet iteration or analogue inevitable. But now there is Carl, but no Skynet. Uncle Bob’s heroic and famous sacrifice has been made unnecessary and irrelevant. Worse, it is probably responsible for John’s death.

I always did think it was unnecessary since it was highly improbable that anyone would ever be able to capture or destroy Uncle Bob. Especially if he and the Connors laid low for the rest of their lives.

On the other hand, he was in pretty bad shape at the end of T2. Maybe he surmised that his damage was irreparable and that it made him too vulnerable.

[Broomstick]

1.)How did Carl know when/where other Terminatos would show up to tip off Sarah? Maybe in a simultaneous send back scenario all of them were told of each other’s missions. But in the case of Legion’s minions that’s an entirely different timeline.

It was one of those blink-and-you-miss-it things, but Carl mentioned that there was a sort of energy pulse that showed up before a time traveler arrived that he could detect and locate. That was how he gave Sarah the coordinates and date/time of another Terminator arrival. No details on what, exactly, that was or how Carl was detecting it, only that he could.

[Patroklos]

An oddly specific thing for an infiltration model to just have eh? Kind of a niche capability, given how uncommon time travel is for Skynet. It would have really come in handy if you were another T-800 sent back in time to track down a T-1000...

It still makes no sense. Unless Carl or Sarah just happens to be within a few minute's travels to wherever that spot is, there is no reason for them to find the Terminators before they go incognito. For this specific movie, the Legion Terminator was not intercepted by Sarah anywhere near where he arrived at.

On a separate note, Sarah Connor's narration at the start of T2 could be used to lend support to the simultaneous push of Terminators into the past. While the first Terminator did alter the timeline, if they both traveled at the exact same time T-1000 could have arrived in the future altered 1995 because that's the only 1995 that now exists. In this case, the altered (by the actions in 1984) timeline 2029 would still have a different instance of Skynet due to the divergence but have no connection to the T-1000 the previous iteration sent back. This gets around the fact that the same Sarah Connor narration clearly states Skynet only sent two Terminators into the past. If you have to count 1984 T-800 and the T-1000 then there is no room for Carl. If you don't have to count T-1000 there is room for Carl, and Uncle Bob isn't sent back due to any action by this timeline's Skynet but rather because John remembers the necessity to do so.

So much of this could be ironed out with a few minutes of thought. You can never get all of the paradoxes right, but every glance shouldn't bring up a new one.

[Galvatron]

It occurs to me that Skynet's reason for sending the T-1000 back may have primarily been to mitigate any alterations in the timeline resulting from the T-800's actions in 1984. Although Skynet was confident that the T-800 would accomplish its mission, the T-1000 had to verify it and then prioritized the termination of John Connor when it discovered that its predecessor had failed.

With John (and Sarah) terminated, the T-1000 could then resume its primary objective. It could even assume the identity of anyone from POTUS to Cyberdyne personnel that were historically crucial to Skynet's development and installation at NORAD. A regular T-800 could never do all that, which may have been Skynet's reason for creating the T-1000 all along.

After some further thought about the above theory, two more questions just occurred to me:

1) Why didn't Skynet just send the T-1000 back to 1984 instead of bothering with the T-800 at all?
2) How did the T-1000 not survive long enough to tell Skynet all about its future from the very start?

My current theory is that its power source has a much shorter lifespan than a T-800's and would therefore only last long enough to ensure Skynet's awakening on Judgment Day. With its mission completed and its power exhausted, it would simply melt into a puddle of its own constituent particles and that would be the end of it.

I think that would answer both questions nicely.

[Proletarian]

Again, the T-800, Kyle Reese, the T-1000 and Uncle Bob were all sent back from different points in time, in that order. This necessarily means that there exist timelines in which the T-800 and the T-1000 arrive in 1984 and 1995, respectively, without Kyle Reese or Uncle Bob in pursuit. And Sarah and John must have survived at least one iteration of both protector-free timelines for John to send Kyle and Uncle Bob into the future.

In other words: rather than two separate timelines - the original timeline of the first film and the timeline altered by T2 - you have to account for at least four: one with a lone T-800, one with a T-800 and Kyle Reese, one with the T-1000, and one with the T-1000 and Uncle Bob. Both films we are necessarily at least the second iterations of those timelines.