Heron61's Geeky Musings on Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles

The Terminator TV show (all nine episodes that exist so far) is an extremely pleasant surprise — who would have expected it to be good? Heron61 deduces some implications of time travel in the Terminator show and movies (some spoilers):

In any case, in addition to being one of the most definitely feminist shows on TV, I also like T:SCC because it’s fundamentally about the sort of time travel where nothing is fixed and the past and future can be changed. I was thinking about the (at this point exceptionally complex) timestream of the show. Looking at the first movie, it’s clear that we were watching at least the 2nd actual timeline. In the original timeline (before any time travel occurred) it’s obvious that John Conner was never born, because Kyle Reese never went back in time. Instead, presumably the war happened sometime later than 1999 (since the 1999 war happened earlier because of access to cyborg technology) and I’m betting that humanity did very badly indeed. So, somehow one of the few survivors, Kyle Reese, gets access to the time machine and goes back into the 1980s. There, he presumably tries to warn people, fails utterly, and instead hooks up with Sarah Conner, they have a kid, and Kyle Reese and Sarah Conner raise this child with the knowledge of the coming war – putting him in the perfect position to be a rebel leader who helps the survivors do a whole lot better than they did in the timeline the first Kyle Reese is from.

The first movie started with this timeline, where John Conner knew he had to send Kyle Reese back, both to protect Conner’s mother from the terminator and to become his father. So, we already have a third timeline, because this time Sarah Conner is attacked by a terminator robot and Kyle Reese is killed by it. Then, in the end of the 2nd movie, Sarah Conner eliminates this timeline by destroying the remains of this robot, creating timeline number four, where the war happens in 2011. Then, the show starts with Cameron taking Sarah and John Conner from the 1990s to 2007, creating timeline five, where John Conner is around a decade younger than he previously was. Sarah Conner destroying the first model of “the Turk” and Derek Reese killing Andy Goode have likely created another timeline that is again at least slightly different.

Not to mention the rather suckalicious third Terminator movie, which is presumably a timeline that was somehow prevented and so now never takes place. I love time travel narratives. :-)

There’s much more, including some possibly unfair comments about why it’s for the best that this isn’t a Whedon show, in Heron61’s post.

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4 Responses to Heron61's Geeky Musings on Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles

  1. 1
    Tefnut says:

    Looking at the first movie, it’s clear that we were watching at least the 2nd actual timeline. In the original timeline (before any time travel occurred) it’s obvious that John Conner was never born, because Kyle Reese never went back in time.

    Wrong, and shows a total misunderstanding of time-travel and paradoxes. What changed from movie to movie is the concept of he timeline as immutable/mutable.

    In the first movie – it was immutable: Sarah’s son was born to grow up and send Kyle back to father himself and grow up to send Kyle back to father himself etc. etc. worlds without end. That’s called a “paradox” and it’s a concept as old as SF. There IS no “original” timeline, as timetravel and the paradox and the father from the future are all an integral part of the timeline, which ain’t all that linear.

    In the second movie, we get the “time is mutable” theory, also familiar, in which knowing about future events enables you to change the timeline, neccessarily creating multiple timelines, since the paradox is no longer a closed loop: if the war is prevented, how and why does Sarah’s son grow up, meet his father, send him back etc.

    The third movie plays on a “flexible within limits” timeline that we saw in John Varley’s Millenium or Connie Willis’ time travel stories: you can change small things- but somehow, What IS Meant To Be Will Happen. If the hero failed to meet his wife at age X, events will conspire to insure that meeting at a later date. When people change variables in the timeline, The Universe adjusts other variables to arrive at the Destined Destination.

  2. 2
    Rich B. says:

    No, no, no.

    Terminator I’s timeline is not the “second timeline.” Its the single “unchangeable time” model, where the past and future interact with each other. The best example of it was 12 Monkeys, but it works in Terminator I as well.

    Heron61 is trying to shoehorn the Kyle Reece story into a more “Back to the Future” view of time travel, which I just don’t think works.

    I agree that T:SCC is awesome, though.

  3. 3
    Robert says:

    Are you smoking crack? Is everyone smoking crack? I keep reading all these blog posts about this wonderful Terminator show, this cool Terminator show, this fill-in-the-positive-adjective Terminator show. What alternative timeline are you guys ‘n gals getting your TV feed from? Because here on the Earth-1 timeline, me and my wife watched the whole first season and it filled the universe with the rotting smell of its own gigantic shittasticness.

    Just my $0.02.

  4. 4
    John S. says:

    Rich B wrote:

    Terminator I’s timeline is not the “second timeline.” Its the single “unchangeable time” model, where the past and future interact with each other. The best example of it was 12 Monkeys, but it works in Terminator I as well.

    That’s true from the standpoint of the first movie. However, I was looking at this from the persective of the series, which is definitively about a flexible and changing future (proven above all else by the death of Andy Goode). From this POV (which I like far better), the timeline of the first movie can’t be the original timeline. Instead, we have a continually changing series of timelines, of which we have at least 6.