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First off let me say I love the concept and I'm enjoying the series SCC. However the SCC started me thinking about the fact that the original future as seen in the first movie must of changed by now, which if I understand it the new movie does show this. Anyway whilst thinking about the storylines in SCC my mind wondered back to the original movie. Is there a fundimental flaw in the storyline? I was thinking about the whole John Conner thing. In the movie we learn that John Conner saves the human race and his father is Kyle Reese. However isn't this a paradox? Surely no matter how many times you go back in time, you have to have a virgin event in the first place. Basically a man called John Conner must rise up and lead the humans in defeating the machines, for the first time. At this point he's had no training from third parties making him ready for this event, it happens. So isn't the idea of Kyle Reese being his father not workable and the storylines in SCC changing the future?

Well the idea in terminator 3, as crap as it was, was that fate couldn't be changed. As for sarah connor chronicles I have no idea.

But there are bound to be flaws and changes in any story which isn't planed out from the start, otherwise they'd have nowhere to go with it. 40k for example has changed a ton of stuff fluffwise since it began.

SCC is it's own timeline, diverging from the movies at the end of T2, so ignore it for the purposes of T3 and T:Salvation

I'm not sure if Salvation is following on from Rise of the Machines though (which I rather enjoyed).

And the real noodle bender....Skynet brough about it's own destruction. Pourquoi? It sent the first Terminator back to kill Sarah. Kyle goes back, fathers John. Yet in doing so Skynet also ensures it's own existence.

Yarrgh!

And my favourite theory? The events of the first two films are interchangable, more or less.

Anything involving time travel will inevitably lead to inconsistencies. I havent seen SCC yet (i plan to) but Terminator is badass and that's good enough for me hehe.

The one thing Skynet is missing is love.

I didn't care for SCC, didn't find the plot that interesting. Try to stop Skynet before it's built, yeah!

The plot of the first movie, where time travel malarkey in the future that is meant to stop a past event in fact leads to that event happening, is a staple of sci-fi time travel stories. It isn’t a paradox if you assume all events are inter-related in a non-linear way and this is just our limited perception that causes us to experience them in a time linear way. So time isn’t A happens, then B happens, then C happens in which time travel changes A to A1, then B1 happens, then C1 happens…. It’s more like A happens and all future time travel events affecting A happen despite not having ‘happened’ yet, then B happens, then C happens including all events that go back to alter A. In this concept everything is pre-determined.

12 Monkeys is another good example of this.

But then you get to the second movie, where fate can be changed. Now there’s a problem, because if future events are really alterable, there’s nothing making sure Kyle Reese comes back to impregnate Sarah Conner and the whole thing is broken.

The one good thing about the third movie is that it fixed this, by introducing a new concept of a broad fate, while allowing a lot of malleability in the finer details. A self-aware robot is inevitable and it will engineer a nuclear Armageddon, and John Conner will stop it, but the actions taken by the Conners in the present can shift that event into the future, and change the finer details of what Skynet is.

I don’t think the idea holds up to close scrutiny, but time travel rarely holds up for more than one movie or tv episode before becoming incoherent. Best to just accept it broadly and focus on the battling robots.

sebster wrote:The plot of the first movie, where time travel malarkey in the future that is meant to stop a past event in fact leads to that event happening, is a staple of sci-fi time travel stories. It isn’t a paradox if you assume all events are inter-related in a non-linear way and this is just our limited perception that causes us to experience them in a time linear way. So time isn’t A happens, then B happens, then C happens in which time travel changes A to A1, then B1 happens, then C1 happens…. It’s more like A happens and all future time travel events affecting A happen despite not having ‘happened’ yet, then B happens, then C happens including all events that go back to alter A. In this concept everything is pre-determined.

Ah, I get what your saying , I made this diagram to demonstrate...



I think you'll find that's accurate. I feel a nobel prize coming my way.