ah! gotcha. no, i'm cool with them time travelling to 2007/08, but why mess with the timeline before that? it just makes no sense except maybe they need to hire me on as continuity consultant.

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The pilot was set in 1999, and they said they were 2 years in Nebraska with Charley, roughly. Which makes it 1997, although T2 came out in... 1991?

Actually, if you accept T1 in 1984, then T2 in 1997 makes sense for John then being 13--as I recall, he was too old in T2 to be only 8 or 9.

It takes some handwaving and retcon, but it's clear Friedman is prepared to do that, to tell the story he wants to tell. For instance, the adoption papers, which I don't recall from T2 either.

I liked the parallel here between Cameron and Sarah: both of them have the opportunity to help someone for no benefit to themselves, and Cameron fails that test. And yet, dancing.

My favorite part of the episode might well be Derek's incomprehending face in the doorway at the end.

Although I also liked the other confrontations: Sarah bitching him out about going in her room; Derek and Cameron over pancakes; John and Derek talking about John's childhood and about how almost everyone stops fighting at some point.

It's pretty clear Derek knows something went down in the basement room of that house: there was too much personal knowledge in that exchange.

Man, that was good.

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It takes some handwaving and retcon, but it's clear Friedman is prepared to do that, to tell the story he wants to tell.

Eh, the entire Terminator franchise has always required handwaving and retcon. This iteration doesn't seem to require much more of either than the movies did.

(I mean, has any version of this story ever addressed the fact that if they DO stop Skynet and prevent Judgement Day, Kyle Reese will never be sent into the past & John Connor will never be born in the first place?)

(And wouldn't it be funny if last night's ep did just that? Since obviously I haven't watched yet?)

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They told my Tivo that they were showing it! Well, my DirecTV. Doesn't flow as well as Tivo.

I don't know what was up with that, but it happened with us, too. Silly TiVo!

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has any version of this story ever addressed the fact that if they DO stop Skynet and prevent Judgement Day, Kyle Reese will never be sent into the past & John Connor will never be born in the first place

nope! i think they're pretending paradoxes don't exist.

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or maybe all of them believe it would be a better world if John had never been born. that's somewhere they could go with it. by trying to stop the evolution of machines, John is sacrificing himself and no one will remember him or the possible future when that happens...

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Ah, but if Kyle Reese doesn't go back in time and warn Sarah Connor about Skynet, then Judgement Day happens anyway because nobody was trying to stop it.

Basically, in order for the story to work, time has to do a loop-de-loop where the "first" time through, Skynet evolves unencumbered and the future happens the way it's described in T1, and then we start sending shit back in time and changing things and continue into the (new) future on an alternate timeline that nevertheless depends on the first one happening the way it originally did in order for causality to remain intact.

IOW, look! Shiny robots! Nice arms!

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It takes some handwaving and retcon, but it's clear Friedman is prepared to do that, to tell the story he wants to tell.

If Friedman were doing Manimal, 2007, I'd be a lot more willing to give him leeway than I am with something as well known as Terminator.

I can usually shuffle around a lot, but there's no way I can buy the events of T2 happening in 1997. Fanwanking them to 1995 if John is indeed 10, as the police file shows in T2, is as far as I can go.

And I have to say, I find the producers' statements I've seen to the effect that the films aren't all consistent, so the show doesn't have to be, somewhat lazy. If I can use Wikipedia to figure out dates from the movies, so can the show writers. Of course people are going to be harping on things like "Did you notice the day? June, 1997?" If sci-fi geeks are going to ask why Buffy didn't get cramps whenever she was around vampires, like she did in the movie, giving a 1997 date for that scene is definitely going to raise a fuss among Terminator fans.

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IOW, look! Shiny robots! Nice arms!

I gave up trying to resolve time paradoxes after I saw the Sealab 2021 where Stormy and Quinn keep going back to try and prevent Sealab from blowing up (and creating mutiple iterations of themselves in the process).

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the Sealab 2021 where Stormy and Quinn keep going back to try and prevent Sealab from blowing up (and creating mutiple iterations of themselves in the process)

I have massive love for that ep.

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