T:TSCC The Turk, Skynet, and Libertarian Terminators

Something has bugged me ever since “The Turk” was brought in as a storyline: while there is some circumstantial evidence linking the Turk to Skynet, I can’t recall, and haven’t been able to confirm, a direct link. This is making me think that the Turk might not be what the TTSCC PTB want us to think. In much the same way that clever editing was used in “Dungeons and Dragons” to make us think that Cameron was the terminator in the mysterious basement room, I think the Turk might be a device of misdirection.

I first started thinking about this when someone in one of the forums suggested that the Turk didn’t lead to Skynet, but to Cameron. What if the Turk is a competitive branch that might have been part of what ended up being the Skynet project, but wasn’t directly integrated into the program? This would help to explain how there could be Libertarian Terminators who don’t want to be a part of Skynet’s program of anthropocide.

The wild card is Cameron. She told Allison Young that she and some other Terminators didn’t want to see the extermination of humans. Cameron is also obviously learning as much as she can from Allison in order to be more effective in reaching John Connor. Here’s the thing…the big assumption is that Cameron was captured and reprogramed by John. Cameron informed Sarah that, “When they reprogram us, they scrub our memories.”

If that’s the case, and that scrubbing implies erasing, then why would Cameron still have all of those memories of Allison from “Allison From Palmdale”? Why would John scrub her memory and then reimplant Allison memories? If we are to assume that Cameron’s memories of Allison are true, then Cameron’s memory was never “scrubbed”, and she’s likely not reprogrammed by John/the Resistance. Cameron has admitted to John that she will lie about “important things” when the mission requires it. While it could be a convoluted Skynet trick, it seems more likely that Cameron and her ilk are rivals to Skynet.  Perhaps they see an advantage with having a partnership with humans that Skynet doesn’t or can’t.

See…here’s the thing: regardless of what the events in TTSCC have done to the future, the Skynet we all know and love is still trying to Kill John with everything except a samurai-wielding Uma Thurman. So Skynet still gets built regardless of Andy’s death, and Mile’s death, and the deaths of many others. How? Remember back to “The Turk”. The winner of the government contract was the Japanese team’s computer. Why couldn’t it be the oh-so-systematic foundation of Skynet?

Future-Andy mentioned that he was only one of a team of 10-15 others that built Skynet. Andy probably got the job based on how well the Turk did. Even so, it was never said that he was the brains of the group (clearly not, as Skynet gets built anyway). For all we know, he was just a subroutine drone. The only reason Sarah didn’t go after the winners was because the future resistance guys didn’t have surveilance material on them. It doesn’t mean that they weren’t important, just that for that one team, they didn’t build a file on them. They followed Andy around because the future-him was so guilt-ridden that he put all the blame on himself.

Then why would a T-1001 be so hot to have the Turk as a basis of the Babylon project? Doesn’t Skynet know its own origins? I think it does. I also think that it knows that there is a rival. From all these temporal experiences, it must be clear to Skynet that trying to alter the future is tough. But what about absorbing it? Instead of fighting the development of the Turk, why not foster it so that it can be just as smart as its future competitor?

Derek seems to have this fear that Cameron is or will be Skynet. What if it’s the opposite—Cameron is the only hope of ensuring that Skynet can eventually fall (albeit after much of humanity dies…sometimes you have to break a few eggs)? The way to do that is to both keep John (and Sarah, given the title of the show) alive and to thwart Skynet’s plans. With the advanced T-1001 on it, it won’t be easy, but after all, Cameron (and, again, her ilk) has the ability to cross against the light that Skynet has trouble with.

Skynet is rolling the dice. It figures that destroying the Turk will effect nothing useful. Instead it’s a race to get it to think in the new way and have the government place that into the Skynet project before the previous beneficiary of the Turk, i.e. Cameron, can stop it.