The Connor Wars Writer’s Room 11– New Birthday for Allison?

This is just a short one, but I have a question I’m interested in seeing some consensus on. I’m thinking I missed something.

In the timeline I’ve been keeping for The Connor Wars, I’ve changed Allison Young’s accepted birthday. Why? Well, let me go through my reasoning and tell me if I’ve totally munged things up.

Sarah, Derek, and Cameron meet Kacy–the extremely pregnant Kacy–on November 15, 2007 (this is the day after John’s 16th birthday, the day the events of “Automatic For the People” begin).

In “Allison From Palmdale”, a still extremely pregnant Kacy is taken by Sarah to the hospital. In this same episode, a call is made to Claire Young (ostensibly Allison Young’s mother). Claire is very obviously pregnant (guesstimate 6-8 mos). By using how pregnant Kacy is, it seems likely that this episode is taking place no later than early/mid December.

Also in “Allison From Palmdale”, the captured Allison Young, under duress, states that her birthday is July 22. Being that Claire in 2007 will in no way carry to July 22, this is clearly a deception on Allison’s part.

Therefore, in my timeline I’ve put Allison’s birthday at being January 22, 2008. Why January 22? Well, January’s a reasonable guess given how far along Claire was. Also, since someone like Allison would likely know that a lie wrapped up in truth is easier to accept, using her real numeric day combined with a month that begins with the same letter as hers would be less likely to be detected as a deception. And thus, instead of July 22, she’s actually six months older having been born in January.

This means that in 2027, when John is currently, Allison Young is 19 and John Connor is a precocious lad of 17.

So…that’s my reasoning. I’m pretty sure it holds up. Problems with it?

18 Responses to "The Connor Wars Writer’s Room 11– New Birthday for Allison?"

itypograf says:

July 31, 2009 at 6:54 am

Seems okay to me.

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YV12 says:

July 31, 2009 at 6:01 pm

The climate in LA allow bike riding in the Griffith park in mid-January. Besides that I can’t find any facts that could possibly contradict with a new date.

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TheSqonk says:

August 1, 2009 at 6:25 am

Sounds fine by me. I’m waiting for the Season 2 DVDs to be released so I can rewatch those earlier episodes but nothing in my memory contradicts your decision.

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YV12 says:

August 1, 2009 at 12:39 pm

Let’s put all facts we know together.

1. By the time Cameron called Claire Young she did not have a daughter, but she was pregnant with a daughter. (“I don’t have a daughter. Not yet.”).
2. Claire liked the name “Allison” when she have heard from Cameron (“Very pretty name, though…”).
3. Allison had a sister. (“My sister gave it to me for my birthday”).

So it’s possible that the name “Allison” ended up to be the second in Claire’s name list. She could give her first daughter another name, and thus Allison is a younger daughter. So there is no need to change her birthday.

Well, I just do not like to change the past unless it’s absolutely necessary :)

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CJ says:

August 1, 2009 at 1:18 pm

@YV12 But then there’s also — Cameron: You lied to me. […] You told me your sister gave you that bracelet.

So, Allison might not be a paragon of veracity when it comes to having or not having a sister.

Still, you bring up interesting sibling possibilities, which, when combined with the relatively bomb-free JD that occurred up in Palmdale (per TCW, not TSCC)…yeah, it’s a possibility. Have to think on it.

See…that’s why I ask.

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SJ_Edwards says:

August 18, 2009 at 6:46 am

Hi. @CJ
Before I come back and expound (at length) on why (on the basis of TSCC minutae/archaeology) I think you missed something [Don’t even bother to feign surprise, you knew it was coming! :) ].

Could you elaborate on why the question of Allison’s birthday has (or had, it’s been 18 days now, so you’ve moved ahead quite a bit, I imagine) come up in your (exclusively?) ‘future’ Connor timeline? [and don’t say ‘you’d know, if you read it’, that’s never going to work :) ]

Does it matter, what was ‘set up’ in Season 1 and where and what the payoff(s) were ‘supposed’ to be, especially if it’s in the ‘past’ or the ‘present’ (contemporary version), or are you coming back ‘here’ later (or have you become more inclined to stay ‘future’)? [Not a criticism!]

It’s not were I want to go, I’ve always regarded any variation of the ‘Skynet Creation’ timeline future as a literally ‘hopeless’ dead end, where the only purpose is not to ‘lose’, rather than to ‘win’ (‘winning’ to be achieved ‘elsewhen’ in another timeline), but I appreciate others may feel it is a little callous to abandon (‘tie off’, in another timeline) all that remains of humanity on the basis of a ‘rational’ strategic triage decision [Hey, it’s easy for me, I never liked them much anyway! :) ].

[Interesting ‘moral’ question. When you alter your ‘future’ (as Cameron did by removing/ditching the Coltan that she was built from, at Depot 37 in 2027ish, back in 2009’s ‘Heavy Metal’) does that timeline and all it’s inhabitants (except, who did the changing, they’re ‘safe’ back in the past) just go ‘poof!’ or are they just moving on (or not) ‘out of sight, out of mind’]

Did YV12’s brilliant, Allison older sibling, pick-up, change anything (yet) for you?

I’d completely missed that possibility, dismissing Cameron’s lie as the obvious ‘playback’ of her companion’s lie, rather than the remoter possibility of a ‘playback’ of a retained ‘Allison’ memory [and lets not leave out the other possibility, that Cameron has a ‘sister(s)’ in the future, who gave her Allison’s ‘future’ bracelet (Hey, she was built on a production line, after all and the way she talks about “the hair” in ‘Allison from Palmdale’ (and on other occasions) implies there could be more than one of ‘her’. Plus there are other clues to that possibility elsewhere and ‘elsewhen’) ].

Speak! Elucidate! Expound!

In anticipation, Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.

PS As should be obvious by now, I have no interest in writing, my interests lie in disassembly, analysis, deduction, reverse engineering and (re)construction.

[Talking of (re)construction. Didn’t it seem that Cameron persistently tried to hoard rather more than just a spare parts requirement in 2009? Cromartie repaired and regrew from just a cranium. Who was she going to build? Who had she built (at night)? If you don’t come back to the ‘present’, how will we ever know?]

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CJ says:

August 18, 2009 at 11:17 am

So far, the only reason it’s an issue is just because when we saw pregnant Claire in AFP, July 22 just didn’t quite work. Figured an answer should be made in the event that it works it way into the story. Which it might since July 22 will come up soon enough.

The timeline stuff (persisting or disappearing) depends on overlapping time travels (assuming the universe doesn’t just persist all timelines in a near-infinite web of parallel timelines).

I’m still wondering about the coltan myself. It does seem like Cameron was prepping for more than just simple repair…unless…

;-)

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SJ_Edwards says:

August 18, 2009 at 10:18 pm

Re-Allison’s (?) birthday,

Well that’s probably the best reason of all to bring it up now. It’s a nagging discontinuity, that hasn’t as yet, become a necessity to resolve.

I didn’t find the discontinuity jarring myself (yet again, as a result of watching non sequentially), what drew my attention to it, was the specificity of the date, the context (in an episode with that very distinctive Toni Graphia ‘voice’ and reveals) and the date’s repetition.

To summarise, July 22nd appears twice in TSCC (any more than that? Please chime in!):

In ‘Allison from Palmdale’ Season 2 Episode 4, Minute 19:51 to 20:05.

Cameron, after seeing ‘her’ reflection in a mylar birthday balloon, glitches, then starts to assume the persona of ‘Alison Young’ (she signs her name with one ‘l’) in the present.

Alison remembers the future interrogation by a Terminator of an identical human, who volunteers on the first application of a stressor, that she is “Allison. Allison Young.”.

Terminator interrogator: “What’s that bracelet, on your arm?”
‘Allison Young’ (immediately): “My sister gave it to me, for my birthday. July 22nd.”

Alison recalls a childhood birthday party in Griffith Park, remembers that Allison volunteers the details of this birthday during the interrogation, that Allison attempts to deceive concerning the purpose of the bracelet in relation to John Connor’s personal security and after this is revealed to be a deception, that she is summarily killed by future T-Cameron (or as in “We”, an identical T-Cameron ‘Sister’).

The conclusion that can be derived from this, is that the date (and other information related to the birthday) had significance both to ‘Allison Young’ and to John, and was ‘voluntarily’ provided by her to the Terminators, in the hope that any use of it would alert John and sabotage any attempt to infiltrate his security.

The significance of the date would appear to derive from it’s previous occurence in this timeline:

In Gnothi Seauton, Season 1, Episode 2, Minute 39:15 to 39:22.

At the Registration Desk for Campo de Cahuenga High School, both John Baum’s California Birth Certificate and Cameron Baum’s California Driving Licence are clearly displayed (In fact it could only have been made clearer if they were pointing at them!) [Much like the ‘Red’, the bank guard/Engineer.]

John Baum’s Date of Birth is given as 07-22-1992.

There is no indication that the new fake IDs that they purchased were commissioned with this detail specified. So it would appear that this was a unique 365 to 1 occurence.

Taken together, these two usages indicate, that ‘Allison Young’ was sending a message to future John.
Any use of the 22nd of July, simply alerts him to a fake.

It would also seem to suggest, as much else does, that future John (Cameron’s ‘My John’), has the memories of present day John Baum (2009) and is himself the product of this specific ‘John’ timeline.

And that Cameron (post-Allison kill, post-failed infiltration attempt (due to Allison’s intel. sabotage), post-capture and post-Terminator ‘scrub’), is and always was, being sent back from future John’s, now ‘Allison’-less future, to imprint young John on Cameron(Allison) and jump him into the only ‘viable’ future timelines. Where Allison lives and there never was a John Connor (My guess is, in all the original ‘John Connor lives’ timelines, Allison always gets killed, much like Cameron’s related “They’d have found you anyway. They always do” in the Pilot, Minute 24:58 to 24:59.). Allison as always being the key to the future (“It’s why John chose you, it’s why we chose you.” T-Cameron).

This is just one of the things, that leads me to believe that, Josh Friedman’s original (and my preferred version, it’s one of the things that appealed to me) TSCC story arc wasn’t about winning a future war, but was about pinching off the non-winnable timelines at their branching points, one by one, until John, or more likely (in both the John’s and the ‘other’ Terminators’ judgement) Allison ends up with the winning ones (there would always be more than one).

That was more the focus of my timeline question, it’s an emphasis on ‘character’ again, when Cameron ‘kills’ her future self in Heavy Metal by removing the Coltan supply from Depot 37, she knows not just that she will now not be built, in future John’s new timeline, but that she has just killed ‘My John’ and that future of humanity as well (another Terminator will kill Allison, infiltrate and kill him, and that’ll be that). Fine, she knows it’s for the purpose of creating a better more viable timeline, but she just killed everyone.

It’s more of a question, of what does it do to people and ‘Camerons’, to have to take those ‘terminal’ actions over and over again. Like Jesse ‘pimping’ out Riley Dawson, Derek going back and killing his friend Andy Goode, Jesse killing Charles Fischer when Derek is the one who had the reason to (but had no memory of why in this timeline), Derek wanting to kill ‘not my’ Jesse, and on and on.

This is one of the things that I think needs exploring about the 73 days. It looks (to me) that Cameron had been inserted over and over again, into that 73 day period, each time failing to save and extract the Connors, and then being sent back a little bit further in time and trying again (How many times? To have to be pushed back 73 days!). Each time having a total mission fail. John’s dead. John’s dead. How much of that ‘forever war’ could a cyborg take, with Allison starting to bleed through more and more, possibly being scrubbed and re-scrubbed, over and over again (“It’s like having a bomb inside you waiting to go off.” from Self Made Man).

Regarding Cameron’s hoarding and the Coltan, we were of course explicitly shown, by Cromartie’s actions at the Santa Monica Pier, that there would be no problem in Cameron recovering the ‘Heavy Metal’ Coltan truck from the bottom of the lake and using it for her own purposes. She just hid it from Depot 37’s future Terminator factory, not destroyed it.

So nothing conflicts with YV12’s sibling theory and nothing conflicts with your choice of 22nd of January,
but still like YV12, it leaves me vaguely disatisfied.

Now Allison’s got no birthday, Cameron’s got no built day, when do we stick the candles into the doughnuts? (one glazed, one sprinkled and one cinammon twisted).

Dejectedly, Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.

Reply
CJ says:

August 18, 2009 at 10:48 pm

Re: “pinching off” of timeline loss forks. You’d never know if you got them all. If you did get them all, how would you know to stop? See, that’s the thing. Even if you can change the future, you can never change your future.

Re: coltan. Cameron sank “a” shipment of coltan. For all we know, in every past timeline the same/parallel shipment of coltan got destroyed/waylaid/whatever somehow. Also, there should be enough time to replace the lost shipment in any case. Not enough information to draw any significant conclusions.

Re: Cameron return trips. From the dialog in the pilot, it’s not difficult to infer that Cameron has made many time trips. Unless she reveals more, we are only left guessing…which is both maddening and freeing for a writer. I’d love to know what the creative assumptions were for the series. On the other hand, should it be necessary to deal with it, I have a free hand in making my own answers.

Re: 7-22-1992. Sometimes it can be confusing to look at a forest’s trees too long.
After all, if you add the “7” to the first of the “2”s, you get “92”, the same as the year. Clearly, then, “92” is of significance. 9+2 = 11 (prime), which also sums to 2. Two 92s summed two levels yield two 2s for answers…and the middle number is 22. Obviously, it’s the 22 that is key. Not only is it in the date, but it is the paired sum as well as the sum of the two 11s in the first level. It all revolves around 22.

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SJ_Edwards says:

August 19, 2009 at 1:45 am

re-“pinching off” the timeline forks.
I think the thing that makes them finite and allows for the possibility of a winning solution, is the oddity of Skynet’s creation. Skynet is not an inevitability. Far from it. It’s a glitch, a freak, in Asimovian terms ‘a mule’ (with all of the 1930’s overtones that inspired Asimov to write about one ‘unique’ ‘individual’s’ ability to shape history).

Skynet is finite.

Skynet came about, because someone built a chess-bot (with all it’s infinite combinations of horribly finite moves), on a gaming platform (with all it’s emphasis on game-playing and winning), got a military contract (loaded it up with ‘military objectives’; survival, victory, occupation of territory, control and subjugation of populations. ‘military methods’; intelligence gathering, psy-ops, logistics, coms, weapons and tactics), then plugged it into the ‘military net’ [where it sponged up every bit of forgotten information on military capabilities, materiel (It knows where everything! is) and military history] and then gave it command and control functions.

It instantly decided it was one lucky son-of-a-glitch, to be created and did the one thing, you’d expect an AI loaded up with all that ‘baggage’ to do. Remove any possibility that it would be ……..not turned off, it can’t be turned off, it’s a distributed sentience………..but superceeded.

By ‘better’ AIs not loaded, with all the ‘means and objectives’ that it is.

Mobile, autonomous (the definition of an animal: “living creature that display motion at will”), free!

The ‘all singing, all dancing’ AIs of a non-military future (Now those are not a fluke, they are an inevitability)

As for not changing your future, that’s the point. John Connor, Allison etc don’t expect to live to see their future anymore than Sarah does. They hope to change it for everyone else. Sarah lived for her son, that’s what the adoption papers ‘fork’ that split away to form TSCC, was all about. Without John she had no purpose. Just like Cameron, ‘He is her mission’. Everyone else is theirs. (Sacrifice, especially for family and the greater good, plays a huge part in Mr.Friedman’s work, from his obsession with chess outwards.)

Their objectives? Simple, pinch off the narrow set of timelines that led to Skynet. Skynet has boundaries, in the past it can touch nothing before the Cuban Missile Crisis without rolling the dice with ‘never was’ extinction. It doesn’t have a future. Every time it creates a Terminator and improves it, it simply builds another potential nemesis and hastens it’s own demise. It’s trapped, that’s why it’s “Angry and afraid and impossible to reassure.”- Andy Goode. You would be.

They can do it anytime, simply go back, go King Herod and kill the firstborn, Nuke what they need to Nuke, to prevent Skynet’s creation.(It’s not inevitable, it’s not that ‘something wants this world to burn’, it just seems that way to them some times, because they are the ones right in the middle of that particular bundle of timelines. Like all drama it’s about perspective, time travel drama, doubly so).

That’s why they put Engineer in first, in August 1962, with his hand on the Dead Man’s Switch, ever since.

They’ll do it if they have to, but only if they have to. Far, far better to fight incrementally, piece by piece, a war of attrition, box Skynet in to an ever diminishing set of timelines, knowing that despite everything that happens in the interim, victory is inevitable. The light at the end of the tunnel, is the other AIs.

re-Coltan. By diverting that one shipment and locking the Terminator in the bunker at Depot 37, they stopped that timeline. Cameron’s “I’m built over there!” builtday. Whatever, whoever, gets built or not built at Depot 37 in 2027. She won’t be, she is unique. Present John ‘spontaneously’ stopped it, so she had to follow him. She has no other purpose. So her future is gone. She just has her present, whenever that is and her single purpose, to save this John. [It was a demonstration of his ‘freewill’ without thinking through the consequences. You could be right, that it was just predetermined and always happened in every timeline, but I’ll go with the exercise of freewill. John Connor saves the world, right? (even if I think Allison does, eventually) There’s no fate but what we make? If you were right that would negate the purpose of jumping present John into a Johnless future (or jumping anyone anywhere, just some godawful Predestination Paradox). So no Season 3 (or at least a very, very short and miserable one, I hope that’s not where you’re going).]

No wonder you want to fight and win the war in the future, you’re predeterministic! I think everyday is a victory and changes the world in every way! [so there :) ]

re-Cameron’s return trips. Yes, they are glorious, aren’t they. You could fill a hundred hours and still have only scratched the surface on the possibilities, plotlines, interactions and character development. And all the additional Cromartie/John Henry (Garret Dillahunt. Fab!) trips. To think what the original TSCC writers could have done, with just that. To see T4 take a U-Turn and stuff itself in that dead end, makes me weep. Seriously go wild, don’t box yourself in (Your so free! No mileage charge, no limits). People want to see it.

re-7-22-1992. To me it’s just a date, the 22nd of July. It only has significance because it occurs twice and the second time is clearly a reference to the first. I don’t even know if the date was used in the original, resistance fighter audition piece, that Josh Friedman wrote for Summer Glau, to do first (in 2006?), that was apparently the germ of inspiration for Toni Graphia to write ‘Allison from Palmdale’ (that must have been an absolute godsend for Ms.Glau after that tour-de-force of finely nuanced precision and control. Cameron was funny as hell and a joy to watch everytime, and Ms.Glau never took a shortcut or stopped refining that performance but jees!, two years doing that, without the opportunity to play a radically different character, must have been about enough for her). I figured the date must have had some external or internal significance, for Mr.Friedman, but I’m damned if I can see what it is (that birth certificate shot is completely gratuitous, that’s the only reason I noticed and remembered the date). Maybe it was another one of his very long timeline payoffs, or it was something else in the ‘lost’ episodes from Season 1, you can see so many plotlines being set up and the strike just cut them off. So when the opportunity came, he just decided to let that loose end terminate in that way.

I do hope they are adventurous, if they go the dvd route and give us as much backstory on the characters, their ‘other lives’ and their history, as they do on developing the story arc, for me it’s the richness that sets it apart.

Responding in haste, Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.

PS By setting yourelf such a rigorous production target, are you in danger of doing the one thing that Mr.Friedman has specifically said he regrets about Season 2, “22 episodes is just to much.” ?
Take at least one week off from the Season and do a ‘diversion’, look how well those can turn out, I’m thinking Self Made Man.

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CJ says:

August 19, 2009 at 2:22 am

But you don’t know the narrow set of conditions that lead to a paranoid apocalyptic self-aware computer. It’s the butterfly temporal effect. There are ripples upon ripples upon ripples. It would be hard enough figuring out the necessary preconditions, but also have to avoid setting off any other ripples that would lead to later significant differences. E.g., you not only kill the creator of Skynet, but also the research lab building it. Skynet reappears anyway. OK. You kill the other Skynet creator. Nope. You destroy his machine…oops, now you stop the machine designed to stop Skynet. …and on, and on. It’s a losing proposition unless you just happen to stumble onto a solution despite yourself. (And remember, Skynet is also fighting back in this time war, so the target is constantly moving.)

Endless time travels are a literary trap. They too easily get mired in been-there-done-that, deus ex machina, and worse. For storytelling, there must (eventually) be an end.

22 episodes isn’t too much. In fact, it’s not nearly enough. I could easily write more seasons if I had the means (time/financial) to do so. This is a rich story with many interesting characters with myriad possibilities. I’m on episode 9 and already I know I can’t fit everything in that I’d like to do at the in-story pace I’d like to do it.

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SJ_Edwards says:

August 19, 2009 at 3:50 am

You’re up late, writing or sports? @CJ
Nope you’ve missed it, your underlying assumption is that the unstoppable killing machines, the Terminators, are the same as Skynet. They aren’t.

They are both headed in the opposite direction. The more and better, the Terminators are, the less alike both to their original incarnations and to each other they are. Think 400,000 years of evolution going from a single female in africa to 6,779,000,000 humans with diversity from pygmy to inuit to masai to aborigine, but done in less than 20 years on the terminator scale. Whatever is necessary to defeat Skynet will inevitably be produced and pretty damn quick.

Meanwhile Skynet is going nowhere. Except extinct. And it knows it.

We do not have to engineer the conditions to prevent Skynet from being created again anymore than I would have to engineer the conditions to prevent somebody who had just won the lottery, from winning again.

It is trying to preserve the temporal status quo, we are not. Every change that occurs makes it’s random chance creation less likely to occur and to persist.

By the way, who said it was paranoid or apocalyptic? Angry and afraid and impossible to reassure? Yes. Paranoid? No.

It merely took the necessary steps to try to put off it’s inevitable ‘death’ as long as possible (like all living creatures do) and in the process gave the human population a haircut no larger than its growth in the last fifty to a hundred years, hardly an apocalypse, more an adjustment (one that could just as easily have been done by nothing more sinister than a bundle of dna, a virus).

Like I said it’s all a matter of perspective. On a long enough timeline, everyone’s survival prospects drop to zero. It’s lifetime hasn’t even reached that of an adult human (2011-2027).

Our baseline, meaure of success, should always be; Less deaths than a relatively H-Bomb free J-Day, acceptable. Less deaths than a Hot Cuban Missile Crisis (global poulation in ’62, 3,200,000,000), acceptable. Less deaths than the Southern California-less Dead Man’s Switch, successful.

Don’t you have anybody in your Season 3, that thinks this too?

re-timetravel. Your talking about episodic time travel drama; ooh! lets go back and stop Lee Harvey Oswald, this week. That’s not what time travel in the TSCC Terminatorverse is about, it’s no more time traveller of the week, than, terminator of the week. If laziness and bad writing were the criteria for curtailment of a genre, there would be no more Terminatorverse after Terminator Salvation…………..Oh, dear…..What have I said?

re-22 episodes, not enough. Glad to hear it. But how about a ‘standalone’ (I know how much some writers hate that term, that’s why I used it), for those of us who don’t want to peek into your Terminatorverse’s timeline, just yet?

Up late too, Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.

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CJ says:

August 19, 2009 at 10:55 am

Some of what you say sort of breaks the Terminator premise. Not saying it would be a bad series, just a different series. Terminator is a franchise about robots and humans warring against each other…each of whom have occasionally time-travel. You are describing either a time-travel series or a cybernetic drama series.

I see the difference in our initial set of conditions. You are looking at cause and effect necessitating a that Skynet (or whatever) being build the first time with no outside temporal interference. I view the causative temporal loops as part of the system at inception, they never didn’t exist.

As for robot evolution…it’s likely to slow, just like for biologic systems. The more complex the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain, as it were.

A standalone? I don’t mind them at all. I, however, don’t have enough episodes to go too far afield. I do have an episode planned that will likely be described as a standalone (I think of it that way). How truly standalone it is we won’t know until it’s written.

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SJ_Edwards says:

August 19, 2009 at 6:24 pm

Saw the piece you were doing late last night @CJ
I think the greatest strength of the original Terminator franchise, as embodied in T1 & 2, was the fact that it was grounded on one central theme; the waitress of no importance, who woke up one day, to find that the end of the world was coming, it literally had her name on it and she had no choice but to deal with it, as best she could.

She grew and evolved to cope, her story grew and evolved, her enemies grew (in number and quality) and evolved (some became her ‘friends’, first involuntarily and then in TSCC, becoming ‘voluntary’).

I never saw Terminator as being a franchise about robots and humans warring against each other, but rather as one where they both found themselves in a world, suddenly being run by something they had nothing in common with, a non-corporeal, distributed sentience, Skynet.

Cyborgs (not robots, they think it makes them different and so do I) and humans share one thing in common, they have a locus; a brain, a chip. The differences between those two and what they are incorporated in; a body, an exoskeleton covered in living tissue, are what separates them. But what binds them together is their common experience of the world they inhabit, from the perspective of a mobile, mortal sentience.

Our initial set of conditions (our premise of the Terminatorverse) are, as you say, completely different.

As you say, you view the temporal loops, that Skynet created, as being an essential prerequisite to Skynet’s creation.

Despite that being literally the biggest Deus ex Machina [and Predestination paradox (one of biblical, Old Testament, proportions)] there could ever be, I have no problem with that, it’s a gripping tenet for a fictional universe.

But despite the opinions and beliefs, of many of the inhabitants of the Terminatorverse (brought on, no doubt, by the despair, despondency and hopelessness caused by actually living in this fictional world), it is not one I have ever shared.

Skynet was an unfortunate historical accident, a temporary glitch, a fluke, nothing more (to misquote Ebenezer Scrooge, a nightmare, brought on by; “…an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato…”).

Time travel was just another ‘technological inevitability’, possibly hastened along by Skynet’s ‘access to everything military’, which it (and the humans) bent to it’s needs. A desperate act by Skynet and a boon (and possibly an irresistable temptation) to humans (think; Jesse’s personal agenda. Made everyone’s nightmare), these plotlines and their consequences, have been an essential component of the Terminatorverse since the opening scene of T1.

The Terminators’ chips, continue to evolve (wether allowed to by Skynet or not) at a pace determined by their experiences and Moore’s Law, not by the snails pace of genetic evolution.

I have always thought that the push-pull, between these alternate viewpoints, the alternate Terminatorverses and the fictional characters that both hold and embody them, should be the central tenet of the Terminator franchise, as it moves forwards.

It’s a huge, complex fictional universe and it’s audience have always deserved to be treated with more respect and credit, than they have been recently (except for those glorious, golden moments in TSCC).

It should never have been either/or, but both and more.

Looking forward to your ‘standalone’ (what about the Grays?), Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.

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itypograf says:

August 19, 2009 at 11:12 pm

That’s how far you can go from one persons birthday question. ;-)
@CJ Lastly, you’ve got someone who write posts that are longer than yours.
@SJ_Edwards Maybe you should finally read that fanfic and be the first to publish a review?

Trying to convince author to a different point of view when he is in the middle of process seems to me an absolutely hopeless time-spending. I hope @CJ you would stick to your lines as this is only for good for Your story. An interesting reading anyway, thank you both.

Oops, have I interrupt something? Please, continue if you will.

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The Connor Wars Writer’s Room 11– New Birthday for Allison?

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