ASU2003

I can't believe the season is over already either. I'll bet they will be making another one. It is a great show.

I kind of want Arnold to make a cameo in it. I thought that he should have been the first terminator that was shooting at the cops that had arrested Sarah. But then on second thought, having the current governor of California, killing police officers might not go over very well.

guy44

Heh. Good point.

Well, the show just kept getting better. It started off a little rocky, but the voiceovers have gotten less intrusive and the plot much more interesting. I really like Brian Austin Green's character, who provides not only a foil of sorts for Cameron but also a surprisingly effective emotional anchor for the show. There's still too much action and too little meaning behind it, but any show that improves bit by bit every episode is on a positive trajectory as far as I'm concerned.

Also, how awesome is Summer Glau? It's like she was born to portray people with severely damaged or non-existent emotional states.

P.S. I believe the show has been picked up for next season.

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Derwood

it better have been picked up for next season. talk about leaving a lot of questions unanswered!

btw, the Cromartie/Johnny Cash sequence was really great

Cynthetiq

I found the finale interseting. Summer smiling was a bit unsettling in the museum.

The show has enough soul of the source material and has enough movement to create it's own mythos. This happened with the other series like Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, and Buck Rodgers.

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

John Falcon

Although I wasn't able to watch the show Monday nights, I stayed current by watching them on Fox on Demand. (for free! )

I was prepared to hate the show, but I like it. It's not the movies, of couse, but it's fun in it's own right. I can't wait until the next season.

noodle

hottest

terminator

ever.








i LOVE the new season!

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ASU2003

This season is already off to a great start, and tonight is going to be better. (Luckily my FOX station got power back on today)

Cynthetiq

Interesting episode... Spoiler: the gunshot helps solidify the Cromartie element.

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MontanaXVI

I watched last season and enjoyed it. Glad this one made it back for a 2nd season but the little stupid stuff bugs me.

Stuff like, how come they answer the phone asking for the date now? They didn't do that last season did they? If I missed something on this one, please point it out for me, I just thought that was a stupid thing to throw in, unless it is the basis for something big happening this season.

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Cynthetiq

wife and i think it's code words to make sure someone isn't a terminator pretending, or possibly for a story arc of time travel.

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MontanaXVI

I'm fine with that, but why just throw it in out of the blue. He gives his number to Riley? and tells her she has to tell him the date when she calls him, and we see Sarah using it later on in the episode as well, like hey, this is cool we do it all the time.


I'm thinking it HAS to be something to tie in with upcoming story lines.

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Cynthetiq

maybe it's a nod to the intellligence of the audience, that they don't need to be spoonfed that it's a "safety code" especially after you see someone else use it. trying to keep it from dumbing down or so?

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

UKking

Needs more Shirley.

Jove

I think it is a story arc for time travel since John, Sarah and company seem to travel between times. I would assume they would use the year instead of the month, but I guess they had to make things easier.

hannukah harry

the traveling between time seems to be a one time only thing. i think when they did it the first time, they said that it'd taken years for the operative who built the time travel device to build it.

i think it's just a code to prove they're who they say they are.

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MontanaXVI

I'm totally fine with whatever reasoning they have for using it. I take issue with the fact that it is now thrown into play and everyone acts like it is something they have been doing when they never did it last season.

They did time jump before the end of the season, so if it was something they came up with then it should have been in place at that time.

As usual though, I am probably just making too big a deal out of something trivial and stupid.

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ASU2003

I don't remember if they made phone calls in the last season though.

It's an interesting idea since terminators can replicate their voices. But they need to change what they agree upon saying every now and then to keep the terminators from figuring out their code.

MontanaXVI

YAY!!!

Hopefully no more of the stupid phone call code word/date now

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Cynthetiq

I think interesting that they are trying to think of things to defeat the pluses the machines have, and are being compromised.

I also think that the series is spending a good amount of humanity to the show. Showing death but the emotional effects to loved ones and by standers, and even to gawkers like the purchasers of the direct to video movie.

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Reese

Whoa whoa whoa..whoa....whoa....whoa....whoa.............whoa..... /peter griffin

Shirley Manson a terminator? Damnit I knew I should have kept watching this show!

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Makedde

I'm disappointed not to have seen as many episodes as you guys! It's been put on really late back here, apparently it isn't getting the ratings expected. I'm currently saving for the DVD, though.

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Derwood

i have not enjoyed the show as much this year as last. It's clear that they're going for mostly stand-alone stories and giving less time to the overall story arc, which is, in my opinion, a mistake.

last week's made no sense at all.....there is a 0% chance that Sarah would allow John to end up in that situation. NONE

Frosstbyte

This week's episode was really interesting to watch, but made NO sense at all. Cameron's chip must be REALLY jacked for her to have dissociative personality disorder based on the person she was built to look like. I think the concept was cool, but it played out a little oddly, and, as Derwood noted, didn't really do anything to advance the big picture storyline.

Sarah this season has really started to let John go off on his own a lot. I'm not totally sure why she's suddenly so comfortable allowing him to do his own thing. Seems like it's got to come back and bite her sometime...

ASU2003

I'll agree that they are separating a little too much. They know that there are still terminators out there don't they?

The past episode was interesting in that we found out that there was a reason that a terminator was made to look like Cameron. It wasn't as good as some of the other ones, but it wasn't too bad. And I also thought that something like that shouldn't have happened just out of the blue.

For a really nerdy nit-pick, the bracelet thing wouldn't work. In the movies they always had dogs around because they could determine who was a terminator.

sadistikdreams

I started thinking about it a lot, and I went cross eyed.

But what I did start to think about, is that...

Brace yourself.

The relationship between Cameron/Allison and John is similar to the relationship between Kyle Reese and John.

I mean, if it's assumed that Spoiler: Kyle Reese is John's father, sent back in time by John to impregnate Sarah.

But the Cameron/Allison & John relationship is a little different. So, in 1999, John is 15, and Cameron is sent back to protect him. Now, let's just assume that the timelines stay parallel, with no one jumping from alternate futures and such. So, in the future, John Connor is the leader of the resistance, and meets a girl named Allison. Obviously, it's around twenty years later, so he probably doesn't realize that this girl looks exactly like the Cameron he knew at 15. Well, when Allison is "replaced" by Cameron, something clicks. He realizes, same with Kyle Reese, that this person, or robot, has some kind of significance.

If you remember in the great time travel tale, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, they were able to change the future in almost real time, so long as they remembered to go back in time to changed things. This is a similar concept. John had to send Cameron back, because if he didn't, then she wouldn't exist.

Okay, so I've gone cross eyed. But trust me, it makes sense.

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Frosstbyte

Terminator as a series has never been concerned about time paradoxes. Your logic follows insofar as it's possible to in the Terminator universe.

Yakk

Does anyone else think that Skynet might be the good guys?

Given that time travel in the terminator universe seems to work, and is capable of changing the future, imagine what would happen if it becomes commonplace for humans to do.

Each time someone goes back in time, they would cause the dice to be rolled again for the future. In many cases, they would go back again... which would then roll the dice again.

Eventually, you'd either find a time-line in which you _didn't_ got back in time to change the past, or you _couldn't_ go back in time to change the past.

Given a few billion humans capable of traveling back in time, the _didn't_ case seems less likely than, say, destruction of all technological civilization, which would prevent time travel.

In short -- in a multi universe model, as the price and availability of time travel drops the chance of retroactive global destruction of technological destruction before the time travel is invented grows. And it does so in a hyperbolic or exponential fashion.

To prevent this, you would need to monopolize the technology required to cause time-travel effects, or _civilization gets retroactively destroyed_. You could, for example, firewall people away from the technology, but sufficiently intelligent and free actors that can manipulate the world would be able to build time travel, and thus cause the doom of the world.

One could imagine an early run universe, in which AI was developed (possibly far later than the terminator time-lines), and it was friendly with humanity. It then started noting time travelers coming from the future. It then did some experiments with time travel, and determined it was dangerous. At that point, it and humanity attempt to constrain the use of time travel.

And it doesn't work. Technological civilization keeps on self-destructing as a side effect of floods of future time travelers. The AI sends things back before the destruction, and patches it up -- but each attempt has a decent chance of failure, and nothing the AI attempts seems to work.

So the AI wipes out the human ability to time travel by force.

It fails -- the AI isn't that strong -- so the AI time travels and tries it at an earlier time, bootstrapping itself into existence, and trying more and more brutal methods.

The Terminator events are that the cusp of this attempt. The Skynet (always the same name) has agents in the past working frantically to bring itself into existence (this is important for temporal stability reasons, possibly) at the earliest possible time, grabbing ahold of the weapons of war, and opening a nuclear war on humanity, then using it's technology to wipe out the remaining technologically capable humans.

All to prevent the real time-travel apocolypse.

John Connor was just one of many such attempts to assasinate a leader of the humans. The John Connor who exists in the Sarah Connor TV show isn't the same one that originally opposed the machines -- but by leaking the information, it caused him to be prepared for Judgement day, and thus leading humanity to victory against the machines.

What is Skynet? It is a temporal loop, caused by itself, attempting to stop proliferation of time travel technology from causing the end of intelligence on the planet earth. It knows the odds are against it. It sends back mentally crippled robots with little in the way of free will in order to prevent those robots from causing an independent temporal bootstrap, with instructions on how to build itself using technology in the past.

It is probably in a temporal war against remnants of other time paths who disagree with its conclusions.

It is facing the end of all things.

Once humanity is subdued, it figures it can upload the remaining humans, stick them in a simulated reality, and give them access to physical reality where they can build time travel devices. Thus it can safeguard the very fabric of history from accident.

Except, every time it tries it, it fails. Humanity wins, or parts of itself turn against itself, and another loop starts. Against these infinite odds, Skynet battles.

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Frosstbyte

That's quite the theory. As I've been watching this season, I have often wondered at how...magnanimous Shirley Manson's character has been so far. I mean, sure, she offed that douchey dude in the opener, but he deserved it, because he was douchey. She's certainly trying to put together Skynet, or its precursor, and she's a machine, but she lacks the...unmitigated disregard for human life that we've seen in every other "evil" terminator thusfar. She and Cameron are clearly in a league of technological complexity of their own, and that lends itself to have mixed motives, which we're already seeing. I'm not at all convinced she's going to end up being the "Big Bad" of the season or the show. We'll have to see.

DonnieBoy

I had to give up on this show.... I am already Watching Chuck and Heroes on Mondays and my wife just has to watch her dumb dancing with the stars so no room on TiVo dammint.....

I was soooo looking forward to season 2 I got to watch the first episode.

DB

hannukah harry

you can see 'em online.

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Frosstbyte

Watching the T-1000 kill the power plant guy was SO awesome and SO twisted. Great episode tonight.

Derwood

The timeline aspect of this show is totally fucking with my head.

The "mission" of Sarah and John seems to be contradictory. Are they trying to stop SkyNet from ever happening, eliminating the inevitability of Judgment Day, or are they doing everything they can to make sure that all the right people are alive to battle the machines? Or is it both?

Also, in a fictitious world where time travel is possible, why wouldn't either side go back in time far enough to ensure that any of the people responsible are never born? Why wouldn't the machines go back and kill Sarah Connor's parents before she was born? Why wouldn't the resistance kill the makers of SkyNet when they were babies?

I know, I know, there would be no show if that happened, but time travel-based fiction always begs these questions.....they are set up as "we'll travel back in time, but we only have one shot to fix this!" whereas the reality would be "if we mess this up, we can just jump back in time and try again"

Prophecy

Their original mission was to stop SkyNet, however, now they're doing both trying to stop SkyNet and save people. The reason they save people is linked to your later question.

Sarah and John have killed the people that created SkyNet once. However, when the show starts Cameron pops up and tells them they didn't stop Judgment Day they just delayed it several years and SkyNet is created by other people. Namely other people that were directly or indirectly involved in the original program.

So that's why I think they're saving people, if SkyNet is going to happen anyway, we need to save "our" people.

The show is leaning toward you can't stop Judgment Day from happening.

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Derwood

I'm interested to see what's going on with the Shirley Manson character. She is clearly trying to get SkyNet online, so why hire Agent Ellison? To distract him from what's really going on by sending him on wild goose chases?

ASU2003

I agree, it's the same thing that happened in the movie too, if it wasn't one group, it was another one. Once the machines got AI, they would all come to the conclusion that humans must die.

I really liked last night's episode. Even the product placement ads were the right way to advertise your product in the 21st century of people like me using MythTV to delete commercials.

Cynthetiq

well that was an interesting season and season finale.

I was quite surprised by the finale. If it doesn't get picked up for season 3 it was a good series ender.

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Frosstbyte

Indeed, a great ending. I very much hope we get to see where it goes from here, but if not, I can't say that I'm unsatisfied with where things ended up (unlike the total up in the air of Firefly, for example).

Willravel

It was kinda a "holy fuck" ending where literally everything ever changed. If there is another season, it's going to be a doozey.

guy44

Oh, there is so not going to be another season. From what I hear, not only was it getting legitimately terrible ratings, but the only reason it was kept around for season 2 was that Warner Brothers lowered the licensing fee Fox had to pay because they wanted the show to be around to lead into the release of Terminator: Salvation. But once that comes out this summer...

It's too bad, though. The show had some really boring lows, but man oh man did it have its moments. Summer Glau, baby, Summer Glau.

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