wb5
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Posts: 230
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Post by wb5 on Nov 28, 2008 20:03:02 GMT -5
I don't see it as multiple timelines but a single changeable future. So far, we haven't seen multiple versions of Sarah, Derek, John or Cameron or any signs of those Star Trekkie/comic book typle multiverses. We have seen Derek meet his younger self though, as well as Fischer. Besides the hair comment, I think there was another throwback/hint about "Allison of Palmdale": when the Japanese genius guy is talking to her about powerful CPU's (anyone else thinks Cameron was rather taken with him - fascinated by what he was telling her, and by the offer of learning "Go"). "If you could take your memories, your subconsciousness, everything that makes you a person, turn into pure data and download it unto a machine, that chip could run it". Cameron answered with a smile - followed by the "are you gonna eat that?". Now, this seems to me like the writers talking to the audience through the Japanese computer guy - what he describes may well be how Cameron gets to "be" Allison (not that I have any idea how they can turn a person's memories etc into "pure data", but BSG has already gone there, this sequence suggest TSCC may follow). I think there is no doubt Riley is from the future - as many pointed out, the "so many mirrors in this world" seems to seal it, and the outburst at her foster parents had already telegraphed it in. Nobody has to be "evil" in this, though. Jesse could genuinely believe she is doing what needs to be done, for the best of the resistance (though even in that case, she's still likely end up "doing the devils work" a la Ellison). Riley is likely just a poor kid that Jesse got ahold of somewhere in the future (or she was talked in it with promises - who wouldn't want to escape from that bleak world?). Riley likely knew what Cromartie was when she faced him, which means she can be very bold when needed. Her panic in Mexico is perfectly explainable - she may know about Terminators, that doesn't mean it isn't extremely frightening when one of them is hot on your trail, shooting people among his path. Allison was afraid too, when she was getting caught in the future. Riley could end up confessing to John eventually, though there are many ways they could go with all this. Derek wasn't immediately convinced that Jesse was right about Cameron, though. He seems to have grown a grudging appreciation for her, since his hatred of "Dungeons and dragons". I hope he fesses up to John before Jesse does something really stupid.
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Post by thecolours on Nov 29, 2008 0:28:30 GMT -5
The bubble tech guy by the very action of sending Jesse back on her own mission is on her side, so it's pretty much a given that he told her everything he knows. Assuming (my new favourite word) that's how Jesse and Riley got to the past... Now that I think about it, Riley's presence is probably the best contradiction of Jesse's story - Cully's-brother-the-bubble-tech-with-no-appreciation-of-operational-security might have sent Jesse back to stop Cameron but why would the resistance send a kid back in time to mess with John Connor's mind? Also, if Big Mouth the Bubble Tech sent Jesse back, why doesn't she know about Kyle? Why doesn't she at least ask Derek - who is in no way subtle about his devotion to his brother - where's Kyle? First of all, if bubble tech was in cahoots with Jesse, she most likely told him the truth about Riley's involvement. If they weren't in cahoots, than Jesse lied about Riley's mission, to smuggle her back in time. Secondly, the bubble tech didn't know about Kyle, because Kyle jumped from a secret skynet facility( ref. Dungeon and Dragons and Demon Hand.) General Perry told Derek, and probably everyone else who asked, that Kyle died on a classified mission, during a raid on a skynet facility. So when Derek told Jesse that John was his nephew, she must have put 2+2 together in her head (explains her gulping at the shocking reveal) that Kyle was sent back on a mission -from this destroyed facility - to a time period, where he could meet up with a young Sarah, and impregnate her. ---------------------------------- I hope, I explained my thoughts clearly enough.
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Post by thecolours on Nov 29, 2008 2:11:00 GMT -5
Here's something I've been wondering. (Sorry if someone already brought it up.)
How did Jesse and Riley know what high school John was attending?
The only explanation I can give is this: Jesse and Riley didn't know where John was, nor what looked like in 2007. The whole time that the season one high school storyline was going on, they were trying to track down John. Jesse must have been following Derek the whole time he was back But, it wasn't until Derek met up with John and Cameron, that they got their big break. Once they had John's visual identity, Riley proceed to the next phase of the plan, by infiltrating the high school John attended.
Side note: Cameron never mentioned to John that she had seen Riley around school. She didn't even know who Riley was until Automatic for The People. So, Riley must have signed up for classes after Cameron stopped going, or they simply didn't bump into each other in the hallway.
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Post by allergygal on Nov 30, 2008 16:31:23 GMT -5
I'd like to take a moment to cheer the fact that Sarah and Derek are actually wearing gloves when they break into Dakara Systems to steal the hard drives.
Also, anyone else notice that Catherine's wardrobe had gotten progressively darker? She started out in white the first time we saw her, then went to light grey, then medium grey and now dark grey. Will she be wearing black soon?
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Post by thecolours on Nov 30, 2008 21:02:07 GMT -5
I'd like to take a moment to cheer the fact that Sarah and Derek are actually wearing gloves when they break into Dakara Systems to steal the hard drives. Also, anyone else notice that Catherine's wardrobe had gotten progressively darker? She started out in white the first time we saw her, then went to light grey, then medium grey and now dark grey. Will she be wearing black soon? The same thing is happening with John.
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Post by rove3 on Nov 30, 2008 23:41:23 GMT -5
Well I'm late to the party having just watched the episode after being out of town for a week. Everyone has already made all the relevant points so I'll just throw my lot in with those who think Riley is from the future. Once John finds out that Riley was sent to infiltrate his inner circle and that Derek kept secrets from him, well it's lttle wonder he grows up thinking that he can't trust anyone but Cameron (he can trust Sarah but she isn't going to live forever). I agree with whoever mentioned it upthread that everyone seems to be directly/indirectly causing all the future events they want to avoid. Seems a little bleak.
And the only thing funnier than Cameron telling Ellison to go back to bed while she stomped around his yard was that he apparently did just that.
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resi
Refugee
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Post by resi on Dec 1, 2008 4:40:39 GMT -5
I found it very interesting what Jesse said about Cameron's influence on John in the future, which obviously plays on the fact that she is from a different future than Derek. Which also probably explains the reason John sent her back.
I also hope that they explain Derek's distrust for Cameron. A theory i had was that Derek knows Allison, and doesn't like that a machine is walking around looking like her. All in all, a great episode. Also, i heard rumors that "Self Made Man" is the last episode until February, instead of "Alpine Fields". Can anyone shed any light on that?
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Post by bowman on Dec 1, 2008 8:53:36 GMT -5
Alpine Fields has been moved to next year, but there are two episodes to go. Self Made Man now soon, and then another one in a week which is the midseason finale. edit: scratch that, the moons and stars aligned: www.fox.com/blogs/terminator/2008/12/01/once-more-with-feeling/Seems we get three episodes before christmas after all.
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Post by cohen on Dec 2, 2008 1:32:30 GMT -5
I think this season has been incredible so I had to join the forum. I couldn't resist it anymore!
I loved this episode. We get to see the childish AI rebel against its elder. It doesn't want to be told what to do or how to act! I also like the connections to the movie "Pi", the chinese board game and the small replica of the computer chip setup that Maximillion used. The small replica can be seen towards the end of the episode, right before Weaver takes Ellison to see Chromartie, you can see a box suspended within a clear box in her office. Great job and I can't wait for future episodes and the dvd release of this season.
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 2, 2008 5:51:31 GMT -5
Once again, trying to figure out who came back when in relation to who without direct writer input is basically a waste of time. We can possibly agree that Cameron came through after Derek because she knew about the safehouse, but that's about it. By the way, I always wondered about Cameron's response to Sarah's question, "Do these Resistance fighters know you?" "They've seen me before." Yeah, babe, under what circumstances, heh, heh? In the interrogation house, perhaps? Not just in Connor's HQ, I'll bet. And as far as we know, only Derek actually saw her before at the HQ. None of the other troops sent back were high enough in rank to get near Connor, apparently. The thing is we do not know if the future has changed one iota despite everything that has happened - with the one possible exception that Andy Goode might not be around any more. More importantly, we don't even know what effect shooting Goode had on anything in the future - he was supposedly part of a team of ten or fifteen people working on Skynet. If he died, unless everybody else on the team was superfluous, Skynet probably would still have been created, if not perhaps in the same way or in the same time period. While HE thought HE created the mind and was responsible for everything, there's no other evidence that this is a true and complete rendering of the situation even as he experienced it. We don't know if "The Turk" even ends up being Skynet. It may be only ONE road to Skynet. There may be other roads to be taken if that fails. Most of these side plots that Skynet seems to be running may not merely be to smooth its takeover when the time comes, but may be attempts to insure that other development projects result in its creation. We just don't know. Also again, I think it's incredibly clear that future John did NOT send Cameron back - she came back on her own. Cameron has probably as complete a picture of John's strategy and tactical moves as anyone - although even she apparently did NOT know that Kyle Reese was John's father. She does know just about everything else going on, as her recital of battle history facts, Kyle and Derek's full military title and specialty, etc., etc. indicates. Cameron had full access to the time chamber and full knowledge of how to operate it. She probably knew everything about John's past life including where he grew up, where he was - at least approximately - at any given time, where he went to school, etc. Even if he didn't tell her such things, if they were in any Resistance OR Skynet computer bank, she probably hacked that information. In fact, it's quite likely Skynet itself downloaded everything it ever knew about Connor to her when she was created. John then added a lot more once she was reprogrammed. She knew that Kyle Reese had been sent back by John to protect Sarah Connor. That's how she found the Connors in the pilot - Sarah used the Reese alias which Cameron knew was related to Sarah Connor because she knew about Kyle's mission. Cameron even chastised Sarah for using it. The only thing she didn't know was that Kyle was John's father - something she probably would consider irrelevant in any event. Skynet would like to know that since it could then simply kill Kyle Reese in the work camp before he escapes with John. In fact, unless it didn't know John Connor was in the camp, I've always wondered why it just didn't kill him there. Maybe T-4 or a subsequent movie will explain that... I again must express complete doubt that Riley is from the future. She simply doesn't fit the mold of either Jesse or Derek. She's a modern, if screwed up, 21st century teenager who's too young to have experienced Judgment Day, lived to be sixteen, and already knows everything about the future John Connor. Parsing her every word as an indication that she's from the future is just too easy - it's a writer's trap we shouldn't fall into. Most of those phrases she's used could easily be just the writer's way of making her seem a unique character. That's standard character development. The "mirrors" comment is something anybody could say, and it's clear that she knows about Judgment Day because Jesse told her - nothing else makes any sense as to why she would be doing what she's doing. She's like Martin Bedell or Charley Dixon - somebody who knows but who can't do anything about it except go through the motions at the orders of someone else - in Bedell's case, John and Derek, in Riley's Jesse. It's also clear that Cameron comes back from a time where she has established a relationship with John. Before the Mexico run, she told John that she knows how lonely he is because they WILL talk about it. This indicates that SHE assumes that the time line as it will develop now will eventually result in their having a relationship. In my view, this is her goal - to either stop Skynet or insure that she changes the future such that both John and Cameron survive, and that both serve as each other's protector - a symbiotic relationship between man and machine. John already seems to see her that way, and she definitely sees him that way. And Derek clearly came back from the same time line because the officer in "D&D" already told him that "Connor doesn't have any friends. And he doesn't talk to any one." Which is exactly the situation Jesse is complaining about. So there is no evidence of a forked time line there. Cameron and John have a close relationship in both Derek's and Jesse's time line. As for why Derek doesn't remember his situation with Fischer while Jesse does, in my view either she was lying to screw with his head - which seems an unlikely lie to try to pull - or his head was so screwed that he really doesn't remember. We STILL don't know what happened in the interrogation house. We STILL don't know if he meant anything significant when he told John that "being inside four walls can screw with your head" in season one. Back in season two, Cameron knew about "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" because John TOLD her about it. Clearly she came back from a time line where she and John are indeed close. It's not just because she's trying to get close now and thus this time line will evolve that way. It already was the case in the future, probably because of events that happened in the future. But her goal now is to both try to stop that time line from ever having to occur - by stopping Skynet from existing - or failing that, to insure that John and she remain close and the equivalent of that time line occurs (presumably preferably without John spending time in a Skynet work camp.) And if she succeeds in stopping Skynet's creation completely, then she STILL needs a relationship with John to insure that she survives in the present. John is the ONLY human being (aside from us Transhumans! ;D ) who is likely to allow her to remain intact and functional in this time period - or at least she thinks so (probably correctly). Finally, once again - there is ZERO evidence that Cameron's chip resulted from any sort of an "upload" from Allison Young. What Xander was talking about was the ability to run the equivalent of a human brain on the chip. Which of course is exactly what a Terminator chip does. There's no evidence anywhere in the franchise that Terminators are created by uploading the digital contents of human brains. And there is no evidence that Cameron was so created. We've been over the "emotions" thing thoroughly and again there's zero evidence for Cameron experiencing emotions. And if Cameron had an interest in that beyond stopping it from happening (she seems to have inherited Sarah's rather ridiculous Luddite notion of completely stopping all AI and supercomputer research everywhere - good luck with that, Sarah!), it was because such a chip could be very useful to her in terms of a) backing up her own chip, and b) using such a chip to improve her own brain. That once again refers back to the moment in season one where John was explaining the Singularity (wrong) and she looked at him when he spoke about machines upgrading their intelligence without human help. That definitely interested her. In other words, she was sort of "flirting" with Xander because she was trying to get information from him. I'm not sure that was significant or just a throwaway, however. Most likely the latter. I wouldn't read much into their interaction.
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Post by allergygal on Dec 5, 2008 1:07:20 GMT -5
I think this season has been incredible so I had to join the forum. I couldn't resist it anymore! I loved this episode. We get to see the childish AI rebel against its elder. It doesn't want to be told what to do or how to act! I also like the connections to the movie "Pi", the chinese board game and the small replica of the computer chip setup that Maximillion used. The small replica can be seen towards the end of the episode, right before Weaver takes Ellison to see Chromartie, you can see a box suspended within a clear box in her office. Great job and I can't wait for future episodes and the dvd release of this season. Hey, we're glad you joined us. Welcome I loved this episode too. It's definitely one of my favorites. Sarah really wasted her time with Dekara - a startup with two main employees? Sure, John said it always starts small, but if they start chasing every startup involved with AI, they'll be there well past Judgment Day. They should concentrate on larger companies. They should also be following Ellison around. Do they think he just fell off the Earth after Mexico? Shouldn't they be interested in what he's doing in regard to this stuff? First, John assumes he took Cromartie, then when he doesn't admit it, John believes him. But then Cameron searches his yard anyway. They don't simply follow him to Zeira Corp's building - hey, BIG AI COMPANY! LOOK AT THAT! MAYBE WE SHOULD CARE! Sarah wasn't interested in Dakara just because it was a small tech start-up. It was the compounding factor of the 3 dots in their logo (which, she's obsessively following since her dreams). Then she got there, she passes by 2 Air Force. And I think the real clincher for her was when Akagi mentioned the Japanese team's chip form the chess competition. I totally agree on Ellison. They should be keeping tabs on him just to see what he maybe does with the knowledge he gained in Mexico. I was at least please to see Cameron double-checking his property for Cromartie's body. I was worried that once John had said he was sure it wasn't there, that Ellison would be considered a dead end. I don't know if that was Cameron's idea or Sarah's (to go back and check), but I'm glad they did. It shows Ellison is not off the hook as a suspect.
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 6, 2008 4:06:10 GMT -5
Yeah, I know Sarah was hooked on her "three dots" nonsense. And in the finale she ends up at a UFO convention based on "three dots"!
But again, if the Connors think they can shut down every potential AI project on the planet, they're really wasting their time and biting off more than they can ever chew. It's utterly Luddite of them.
Their methodology should be to track down those projects which are directly military related OR are directly connected to people they know are connected to Skynet via Cyberdyne or the notations on the blood wall or whatever. Tracking Andy Goode was a correct approach, for example. Not following the Japanese was not a reasonable approach, even though that AI project WAS getting a military contract.
Even there, the odds of their succeeding are minimal - because it could even be the case that Skynet is created from some project totally unconnected to the military - which could simply embed itself in the military network from outside once it becomes self-aware. This is probably the motivation for them to investigate every AI project, but it's a hopeless task.
The best they can hope to do is track down those companies directly connected to Skynet plots - such as following Ellison around until he ends up at Zeira, which would be a huge tipoff.
In fact, they've never even bothered to try to find that guy Walsh who actually HAD "The Turk" and sold it to Weaver. Once they killed Sarkissian, they completely FORGOT about the guy that Sarkissian sold "The Turk" TO!
They didn't know Walsh's name, but the guy evidently had some connections in LA, and presumably traded in high-tech industrial espionage or some sort of similar trade. If they spent time using Derek's fence connections and the like, they might have found out that this guy had the ability to acquire and sell "The Turk". Then they could have tracked him down, kicked his butt until he told them where he sold it.
And then they'd be back in business at the bottom line of stopping Skynet - the real Skynet - from ever existing (assuming "The Turk" actually IS the "real" Skynet").
Instead, they've utterly ignored all that and concentrated on Skynet side plots while Skynet has been growing utterly unimpeded.
It's pathetic. As the Transhumans in my fan-fic would tell them if I ever get around to writing it. In fact, my characters would meet the Connors precisely BECAUSE they were following up on Walsh. Except they wouldn't find him and things would develop otherwise. My characters would get on Ellison and be led to Weaver in a heartbeat.
By the way, we're all assuming that just because Weaver is involved that "The Turk" is destined to become Skynet. But maybe it isn't!
Consider Dr. Ferguson. Skynet sent a Terminator to his office. Why? Was it because he was important to the creation of Skynet and Skynet wanted him protected by a Terminator receptionist? If so, why did "The Turk" almost immediately kill him? Because killing Ferguson was how "The Turk" learns about killing humans? Or maybe Ferguson managed to "damage" "The Turk" - through his mentoring of it - before it killed him so that "The Turk" can never become Skynet or maybe could become a tool against Skynet. In which, the Terminator sent to Ferguson's office might have been there to assassinate him.
Maybe Ellison's role in all this is to either cause "The Turk" to become Skynet or to prevent "The Turk" from becoming Skynet.
Maybe the Connors will have nothing to do with it either way.
We just don't know.
What we do know is that the Connors are messing up by not concentrating on finding "The Turk" and stopping Skynet from existing.
OR we can assume that the Connors running around with all these side plots are in fact destined to come to the conclusion that stopping Skynet isn't feasible at all and maybe they'll turn to concentrating on creating the Resistance to deal with the inevitable Judgment Day.
If you're stuck with a lemon, make lemonade! ;D
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Post by gothamite66 on Dec 8, 2008 20:33:06 GMT -5
Just wondering if anyone else has noticed the cactus poster in Riley's bedroom. Kind of similar to Sarah's dream. Maybe Sarah's not so crazy.
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schmacky
Major
"Make yourself useful."
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Post by schmacky on Dec 8, 2008 21:05:06 GMT -5
Just wondering if anyone else has noticed the cactus poster in Riley's bedroom. Kind of similar to Sarah's dream. Maybe Sarah's not so crazy. Ah, very interesting. So Riley has a picture of cacti in her room and Sarah dreams Cameron is watering the cacti. Maybe it means that Cameron, by her long-time assocation and parternship with John creates (watering the cacti) the division in the Resistance (represented by Riley and the poster) which weaken John enabling the machines to finally finish him off (Sarah's dream of the cacti turning into liquid Terminator-cacti that wrap itself around John).
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Post by richardstevenhack on Dec 9, 2008 4:39:52 GMT -5
Since Sarah has never seen Riley's room, and since cacti are, well, common in southern California and Mexican deserts, are we to assume that Sarah is now becoming psychic?
Next week's episode apparently is supposed to be some sort of "X-Files" like episode. I hope they do a lot better than they did with "Alpine Fields".
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