Restoring the real Derek is easy enough and I wouldn't be surprised if it was planned all along. John's trip to this alternate future was all going to be just a temporary story arc. To make it permanant would destroy the concept of the series and even the films. At some point John is going to return to the present. There are two possibilities here.
I agree that it has to be a temporary arc and John will return. As long as he's in this future, Sarah's story is pointless because we already know that she fails to stop j-day. I don't actually expect Sarah to defeat Skynet permanently since that would mark the end of the story. But without any hope that it
could be stopped, there's really no story to tell.
1. it isn't an alternate future at all and John was always going to make this trip all along and return. Since Allison and Kyle are still alive we can surmise that this isn't 2027, but much earlier, so if Derick and crew were lying to this kid claiming to be John Connor then this could indeed be the "real" timeline. After all, the dogs were barking and now we have this naked kid claiming to be their leader. I would BS just as much a Derek. So, if it was before Cameron killed Allison and even before Kyle gets sent back then that is "our" Derek. All John has to do is warn Derek about getting shot and the problem is solved and Derek lives. Think Doc Brown in Back to the Future, Marty writes Doc a note warning him he will be shot and so Doc wears a bullet proof vest thus preventing his death.
If we go by Allison's age, John probably landed in 2027 or very close to it. Her mother was very pregnant in "Allison from Palmdale", so Allison was most likely born in 2008. And since there wasn't any attempt to make Summer Glau look older as Allison in that final scene than she did as Cameron, we can assume Allison is late teens (I think 18 or 19, which would mean its 2026 or 2027).
I don't think the out-of-focus teen John that walked up behind Derek in the time chamber in "Dungeons & Dragons" was an actual reveal of how old future!John was. That was just Derek blurring memory and present-day reality. Here's more evidence that future!John wasn't a teenager in the existing story:
- In "Dungeons & Dragons", Cameron told John that he spent 6 years in a Skynet work camp with Kyle from 2015-2021. We learned in "What He Beheld" that Kyle was 8 on judgement day (2011), so that would've made him 12 when he and John first got captured. Kyle in this current future is a grown man. Also, if it was the year 2015, Allison would only be about 7 and Derek about 19.
- In "What He Beheld", Derek told John that he celebrated his (John's) 30th birthday with him. That would mean Derek couldn't be sent back on his time travel mission for at least 13 years. And Derek is certainly not 13 years younger right now than what we knew him to be in 2007 (he'd be about 18 years old if he was).
I've heard that the "celebrated your 30th with you" was actually a gaff and Derek was supposed to have said "40th". That would actually make more sense since it would mean they were friends by 2023,
after John and Kyle were out of the work camp. It still wouldn't mesh with the idea that 17-year-old John jumping to the future in BTR could be who Derek was remembering in D&D, though.
- In "Goodbye to All that", Derek said Martin Bedell helped John form the resistance. But in this future, the resistance is already formed and John Connor wasn't there to form it.
John could stay, join the resistance, and maybe one day lead the fight, but it would probably take a long time and it would absolutely be a different story than what we've heard before.
2. It is an alternate future, so we would need John when he returns to 2007 going back a day earlier and preventing his death, but of course that would mean both of them would have to remain unseen by Sarah and the other John untill John makes the trip into the future. We don't want 2 Johns, it would screw everything up.
Anyway, I would be satisfied with either of these possibilties. What would bug me is bringing this other Reese (if he is indeed a different Reese) into 2007. We don't know him, it wouldn't be the same. We hardly knew "our" Reese, they bearly scratched the surface of who he was and what he could have meant to the show.
Of course all of this moot because the show is cancelled and only two of the actors seem to think there might be a movie or something and even that was months ago, so I guess it really doesn't matter. My point is that I never thought they ever intended Derek's death to be permanant when this is (like it or not) a time travel show.
I'd love for John to jump back to a point before Derek's death and prevent it because I don't want a new Derek either. He doesn't have the memories of our Derek, he doesn't know Sarah and John and he might be very different. What good is that? I'd rather just have a totally new character than the dissatisfaction of a new
version of a character we already knew.
But I don't see it happening (John preventing Derek's death) for the reason you mentioned: two Johns. He'd either have to kill himself after preventing Derek's death or kill his former self and take his place. Otherwise, we'd have two Johns running around in 2009 and that would just be too silly.
The possibility of a continuation movie still exists. There are complications with the Terminator rights that need to be sorted out before anything could happen. But the fans still really want it, the writers would love to do it, the actors would love to do it. As long as that remains unchanged, hope is alive. It took a couple years for Firefly and Farscape to get continuation movies, so just because it hasn't happened yet for TSCC doesn't mean it won't.
By the way, in case you didn't know,
savethescc.com is planning a TSCC convention for late spring/early summer of 2012.
Nice to see new activity on the forums here