Terminator - Time Travel Issues

Timetravel runs in loops. The original timeline of events proceeds through the first time until timetravel is created. Then someone is sent back and disrupts time therefore altering it. This can only happen once because all the events repeats itself from then on. This I believe is what is happening in the Terminator series. All the events have happened before. John Conner grows up to lead the revolution without having to deal with the Terminators when he was little. The machines decide then to send back a Terminator to destroy John Conner which begins the loop and changes time forever. The movie actually shows the sencond or later loops, because all the events as we find out in T3 have already happened before. Every time the reach the point of timetravel another loop in time developes causing a pile of time loops which will go on for infinity. hpowever these loops keep repeating. So after one loop of time has been changed it can never be changed again.

Just wanted to get everyone elses thoughts on my theory.

Everytime the terminator goes back in time , the future changes doesnt it, How can you have a big pile of loops, diffrent loops? That means diffrent dimentions? happening parallel to each other, IF infact the whole underlying story was about Kate's father being in control of skynet, why dont mention it earlier, when the terminator came back instead of going to protect kate and john, go straight the father remove him for skynet, or even in T2 , ok i have confused myself now. ❌

First of all, I want to say that I know that all this is about a work of science fiction. The use of temporal loops in science fiction is always to invoke a little wink, wink, nudge, nudge to the reader/viewer. Temporal loops can't be solved. They will always imply a theory that can't be proved or which another theory will contradict. They are clever, (or not so clever) plot devices designed to make the viewer/reader think "Oh, so that means...” but only for a second or two. If you think about them too much, you end up here, trying to make sense of anything Saberist writes.

Having said that, there is one way to relive yourself of the "Kyle Reese is John Connors father and what about Cyberdyne/Skynet" headache.

Chaos Theory. It states that the future is made up of the sum total of all decisions that anything that can make a decision makes. That would be the future five minutes from now, or five hundred years from now. Every second of the day, we all go along making decisions to do this, or to do that. Assuming that no “thing” can affect how you make a decision, the idea of fate or destiny is disproved. If nothing can control our thoughts, and the decisions we all make determine the future, then the future is never a set outcome. The future is, literally, only the next second away.

In the Terminator series, the biggest problem is the idea that Kyle Reese is destined to be John Connors father. There is also the idea that Cyberdyne/Skynet was born out of them finding the pieces of the original Terminator. This implies that the temporal loop that brings the first T-800 back to 1984 was destined to happen. Chaos Theory says this is not the case. We have never seen the FIRST timeline.

If you let the idea that Kyle Reese is not John’s original father, and that Myles Dyson was not the primary scientist to develop the advanced microprocessor the first time, then those nasty little time loops go away. Anybody could have been John’s original father in the first timeline. Instead of meeting Reese that night, she might have had a one-night stand that left her pregnant. All Skynet knew was that the son of Sara Connor would lead the revolution.

Just because Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, does not mean that someone else would not have. He was just the first. Any one, or many, of the engineers at Cyberdyne could have developed the technology that led to Skynet. This is what could have happened in the first timeline.

The first timeline ceased to exist the instant Reese was sent back, and the SECOND timeline began when he arrived in 1984. The events of the first Terminator make up the second timeline. Reese fathers John Connor, they defeat the first T-800, Cyberdyne gets the pieces and then Myles Dyson develops the chip that lead to Skynet. This timeline allows the events of T2 to happen.

It could be said that with the advanced jump in technology that the first T-800 gave Cyberdyne, is what led to the T-1000. (If the T-1000 existed in the first timeline, Skynet would have sent it.) It could be said that all technology is advanced a great deal because it is in the second timeline that the rebels are able to “capture” a T-800 and send it back to protect Connor. If they could capture T-800’s in the first timeline everything would be different. The second timeline ceased to exist when the T-1000 and T-800 are sent back and the third timeline begins in 1991. In T2, they think that they have destroyed all information and hardware that leads to Skynet. Well we can see that they didn’t and since I am getting tired of writing, we can see that the third timeline ends and the fourth begins with “T3”. All timelines are discreet and do not loop or overlap. Problems solved, now go watch something like “Finding Nemo”.

Dr Plaid

well stated and i thought i was the only one (read my comment in the who was john connors' father or first father, whatever) who felt that it was highly unlikely that a beautiful woman, who is young, employed with her own apartment will not find a sex partner in the crowdwe city of LOS ANGELES @ such an age when women in that time peroid often look to settle down. One of the reasosn i think they portray the idea that if john doen't send kyle john can never be, it an attempt to keep sarah's character innocent and wholesome who only had sex with kyke due to his compelling story, one enough to move her to find herself attracted to him. He a soldier who's fate is to protect her. But i figured that hey if she can date guys who drive porches, then within that yer or by the following few years, whe would have met someone any settled down and maybe had a family when the waR HIT IN 1997. CONNOR BEING S SURVIVOR GROWS TIRED OF THE TRATMENT OF HUMANS AND BEING THE SON OF SPUNKY SARAH HAS HAD ENOUGH AND GATHERS HUMANS IN A PLOT TO OVER THROW THE MACHINES BEFORE THE HUMAN ARE WIPED OUT. Kyle is born in the ruins and becomes an experienced soldier qualified to be sent back to protect sarah connor. hence t1. So i agree john had another father before kyle. SARAH WOULD NOT HAV DIED A VIRGIN. i THINK the events of ti sped up the development of the machines and chip technology and the events in t2 slowed down the events of t3 and judgement day due to destroying any evidence of t1, but any development based on it since t1, but it's a matter of speeding uo and slowind down. Prevention or closure can happen only two ways: humans somehow learn their lesson or the human race looses the war and is wiped out.

this is 2 confusing, STOP IT!

But he (dulobast25) is talking the truth...about that should Mostow think, when started to write a script!

i guess its meant to be John conner would be born regardless who his daddy is and he will rise to form the resistance etc.

YEs it think so, but nobody knows it even the viewer except skynet. I guess one hint is that they never even made an attempt to kill the father, either because they had not info on him, or because from the future point of view, the father could have been anybody thus the mother who taught john was the more imprortant, the more fixed character. I think that john pretty much was destined to be born and to be sarah's son. But suppose john had a diffrerent mother.. assuming fate, it would not matter for his name would be fdifferent but fate the same.. i guess looking at it from that perspective, if john didn't step up it is likely that someone else would have and in an alternate timeline that person would be the destined one who would have been john but due to circumstances was not. In other words.. the person who was destined to lead likely would have regardless who his parents ended up being and what is name ended up being.. just a theory.

Yeah, i thinkd= sarah was under the impression that kyle had to be sent back for her son to be john but either way you look at it, sarah is the necessary element.. in the 2nd timeline kyle is the father but sarah trains john... before kyle could have been his father, john must have learned on his own but in either case the father is not as importtant, just a mother to give birth.

But he has to get somehow from father or enybody skills which make him leader. If he is now alone with no parents, no friends...he cannot get skills for his future...

he has the inate qualities to be a leader..genetic qualities, sarahs backbone that she never even knew whe had....she trained him in t1 timeline because she was told that she did it before.. in the original timeline it is likely john stepped up becasue somebody had to and remember, the events in t1 sped up judgement day...so john would have had more time to develop skills as a survivor of the war... and living in that time we would ALL learn one way or another to be a soldier of some sort. Sarah learned, and all kyle taught her was to make plastique bombs, the rest she learned herself..how to survive, i mean. the idea to go the mexico, these were he ideas when faced with a war she feels she and her son must fight....same change would have affected john when faced with judgement day, he would change from a regular kid to a person of necessity.. he would have found that inner strength that sarah did. after all she converted after battleing one terminator. What do you think john would do having to battle with amny terminators.. adapt, plan.. like his mother would have.

I think there is a daisy chane of loops more of like dime loops riding along an timeline continuum. Where the event originally happens worse but is revisited each time someone jumps in time ad it desrupts all events after that if inderectly related.

How come Skynet always sends back a terminator years after a previous one has failed. Okay the first was sent back to 1984, the next was sent in 1994 or 95. How come they just didn't send one back to either 1983 or further back. Understand what I'm saying?

No, not really.

So your asking why skynet never sent a terminator back farther in time instead of going in the future??

If this is your question there is an easy answer the time machine can only go back so far. (At least this is my guess) and there are big risks with sending someone to far back in the past the farther you go back the more you can F things up

Lets say skynet sent a terminator back in time to kill Johns Great Great grandpa and lets say it succeeded. There would be no John Connner in the future because it ended the family gene pool but what if Johns great grandpa had something to do with the computer industry or robotics industry or even a manufacturing plant he could have crated something that made it possible for skynet to be built in the first place or he could have saved the life of Dysons great grandpa or something like that.

The farther you go back in time the bigger the change in the present. A super advanced computer would relies this and not take the risk of ending its own existence

after they developed the t-1000 why not just send it back again to kill sarah connor, it seems they would just keep trying with his mother, because it supposedly the mothers teachings and warnings that helped john become the leader of the resistance so it did have more to do with his mother than john connor, i guess it never works when you try and disect the movies though

tis a movie people...let it go... 🙂

I was just making a point.

u r right but ya, just a movie. and ya, just a point, an ya ITS THE BIGGEST THING: THE TEMRINATOR

so i would say that they had 2 make things more interesting for terminator2

the plot for T-2 was great fit like a glove, and sometimes its fun to get lost in the fiction thats what ther made for

I the first terminator
film the guys at the police station are asking Kyle questions about the terminator and they ask him why didn't he bring any weapons from the future and he says that only flesh can come through the portal so how can the T1000 and the T-X get trough the portal if they are all Metal?