Time Travel question...

Has anybody ever read "Split Second" by Douglas Richards? It had an interesting way of dealing with paradoxes. There was a machine that could send items back in time a fraction of a second. When the object arrived, a small distance away due to Earth moving, a signal was sent aborting the sending. You now have two of the item. Paradox? Sure, but the universe didn't care. It just went merrily on.

 

I enjoy that the Terminator franchise has somewhat intentionally become a hot mess, which is how time travel wars would happen. It's not a loop, people are breaking things left and right, no one even knows how or why it started anymore, just more attempts to go back and win it somehow, resulting in even more mess.

 

I'm honestly surprised it's not more messed up than it already is with each attempt to go back and fix things at this point. And then you have the movies that have become worse and worse...

 

The first Terminator movie works OK as a classic time loop, but the sequels make it clear that we're dealing more with BTTF style time travel, plus a lot of misunderstood misinformation by the main characters!

 

According to a Terminator Comic from the 80s, there's a moon base full of human beings on the moon, waiting to see which way the war goes before they intercede. Way I figure is that means that they only have weapons of last resort up there, and they are waiting for all the humans to die before they start massdriving Earth from the asteroid field leveling continents... Or they got nothing.

 

It could have been worse.

Skynet is secretly controlled by humans, who are just plain incompetent

 

I've always suspected that since there is so much time travel going on in the Terminator series, eventually it will all collapse...when Skynet accidentally gets the inventor of time travel killed, before he can do it.

And since Skynet's entire existence depends on time travel... well, you know.

 

So, waiting it out until Skynet destroys itself. Wouldn't make for much of a movie though. But that'd be quite the twist if the movies had an overarching storyline.

 

Skynet secretly controlled by humans isn't the worst thing they could do haha.

 

Skynet is controlled by the Apes!

Is that the worst thing?

 

Crossover event

 

A little bit too on the nose where reality is concerned.

 

I'm sure someone will point out my mistake, but I thought the first three movies were internally consistent in that each subsequent movie had been influenced by the events that had come before with the message that the machine war and John's role as leader were inevitable and the events of the future just occurred on a sliding timeline.

 

True but if a person can make alterations to the timeline then it's not a true time loop (AKA predestination paradox).
The way time travel was depicted in T2 and T3 is more akin to BTTF time travel with a dash of destiny/inevitability thrown in for measure (humanity's inevitable self destructive nature etc)

 

I think it may have been the comics that used the word "causality bubble" meaning that time pilots by the act of time travel are protected to a degree from changes to the time line, but the more change that happens, the more wear the bubble feels until it eventually pops.

 

By the causality bubble "popping" are we talking about what nearly happened to Marty near the end of BTTF1?

 

I understand your point now. And agree. which would make Salvation a prequel to the other three films. With one addition--the temporal paradox as outlined in Terminator 2 is set up in Terminator as that is when the arm is left in the timeline.

 

Movie 1. On August 29, 1997 Skynet controls the Yank's missiles and throws everything at Boris. The USSR (no fall of communism?) returns fire. Judgment day.

Movie 2, special features. Michael Jackson turns 50. No Judgment Day.

Movie 3. On July 25th, 2004 Skynet is military grade antivirus software, that is launched to fight a Virus crippling the internet, put there by a total dream boat from the future, takes over NORAD and launches everything at Boris. Capitalist Russia returns fire. Judgement Day. Actually, I'm not sure if young Skynet did jack all to contribute towards Judgement Day, and it wasn't Old Skynet all by himself setting the world on fire by way of the Terminatrix.

 

Would be ironic if the antivirus would have ended up seeing itself as the virus crippling the internet and fight itself into oblivion.

 

1. Old Skynet took a dive, and history chugged along.
2. Old Skynet killed (or assimilated?) young Skynet, and set to destroy humanity but with a playbook preaware of the next 35 years.
3. Old Skynet killed (or assimilated?) young Skynet, and replayed out history with no noticeable changes until after Kyle, the two T-800s were sent back, but they were really playing possum all along, waiting till after history had played out to stop fighting the war left handed.