And how it screws everything up.
I’ve talked about Time Travel before. Everyone knows that I’m not necessarily a huge fan of the concept in movies and television.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a good Star Trek episode with time travel. Episodes like ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ and ‘Trials and Tribble-ations’ are too much fun to pass up.
But the beauty of Star Trek time travel is that each movie and each episode is self-contained. Star Trek was never a serial drama, so the fact that cast and crew went whipping through time last week really had no bearing on what happens this week.
When time travel is put into a story that does matter, though, it almost always screws up the story in one way or another.
Enter Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
There’s a writer’s strike going on and I have few choices in entertainment. Terminator isn’t exactly my kind of show, but I like Summer Glau enough to stick with it.
Last night’s episode kills me, though. If you haven’t watched it yet, stop reading now because I’m about to talk all about the plot.
The basic premise in this episode is that a Terminator has been sent back from the future to store off some metallic alloy in a bunker so that when the apocalypse comes, Skynet will have tons of material from which to build its army of evil.
Our heroes, John, Sarah, and River, are going to save the day by making sure that the alloy doesn’t get stored in the bunker, and the Terminator army isn’t as strong in the future. Sounds like a major blow to the whole future war, right?
There’s just so many problems associated with this, though, that it hurts my head to think about it.
First off, when Skynet opens up the bunker in the future, it’s going to know that its terminator failed and when said terminator is reactivated it will also know that John, Sarah, and River stopped it from succeeding.
So then Skynet knows that John, Sarah, and River are at that place and time. So then Skynet can send back terminators to deal with that. Or it can reprogram the first terminator to be watching for them.
Regardless of the outcome, Skynet has to know that its alloy is never stored away. And since its alloy is never stored away, why did it even bother sending someone into the past to store it? It has to, of course, because if it hadn’t then it would never know that it wasn’t stored.
So Skynet had to make the illogical decision of sending a Terminator back to store some alloy that it knew wasn’t going to actually get stored.
Furthermore, Skynet had to have made the illogical decision to not even let said Terminator know that it was going to fail at its mission at the hands of the person they’re all out to kill — John Connor.
John Connor delivered himself into their hands, and Skynet was too stupid to capitalize on it. Skynet’s not so bright. I don’t understand why the resistance is having so much trouble with it.
But you see, only Cromartie (the terminator from ‘99) knows what the three look like. Now it would make sense that he could leave a picture of them in a safe place, but that would end the series PDQ.
The fact that the armory terminator failed in his mission instantly changes the timeline, so Skynet will not be opening the bunker in the future. The decision of Skynet was logical when it was made, and when the armory terminator was defeated, the future when that decision of Skynet was made no longer existed.
Time travel paradoxes are pretty much unsolvable (if I kill my grandfather or save a new line of family) for reverse travel if we are to believe that even observation changes a situation. Non linear time existence (Dr. Who) really doesn’t fix much. But skipping huge parts of time to move forward works except for where are you while that time passes? If you’re in a time machine watching the world speed by then you’re in their space and people must wonder how you can sit for millenia motionless and not rot. And what if they decide to move you? Or drive a car into you? The only way to time travel is to move forward to a new time without being in any time in between. Not sure I find much reason for that.