The fact that Kate is now targeted by a T-X raises some other questions.
The most intriguing of these is why Kate was never targeted prior to the morning on which SkyNet became a reality. The answer to this, though, is relatively simple. Kate is the daughter of General Robert Brewster, who was the one to oversee the development and launch of SkyNet. Tampering with events too close to the general's life could be fatal; we can be certain that had Brewster known that the system he oversaw was going to send a robot assassin to kill his own daughter, he would not have launched SkyNet. There is thus a very narrow window between the latest moment that SkyNet can kill Kate without alerting her father to the danger and the moment when Kate vanishes from the grid and cannot be found. Killing her mother before she is born would be a major misstep; sending machines that her father might recognize as developments from his own work would be more so.
The other, though, is, why send a T-X? It is described in the film as an "anti-terminator terminator", a machine designed to destroy other machines. That is more than is needed to kill Kate and the several others on the hit list--and SkyNet is undoubtedly rationing resources. It would send a less effective machine, the T-800 model 101, to do a job for which it should be adequate.
It also recognizes that in the history it knows it was previously thwarted by virtue of the fact that someone, presumably John Conner, sent someone or something back after it did to protect its targets. Thus it kills John Conner in the future before attempting to kill his lieutenants in the past. The hope is that with John dead, no help will come from the future.
This construction makes the scene at the veterinary clinic much more credible. John Conner is already there in the cage. Kate Brewster is in the back when Betsy arrives with her cat. The T-800 kills the female who is there, and lacking the clever DNA matching ability of the T-X does not know that he has killed the wrong target (just as in the first movie it did not know that it had killed Sarah's roommate until Sarah called to leave a message). With one dead woman and one recognizable T-800, John Conner is going to grab the fair maiden in distress and flee the scene. He will explain in the car, and while the T-800 searches the city only to be incinerated in the first explosion, John and Kate escape to Mexico.
It is after this timeline has stabilized that Kate Brewster Conner sends a reprogrammed T-800 back. Her motivation is, as John used it to save his mother originally and again years later, to save her father. She was there for those earlier events, and knows the dangers.
In defense of this reconstruction, note that the T-800 that rescues the couple says the T-X was sent because his presence was anticipated. It undoubtedly was so retroactively. After the first T-800 failed, Kate sent the matching T-800 back to fight it, and although she did not save her father she did cause SkyNet to upgrade on its next timeline to the T-X instead of the T-800. Thus the unaided John and Kate had to escape a T-800, not a T-X; in the history in which they faced the T-X, the T-800 was already there to assist them.
However, the mission of the T-X raises more problems, to be considered next time.
Comments