It was suggested in comments that with the video release of Terminator Salvation this column should not only examine its place in the Terminator timeline but summarize the previously published and rather complicated analysis of the other three films. Indeed, although it has stood the test of time to some degree, Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies unravels Terminator was the first such analysis to appear (under a slightly different title with a different URL) when the Temporal Anomalies site launched in 1997. Its consideration of the first two films dealt with some serious complexities, and made predictions concerning what the franchise might be able to do with the story from there. Further, the more recent addition of an analysis of Rise of the Machines put the entirety of the first two films in a new context not fully addressed, despite the fact that several of the predictions of the previous article had been confirmed. Thus as the fourth film has come to video, it seems appropriate to examine the story so far, and to polish some of what has already been said.
The story begins with the third film. It is here we learn who originally designed SkyNet. In the second film it appeared that Cyberdyne created the massive computerized defense system as a hardware system; but it was also revealed that Cyberdyne did so based on studying the parts from the demolished T-800 left in their factory in the first film. This in the first film would have been a predestination paradox, the effect in the past dependent upon the cause in the future; but in the second film it became a grandfather paradox, as the cause from the future destroyed its own basis in the past. Thus the second film forces us to abandon fixed time theory as a plausible explanation. Assuming that replacement theory is the best replacement, that the people involved really are changing their own past (not the past of a parallel or divergent dimension), we then resolve the uncaused cause by postulating an original cause that was displaced. In this case it is not difficult to do this, because the third film gives it to us: as predicted, someone else developed a different SkyNet at a later date. That someone was the Autonomous Weapons Division of the Cyber Research Systems branch of the United States Air Force, under the direction of General Robert Brewster.
It is not impossible that there was some other original creator of SkyNet, and there might have been contributors to the project; but it seems most reasonable to assume that the Air Force was working on autonomous systems long before the early nineties, long before the Internet had become what it was, and that they had been consulting many private contractors for the latest in hardware and software. It is also evident that in the eighties the notion of harnessing multiple computers in parallel was in its infancy. Answers were seen in hardware in those days; it was not until this millennium that software solutions rose to prominence. Thus it is not surprising that in 1984 they were looking at hardware solutions, but by 2004 they were looking at a software solution. It is also not surprising that absent the parts from the future, no hardware solution was forthcoming. Hardware becomes dated very quickly and cannot upgrade itself; intelligent software might be able to manage both its own upgrades and that of its hardware, given the right tools.
Thus we find that the Air Force is responsible for the original creation of a SkyNet that was an intelligent defense program released into the Internet that became sentient and proceeded to defend itself against humanity.
The story then doubles back on itself, because that program eventually decided that John Conner must die; yet without that decision, John Conner could never have been born. Thus we must turn back the clock to 1984 and Sarah Conner's child.
Comments