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* Also in the Pilot: in a deleted scene Cromartie sits in a house and replaying clips, when he gets to the part that Cameron ran him over he scans the New Mexico license plate of Cameron's Ford F-250 and a small message pops up on the right saying "*972-S4B*. Running DMV Records". What would that give him? Cameron probably stole it so why bother checking who's the owner? And how could he track it? It's 1999, cars didn't have an internet connection then...
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* Also in the Pilot: in a deleted scene Cromartie sits in a house and replaying clips, when he gets to the part that Cameron ran him over he scans the New Mexico license plate of Cameron's Ford F-250 and a small message pops up on the right saying "*972-S4B*."*972-[=S4B=]*. Running DMV Records". What would that give him? Cameron probably stole it so why bother checking who's the owner? And how could he track it? It's 1999, cars didn't have an internet connection then...
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{{Headscratchers}} for ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'' specifically. For other entries in the franchise, go [[Headscratchers/{{Terminator}} here]].
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***The headless terminator body was found in the debris, yet neither the government nor a robotics company thought to acquire it for study?
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** This is awesome, the first time this troper have seen {{Squick}} and CrowningMomentOfFunny combined.
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** This is awesome, the first time this troper have seen {{Squick}} and CrowningMomentOfFunny SugarWiki/FunnyMoments combined.
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* In 'Today is the Day', when John is confronting Jesse in her hotel room (And yes, I do feel bad about nitpicking what is possibly the series' biggest CrowningMomentOfAwesome), he tells her about Skynet sending a Terminator after him "When I was twelve". If he were supposedly born in November of '83 now, would that not make him thirteen in July of '97? Now it's true that John may be simply misremembering things, but it still smells of continuity error to me.
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* In 'Today is the Day', when John is confronting Jesse in her hotel room (And yes, I do feel bad about nitpicking what is possibly the series' biggest CrowningMomentOfAwesome), SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome), he tells her about Skynet sending a Terminator after him "When I was twelve". If he were supposedly born in November of '83 now, would that not make him thirteen in July of '97? Now it's true that John may be simply misremembering things, but it still smells of continuity error to me.
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* In a deleted scene Cromartie sits in a house and replaying clips, when he gets to the part that Cameron ran him over he scans the New Mexico license plate of Cameron's Ford F-250 and a small message pops up on the right saying "*972-S4B*. Running DMV Records". What would that give him? Cameron probably stole it so why bother checking who's the owner? And how could he track it? It's 1999, cars didn't have an internet connection then...
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* In Also in the Pilot: in a deleted scene Cromartie sits in a house and replaying clips, when he gets to the part that Cameron ran him over he scans the New Mexico license plate of Cameron's Ford F-250 and a small message pops up on the right saying "*972-S4B*. Running DMV Records". What would that give him? Cameron probably stole it so why bother checking who's the owner? And how could he track it? It's 1999, cars didn't have an internet connection then...
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* In a deleted scene Cromartie sits in a house and replaying clips, when he gets to the part that Cameron ran him over he scans the NM license plate of the truck and a small message pops up on the right saying "972-S4B. Running DMV Records". What would that give him? Cameron probably stole it so why bother checking who's the owner? And how could he track it? It's 1999, cars didn't have an internet connection then...
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* In a deleted scene Cromartie sits in a house and replaying clips, when he gets to the part that Cameron ran him over he scans the NM New Mexico license plate of the truck Cameron's Ford F-250 and a small message pops up on the right saying "972-S4B."*972-S4B*. Running DMV Records". What would that give him? Cameron probably stole it so why bother checking who's the owner? And how could he track it? It's 1999, cars didn't have an internet connection then...
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* In a deleted scene Cromartie sits in a house and replaying clips, when he gets to the part that Cameron ran him over he scans the NM license plate of the truck and a small message pops up on the right saying "972-S4B. Running DMV Records". What would that give him? Cameron probably stole it so why bother checking who's the owner? And how could he track it? It's 1999, cars didn't have an internet connection then...
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*** Also a bit of FridgeLogic. There are a lot of references to ''Literature/TheWizardOfOz''. Future John is the Wizard and present John is the man behind the curtain.
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*** Also a bit of FridgeLogic. There are a lot of references to ''Literature/TheWizardOfOz''.''Film/TheWizardOfOz''. Future John is the Wizard and present John is the man behind the curtain.
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*** Right. So since Derek B apparently ''also'' traveled back in time, is he running around somewhere, or is he in an entirely separate timeline?
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* In the pilot, after Cromartie shoots at John and they go back to his house, and Cameron fights him in a Terminator battle...When she brings down the big wire, why doesn't she [[JustEatGilligan extract his chip]] while he's incapacitated?
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** It's made clear that (although it's a paradox), non-tortured Derek, let's call him Derek A, went back. Although Derek A was tortured, which we see in "Dungeons and Dragons," it wasn't by Fischer. The events of "Complications" created the timeline where Fischer gets locked up, then becomes a Gray and tortures Derek B.
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*** In T3, Sarah dies of leukemia, which in the late 90s and early 00s had a lower success rate of treatment than it has now. It's possible she won't die of cancer, or won't die until much later in the TSCC timeline. Sarah's death was sort of a TakeThat response to Creator/LindaHamilton declining to return anyway.
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*** Also a bit of FridgeLogic. There are a lot of references to ''Literature/TheWizardOfOz''. Future John is the Wizard and present John is the man behind the curtain.
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** John Henry is attached to the server farm via a wire in the ''back'' of his head. There's no indication whatsoever that he's plugged in anywhere near his chip port. And he can stand up and move around, just not very far, like a dog on a leash. So Cameron sits and tells him how to take out her chip. He opens up his own head, installs the chip, and once it's done uploading, he redirects whatever he needs and yanks out his cord.
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** If you're committing a felony and it results in someone's death, you can be charged with murder.
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*** Cameron also left out information as early as the second episode. In the first episode, she told Sarah that she'd been looking for them for 70-odd days, and that they knew Skynet started in LA in 2007. In the second season, we find out that other people jumped with her, but it's three days later and she didn't tell Sarah. So Sarah knows from the outset that Cameron has her own agenda and never really answers any questions. She also doesn't take orders well, and shoots first. That's not someone/something anyone could trust easily.
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** For the former we can look at this as simply a means of introducing drama in John wanting to save the girl and Cameron stopping him, the conflict being that if they just let someone kill themselves then Skynet wins. For the latter Derek and the others, it was hinted, were tortured by Cameron (look at his reaction when he sees hers dancing to the same piece of music) then let go so Skynet could track them back to the Resistance.
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No. Cleaned up rude hate speech.
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** ...are you ''dense''? Do you want me to list the reasons why this is a terminally retarded idea?
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*** Technically the ending ''could'' be read as John's jump into the future is the beginning of the human resistance's "win" against the machines. In the first film, Reese told Sarah that when he jumped, they had already won. Their grid was smashed, which is why they sent the T-800 back in the first place, with Reese following him. So when John jumps to find no one knows who he is, he joins the scattered human resistance, rises through the ranks, and uses his knowledge of the machines to win the war in the future. Although it is heavily implied in the series that his way of winning isn't beating the machines as the original John Connor did, but working with them.
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** This is strongly implied to be the case, with her echoing back "will you join us?"
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** This is strongly implied to be the case, with her echoing back "will you join us?"us?" It's also heavily implied with the eel. After the submarine was scuttled, the T-1001 takes the form of an eel and swims away. The eel in the tank joins Weaver in the finale.
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** From the SWAT's point of view, Dyson at Cyberdyne looked very much like a hostage brought there under a gunpoint. So yes, they had their reasons to charge Sarah with his death.
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** It's explicitly stated in the pilot that not only does John want to fight instead of running, Cameron tells Sarah she knows how Skynet starts. Not ''who'' starts it, but how and when: Los Angeles, 2007. This is why they have to jump forward, and why they spend the next two years chasing The Turk and going on various missions. It's AllThereInTheManual.
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** He's 15, almost 16 in the pilot, when they blow up a bank vault. He can at the very least be charged (probably as an adult) for that crime. Destruction of property, domestic terrorism, etc.
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* Speaking of Sarah's crimes...Here's something that's always been a Headscratcher. Why was Sarah charged with Miles Dyson's murder? He was alive and fine when they were setting explosives. The team that swarmed the scene shot the place up, including Dyson. Then he died of his SWAT gunshot wounds, while holding the detonator. If the police didn't want to take responsibility for his death, they could have just said he died in the blast, which was close enough to the truth. From the POV of the law, she's violent, a domestic terrorist, and schizo, but she's not a murderer.
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** As the previous troper noted, their jump forward in time is a hand-wave of Sarah's death in T3. There is a more practical reason, though: it's cheaper to set a TV series in the present day (2007, as of Season 1 of the series) than to try and make it look like 1999.
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* We know that Jesse wants to provide John Connor with a girlfriend to keep him from getting too attached to Cameron. So she picks a young attractive woman out of the refugees and sends her back to pose as a high school girl and hook up with John. But Jesse herself is reasonably attractive and not much older than the woman she picks. So wouldn't it be simpler to just do the fake girlfriend bit herself?
** ...Jesse isn't a teenager. And Cameron knows her.
** ...are you ''dense''? Do you want me to list the reasons why this is a terminally retarded idea?
*** Sarah's reaction to an older woman coming onto her son would be, well, unpleasant to say the least.
*** John's not a moron. An older woman who is at ''least'' in her mid-twenties coming on to him is going to set off warning bells.
*** [[spoiler: The "girlfriend" is intended to bait Cameron into killing her to alienate John from Cameron.]] Somehow, I don't think Jesse is willing to go that far. And last, and most important of all,
*** '''Derek Reese is sleeping with Jesse.''' I don't know about you, but I think the idea of Jesse trying to seduce John ''while she is in the middle of an active sexual relationship with his uncle'' is '''not''' the smartest idea.
**** Well, she doesn't know Derek is John's uncle until long after she's sent Riley after him. But the fact that one of the reasons she hates Cameron is that [[spoiler:she was the one who told her she'd miscarried her child with Derek]] it's probably safe to assume she's not interested in cheating on her boyfriend.
** This is awesome, the first time this troper have seen {{Squick}} and CrowningMomentOfFunny combined.
* Is the T-1001 that assumes Mrs Weaver's form meant to be the same T-1001 that Jesse was contacting in the future?
** This is strongly implied to be the case, with her echoing back "will you join us?"
** Its pretty much confirmed, considering how Cameron reacts to the "Will you join us" message, too.
*** But the answer she/it gave was no, so wouldn't it make more sense if it was another T-1001?
*** Would another T-1001 know the code phrase? It was implied that the T-1001 that was on the Jimmy Carter was at least partially in charge of the "pro-peace" machine faction, or at least a representative.
*** Well there is a chance that they sent the message to more than one machine. Ah well guess I'll never know for sure.
* Why was it cancelled? Why does god hate me so?
** Because Fox hates good shows, and keeps crappy ones around.
*** I hope you aren't implying that WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy is a crappy show! :O (Although, to be fair, they DID cancel it ... several times)
**** That's your opinion, this troper hates WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy and thinks this show is awesome, learn to express your opinion as just that an opinion not a fact.
** There's also the fact that the producers decided that the episodes that would lead in after the mid-season break were "The Good Wound" and "Desert Cantos," which were themselves among the weakest episodes of the entire second season. Leading in with them following the lengthy break didn't help ratings.
** Because people stopped watching it after seeing a bunch of weak episodes, and never came back.
** Also, it got really expensive.
*** Or more accurately it was not a Fox show and so they weren't as willing to shell out for the third season. SCC was a Warner Brothers production with a lot of the secondary rights ([=DVDs=], etc.) being held wholly by WB. At the end of the second season, with ratings low (both for SCC itself and the block of time it shared with Dollhouse), Fox was looking to for a significant discount on the show (they did the same for Dollhouse), the WB wasn't willing to do so, and hence Fox dropped the same.
* In the series finale, John goes into the future. As such he never existed as the leader of the resistance. Instead, Kyle Reese seems to be the leader, and as he has no reason to go back in time... John will never be born. Kind of a stable time loop where John should cease to exist the moment he jumps into the future. So why is he still there?
** I think it is called "FOX Just Cancelled Us" and the production team decided to throw out the biggest cliff hanger possible, regardless of logic or real-world space/time problems.
** Different model of time travel in TSCC.
** There's also never been any indication ''or'' refutation of the Grandfather Paradox in the series prior to that moment, though that scene confirms that Grandfather Paradox works. Time-jumping apparently gives you VideoGame/ChronoTrigger-style time-traveler's immunity.
** The time travel used in this (and arguably, throughout the Terminator movie series) is iterative time travel, wherein paradoxes can seemingly occur, but really don't. Because even if you erased a future or past event, it still DID exist at one time. Think of a streambed that changes course... the old streambed is still there, the river just isn't flowing in it at the moment.
*** I believe that in the series, everyone is possibly WrongGenreSavvy about how the timeline works. they think that time travel follows a predestination model, but in reality it is all iterative. For example, Kyle Reese doesn't matter to the past; in fact, his act of impregnating Sarah eliminates the John Connor who sent him back and replaces him with a new one. Of course, it turns a big part of T3 into a ShaggyDogStory, but that's a bit of bitter, delicious irony.
* The AbortedArcs from S1 drive me a little nuts. Who was targeting the girl who suicided, and why? What was up with the blonde girl who John liked? What was going on in the basement in "Dungeons And Dragons" and why were Derek and the others suddenly let go?
** That last question probably would have been answered as the series progressed, if it hadn't been canceled. As it was, it appeared to be connected with Cameron and how Derek recognized her, and Cameron's comment in "To The Lighthouse" about how Derek ''had'' broken under interrogation before, but didn't realize it.
*** There's a good chance that what was happening in the basement of "Dungeons and Dragons" was part of the interrogation/teaching sessions that were later shown in "Complications." That may also show a connection with similar interrogations like the one in "Allison from Palmdale." Fisher shows the machines how to become like humans by interrogation, and the Cameron cyborg uses those techniques while interrogating Allison to become her.
* Ignoring the fact the future saviour of humanity seems like a big mama's boy who exhibits little in the way of initiative most of the time... the MO for him and his mother is pretty much to avoid detection and to prepare John to lead humanity against the machines. So, what do they do? Go to LA and enrol him in high school, of course! They aren't even deterred by the fact that their arrival there is naked, videoed and shown on TV. What was wrong with staying in Mexico and training John? Not to mention the fact that Sarah's pathological inability to use a surname other than Reese is clearly a death wish. Needless to say - it seems rather unlikely that the risk of regularly attending school (fake identity or not) is far greater than the rewards of a high school education. Granted, one might argue that there's a necessity for normal social interaction... but if you go down that road, there's a lot to be said about the relationship between Sarah and her son.
** Because a show based entirely on John sitting in the jungles of Mexico complaining endlessly wouldn't have been fun to watch. Plus, T1 and T2 are both set in L.A., so call it an homage.
** They stay in LA because they've chosen to ''stop'' running and are hunting Skynet - supposedly, though Sarah waffles back and forth on that issue, which is understandable, considering she's batshit insane. And Sarah does eventually realize that John being in public school is a bad idea, as she does pull him out and starts homeschooling him instead.
* One point that always seemed incongruent... why travel FORWARD in time and thus, lose extra years to stop Skynet? Surely if they knew a time frame and location - they could have just left a note? Also, said time travel breaks about the ONLY rule ever established in Terminator - a big ol' terminator head flies through the time vortex... but the gang lose their clothes and fancy gun.
** They traveled forward in time to escape pursuit and to avoid Cromartie. Jumping forward several years effectively got the FBI off their backs and made them disappear. As for Cromartie's head, that's a case of ExecutiveMeddling; in the original version, Cromartie's head was supposed to still have its skin on it when it went through the portal, but the suits at FOX thought that was too gruesome (in a Terminator series, I know....) so it had to be changed to a metallic skull instead.
** They also traveled forward because Sarah had originally died of cancer during those years. They jumped over her date of death, which is why Sarah is so concerned with cancer for the rest of the series.
** It's the problem with all Time Travel stories -- why not simply go back far enough in time to radically alter the Industrial Revolution or Oppenheimer and his bomb, or make sure Andy's parents never hook up and thus never invent Skynet? Or, for that matter, go back and rescue Kyle? If Future John actually has his own machine then it seems a little short sighted to constantly be sending people back to the early 1990s.
*** Because 1) the development of a particular bomb isn't the problem, humanity's just going to build a weapon like that eventually, and 2) ever notice how most of the grounded humans, even the ones in horrible situations, focus on protecting other people than on killing someone to solve their problem? Yeah, that's to drive home the point that they're ''humans''. Skynet sends assassins because it's a cold, unfeeling machine, humans send protectors because they're not. The one time anyone on the human side (Sarah) decides to try and use murder to solve their problem, it's emphasized that she's becoming very machine-like, and she almost instantly regrets it and thanks John for stopping her (because she's just desperate and a bit unhinged, not "batshit crazy" as tropers often characterize her). She considers it again in the series, but again, she's becoming desperate and starting to feel like she's out of options, it's not a go-to.
* Why does Sarah inherently distrust Cameron just because she's a machine? After T2, you'd think she'd have learn that ''some'' reprogrammed Terminators can be trusted. Her monologue in T2 even mentioned how Arnie ended up being a better father figure to John than any of the ''human'' father figures in his life. Why wouldn't she trust Cameron? (Granted, there's reason to distrust her in the second season after she starts glitching up and acting unpredictably, but Sarah distrusts her from ''day one''.)
** She doesn't really distrust Cameron. If she ''did'' distrust Cameron, she'd never have let her near John in the first place, let alone allow Cameron to operate on her while wounded, or follow her into the future based entirely on her word. She ''dislikes'' Cameron, but it is very, very clear that she does trust her up until she glitches the first time.
*** There's also the part that unlike Arnie, Cameron explicitly only really takes her orders from future John and will readily go behind their backs, kill people she's told not to and lie in the pursuit of her own unknown objectives.
* Wouldn't a teenage boy who suddenly ended up ''naked with his mom'' have a {{Squick}} reaction?
** A normal teenage boy, yes. ''John Connor'', however, does not count as normal by any stretch of sanity.
** He's much too busy watching a naked Cameron kick some ass...
** Well they knew what would happen so it wasn't like they were totally unprepared in seeing eachother nude.
** Firstly, they had other things to focus on at the moment. Secondly, just because he didn't spend five minutes going "EW! MOM! YOU'RE NAKED! EW! EW! [[ThatMakesMeFeelAngry I'M SEEING MY MOM NAKED AND IT'S GROSSING ME OUT]]! EW!" doesn't mean he didn't think "Ack, naked Mom, gross" and try to avoid looking at her.
*** Also, not every family is fussy about nudity. Some parents who live in close quarters are occasionally nude around their kids, no matter what the age, and no one cares.
* Is there any in-universe reason why, in the pilot, when Sarah has a nightmare about a humanoid Terminator, ''it doesn't look or sound like ANY of the ones she's actually encountered?''
** We only know the Terminator in the pilot is different in hind-sight, very easily if the show had continued they could have guest starred that actor again. Also, it is first time the audience sees a SCC terminator, they needed an Arnie stand-in, which this one does, at least this one dresses similarly (versus Cromartie who is about as un-Arnie as one can get)
** .....because ''it's a dream''? Shockingly enough, when you're in the middle of a dream, the human mind is not at all concerned with little things like "logic" or "consistency".
*** Yes, but one would think the faces of 2 of the most traumatic incidents in her life would have made enough of a dent to haunt her nightmares for a long, long time.
*** And again, ''dreams are not logical.'' That's why they're ''dreams.'' Dreams do not follow logic or consistency, regardless of how much of a "dent" they put in someone's mind. Yes, the Terminators are going to leave an impression on her mind, but that doesn't mean that the Terminators in her dreams are going to be perfect, exact replicas of the Terminators she's dealt with before, esepcially considering of their skeletal forms, one was only seen during a frantic chase and fight where she's not going to remeber the exact layout of every widget and piece of the machine, and the other was an amorphous blob.
**** Perhaps she has met a stoney-faced 6 foot plus human who she thought was a Terminator, an encounter that so terrified her that she still has nightmares about it.
*** He's pretty clearly supposed to represent a T-800. Sarah herself looks different from the movies, why can't you accept the same logic for the Terminator in the pilot?
*** It's obvious, isn't it? Sarah already knows Terminators can look like anyone. What's scarier to dream about: a recognizable face you can easily pick out of a crowd, or knowing that anyone, ''anyone'' could be one of them here to kill you and your son?
*** Also, she actually seemed to come to care about the reprogrammed T-800... it's implied that she was going to trust him enough to raise John for her if she didn't come back from her mission to kill the creator of Skynet. While she may not have loved him, some trust and gratitude may have become associated with that face in her subconscious. A combination of that and the above note about the fear of an unidentified Terminator masquerading as someone else may well have pushed her dreaming mind to avoid putting the more better-known T-800 version's face on it.
* After you get over the shock of the finale, and what it does to the timeline and the fact that we'll probably never see a season three, does anyone else get a little pissed that after a season of teasing around with him, we just got guaranteed that they never intended for us to ever see FutureBadass [[TheManBehindTheCurtain John Conner]] on screen?
** No. They were deliberately keeping future!John as TheFaceless; he's been a background character throughout the first, second, and third movies, and even in the fourth he was just a byproduct of that ''other'' John Connor who started the whole thing. Hell, even in the second movie, we only got one short glimpse of him. Giving him a face and a personality would have ruined the ShroudedInMyth nature of the mysteious future messiah character.
** In the movies he is this mysterious future messiah and indeed a background character, in TSCC he is much more involved, with scenes where Derek and Jesse wonder what he is thinking, a history with Allison and the man behind whatever convoluted scheme Cameron is involved in that causes her to join John Henry and probably the only one that completely knows why what happened. He was TheFaceless but it was very much played with and Cameron refused to let people see him for what I presume to be in-story reasons. From what I thought, they were building up to something.
*** They probably were. [[ExecutiveMeddling Things]] [[ScrewedByTheNetwork happened.]]
* In 'Today is the Day', when John is confronting Jesse in her hotel room (And yes, I do feel bad about nitpicking what is possibly the series' biggest CrowningMomentOfAwesome), he tells her about Skynet sending a Terminator after him "When I was twelve". If he were supposedly born in November of '83 now, would that not make him thirteen in July of '97? Now it's true that John may be simply misremembering things, but it still smells of continuity error to me.
** John's dominant emotion at the moment is tightly controlled ''fury'', and he's off-handedly recalling a chaotic and tumultous point in his history, which is largely ''irrelevant'' to the point at hand. John doesn't give a flying fuck about remembering precisely how old he was when that happened, especially when time is such a hilariously mutable thing in this series.
**** In this timeline, the T-1000 was sent after him when he was twelve (probably sometime in 1996). John, Sarah, and Uncle Bob run and hide in the desert for some time and the blowing up Cyberdyne event (climax where T-1000 is terminated) happens in 1997, not long before Judgment Day was set to happen. Keep in mind that as the "looping" timelines go by, with John sending Kyle to follow and stop the T-800, the T-800 and Kyle are sent back at an earlier date every time in order to erase the mistake of the previous failing of the T-800. As timelines go by, they go a littler earlier each time to erase the previous incarnations of them. The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a later timeline than the one we experience in T1/T2. The events of T1/T2 remain, just occurring on different dates. There's definitely an element of fate and destiny that keeps key moments intact, but as the timeline goes further, the future drastically changes, creating more time travelers that go back in time and create an infinite branching path of eternal possibility. It doesn't make any timeline less important. Your life matters and your timeline is all you know. If it doesn't meet your satisfaction, you go back in time and attempt to change it. The alternate timeline of T3/Salvation would be a further along timeline (possibly the last, depending on what happens in T5/T6) as John Connor is born in 1981 in that timeline. The cycle of the T-800 and Kyle going back earlier and earlier in time would eventually have to end. Hopefully it ends with the upcoming films. (~by Xyberfaust)
* Just watched the episode where Ellison and a SWAT team tries to take down Cromartie and all get killed except Ellison. The fight concludes with Ellison the only one left standing, held at gunpoint by Cromartie... Who just walks off. What reason did he have to let Ellison live?
** Its explained in the second season. The short version is that by letting Ellison live, Cromartie can watch him in the belief that he will lead Cromartie to the Connors.
* What the hell was Future-John thinking when he decided to send a terminator with the appearance of a ridiculously hot girl back to protect Past-John? It's pretty obvious that the scene with Cameron spontaneously ranting about being in love with John before he pulls her plug and the other one in the last (or second-last?) episode under the DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything classification both really fucked him up in the head with UST. Future-John could have spared himself those freaky situations by sending another Arnold-Terminator back, but instead Past-John is left with the only thing resembling a girl he knows is a killing machine which... the scene when has to stick his hand in her and... I'm really unable to find the right words. Does anyone see what I'm getting at here? The only explanation I can think of is that Future-John ''wanted'' to traumatize Past-John for some reason.
** Its strongly implied in the finale that there was an ulterior motive to sending Cameron back that extended beyond simply sending a bodyguard. Note that future-John was using Cameron as his own personal advisor and laison, and it is worth noting that future-John Connor was strongly implied to at least know Allison Young personally. But the problem here is that we ''don't know'' what his motivations were or what he was planning, because the series got canceled. All we have is speculation. Maybe future-John cared about Cameron enough that he wanted to preserve her by sending her back. Maybe Cameron is the only Terminator he trusts enough to carry out what appeared to be a cross-time BatmanGambit. We don't know.
**** John Connor got close to the terminator that killed Allison and impersonated her to get into the camp, after reprogramming it. Perhaps it was his connection to Allison that he couldn't seem to let go of. Cameron could also become a predestination object, like Kyle, or the photograph (inserting itself in the past and eventually becoming self-sustaining).
On the sub, in Jesse's future (past), she is on a mission setup by "John Connor" (who no one was allowed to see) to bring the box which contains the T-1001 (Catherine Weaver) to "John Connor" to setup peace between the resistance and a rebel faction of machines. Cameron was the one speaking in John Connor's place because she accidentally killed him. Cameron is loyal to John and continues his mission to bring peace. When the Jesse/sub mission with the T-1001 goes bad, that plan is ruined. Cameron has failed. Cameron decides to send herself back in time to protect John and make things right. "She" gets close to him, ensuring he falls in love with "her", thus ensuring his protection of "her" and "her" life. There is a self-aware desire to live. Cameron, in that sense, is independent and crosses against the light, like John Henry. It's no coincidence, that by the end of it all, they are one and the same.
In the final moment between John Connor and Cameron, Cameron tries to get John to understand that "she" is a machine that deep down is made to kill him. And she warns him of what might happen (what did happen).
Cameron: "You need to understand how it works."
John: "What?"
Cameron: "This chip. This body. The software is designed to terminate humans. The hardware is designed to terminate humans. That's our sole function."
John: "Not you."
Cameron: "No. Not anymore. But what was there is still there... and it will always be there."
John: "So down deep... you want to kill me."
Cameron: "Yes. I do."
John: "Then why don't you?"
Cameron: " I might someday."
(~by Xyberfaust)
** Also I'm confused as to which of the above experiences you think would be any less traumatic for John if Cameron were in the form of a teenage male or, say, an old man.
* In in the final episode of Terminator SCC, how is Cameron able to give John Henry her chip? Weaver's computer system was hooked up through the CPU port in his head, so even if Cameron managed to remove her chip before deactivating, how would he install it in himself without removing the wires, rendering himself immobile?
** Its entirely possible that he programmed his body to extract the chip by itself and switch them out. We know that terminator bodies can be remotely controlled, as Cromartie's own body has shown when it tracked down its own head. John Henry codes up a simple set of movement orders and uploads them into the body, and the body extracts and switches out Cameron's chip. Presto.
*** John Henry extracted Cameron's chip (with Cameron's consent) and placed it in his own head. He could then upload himself onto this sophisticated computer chip from the future. The real question is, "Is it just John Henry on that chip with Cameron erased? Is it just Cameron still on the chip in control of this new body? Do they share the chip? If they share it, which one is in control? Cameron, John Henry, Lily Tomlin, or Steve Martin? Is Cameron now on The Turk? Oh the possibilities...
* It's been a while since I saw the episode "Alice from Somewhereoranother", but I don't recall ever quite getting how/why Cameron suddenly starts manifesting Allison's personality and ''memories'' as a programming glitch. It seems to me that that wouldn't be possible unless those things were put in her chip, and I can't fathom a reason for that happening.
** Cameron doesn't have Allison's memories. She has memories of Allison talking ''about'' her memories when she was interrogating Allison so she could mimic her. Note that when the counselor is asking Cameron about her past, she begins reciting, word-for-word, what Allison said in the interrogation room. The episode in question strongly implies that Allison was either a close friend or intimate of John Connor, so Cameron had to mimic her very closely in order to fool John. Also, Cameron's CPU apparently has the ability to at least fake emotions to the point that Cameron herself can be overcome by them (i.e. she panics, she breaks down crying, etc.) which suggests she was designed to be a very ''deep'' cover agent. From this, we can conclude that Cameron was going to impersonate Allison to the point that she could be her in every aspect. Cameron basically took all of the information Allison gave her, built up a personality around that, and used it to infiltrate John's base.
* The episode ''Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today'' takes place mostly in Mexico, on the Day of the Dead, which is celebrated November 2nd. This episode takes place a few episodes after we've been told, through the Connors' old phone code, that the date is November 18th (note that John also makes a joke about the Mexican restaurant they're in having a great Thanksgiving special, which fits more with the later date than the fact that we're told that the Day of the Dead festival is celebrated that very evening a few minutes earlier). Maybe they just happened to be in a Mexican village that celebrates the Day of the Dead a few weeks late, but that's a stretch.
** That's because it's [[ItsAlwaysMardiGrasInNewOrleans always the Day of the Dead in Mexico]].
*** John and Riley did go in 2007, but not on Nov1 or Nov2 (when Dia De Los Muertos traditionally is celebrated). The celebrations were postponed because of the great floods in Mexico that happened around that time in 2007. Tropical Storm Noel devastated the area at that time. (~by Xyberfaust)
* What the FUCK happened during "Some Must Watch"? I have absolutely no idea what I just saw.
** I thought it was quite clear. Sarah was captured by the agent and held in the back of his van. Every time she was in the sleep clinic, she was actually having a vivid dream after being drugged into unconsciousness. None of the stuff that was happening while in the clinic was real; the only stuff that was real was in the van.
*** For who agent was working? Since transmitter, which he implanted in Sarah, was used later by unknown force, including terminators, who attacked both John and Savannah. While agent, as far as I understood, worked for Mrs. Weaver initially.
*** He was definitely working for whoever was trying to take down Weaver and the Connors. He was apparently just a spy inside the manufacturing plant.
**** He was working for Kaliba. (~ by Xyberfaust)
* As we know, Cromartie eventually was taken down using two MP-5 sumbachine guns and 12-gauge shotgun. So how it could be he survived attack of FBI HRT earlier? FBI HRT consisted from ~20 soldiers, armed with MP-5, shotguns and even M-4A1 carbines, and, consequently, could provide much more firepower (Besides, if Cromartie was defeated in the way we saw, then he was wrong in the pilot serie where he identified SWAT team, as well armed with MP-5 submachine guns, as "Treat: none"). This could be partially justified by fact that Sarah, Derek and Cameron could have knowledge of structural weakness of T-888 and knew where to aim to incapacitate him, however still CurbStompBattle of Cromartie vs. FBI HRT seems to be inconsistent technically.
** The submachineguns are zero threat to a Terminator. They just bounce off his endoskeleton, which should not be any surprise, considering that they're designed for close-quarters combat against humans and aren't designed to overpenetrate. They're essentially firing pistol rounds, and those just smash into the metal, deform, and fall off. Note that when Sarah and Derek were firing on Cromartie, they weren't doing any damage at all to him. It wasn't until Cameron entered that any appreciable damage was being inflicted. Cameron appeared to be using solid slug ammunition, and was aiming for vital points. She also had some distance on Cromartie, and he was distracted by returning fire at two spaced-out enemy targets. The FBI HRT team went after Cromartie with submachineguns exclusively and were fighting him in close quarters, and were likely aiming for center of mass. Also, keep in mind that Cameron, being a machine, is not going to be affected by things like fear, shock, surprise, or panic. She knows exactly what she's up against, knows exactly how to take it down, and is loaded with exactly the right weaponry to take it down. Her aim isn't going to waver, she doesn't need to retreat to get to cover, and she's not going to be panicking at the deaths of multiple teammates.
** WordOfGod is the ammunition Cameron was firing at him was depleted uranium rounds, which would pack a punch much stronger than the regular ammo the FBI was using.
* Cromartie's head traveled with Sarah, John and Cameron to year 2008, but his body remained under debris of bank building. And nobody cleaned up debris, since nobody found it... I can't believe it. Besides, it is unclear, how his headless body was able to walk without seeing obstacles and where it is going, since optic inputs of terminator still are in its head. And nobody spotted it while it was walking!
** The debris was cleaned up. It was moved to a junkyard, and the body along with it.
* It's been established that many of the show's characters are from different "parallel future timelines" but how come everyone who travels back in time ends up in the same "present timeline"?
** They don't. Each act of travelling back in time creates a new timeline, and people from those timelines go back in time and end up in a timeline that resulted in their timeline of origin forming, only now they're creating a new timeline by being there.
** I mean the "present" story takes place in one and only one timeline. so how do people from many different "future timelines" end up in the one specific timeline TSCC takes place in?
*** ''They're not.'' Every time someone travels back in time they're making a new timeline, and people from ''that'' alternate future are travelling back to their past. We don't see that change happening, so it looks like one "unbroken" timeline in the present.
** but that practically begs people to ask what happened in the one timeline when the next episode picks up in a different one. the audience isn't invested in the future timelines because they don't really matter but the audience is invested in the present timeline(s).
**** That's right. The only timeline that matters is the one you are experiencing. There are infinite possible timelines due to time-travel. Every time someone travels back in time, it creates a new timeline with a new future (where in turn you have people coming back from that new future, thus creating another new future/timeline). They are constantly bombarded by people from an ever-changing future. It also appears that each person that comes back from the future only slightly changes the future to where its similar and not too drastic of a change. (~ by Xyberfaust)
* Sarah's decision at the end of "Born to Run" bugs the heck out of me. So, she's just found out that Catherine Weaver is a T-1001 and that John Henry, possibly a proto-Skynet, has absconded to the future with Cameron's chip. So when John, greatly distressed, wants to travel to the future to save Cameron, ''she lets him''! All his life, she's tried to protect him, keep him alive and prepare him for his destiny. Now, suddenly, she lets go. She doesn't try to convince or force John not to follow Cameron; she doesn't go with him so that she can protect him. She steps back and watches as he disappears, with a ''T-1001''. What The Fuck?!
** Yeah? She's spent two entire seasons essentially having to deal with the fact that John is growing up and making his own decisions, and finally realizing that John should control his own fate. As much as she hates it, she has to let ''him'' make the decision himself. Its called CharacterDevelopment.
*** Letting him control his own fate means letting him remove himself from the timeline? That's a win for Skynet right there. I can see why John makes that decision, blinded by 'love', but Sarah letting him do that, not even calling him out on it? Okay, maybe the heat of the moment didn't allow them to consider the consequences. Sarah still let John leave with a ''T-1001''. Letting your son commit suicide does not seem like CharacterDevelopment to me.
*** Letting him leave with a T-1001 that's repeatedly shown an honest desire to help them, right up to deliberately shielding them from an attack by an explosive drone. If Weaver had wanted them dead, she could have just stepped aside, or simply killed them then and there. And what does moving ahead in time do that lets Skynet "win"? The time travel in the setting essentially allows for infinite do-overs, and John has a T-1001 who has already demonstrated an express interest in keeping him alive to watch his back. And taking John ahead into the future effectively removes him from Skynet's reach for decades and ensures he survives Judgment Day, which, considering the ruthless way in which the family was being hunted over the last few episodes, was a win.
*** Up until she turned into a shield for them, the Connors had no idea Weaver was a Terminator. How has she repeatedly shown an honest desire to help them? Sarah doesn't even trust Cameron, who's been specifically been programmed to protect John, and who's saved John's life several times (and tried to kill him once, but that's irrelevant here). She just trusts Weaver to protect John? As far as she knows, Weaver orchestrated the removal of Cromartie's body, stole the Turk and used it to create John Henry, who for all the world looks like a proto-Skynet and who's now absconded to the future with Cameron's chip, which she seems to have handed over willingly. Nothing in this scenario should lead to her trusting Weaver. Yes, obviously Weaver could have killed John many times over if she'd wanted to. Allowing for that does not mean she can be trusted with John's well-being. As for moving forward being a 'win', while the time-travel mechanics allows for do-overs, it does not erase (there's no evidence that they do) already created timelines. John is integral to the Resistance winning the war. Now there is no John Connor leading the Resistance. There's a 16/17 year old kid who's in over his head. It is very possible that even if John returns to the past, this particular timeline is fucked and that just seems irresponsible. In any case, I don't have a problem with the 'move-foward'. It was a nice setup to exploring just how important John Connor is to the survival of humanity. It's Sarah's response that bothers me. I would have liked her to show a little more emotion. She just steps back and promises John she'll 'stop it'. It's like she's not even surprised by her son's decision to jump into the far future where who knows what awaits him.
*** As noted before, CharacterDevelopment. Sarah doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the simple fact is that her character arc is a steady realization of just how badly she keeps screwing up over the series, both in her decision making and in how she raised John. By that point in the story, Sarah doesn't truly trust herself. But she trusts ''John'' to make the right decision. So she stands aside and lets him make the choice. The entire series up to that point was culminating in that moment, where Sarah ''stops'' running John's life. Does she trust Weaver? Likely not in the slightest. But she trusts her ''son''. She's not letting John run off with Weaver, she's simply accepting that he's an adult and can make his own decisions, and therefore letting him go. If this was Sarah from [=T2=], or Sarah in the first season or beginning of the second, no, she likely would have stopped John, but she ''isn't''. That's the whole point.
* Jesse's whole storyline doesn't seem to make sense. She travels back through time, bringing Riley with her, for the sole purpose of driving a wedge between John and Cameron. ''How the heck did she know Cameron was there with teenaged John''? I doubt he went around telling stories about how his terminator BFF was sent back through time and protected him as a teenager. Kyle's and Derek's missions were all top secret even though Derek's was essentially just "go back and set up a safe house" so I doubt he'd make Cameron's mission public knowledge. There doesn't seem to be any logical in-series reason why Jesse would know about Cameron being around John in 2007.
** She's got enough connections to figure it out, especially when she's actively in a relationship with one of John's personal commandos who gets sent back in time. She could dig up the information as to who was being sent when; the Resistance is not that great at information security.
* ''Some Must Watch, Some Must Sleep'': Why is Sarah so adamant about not calling John no matter what? It makes sense when a Terminator is involved, but it isn't that kind of situation. Worst case scenario, John takes a leisurely rescue drive and then sends Cameron in to rip out the guy's spine.
** Paranoia on her part. As far as she's concerned, ''any'' call to John will compromise his safety.
* At one point we learn that Jesse comes from a different timeline than Derek. All well and good. Except that ''her'' Derek is also implied to have time traveled. Does that mean that there is a Derek with memories of being tortured by Fischer running around in the same past as the Derek without them? If no then why didn't Jessee end up with him instead? If yes then is that the general rule? Are there multiple versions of Kyle Reese? Of Cameron? Do we get a whole new set of time travelers each time a Terminator ends up a hundred years in the past?
* Who is left to fight back in the future when all the competent officers seems to flee for greener pastures in the past? I mean Reese, Jesse and such, they all infiltrate back.
** All of the hundreds or thousands of soldiers who don't go back.
* Agent Ellison suggests that if they want to teach John Henry to obey the law, they should, "Start with the first ten." Which is uplifting and reminds us that God can kick a T-1000's ass. But something approaching half of those rules don't even make sense when applied to an AI.
** That's almost certainly going to be a plot point. For every "turn the other cheek" there's a hundred "stone them to death". Humans can understand the intention of the law because we're so illogical, but John Henry could turn into [[{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}} Robot Santa]] if Ellison isn't careful.
*** Context, people. There's nothing "illogical" about the notion that something can be necessary/permissible in one context but morally wrong in another context. Any machine incapable of understanding that concept would be unable to relate to human beings at all. And a machine that is incapable of relating with humans would make a spectacularly poor infiltrator.
** I think that first post was thinking more along the lines of ''(holds up hand like Arnold in the second movie)'' "I swear I will not have any gods before the one true God. I swear I will keep Sunday holy. I swear that if I ever have a mother or father, I will honor them.
* Since the timeline branched again in 1999 in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, did the T-X end up in that timeline's 2004? This seems to be the first time travelers from subsequent timelines did not arrive in chronological order, so the franchise does not have a precedent for this.
** As far as the Sarah Conner Chronicles is concerned, [[CanonDisContinuity T3 never happened]]. Which is just fine by me.
*** Okay, to everyone who keeps saying T3 never happened, shut up. It did, get over it, SCC are the events that happened between T2 and T3. This is evident as Sarah Conner is alive in T2 and dead in T3, leading one to wonder what happened between that time.
**** Um, no. TSCC goes out of its way to contradict T3, as T3 had Judgement Day happening in 2004 and Sarah dying in 1997. And WordOfGod confirms that TSCC takes place in an alternate continuity and that it's their own version of T3.
***** So, in a sense SSC never happened for real in the continuity.
****** Depends on what you consider to be the "real" continuity.
****** In a universe with changing history, they both could be 'real'. We just might be missing another time travel adventure between T3 and TSCC, which altered the date of Judgment Day yet again to 2011. No one mentions it, but it's entirely possible that the Conners simply didn't know about it. Yes, Sarah dies of cancer in 1997 by T3, but is alive in TSCC as of 1999, but that could just be a butterfly effect of some sort. Or perhaps that's backwards, and it's Sarah not dying until later that postponed judgment day. (It's even slightly possible this is backwards, and that TSCC come first in metatime, and Judgement Day eventually gets altered in the other direction. Although obviously if it does all the events of TSCC including the time jump get erased.)
****** At least one event in T3 is acknowledged in the Sarah Connor Chronicles: Sarah dying of cancer (that was why she was grabbed from the past and reunited with John in whatever year they're in now). And unless Cameron has some sort of magical cancer-curing abilities, Sarah's STILL going to die whenever those symptoms decide to show themselves.
******* You mean a magical cancer cure like: being told that in the future you will literally be dead if you don't quit smoking, quitting, then getting * very* regular checkups to see if you have a small tumor?
* What chain of events could have lead to the time jump forward in the pilot of TSCC? Had the John Connor that sent Cameron back also been sent forward at some point? Was that the original plan when someone was sent back to build the time machine in the bank? For that matter, if each use of the time machine results in a new parallel timeline, how could you possibly form a plan that requires multiple packages to be sent to the past?
** The time jump forward was clearly intended to get the Connors from 1999 to 2007 to get them away from both the FBI and Cromartie.
** Plus, they've just convinced Cameron they want to fight, to try to stop Skynet from coming into being. They jump to where Skynet comes from, because if they just WAIT, [spoiler]Sarah will be dead by then.[/spoiler] Incidentally, if you want to see TSCC and T3 as being in the same universe, separated by a single act of time travel, this would seem to be the point of separation right here.
* How did the Cromartie terminator manage to travel into the future at the end of the pilot episode when its head wasn't covered in living tissue?
** ExecutiveMeddling. The head was originally going to be fleshy. Unfortunately, this was thought to be too gory for broadcast. Therefore, the official position is that the flesh was "burnt off" by the time field during travel.
* Why is Cameron, the "new model" in a line of infiltrator cyborgs, ''worse'' at mimicking human behaviour than any of the other terminators seen in the series or movies? Half of the time she acts kooky and says weird things in front of people who do not know she is a terminator. WordOfGod explains that after the time jump she entered an environment for which she did not have preset guidelines. However, that feels odd, given that we see other terminators (of an earlier model) who have adapted much better to unexpected circumstances. One example would be Cromartie, while another terminator missed its intended arrival date by ''almost a century'' and still managed to blend in well enough to organize and oversee an major construction project.
** ''Cromartie'' was better at blending? Cromartie was so ineffective at hiding himself that the FBI was able to track him down, not to mention the shower scene at the high school, on top of the rampant murder sprees. We don't really see much of Myron Stark and what he did, though he also came off as weird in the few scenes showing him in the past, and he did show behavioral standards that were off enough that the period newsreels commented on them. There are several scenes where Cameron does say weird things, but most of those are in the second season, where Cameron's chip is damaged. And its also worth noting that Cameron is also able to ''perfectly'' blend in when she wants to, such as when she first meets John, when she helps infiltrate Kaliba, and when she scans the nuclear plant guards' [=IDs=]. And there's also the "Allison" persona, which shows Cameron is actually capable of mimicking emotions and human responses so perfectly that she thinks she is human herself. Yes, there are moments of awkwardness on her part, but Cameron is no more awkward than any other Terminator, and she's shown superior blending abilities, when she needs to.
*** Okay, I'll grant you that about Cromartie. My point was more about Cameron's everyday behaviour than the long-term planning skills. It just bugs me that there are so many "look how cuckoo she is" moments with her, especially when compared to other terminators. Personally, I feel like the terminators' ability to mimic natural human body language and such has been going down since Robert Patrick's T-1000.
*** Well, yeah, Cameron acts cuckoo. ''Her processor has been damaged''. Most of her oddities pop up in the second season, after she sat down on a car bomb and took a giant chunk of shrapnel to the back of the head, which so badly damaged her processor that she actually glitched into a different personality that was convinced it was human. Prior to that, the only really ''weird'' thing she did in public was the stuff involving the guidance counselor and the girl who committed suicide. And ''of course'' there are more moments showing Cameron's oddities than there are with other Terminators; she's a main character with a ton of screentime. If you spent as much time watching Vick, Carter, Cromartie, etc. you probably would see more acts of oddness on their parts too.
**** Its worth noting that one of the Terminators, Vick, is actually apparently pretty bad at mimicking the person he replaced; his wife noticed that he was acting very strangely "after the crash" (presumably when the original Vick was killed and replaced) but she passes this off as the aftereffects of whatever said crash involved.
* In TSCC why would the police be after John?
** Because he and his mother are basically wanted terrorists who've bombed civilian targets in the past based on the ludicrous assumption that those targets are going to create killer robots in the future? You know, the same reason that Sarah was institutionalized in the second movie?
** I can understand Sarah getting arrested but John was only 10 years old when it happened.
** Irrelevant to why they're after him. He is both a witness and a minor being cared for by a criminal. The police will want him regardless, if only to question him.
*** In the show, it just made it seem that the cops were trying to arrest him. That's why I'm confused.
*** John has always been Sarah's weak point. If the police can catch him, they know that Sarah will come looking for him. Since she is a wanted terrorist, they'll do anything catch her. Also, living off the radar makes you wonder what they do for money, since its hard to get a decent job without SSN, permenant address, or anything resembling a clean background check. Besides, in the pilot, the security cameras witnessed him aiding in ''a fucking bank robbery'' that ended with an explosion that probably thermalized the vault. If there is evidence he made it out, of course they'll be looking for him.
* Speaking of Sarah being a wanted terrorist, who is basically promised the death penalty if she doesn't get out of jail... This is bad, but is anyone else thinking RealityIsUnrealistic in that they just took Sarah down when she charged a street full of cops? ''L.A. cops'' no less. The finale might have been different if she'd unwittingly committed SuicideByCop.
----
** ...Jesse isn't a teenager. And Cameron knows her.
** ...are you ''dense''? Do you want me to list the reasons why this is a terminally retarded idea?
*** Sarah's reaction to an older woman coming onto her son would be, well, unpleasant to say the least.
*** John's not a moron. An older woman who is at ''least'' in her mid-twenties coming on to him is going to set off warning bells.
*** [[spoiler: The "girlfriend" is intended to bait Cameron into killing her to alienate John from Cameron.]] Somehow, I don't think Jesse is willing to go that far. And last, and most important of all,
*** '''Derek Reese is sleeping with Jesse.''' I don't know about you, but I think the idea of Jesse trying to seduce John ''while she is in the middle of an active sexual relationship with his uncle'' is '''not''' the smartest idea.
**** Well, she doesn't know Derek is John's uncle until long after she's sent Riley after him. But the fact that one of the reasons she hates Cameron is that [[spoiler:she was the one who told her she'd miscarried her child with Derek]] it's probably safe to assume she's not interested in cheating on her boyfriend.
** This is awesome, the first time this troper have seen {{Squick}} and CrowningMomentOfFunny combined.
* Is the T-1001 that assumes Mrs Weaver's form meant to be the same T-1001 that Jesse was contacting in the future?
** This is strongly implied to be the case, with her echoing back "will you join us?"
** Its pretty much confirmed, considering how Cameron reacts to the "Will you join us" message, too.
*** But the answer she/it gave was no, so wouldn't it make more sense if it was another T-1001?
*** Would another T-1001 know the code phrase? It was implied that the T-1001 that was on the Jimmy Carter was at least partially in charge of the "pro-peace" machine faction, or at least a representative.
*** Well there is a chance that they sent the message to more than one machine. Ah well guess I'll never know for sure.
* Why was it cancelled? Why does god hate me so?
** Because Fox hates good shows, and keeps crappy ones around.
*** I hope you aren't implying that WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy is a crappy show! :O (Although, to be fair, they DID cancel it ... several times)
**** That's your opinion, this troper hates WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy and thinks this show is awesome, learn to express your opinion as just that an opinion not a fact.
** There's also the fact that the producers decided that the episodes that would lead in after the mid-season break were "The Good Wound" and "Desert Cantos," which were themselves among the weakest episodes of the entire second season. Leading in with them following the lengthy break didn't help ratings.
** Because people stopped watching it after seeing a bunch of weak episodes, and never came back.
** Also, it got really expensive.
*** Or more accurately it was not a Fox show and so they weren't as willing to shell out for the third season. SCC was a Warner Brothers production with a lot of the secondary rights ([=DVDs=], etc.) being held wholly by WB. At the end of the second season, with ratings low (both for SCC itself and the block of time it shared with Dollhouse), Fox was looking to for a significant discount on the show (they did the same for Dollhouse), the WB wasn't willing to do so, and hence Fox dropped the same.
* In the series finale, John goes into the future. As such he never existed as the leader of the resistance. Instead, Kyle Reese seems to be the leader, and as he has no reason to go back in time... John will never be born. Kind of a stable time loop where John should cease to exist the moment he jumps into the future. So why is he still there?
** I think it is called "FOX Just Cancelled Us" and the production team decided to throw out the biggest cliff hanger possible, regardless of logic or real-world space/time problems.
** Different model of time travel in TSCC.
** There's also never been any indication ''or'' refutation of the Grandfather Paradox in the series prior to that moment, though that scene confirms that Grandfather Paradox works. Time-jumping apparently gives you VideoGame/ChronoTrigger-style time-traveler's immunity.
** The time travel used in this (and arguably, throughout the Terminator movie series) is iterative time travel, wherein paradoxes can seemingly occur, but really don't. Because even if you erased a future or past event, it still DID exist at one time. Think of a streambed that changes course... the old streambed is still there, the river just isn't flowing in it at the moment.
*** I believe that in the series, everyone is possibly WrongGenreSavvy about how the timeline works. they think that time travel follows a predestination model, but in reality it is all iterative. For example, Kyle Reese doesn't matter to the past; in fact, his act of impregnating Sarah eliminates the John Connor who sent him back and replaces him with a new one. Of course, it turns a big part of T3 into a ShaggyDogStory, but that's a bit of bitter, delicious irony.
* The AbortedArcs from S1 drive me a little nuts. Who was targeting the girl who suicided, and why? What was up with the blonde girl who John liked? What was going on in the basement in "Dungeons And Dragons" and why were Derek and the others suddenly let go?
** That last question probably would have been answered as the series progressed, if it hadn't been canceled. As it was, it appeared to be connected with Cameron and how Derek recognized her, and Cameron's comment in "To The Lighthouse" about how Derek ''had'' broken under interrogation before, but didn't realize it.
*** There's a good chance that what was happening in the basement of "Dungeons and Dragons" was part of the interrogation/teaching sessions that were later shown in "Complications." That may also show a connection with similar interrogations like the one in "Allison from Palmdale." Fisher shows the machines how to become like humans by interrogation, and the Cameron cyborg uses those techniques while interrogating Allison to become her.
* Ignoring the fact the future saviour of humanity seems like a big mama's boy who exhibits little in the way of initiative most of the time... the MO for him and his mother is pretty much to avoid detection and to prepare John to lead humanity against the machines. So, what do they do? Go to LA and enrol him in high school, of course! They aren't even deterred by the fact that their arrival there is naked, videoed and shown on TV. What was wrong with staying in Mexico and training John? Not to mention the fact that Sarah's pathological inability to use a surname other than Reese is clearly a death wish. Needless to say - it seems rather unlikely that the risk of regularly attending school (fake identity or not) is far greater than the rewards of a high school education. Granted, one might argue that there's a necessity for normal social interaction... but if you go down that road, there's a lot to be said about the relationship between Sarah and her son.
** Because a show based entirely on John sitting in the jungles of Mexico complaining endlessly wouldn't have been fun to watch. Plus, T1 and T2 are both set in L.A., so call it an homage.
** They stay in LA because they've chosen to ''stop'' running and are hunting Skynet - supposedly, though Sarah waffles back and forth on that issue, which is understandable, considering she's batshit insane. And Sarah does eventually realize that John being in public school is a bad idea, as she does pull him out and starts homeschooling him instead.
* One point that always seemed incongruent... why travel FORWARD in time and thus, lose extra years to stop Skynet? Surely if they knew a time frame and location - they could have just left a note? Also, said time travel breaks about the ONLY rule ever established in Terminator - a big ol' terminator head flies through the time vortex... but the gang lose their clothes and fancy gun.
** They traveled forward in time to escape pursuit and to avoid Cromartie. Jumping forward several years effectively got the FBI off their backs and made them disappear. As for Cromartie's head, that's a case of ExecutiveMeddling; in the original version, Cromartie's head was supposed to still have its skin on it when it went through the portal, but the suits at FOX thought that was too gruesome (in a Terminator series, I know....) so it had to be changed to a metallic skull instead.
** They also traveled forward because Sarah had originally died of cancer during those years. They jumped over her date of death, which is why Sarah is so concerned with cancer for the rest of the series.
** It's the problem with all Time Travel stories -- why not simply go back far enough in time to radically alter the Industrial Revolution or Oppenheimer and his bomb, or make sure Andy's parents never hook up and thus never invent Skynet? Or, for that matter, go back and rescue Kyle? If Future John actually has his own machine then it seems a little short sighted to constantly be sending people back to the early 1990s.
*** Because 1) the development of a particular bomb isn't the problem, humanity's just going to build a weapon like that eventually, and 2) ever notice how most of the grounded humans, even the ones in horrible situations, focus on protecting other people than on killing someone to solve their problem? Yeah, that's to drive home the point that they're ''humans''. Skynet sends assassins because it's a cold, unfeeling machine, humans send protectors because they're not. The one time anyone on the human side (Sarah) decides to try and use murder to solve their problem, it's emphasized that she's becoming very machine-like, and she almost instantly regrets it and thanks John for stopping her (because she's just desperate and a bit unhinged, not "batshit crazy" as tropers often characterize her). She considers it again in the series, but again, she's becoming desperate and starting to feel like she's out of options, it's not a go-to.
* Why does Sarah inherently distrust Cameron just because she's a machine? After T2, you'd think she'd have learn that ''some'' reprogrammed Terminators can be trusted. Her monologue in T2 even mentioned how Arnie ended up being a better father figure to John than any of the ''human'' father figures in his life. Why wouldn't she trust Cameron? (Granted, there's reason to distrust her in the second season after she starts glitching up and acting unpredictably, but Sarah distrusts her from ''day one''.)
** She doesn't really distrust Cameron. If she ''did'' distrust Cameron, she'd never have let her near John in the first place, let alone allow Cameron to operate on her while wounded, or follow her into the future based entirely on her word. She ''dislikes'' Cameron, but it is very, very clear that she does trust her up until she glitches the first time.
*** There's also the part that unlike Arnie, Cameron explicitly only really takes her orders from future John and will readily go behind their backs, kill people she's told not to and lie in the pursuit of her own unknown objectives.
* Wouldn't a teenage boy who suddenly ended up ''naked with his mom'' have a {{Squick}} reaction?
** A normal teenage boy, yes. ''John Connor'', however, does not count as normal by any stretch of sanity.
** He's much too busy watching a naked Cameron kick some ass...
** Well they knew what would happen so it wasn't like they were totally unprepared in seeing eachother nude.
** Firstly, they had other things to focus on at the moment. Secondly, just because he didn't spend five minutes going "EW! MOM! YOU'RE NAKED! EW! EW! [[ThatMakesMeFeelAngry I'M SEEING MY MOM NAKED AND IT'S GROSSING ME OUT]]! EW!" doesn't mean he didn't think "Ack, naked Mom, gross" and try to avoid looking at her.
*** Also, not every family is fussy about nudity. Some parents who live in close quarters are occasionally nude around their kids, no matter what the age, and no one cares.
* Is there any in-universe reason why, in the pilot, when Sarah has a nightmare about a humanoid Terminator, ''it doesn't look or sound like ANY of the ones she's actually encountered?''
** We only know the Terminator in the pilot is different in hind-sight, very easily if the show had continued they could have guest starred that actor again. Also, it is first time the audience sees a SCC terminator, they needed an Arnie stand-in, which this one does, at least this one dresses similarly (versus Cromartie who is about as un-Arnie as one can get)
** .....because ''it's a dream''? Shockingly enough, when you're in the middle of a dream, the human mind is not at all concerned with little things like "logic" or "consistency".
*** Yes, but one would think the faces of 2 of the most traumatic incidents in her life would have made enough of a dent to haunt her nightmares for a long, long time.
*** And again, ''dreams are not logical.'' That's why they're ''dreams.'' Dreams do not follow logic or consistency, regardless of how much of a "dent" they put in someone's mind. Yes, the Terminators are going to leave an impression on her mind, but that doesn't mean that the Terminators in her dreams are going to be perfect, exact replicas of the Terminators she's dealt with before, esepcially considering of their skeletal forms, one was only seen during a frantic chase and fight where she's not going to remeber the exact layout of every widget and piece of the machine, and the other was an amorphous blob.
**** Perhaps she has met a stoney-faced 6 foot plus human who she thought was a Terminator, an encounter that so terrified her that she still has nightmares about it.
*** He's pretty clearly supposed to represent a T-800. Sarah herself looks different from the movies, why can't you accept the same logic for the Terminator in the pilot?
*** It's obvious, isn't it? Sarah already knows Terminators can look like anyone. What's scarier to dream about: a recognizable face you can easily pick out of a crowd, or knowing that anyone, ''anyone'' could be one of them here to kill you and your son?
*** Also, she actually seemed to come to care about the reprogrammed T-800... it's implied that she was going to trust him enough to raise John for her if she didn't come back from her mission to kill the creator of Skynet. While she may not have loved him, some trust and gratitude may have become associated with that face in her subconscious. A combination of that and the above note about the fear of an unidentified Terminator masquerading as someone else may well have pushed her dreaming mind to avoid putting the more better-known T-800 version's face on it.
* After you get over the shock of the finale, and what it does to the timeline and the fact that we'll probably never see a season three, does anyone else get a little pissed that after a season of teasing around with him, we just got guaranteed that they never intended for us to ever see FutureBadass [[TheManBehindTheCurtain John Conner]] on screen?
** No. They were deliberately keeping future!John as TheFaceless; he's been a background character throughout the first, second, and third movies, and even in the fourth he was just a byproduct of that ''other'' John Connor who started the whole thing. Hell, even in the second movie, we only got one short glimpse of him. Giving him a face and a personality would have ruined the ShroudedInMyth nature of the mysteious future messiah character.
** In the movies he is this mysterious future messiah and indeed a background character, in TSCC he is much more involved, with scenes where Derek and Jesse wonder what he is thinking, a history with Allison and the man behind whatever convoluted scheme Cameron is involved in that causes her to join John Henry and probably the only one that completely knows why what happened. He was TheFaceless but it was very much played with and Cameron refused to let people see him for what I presume to be in-story reasons. From what I thought, they were building up to something.
*** They probably were. [[ExecutiveMeddling Things]] [[ScrewedByTheNetwork happened.]]
* In 'Today is the Day', when John is confronting Jesse in her hotel room (And yes, I do feel bad about nitpicking what is possibly the series' biggest CrowningMomentOfAwesome), he tells her about Skynet sending a Terminator after him "When I was twelve". If he were supposedly born in November of '83 now, would that not make him thirteen in July of '97? Now it's true that John may be simply misremembering things, but it still smells of continuity error to me.
** John's dominant emotion at the moment is tightly controlled ''fury'', and he's off-handedly recalling a chaotic and tumultous point in his history, which is largely ''irrelevant'' to the point at hand. John doesn't give a flying fuck about remembering precisely how old he was when that happened, especially when time is such a hilariously mutable thing in this series.
**** In this timeline, the T-1000 was sent after him when he was twelve (probably sometime in 1996). John, Sarah, and Uncle Bob run and hide in the desert for some time and the blowing up Cyberdyne event (climax where T-1000 is terminated) happens in 1997, not long before Judgment Day was set to happen. Keep in mind that as the "looping" timelines go by, with John sending Kyle to follow and stop the T-800, the T-800 and Kyle are sent back at an earlier date every time in order to erase the mistake of the previous failing of the T-800. As timelines go by, they go a littler earlier each time to erase the previous incarnations of them. The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a later timeline than the one we experience in T1/T2. The events of T1/T2 remain, just occurring on different dates. There's definitely an element of fate and destiny that keeps key moments intact, but as the timeline goes further, the future drastically changes, creating more time travelers that go back in time and create an infinite branching path of eternal possibility. It doesn't make any timeline less important. Your life matters and your timeline is all you know. If it doesn't meet your satisfaction, you go back in time and attempt to change it. The alternate timeline of T3/Salvation would be a further along timeline (possibly the last, depending on what happens in T5/T6) as John Connor is born in 1981 in that timeline. The cycle of the T-800 and Kyle going back earlier and earlier in time would eventually have to end. Hopefully it ends with the upcoming films. (~by Xyberfaust)
* Just watched the episode where Ellison and a SWAT team tries to take down Cromartie and all get killed except Ellison. The fight concludes with Ellison the only one left standing, held at gunpoint by Cromartie... Who just walks off. What reason did he have to let Ellison live?
** Its explained in the second season. The short version is that by letting Ellison live, Cromartie can watch him in the belief that he will lead Cromartie to the Connors.
* What the hell was Future-John thinking when he decided to send a terminator with the appearance of a ridiculously hot girl back to protect Past-John? It's pretty obvious that the scene with Cameron spontaneously ranting about being in love with John before he pulls her plug and the other one in the last (or second-last?) episode under the DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything classification both really fucked him up in the head with UST. Future-John could have spared himself those freaky situations by sending another Arnold-Terminator back, but instead Past-John is left with the only thing resembling a girl he knows is a killing machine which... the scene when has to stick his hand in her and... I'm really unable to find the right words. Does anyone see what I'm getting at here? The only explanation I can think of is that Future-John ''wanted'' to traumatize Past-John for some reason.
** Its strongly implied in the finale that there was an ulterior motive to sending Cameron back that extended beyond simply sending a bodyguard. Note that future-John was using Cameron as his own personal advisor and laison, and it is worth noting that future-John Connor was strongly implied to at least know Allison Young personally. But the problem here is that we ''don't know'' what his motivations were or what he was planning, because the series got canceled. All we have is speculation. Maybe future-John cared about Cameron enough that he wanted to preserve her by sending her back. Maybe Cameron is the only Terminator he trusts enough to carry out what appeared to be a cross-time BatmanGambit. We don't know.
**** John Connor got close to the terminator that killed Allison and impersonated her to get into the camp, after reprogramming it. Perhaps it was his connection to Allison that he couldn't seem to let go of. Cameron could also become a predestination object, like Kyle, or the photograph (inserting itself in the past and eventually becoming self-sustaining).
On the sub, in Jesse's future (past), she is on a mission setup by "John Connor" (who no one was allowed to see) to bring the box which contains the T-1001 (Catherine Weaver) to "John Connor" to setup peace between the resistance and a rebel faction of machines. Cameron was the one speaking in John Connor's place because she accidentally killed him. Cameron is loyal to John and continues his mission to bring peace. When the Jesse/sub mission with the T-1001 goes bad, that plan is ruined. Cameron has failed. Cameron decides to send herself back in time to protect John and make things right. "She" gets close to him, ensuring he falls in love with "her", thus ensuring his protection of "her" and "her" life. There is a self-aware desire to live. Cameron, in that sense, is independent and crosses against the light, like John Henry. It's no coincidence, that by the end of it all, they are one and the same.
In the final moment between John Connor and Cameron, Cameron tries to get John to understand that "she" is a machine that deep down is made to kill him. And she warns him of what might happen (what did happen).
Cameron: "You need to understand how it works."
John: "What?"
Cameron: "This chip. This body. The software is designed to terminate humans. The hardware is designed to terminate humans. That's our sole function."
John: "Not you."
Cameron: "No. Not anymore. But what was there is still there... and it will always be there."
John: "So down deep... you want to kill me."
Cameron: "Yes. I do."
John: "Then why don't you?"
Cameron: " I might someday."
(~by Xyberfaust)
** Also I'm confused as to which of the above experiences you think would be any less traumatic for John if Cameron were in the form of a teenage male or, say, an old man.
* In in the final episode of Terminator SCC, how is Cameron able to give John Henry her chip? Weaver's computer system was hooked up through the CPU port in his head, so even if Cameron managed to remove her chip before deactivating, how would he install it in himself without removing the wires, rendering himself immobile?
** Its entirely possible that he programmed his body to extract the chip by itself and switch them out. We know that terminator bodies can be remotely controlled, as Cromartie's own body has shown when it tracked down its own head. John Henry codes up a simple set of movement orders and uploads them into the body, and the body extracts and switches out Cameron's chip. Presto.
*** John Henry extracted Cameron's chip (with Cameron's consent) and placed it in his own head. He could then upload himself onto this sophisticated computer chip from the future. The real question is, "Is it just John Henry on that chip with Cameron erased? Is it just Cameron still on the chip in control of this new body? Do they share the chip? If they share it, which one is in control? Cameron, John Henry, Lily Tomlin, or Steve Martin? Is Cameron now on The Turk? Oh the possibilities...
* It's been a while since I saw the episode "Alice from Somewhereoranother", but I don't recall ever quite getting how/why Cameron suddenly starts manifesting Allison's personality and ''memories'' as a programming glitch. It seems to me that that wouldn't be possible unless those things were put in her chip, and I can't fathom a reason for that happening.
** Cameron doesn't have Allison's memories. She has memories of Allison talking ''about'' her memories when she was interrogating Allison so she could mimic her. Note that when the counselor is asking Cameron about her past, she begins reciting, word-for-word, what Allison said in the interrogation room. The episode in question strongly implies that Allison was either a close friend or intimate of John Connor, so Cameron had to mimic her very closely in order to fool John. Also, Cameron's CPU apparently has the ability to at least fake emotions to the point that Cameron herself can be overcome by them (i.e. she panics, she breaks down crying, etc.) which suggests she was designed to be a very ''deep'' cover agent. From this, we can conclude that Cameron was going to impersonate Allison to the point that she could be her in every aspect. Cameron basically took all of the information Allison gave her, built up a personality around that, and used it to infiltrate John's base.
* The episode ''Mr. Ferguson Is Ill Today'' takes place mostly in Mexico, on the Day of the Dead, which is celebrated November 2nd. This episode takes place a few episodes after we've been told, through the Connors' old phone code, that the date is November 18th (note that John also makes a joke about the Mexican restaurant they're in having a great Thanksgiving special, which fits more with the later date than the fact that we're told that the Day of the Dead festival is celebrated that very evening a few minutes earlier). Maybe they just happened to be in a Mexican village that celebrates the Day of the Dead a few weeks late, but that's a stretch.
** That's because it's [[ItsAlwaysMardiGrasInNewOrleans always the Day of the Dead in Mexico]].
*** John and Riley did go in 2007, but not on Nov1 or Nov2 (when Dia De Los Muertos traditionally is celebrated). The celebrations were postponed because of the great floods in Mexico that happened around that time in 2007. Tropical Storm Noel devastated the area at that time. (~by Xyberfaust)
* What the FUCK happened during "Some Must Watch"? I have absolutely no idea what I just saw.
** I thought it was quite clear. Sarah was captured by the agent and held in the back of his van. Every time she was in the sleep clinic, she was actually having a vivid dream after being drugged into unconsciousness. None of the stuff that was happening while in the clinic was real; the only stuff that was real was in the van.
*** For who agent was working? Since transmitter, which he implanted in Sarah, was used later by unknown force, including terminators, who attacked both John and Savannah. While agent, as far as I understood, worked for Mrs. Weaver initially.
*** He was definitely working for whoever was trying to take down Weaver and the Connors. He was apparently just a spy inside the manufacturing plant.
**** He was working for Kaliba. (~ by Xyberfaust)
* As we know, Cromartie eventually was taken down using two MP-5 sumbachine guns and 12-gauge shotgun. So how it could be he survived attack of FBI HRT earlier? FBI HRT consisted from ~20 soldiers, armed with MP-5, shotguns and even M-4A1 carbines, and, consequently, could provide much more firepower (Besides, if Cromartie was defeated in the way we saw, then he was wrong in the pilot serie where he identified SWAT team, as well armed with MP-5 submachine guns, as "Treat: none"). This could be partially justified by fact that Sarah, Derek and Cameron could have knowledge of structural weakness of T-888 and knew where to aim to incapacitate him, however still CurbStompBattle of Cromartie vs. FBI HRT seems to be inconsistent technically.
** The submachineguns are zero threat to a Terminator. They just bounce off his endoskeleton, which should not be any surprise, considering that they're designed for close-quarters combat against humans and aren't designed to overpenetrate. They're essentially firing pistol rounds, and those just smash into the metal, deform, and fall off. Note that when Sarah and Derek were firing on Cromartie, they weren't doing any damage at all to him. It wasn't until Cameron entered that any appreciable damage was being inflicted. Cameron appeared to be using solid slug ammunition, and was aiming for vital points. She also had some distance on Cromartie, and he was distracted by returning fire at two spaced-out enemy targets. The FBI HRT team went after Cromartie with submachineguns exclusively and were fighting him in close quarters, and were likely aiming for center of mass. Also, keep in mind that Cameron, being a machine, is not going to be affected by things like fear, shock, surprise, or panic. She knows exactly what she's up against, knows exactly how to take it down, and is loaded with exactly the right weaponry to take it down. Her aim isn't going to waver, she doesn't need to retreat to get to cover, and she's not going to be panicking at the deaths of multiple teammates.
** WordOfGod is the ammunition Cameron was firing at him was depleted uranium rounds, which would pack a punch much stronger than the regular ammo the FBI was using.
* Cromartie's head traveled with Sarah, John and Cameron to year 2008, but his body remained under debris of bank building. And nobody cleaned up debris, since nobody found it... I can't believe it. Besides, it is unclear, how his headless body was able to walk without seeing obstacles and where it is going, since optic inputs of terminator still are in its head. And nobody spotted it while it was walking!
** The debris was cleaned up. It was moved to a junkyard, and the body along with it.
* It's been established that many of the show's characters are from different "parallel future timelines" but how come everyone who travels back in time ends up in the same "present timeline"?
** They don't. Each act of travelling back in time creates a new timeline, and people from those timelines go back in time and end up in a timeline that resulted in their timeline of origin forming, only now they're creating a new timeline by being there.
** I mean the "present" story takes place in one and only one timeline. so how do people from many different "future timelines" end up in the one specific timeline TSCC takes place in?
*** ''They're not.'' Every time someone travels back in time they're making a new timeline, and people from ''that'' alternate future are travelling back to their past. We don't see that change happening, so it looks like one "unbroken" timeline in the present.
** but that practically begs people to ask what happened in the one timeline when the next episode picks up in a different one. the audience isn't invested in the future timelines because they don't really matter but the audience is invested in the present timeline(s).
**** That's right. The only timeline that matters is the one you are experiencing. There are infinite possible timelines due to time-travel. Every time someone travels back in time, it creates a new timeline with a new future (where in turn you have people coming back from that new future, thus creating another new future/timeline). They are constantly bombarded by people from an ever-changing future. It also appears that each person that comes back from the future only slightly changes the future to where its similar and not too drastic of a change. (~ by Xyberfaust)
* Sarah's decision at the end of "Born to Run" bugs the heck out of me. So, she's just found out that Catherine Weaver is a T-1001 and that John Henry, possibly a proto-Skynet, has absconded to the future with Cameron's chip. So when John, greatly distressed, wants to travel to the future to save Cameron, ''she lets him''! All his life, she's tried to protect him, keep him alive and prepare him for his destiny. Now, suddenly, she lets go. She doesn't try to convince or force John not to follow Cameron; she doesn't go with him so that she can protect him. She steps back and watches as he disappears, with a ''T-1001''. What The Fuck?!
** Yeah? She's spent two entire seasons essentially having to deal with the fact that John is growing up and making his own decisions, and finally realizing that John should control his own fate. As much as she hates it, she has to let ''him'' make the decision himself. Its called CharacterDevelopment.
*** Letting him control his own fate means letting him remove himself from the timeline? That's a win for Skynet right there. I can see why John makes that decision, blinded by 'love', but Sarah letting him do that, not even calling him out on it? Okay, maybe the heat of the moment didn't allow them to consider the consequences. Sarah still let John leave with a ''T-1001''. Letting your son commit suicide does not seem like CharacterDevelopment to me.
*** Letting him leave with a T-1001 that's repeatedly shown an honest desire to help them, right up to deliberately shielding them from an attack by an explosive drone. If Weaver had wanted them dead, she could have just stepped aside, or simply killed them then and there. And what does moving ahead in time do that lets Skynet "win"? The time travel in the setting essentially allows for infinite do-overs, and John has a T-1001 who has already demonstrated an express interest in keeping him alive to watch his back. And taking John ahead into the future effectively removes him from Skynet's reach for decades and ensures he survives Judgment Day, which, considering the ruthless way in which the family was being hunted over the last few episodes, was a win.
*** Up until she turned into a shield for them, the Connors had no idea Weaver was a Terminator. How has she repeatedly shown an honest desire to help them? Sarah doesn't even trust Cameron, who's been specifically been programmed to protect John, and who's saved John's life several times (and tried to kill him once, but that's irrelevant here). She just trusts Weaver to protect John? As far as she knows, Weaver orchestrated the removal of Cromartie's body, stole the Turk and used it to create John Henry, who for all the world looks like a proto-Skynet and who's now absconded to the future with Cameron's chip, which she seems to have handed over willingly. Nothing in this scenario should lead to her trusting Weaver. Yes, obviously Weaver could have killed John many times over if she'd wanted to. Allowing for that does not mean she can be trusted with John's well-being. As for moving forward being a 'win', while the time-travel mechanics allows for do-overs, it does not erase (there's no evidence that they do) already created timelines. John is integral to the Resistance winning the war. Now there is no John Connor leading the Resistance. There's a 16/17 year old kid who's in over his head. It is very possible that even if John returns to the past, this particular timeline is fucked and that just seems irresponsible. In any case, I don't have a problem with the 'move-foward'. It was a nice setup to exploring just how important John Connor is to the survival of humanity. It's Sarah's response that bothers me. I would have liked her to show a little more emotion. She just steps back and promises John she'll 'stop it'. It's like she's not even surprised by her son's decision to jump into the far future where who knows what awaits him.
*** As noted before, CharacterDevelopment. Sarah doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the simple fact is that her character arc is a steady realization of just how badly she keeps screwing up over the series, both in her decision making and in how she raised John. By that point in the story, Sarah doesn't truly trust herself. But she trusts ''John'' to make the right decision. So she stands aside and lets him make the choice. The entire series up to that point was culminating in that moment, where Sarah ''stops'' running John's life. Does she trust Weaver? Likely not in the slightest. But she trusts her ''son''. She's not letting John run off with Weaver, she's simply accepting that he's an adult and can make his own decisions, and therefore letting him go. If this was Sarah from [=T2=], or Sarah in the first season or beginning of the second, no, she likely would have stopped John, but she ''isn't''. That's the whole point.
* Jesse's whole storyline doesn't seem to make sense. She travels back through time, bringing Riley with her, for the sole purpose of driving a wedge between John and Cameron. ''How the heck did she know Cameron was there with teenaged John''? I doubt he went around telling stories about how his terminator BFF was sent back through time and protected him as a teenager. Kyle's and Derek's missions were all top secret even though Derek's was essentially just "go back and set up a safe house" so I doubt he'd make Cameron's mission public knowledge. There doesn't seem to be any logical in-series reason why Jesse would know about Cameron being around John in 2007.
** She's got enough connections to figure it out, especially when she's actively in a relationship with one of John's personal commandos who gets sent back in time. She could dig up the information as to who was being sent when; the Resistance is not that great at information security.
* ''Some Must Watch, Some Must Sleep'': Why is Sarah so adamant about not calling John no matter what? It makes sense when a Terminator is involved, but it isn't that kind of situation. Worst case scenario, John takes a leisurely rescue drive and then sends Cameron in to rip out the guy's spine.
** Paranoia on her part. As far as she's concerned, ''any'' call to John will compromise his safety.
* At one point we learn that Jesse comes from a different timeline than Derek. All well and good. Except that ''her'' Derek is also implied to have time traveled. Does that mean that there is a Derek with memories of being tortured by Fischer running around in the same past as the Derek without them? If no then why didn't Jessee end up with him instead? If yes then is that the general rule? Are there multiple versions of Kyle Reese? Of Cameron? Do we get a whole new set of time travelers each time a Terminator ends up a hundred years in the past?
* Who is left to fight back in the future when all the competent officers seems to flee for greener pastures in the past? I mean Reese, Jesse and such, they all infiltrate back.
** All of the hundreds or thousands of soldiers who don't go back.
* Agent Ellison suggests that if they want to teach John Henry to obey the law, they should, "Start with the first ten." Which is uplifting and reminds us that God can kick a T-1000's ass. But something approaching half of those rules don't even make sense when applied to an AI.
** That's almost certainly going to be a plot point. For every "turn the other cheek" there's a hundred "stone them to death". Humans can understand the intention of the law because we're so illogical, but John Henry could turn into [[{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}} Robot Santa]] if Ellison isn't careful.
*** Context, people. There's nothing "illogical" about the notion that something can be necessary/permissible in one context but morally wrong in another context. Any machine incapable of understanding that concept would be unable to relate to human beings at all. And a machine that is incapable of relating with humans would make a spectacularly poor infiltrator.
** I think that first post was thinking more along the lines of ''(holds up hand like Arnold in the second movie)'' "I swear I will not have any gods before the one true God. I swear I will keep Sunday holy. I swear that if I ever have a mother or father, I will honor them.
* Since the timeline branched again in 1999 in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, did the T-X end up in that timeline's 2004? This seems to be the first time travelers from subsequent timelines did not arrive in chronological order, so the franchise does not have a precedent for this.
** As far as the Sarah Conner Chronicles is concerned, [[CanonDisContinuity T3 never happened]]. Which is just fine by me.
*** Okay, to everyone who keeps saying T3 never happened, shut up. It did, get over it, SCC are the events that happened between T2 and T3. This is evident as Sarah Conner is alive in T2 and dead in T3, leading one to wonder what happened between that time.
**** Um, no. TSCC goes out of its way to contradict T3, as T3 had Judgement Day happening in 2004 and Sarah dying in 1997. And WordOfGod confirms that TSCC takes place in an alternate continuity and that it's their own version of T3.
***** So, in a sense SSC never happened for real in the continuity.
****** Depends on what you consider to be the "real" continuity.
****** In a universe with changing history, they both could be 'real'. We just might be missing another time travel adventure between T3 and TSCC, which altered the date of Judgment Day yet again to 2011. No one mentions it, but it's entirely possible that the Conners simply didn't know about it. Yes, Sarah dies of cancer in 1997 by T3, but is alive in TSCC as of 1999, but that could just be a butterfly effect of some sort. Or perhaps that's backwards, and it's Sarah not dying until later that postponed judgment day. (It's even slightly possible this is backwards, and that TSCC come first in metatime, and Judgement Day eventually gets altered in the other direction. Although obviously if it does all the events of TSCC including the time jump get erased.)
****** At least one event in T3 is acknowledged in the Sarah Connor Chronicles: Sarah dying of cancer (that was why she was grabbed from the past and reunited with John in whatever year they're in now). And unless Cameron has some sort of magical cancer-curing abilities, Sarah's STILL going to die whenever those symptoms decide to show themselves.
******* You mean a magical cancer cure like: being told that in the future you will literally be dead if you don't quit smoking, quitting, then getting * very* regular checkups to see if you have a small tumor?
* What chain of events could have lead to the time jump forward in the pilot of TSCC? Had the John Connor that sent Cameron back also been sent forward at some point? Was that the original plan when someone was sent back to build the time machine in the bank? For that matter, if each use of the time machine results in a new parallel timeline, how could you possibly form a plan that requires multiple packages to be sent to the past?
** The time jump forward was clearly intended to get the Connors from 1999 to 2007 to get them away from both the FBI and Cromartie.
** Plus, they've just convinced Cameron they want to fight, to try to stop Skynet from coming into being. They jump to where Skynet comes from, because if they just WAIT, [spoiler]Sarah will be dead by then.[/spoiler] Incidentally, if you want to see TSCC and T3 as being in the same universe, separated by a single act of time travel, this would seem to be the point of separation right here.
* How did the Cromartie terminator manage to travel into the future at the end of the pilot episode when its head wasn't covered in living tissue?
** ExecutiveMeddling. The head was originally going to be fleshy. Unfortunately, this was thought to be too gory for broadcast. Therefore, the official position is that the flesh was "burnt off" by the time field during travel.
* Why is Cameron, the "new model" in a line of infiltrator cyborgs, ''worse'' at mimicking human behaviour than any of the other terminators seen in the series or movies? Half of the time she acts kooky and says weird things in front of people who do not know she is a terminator. WordOfGod explains that after the time jump she entered an environment for which she did not have preset guidelines. However, that feels odd, given that we see other terminators (of an earlier model) who have adapted much better to unexpected circumstances. One example would be Cromartie, while another terminator missed its intended arrival date by ''almost a century'' and still managed to blend in well enough to organize and oversee an major construction project.
** ''Cromartie'' was better at blending? Cromartie was so ineffective at hiding himself that the FBI was able to track him down, not to mention the shower scene at the high school, on top of the rampant murder sprees. We don't really see much of Myron Stark and what he did, though he also came off as weird in the few scenes showing him in the past, and he did show behavioral standards that were off enough that the period newsreels commented on them. There are several scenes where Cameron does say weird things, but most of those are in the second season, where Cameron's chip is damaged. And its also worth noting that Cameron is also able to ''perfectly'' blend in when she wants to, such as when she first meets John, when she helps infiltrate Kaliba, and when she scans the nuclear plant guards' [=IDs=]. And there's also the "Allison" persona, which shows Cameron is actually capable of mimicking emotions and human responses so perfectly that she thinks she is human herself. Yes, there are moments of awkwardness on her part, but Cameron is no more awkward than any other Terminator, and she's shown superior blending abilities, when she needs to.
*** Okay, I'll grant you that about Cromartie. My point was more about Cameron's everyday behaviour than the long-term planning skills. It just bugs me that there are so many "look how cuckoo she is" moments with her, especially when compared to other terminators. Personally, I feel like the terminators' ability to mimic natural human body language and such has been going down since Robert Patrick's T-1000.
*** Well, yeah, Cameron acts cuckoo. ''Her processor has been damaged''. Most of her oddities pop up in the second season, after she sat down on a car bomb and took a giant chunk of shrapnel to the back of the head, which so badly damaged her processor that she actually glitched into a different personality that was convinced it was human. Prior to that, the only really ''weird'' thing she did in public was the stuff involving the guidance counselor and the girl who committed suicide. And ''of course'' there are more moments showing Cameron's oddities than there are with other Terminators; she's a main character with a ton of screentime. If you spent as much time watching Vick, Carter, Cromartie, etc. you probably would see more acts of oddness on their parts too.
**** Its worth noting that one of the Terminators, Vick, is actually apparently pretty bad at mimicking the person he replaced; his wife noticed that he was acting very strangely "after the crash" (presumably when the original Vick was killed and replaced) but she passes this off as the aftereffects of whatever said crash involved.
* In TSCC why would the police be after John?
** Because he and his mother are basically wanted terrorists who've bombed civilian targets in the past based on the ludicrous assumption that those targets are going to create killer robots in the future? You know, the same reason that Sarah was institutionalized in the second movie?
** I can understand Sarah getting arrested but John was only 10 years old when it happened.
** Irrelevant to why they're after him. He is both a witness and a minor being cared for by a criminal. The police will want him regardless, if only to question him.
*** In the show, it just made it seem that the cops were trying to arrest him. That's why I'm confused.
*** John has always been Sarah's weak point. If the police can catch him, they know that Sarah will come looking for him. Since she is a wanted terrorist, they'll do anything catch her. Also, living off the radar makes you wonder what they do for money, since its hard to get a decent job without SSN, permenant address, or anything resembling a clean background check. Besides, in the pilot, the security cameras witnessed him aiding in ''a fucking bank robbery'' that ended with an explosion that probably thermalized the vault. If there is evidence he made it out, of course they'll be looking for him.
* Speaking of Sarah being a wanted terrorist, who is basically promised the death penalty if she doesn't get out of jail... This is bad, but is anyone else thinking RealityIsUnrealistic in that they just took Sarah down when she charged a street full of cops? ''L.A. cops'' no less. The finale might have been different if she'd unwittingly committed SuicideByCop.
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