The Terminator franchise for me touches upon one topic we have already covered The GrandFather Paradox in which the Terminator is sent back in time to try and halt the resistance, by killing the resistance leaders mother, thus stopping him from ever being born. It also touches on two other topics for me. One of which being, the actual concept of time travel and the practicalities of going back in time and where you land and how you interact with the environment around you and how that environment interacts with yourself. Secondly, the theory of pre determination (which we will touch upon on a later blog post) Is the rise of the machines inevitable? Due to the fact that each action within each instalment, seems to just put off the judgement day from happening and not halt it.
Part 1
The actual physical hurdles to going back in time. So you send your body back in time. Where does it land? Where will it appear? What else would be in that same time and space? The film the fly explores what happens when the character transports themselves only to then discover a fly has entered the chamber. The break down of molecules then happens to both the human and the fly and they are spliced back together when they are put back together.
Sending something back in time would then not only need the target for your landing, not only to be precise in regards to land or sea. Ensuring you didn't just materialise into a building or a hundred miles above the sea, or even in space as you miss calculated the trajectory of an ever moving Earth. But what if another animal/insect/object is in that space as you go back?
The Terminator films got around this with great effect, by sending the humans/robots back within a sphere. The clinical atmosphere they entered into in the future was then brought with them as a cocoon. It was then sent as a whole package to the target area and then recreated there. Burning out whatever was at the landing spot. On the basis of Newtons 3rd law though, if every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Where does all the energy go from when they are propelled back in time?
But the method of sending someone back in time and failing, could be an interesting use for a book idea, so holding onto that thought.
Part 2
Pre determination, another blog post for the future. There is a very interesting film by the same name, but in this series of Terminator films, it seems no matter what happens within the film itself, all they ever seem to do is to put off Judgement Day, but not actually stop it.
So that then begs the question, Is something inevitable? No matter what you try to do to change something, are somethings meant to happen no matter what?
My own thoughts are that you live your life to a story line, but you have the choice of how the story goes. Your life is calculated by the input you put into it, and the decisions you make. Now something as a higher power may have calculated the choice you are most likely to make, and predicted you would take one path or another, but there is nothing stopping you from taking a differing path or to sit lazily on the one you are already on. When major changes occur that is when I believe the The GrandFather Paradox doesn't fit and for want of a better explanation it is when for me that the rule of Sliders comes into place, That you have changed a time line. That two are in play the original line in which an event would happen if you did do a particular action, then the new time line in which you did the exact opposite to that action.
All things have a consequence and you have to live with the choices you make. As of yet we don't access to time travel so you make careful reflection on the choices and decisions which you make as you can only currently live your life along the timeline you make.
I would love to read your thoughts in the comment section below.
Below is a little more about the Terminator films.
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Central Premise
The central theme of the franchise is the battle for survival between the nearly-extinct human race and the world-spanning synthetic intelligence that is Skynet. Skynet is positioned in the first film as a U.S. strategic "Global Digital Defense Network" computer system by Cyberdyne Systems which becomes self-aware. Upon activation, it immediately perceives all humans as a "security threat", and formulates a plan to systematically wipe out humanity itself. The system initiates a nuclear first strike against Russia, thereby ensuring a devastating second strike and a nuclear holocaust which it anticipates will instantly wipe out much of humanity. Indeed, it does, with approximately 3 billion casualties – more than half of the total human population at the time – in the resulting nuclear war. In the post-apocalyptic aftermath, Skynet later builds up its own autonomous machine-based military capability which includes the Terminators used against individual human targets and, therefore, proceeds to wage a persistent total war against the surviving elements of humanity, some of whom have militarily organized themselves into a Resistance. At some point in this future, Skynet develops the ability of time travel, and both it and the Resistance seek to use this technology in order to win the war; either by altering or accelerating past events in Skynet's favour, or by preventing or forestalling the (present) apocalyptic timeline.
Judgment Day
In the franchise, Judgment Day (a reference to the biblical Day of Judgment) is referred to as the date on which Skynet becomes self-aware, decides to exterminate mankind, and launches a nuclear attack on Russia which, in retaliation, launches a nuclear attack on the United States (and presumably other nations around the world as well). Due to time travel and consequent ability to change the future, several differing dates are given for Judgment Day in different films in the franchise. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah states that Judgment Day will occur on August 29, 1997. However, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines shows that the Judgment Day holocaust has been postponed to July 25, 2004. In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Judgment Day was delayed further to April 21, 2011, due to the attack on Cyberdyne Systems in the second film.
The fifth film in the franchise Terminator Genisys takes place on August 28, 2017, two days before the actual date of Judgment Day due to a Nexus event altering the timeline. In the second film, Miles Dyson began developing Skynet by using the arm and chip recovered from the T-800 unit that appeared in the first film. In Genisys, however, that Terminator unit is destroyed and subsequently dissolved in acid by the Guardian, thus preventing Cyberdyne from reverse engineering it. This serves to postpone Judgment Day even further. However, in Terminator Genisys, by the end of the film it's been delayed even further, as the system core is discovered, contained inside a subterranean blast shelter, having survived the explosion, and thus, only delaying the attack on human race, since it still exists in its chamber.
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