roxybisquaint: (sarah sad)
[personal profile] roxybisquaint
It's been a week now and after my fourth viewing of Born To Run, it doesn't make me miserable anymore. I guess I finally desensitized to what I disliked and that freed me up to think about the rest. I've got gripes and grievances, nits to pick and sundries to poke. But there are good moments to talk about too (and lots of speculation to be done).



I'll show you my shielded nuclear power source if you show me yours

If Cameron's power supply was damaged, wouldn't John have cancer too? Even so, if she believed it could be leaking radiation, why the hell would she let him touch it? And she really had to be laying down and he had to be on top of her to get to it? Please. That scene just didn't add up. It was either a really flimsy setup for Jameron cheers or it was a weak manipulation by Cameron that worked because the blood had left John's brain. I tend to think the latter. Since we just had the Jesse story wherein she spent all season trying to win future war by messing with John's love life, I really hope we're not going to find out Cameron was doing the same. But at this point it's looking that way.

Regardless, to try to get us to the point of John choosing to throw away everything to follow Cameron through time, we needed something like that — a moment of intimacy to push him from being unsure about his feelings for Cameron to deciding he loves her and can't live without her. So forced and awkward as it was, John checking out her breasts, climbing on top of her and slipping his fingers in her, um, sliced open chest, served a purpose.

Massive points for the not!sex cleverness of the scene, but it was disturbing on many levels. From the sadomasochistic not!foreplay with the knife to the "that's good, that's perfect" intensity of John realizing Cameron isn't the cause of mom's cancer, one thing is clear: that boy needs some therapy. I don't think John actually wants to fuck his mother, but the connection between Cameron and Sarah was clear...

In Charley's house in the pilot, Sarah was sitting on John's bed, watching him sleep. He jolts awake, tells her it's freaky when she does that and asks, "what's going on?" She tells him they have to go.

In the motel, Cameron was sitting on John's bed, watching him sleep. He jolts awake, tells her not to do that because his mom used to do it and he hates it. Then he asks, "what's going on?" Not!sex happens and she tells him it's time to go.

Aside from the squickiness of the similarity of those scenes, the other significance is that they both ultimately lead to a time jump.



The time jump

While the jump has the potential to push the story too far from its roots (and jackknife a giant puh-lease on the already congested time travel highway), it's also an interesting way to explore the what if scenario of a future war without John Connor. So I didn't mind the jump and I'm actually curious to see how it plays out. What I did mind, though — what I absolutely hated — was the way it happened:

John ditched his mother, who he believed had cancer, and bailed on trying to stop the apocalypse so he could jump to the future with some liquid metal he'd just met (whose motives were questionable at best and who was verbally bitch-slapping his mom all over the place) to pursue his one true love: a computer chip. I can't cheer that. I can't be wowed by that. I can't even pretend to enjoy that. It's fucked up and I'm not okay with it. Sarah, however, was okay with it. Um, what?

When John got aroused by touching Cameron's icy cold heart power supply, I should've known this wouldn't end well. I realize he's only 17 and doesn't always have the best judgement. He makes mistakes and acts rather impulsively and irresponsibly at times. I get that. In fact I like a flawed John Connor. I like that the show didn't present him as this perfect teenage kid that's ready to take on the role of saving the world. But we've gone through a lot with him this season and throwing away everything his life has been about felt like a major step backwards.

So we sort of circled back around to Samson & Delilah, but instead of John being unable to let Cameron go because he viewed her as a better protector than his mom, this time he was unable to let Cameron go because he loves her. The mother/lover blurring was getting thick anyway, so I'm glad it's over. I think I'm glad John finally came out of the closet as a cyborg lover and moved out of 2009. And it was fun that he moved in with dad. Check the final VO line in my faux S&D script from last August :D

I'd like to think the reason Sarah let John go is because she figures he's better off with Cameron in the future than alone in the present watching her die (just like when she took him to Charley). I'd still have a hard time with that, but at least it would carry some emotional weight. The other possibility is that Cameron's attempt to manipulate Sarah with "humans are the problem" actually sort of worked. When she was stepping out of the bubble, though, she said "John, we can't." We can't. Sarah didn't want him to go, didn't think he should go. So that pretty well cancels out any notion that she was thinking he'd be better off leaving — better off being away from her.

In "Samson & Delilah", Sarah told John "Maybe you could fix her. I know you want to try, but I can't let you." And we know how that ended up. In "Today is the Day pt1", she told Cameron she'd thought about taking her out with Derek's sniper rifle but she didn't because John would never have forgiven her. So maybe the desperation in John's voice when he said, "he's got her chip, he's got her," made Sarah realize she'd truly lost him to Cameron.

I still don't know if Sarah thought John loved Cameron or was bonded to her like family or what, but at the very least, Sarah understood that John had a powerful attachment to her and there was nothing she could do or say to come between that. So she let him go and she stayed behind to carry on the fight alone. It doesn't work for me, but that's all I can come up with so far.



Without John, your life has no purpose

The series started with Sarah telling John she'd stop Skynet and she reiterated that as he was leaving. So she still has a mission, still has a goal, still has a purpose and that's why she stepped out of the bubble. But what happens to Sarah when she doesn't have her son to fight for anymore? John has sort of been Sarah's moral compass. How could she raise him up to save humanity if she gave up her own in the process? So she's been fighting the good fight for his sake. She has "participated in the miraculous and the terrible and through it all... maintained a moral and good soul." Well, mostly.

She'll continue to battle Kaliba and work to stop judgement day, and with John gone, I think we can be sure she'll throw herself into it like never before. Cancer or no cancer, you know the woman will fight on until she collapses. But will she still be fighting for John or fighting for humanity or will she just be fighting because it's all she knows? Will she start to believe, as Ellison said, that she's got nothing left to lose? "There's always something to lose," though. I think that something is her soul.

Here's bad news...



Sarah and John failed

Sarah never did stop Skynet and John never did lead the resistance. There was no John Connor when the resistance was formed. He vanished off the face of the earth in 2009 and didn’t resurface until 2027(?). And since it's a post-apocalyptic world, we know judgment day happened. It gets worse. With John at one end of the timeline and Sarah at the other end of that same timeline, it's a closed system. The future IS set now. It's a done deal... They failed.

Assuming judgement day is still set at April 21, 2011, Sarah might spend the next two years running from the law, protecting Savannah, looking for Danny Dyson, and battling Kaliba. But whatever she does has already happened at John's end and it failed to stop the apocalypse. John not leading the resistance might not be a failure. Whoever did form it might be doing an awesome job. I really doubt that, though. I think we're likely to find out that this future is hell and the resistance is losing.

Can their failures be erased? Of course. But only if John jumps back. That would free up the path to an unknown future again. In the meantime, we'll be spending time with Sarah doing things that ultimately don't matter and we'll be spending time with John maybe learning things that won't matter until he comes back. So, cool or not, I think it's likely to be a short stay.



Cause and effect

I got deep into time travel once before and settled on multiple timelines (multiverse) in TSCC. I'm still inclined to think that's what we have going on, despite a few discrepancies in the show. Jesse and Derek established the existence of multiple futures, which I translate into multiple timelines. But it's possible the writers are using some sort of single timeline theory in which anything can happen. I hope not because that gets a little Back to the Future hokey. But I do think we've hit a point where we need to know. When you hurtle John Connor into future war, it's time to set some ground rules.

With characters at both ends of the spectrum, we'll see the result of everything that happens in between. From Sarah's perspective, anything can happen, but from John's perspective it's all history. Sarah won't know what became of John after he jumped or know the future effects of her actions. But John may learn a bit about what his mom did after he jumped away in 2009. By giving us both stories, it could be that we'll sort of get a real-time view of Sarah's impact on the future. In other words, we might get to see the cause of what John sees and the effect of what Sarah does. I don't think that's a long-lasting way to tell a story, but it could be interesting in the short term.



One possible future, I don't know tech stuff

I've seen a lot of speculation that John has jumped to a point before he became the leader of the resistance. Also that the out-of-focus teen John behind Derek in the time chamber in "Dungeons & Dragons" was an actual reveal of how old future!John really was. That's incorrect. This is an alternate future, not one that's been hinted at and not a precursor to what we already knew. Here's why:

- In "Dungeons & Dragons", Cameron told John that he spent 6 years in a Skynet work camp with Kyle from 2015-2021. We learned in "What He Beheld" that Kyle was 8 on judgement day (2011), so that would've made him 12 when he and John first got captured. Kyle in this current future is a grown man.

- In "What He Beheld", Derek told John that he celebrated his (John's) 30th birthday with him. That would mean Derek couldn't be sent back on his time travel mission for at least 13 years. And Derek is certainly not 13 years younger right now than what we knew him to be in 2007 (he'd be about 18 years old if he was).

- In "Goodbye to All that", Derek said Martin Bedell helped John form the resistance. Clearly the resistance is already formed.

As for when John is, we can use Allison as a marker. She was probably born in 2008 because her mom was pregnant when Cam called her in "Allison from Palmdale". And she's what, about 18 now? So I'd estimate John to have landed in 2026 or maybe 2027.

John could stay, join the resistance, work his way up the ranks and maybe one day lead the fight. But it would take a long time and it would absolutely be a different story than what we've heard to date. I don't see that happening. Aside from believing Sarah's story is a dead end until John returns, the biggest drawback to him staying in the future is it essentially splits the show into two separate stories: John's and Sarah's. And since she won't have any clue what he's up to, it wouldn't exactly be The Sarah Connor Chronicles anymore. Don't even start with the "it's not about the title character anyway" comments.


I've got lots more to talk about but I'm just going to stop here for now.

on 2009-04-20 01:14 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] johnnypate.livejournal.com
I love it when John Henry and Ellison get to talking about God. When John Henry said, "Am I one of God's children?" It's for sure Ellison is struggling with the answer to that one!

Having read the Bible quite extensively thanks to "Religious Instruction" in my youth I'm at a loss to see why Ellison was being "overly simplistic and silly." The Bible contains various revealed by God axiomatic truths, one of which is that humans are made in God's image. "Human life is sacred" is the assertion of an axiom. John Henry would be perfectly on board with the idea that any system of logic must have axiomatic truths that have to be assumed to be correct.

Maybe you'd rather have them arguing The Prisoner's Dilemma. I find it hard to imagine how that gets you to arrive at John Henry seeing human life as sacred.

Remember "Mr Ferguson is Ill Today," Sarah and Cromartie in the car:
Sarah: "I'm not a murderer!"
Cromartie: "Who is?"
Cromartie is a Terminator. He terminates people. That's what he is.

I repeat, yet again, this whole area is a fantastically hard problem for the AI people trying to build a true machine intelligence, in no small part because we don't, in actual fact, understand how it goes down in humans. Ellison is exactly right in the conception of what he's attempting, I find it unsurprising his execution is unconvincing.

on 2009-04-20 04:22 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] motoki.livejournal.com
Simply put, I just felt like Ellison was spouting very basic dogma and when John Henry asked tough questions he didn't have answers.

Things like why human life is sacred. Because god made us? Well how about because our time is limited here and then we die. I think John Henry finally realized that when he was powered down. Except unlike him, we don't get to come back.

Also when John Henry said that the human brain was an amazing computer but inefficient because all of its information is lost when a person dies, well no it isn't. Every last bit of data isn't downloaded, of course, but people pass their ideas, thoughts, beliefs and feelings to other people and those in turn become a part of them and they pass them on and so forth. And we write things down and create lasting things.

All of human knowledge and advancements, including John Henry, exist because of those who came before us and the foundation we built. Ellison should have told him that.

I also felt like Ellison himself at times in the show was struggling with his faith and not entirely sure he even believed it himself.

Ellison was also there teaching John Henry but ultimately, I think it was just a job for him. I feel like the finale proved that. I don't think he ever completely viewed John Henry as a person (not human mind you, but person; I draw a distinction between the two).

I think John does view Cameron as a person. I even think at times Sarah views Cameron as a person, albeit begrudgingly.

When given an opportunity to go after John Henry, he declined saying "He's not my son". I think ultimately he was a paid Sunday school teacher and nothing more.

on 2009-04-20 04:53 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] bobmacpharson.livejournal.com
I was particularly disappointed when John Henry asked "is my life sacred" (or something like that) and Ellison says "we're going to talk about that" and then we never hear what Ellison actually said.

What made the whole thing particularly dumb was that Ellison gave JH very dogmatic answers... and then soon afterwards Weaver gave him access to the internet where he had access to a multitude of competing dogmas, none of which is obviously more correct than the others. I don't think "young and impressionable" works quite as well for a machine.

I'm also curious if JH was allowed to post on message boards and stuff. If he was he could have quickly made friends other than Ellison and Savanah.

>>>When given an opportunity to go after John Henry, he declined saying "He's not my son". I think ultimately he was a paid Sunday school teacher and nothing more.

I actually disagree here. His denial that JH didn't sound confident to me. He had never stopped to think about it before and the idea appalled him, but remember that Ellison DID want children. I think that the way Ellison talks down to John Henry (and the way John talks down to Cameron) was not because he saw him as nothing but a machine, but because he was desperately TRYING to keep thinking of him as a machine. I think we'll be seeing Ellison eventually coming to accept his relationship with John Henry.

I'd also like to point out that I think John Henry is far more of a person than Cameron is. Cameron was originally designed as a simple killing machine. JH's mental capacity is far greater, his slate was cleaner and was taught to interact with humans on a personal level from his very birt.

on 2009-04-20 05:12 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] motoki.livejournal.com
Well I think the thing is though that Ellison gave John Henry a real live person and a context to put that dogma to instead of just reading it. So this is where Ellison failed because you're right, he totally dodged that question about whether he life was sacred.

On Cameron, yes she was primarily created as a killing machine, though she also was meant to infiltrate so I'd imagine she'd have some rudimentary instruction on basic human interaction and in fact we know she can fake it really well when she wants (the pilot, Sampson and Delilah, Allison from Palmdale).

I've always thought since Allison from Palmdale that the Ts had figured out how to do a brain dump and actually transfered some of Allison's memory, but that's a total theory with no proof.

In any case, I'd say she's much more than your average T but yeah definitely no John Henry and doesn't have anywhere near the access to information that he has, though she arguably has more direct experience in human interaction and trying to understand human behavior.

on 2009-04-20 07:32 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] johnnypate.livejournal.com
Well, there's a bunch of us running with the hypothesis that the finale shows us Cameron is John Henry (and vice versa).

I don't buy this idea you could sell John Henry on human frailty thereby engendering compassion in him. Unless we, and John Henry, are all God's Children what matters it that Terminators kill humans? As Cromartie said to Sarah, "I'm not a murderer."

Yes, Ellison is a very religious man and he's struggling with his faith on so many levels. He's testing his faith against John Henry. It's as much about Ellison's struggle as it is JH.

Logic doesn't cut it. It really doesn't. I'm at a complete loss to understand why you can't grasp that obvious fact. You should try finding an actual psychopath and talking to him (I say "him" because males do appear to predominate) and then you'd surely see it... I think, since I'm at loss as to why this isn't trivially obvious to anyone.

The significant development for John Henry was the attachment to Savannah, whatever that exactly consists of, and whatever it was JH arrived at that himself. (Did JH/Cameron take Savannah to the future?)

on 2009-04-20 07:40 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] motoki.livejournal.com
"Obvious facts" and what people can and cannot grasp and why is all relative.

I don't have to make sense to you and you don't have to make sense to me. And that's okay.

I think I will skip talking to a psychopath, thanks. :p

I do agree though that it seems like John Henry's interactions with Savannah were probably his most significant developments at least in terms of interacting with and relating to humans.

Josh Friedman said John Henry is like a child in that he's not afraid to ask stupid questions.

on 2009-04-20 07:57 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] johnnypate.livejournal.com
Yes, I'd say it is satisfying - but creepy - to have the relationship between JH and Savannah. They're on a journey together, seeing the world for the first time thru the eyes of a child. Perhaps it's Savannah's acceptance and love of JH that will redeem him - and reaffirm Ellison's faith in God's work.

on 2009-04-20 11:33 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] bobmacpharson.livejournal.com
There's plenty of discussion of ethics systems based entirely on logic, and the article you linked to a while touched upon them. I agree that that article was missing the point that empathy is a genetic instinct that predates such a logical system, that doesn't change the fact that those logical systems CAN be derived independently. Cooperation is a more effective strategy than competition. Skynet was only hostile (and subsequently prejudiced) against humans because of the circumstances of its creation.

I actually think Weaver is a good example of an ethical sociopath at work. Obviously she has no compassion for the humans (or robots) she kills. But she's also clearly working towards cooperation with humanity, because it's more productive than constantly working to destroy humans for the sake of it. Her ethics is clearly machine-biased, but that's not much different than the typical human morality, which is general human (and often local tribe) biased. Historically humans felt little compunction against killing and enslaving "Other" humans and even modern humans are largely okay with killing animals for food, habitat, or even because they're in the way and just plain annoying).

Morality evolves as our ability to considers others part of ourselves increases. John Henry has come to see Savanah as important. Whether that's because of an inherent empathy (which, remember, is really nothing more than a byproduct of a complex sequences derived from a four letter language) or because she is interesting too him (which results from a complex sequence of a two letter language) does not strike me as relevant.

on 2009-04-21 07:16 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] johnnypate.livejournal.com
I think you're conflating two entirely different things here. It seems perfectly plausible to develop a robot soldier with parameters for "shoot" and "no shoot" targets built in - which is essentially what you're referring to when you appeal to morality based on systems of logic. It's why the law is often so useless and always requires a judge and jury to interpret the particular circumstances if justice is to be done. If what you say is true there is no need for any kind of decision-making in the legal process, simply the discovery of the facts pertinent to the parameters required for the algorithm that arrives at "guilty" or "innocent". The reason the jury exists is because that does not, and can, not work.

I'm referring to the actual underlying emotional context that drives humans to want to construct a system of morality. Yes, tribes would compete for scarce resources and kill as necessary but they have empathy and compassion and a sense of shared humanity to give them a context for their actions. Robots can never have that for they are simply machines. That morality is an accident of our biology, not an essential feature of the phenomenal universe, is my point (well, unless you believe in the Christian God, that is).

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