John Henry, where's your trousers?
Apr. 29th, 2010 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roxybisquaintYou guys already know that I don't think John Henry time-jumped. I think he used Cameron's chip (or repaired and used the water cooler terminator's chip) and left Zeira Corp to go find his AI brother in present day. This post isn't really about that theory, though. This time, I'm just analyzing the situation.
"You can't bring anything through when you come—not weapons, not clothing, nothing."
If John Henry did jump, where is his clothing? It should've been in a pile on the floor, but it wasn't. Clothing doesn't go through, so it either gets disintegrated by the time bubble or left behind by the time bubble. Since Cameron's clothed body was sitting there in the chair (and the chair and table were there), we can rule out disintegration. She was clearly within the sphere of the time bubble when Weaver and John left, so she would have been within the sphere when John Henry left too. Yet Cameron's body was clothed and intact and John Henry's clothes were not there.
Was that a hint that he didn't actually jump ahead or was it just a gaff?
"You can't bring anything through when you come—not weapons, not clothing, nothing."
If John Henry did jump, where is his clothing? It should've been in a pile on the floor, but it wasn't. Clothing doesn't go through, so it either gets disintegrated by the time bubble or left behind by the time bubble. Since Cameron's clothed body was sitting there in the chair (and the chair and table were there), we can rule out disintegration. She was clearly within the sphere of the time bubble when Weaver and John left, so she would have been within the sphere when John Henry left too. Yet Cameron's body was clothed and intact and John Henry's clothes were not there.
Was that a hint that he didn't actually jump ahead or was it just a gaff?
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no subject
on 2010-04-30 12:42 am (UTC)But yeah, by that logic, shouldn't Cameron and the Turk machine have been destroyed when John and Weaver jumped forward? Unless Cameron's organic components still counted, in which case she would have gone with them. For that matter, I can't recall what we can see of the basement room after they jumped, but it seemed rather wreaked.
(If they'd just put the time machine far enough away from John Henry's table to not engulf all this other stuff, then they could have avoided this problem.)
I'm all for the "John Henry didn't go to the future" theory, if only because him going to the future is the worst move he could make: as I've said before, it makes no sense for John Henry to face Kaliba/Skynet in the future where its processing power will have increased by several orders of magnitude and it controls armies of Terminators and HKs that can act openly, instead of in the present where they're more even matched in processor speed and it has only a small force of Terminators and human mercenaries that must act covertly.
no subject
on 2010-05-01 01:53 am (UTC)But yeah, by that logic, shouldn't Cameron and the Turk machine have been destroyed when John and Weaver jumped forward? Unless Cameron's organic components still counted, in which case she would have gone with them. For that matter, I can't recall what we can see of the basement room after they jumped, but it seemed rather wreaked.
Yeah we never do get to see the aftermath of a time bubble leaving. But the fact that the Zeira Copr basement is still there when they land in the future means it wasn't destroyed by the time bubble's departure (or by the drone or by j-day). It looks pretty dark and dreary, but it's still there. Most of the damage seems to be from — busting through walls for passage during the war.
(If they'd just put the time machine far enough away from John Henry's table to not engulf all this other stuff, then they could have avoided this problem.)
I think Cameron had to be within the sphere so John would think her body was coming through with them (and be a little freaked out when Weaver tells him after they get there that "it doesn't go through"). All they really had to do was stick John Henry's clothes in a pile on the floor and then we can use ^ tackdriver's theory that the bank vault blew up because of the reaction of plasma gun meeting TDE.
I'm all for the "John Henry didn't go to the future" theory, if only because him going to the future is the worst move he could make: as I've said before, it makes no sense for John Henry to face Kaliba/Skynet in the future where its processing power will have increased by several orders of magnitude and it controls armies of Terminators and HKs that can act openly, instead of in the present where they're more even matched in processor speed and it has only a small force of Terminators and human mercenaries that must act covertly.
I've completely adopted your theory on this, by the way. Back when I first starting thinking about John Henry not jumping, I didn't even had a good reason for it. But you had it worked out nicely and I've been convinced ever since that he remained in the present and went to find Kaliba.
no subject
on 2010-05-01 03:51 am (UTC)Wait a sec. Are you saying that the Resistance Base that John and Weaver land in (the one where his father and uncle are) is in the same location as the basement that they jumped from? Isn't that just a little too... coincidental?
I don't think that it's ever been implied that time travel in Terminator pops you out in the same place that you left. If anything, just the opposite: no two (groups of) time travellers in the franchise have popped out in the same place. Kyle arrived in an alleyway, Arnie in T2 at a biker bar, Derek in some location I don't recall (on a hill somewhere?) and the guy with a bullet in him in the middle of the street.
But you had it worked out nicely and I've been convinced ever since that he remained in the present and went to find Kaliba.
Logically, it makes more sense to fight Kaliba in the present and not the future. So if John Henry learned anything from all those D&D games, he hasn't jumped. :-) (Or if anything, jumped further back to get the drop on Kaliba in the past. That's what most of the D&D players I know would have done. If they went to the future at all, it would just be to grab some more advanced weapons to use.)
...I'm just not sure if the writers had realized that by the time they wrote the episode.
argh
on 2010-05-01 07:31 am (UTC)Indeed I am. If that's not what it was supposed to be, I'm either too much of a geek (entirely possible) or they did a poor job disguising it. I could tell it was the same room. The computer rack is even still against the wall (with military supplies on it instead of computer equipment).
Isn't that just a little too... coincidental?
Yeah I'd say it's almost as coincidental as jumping 18 years through time and bumping into your uncle, father and the human girl your cyborg was modeled after are all walking through.
I don't think that it's ever been implied that time travel in Terminator pops you out in the same place that you left. If anything, just the opposite: no two (groups of) time travellers in the franchise have popped out in the same place. Kyle arrived in an alleyway, Arnie in T2 at a biker bar, Derek in some location I don't recall (on a hill somewhere?) and the guy with a bullet in him in the middle of the street.
It certainly doesn't match up with what we know of time travel in T1, no (T2, we don't know if they came from the same location or not). But the future changed after T2, so the details of how it works could be different.
I've just accepted it as how time travel works in TSCC: you arrive at the exact spot you left from, just a different year. The bank vault time machine didn't show any coordinates, just the current date and a target year.
"Same where, different when." - Cameron
She probably just meant they were still in LA, but I always assumed they landed where the bank vault had once been. We know the bank had been obliterated. Maybe eventually a highway was put through there.
Once you got me questioning this, though, I rechecked the pilot. The news broadcaster says it was the 105 freeway and wikipedia has that as being completed in 1993. So I guess they could not have landed where the bank once was. Hmm.
Okay now I'm confused. Do they just land in random places? Do they land where they left from? Did Weaver have a TDE with extra capabilities allowing her to set it to land them in the same room? Or was it not even supposed to be the same room?
Re: argh
on 2010-05-01 04:41 pm (UTC)So either she intentionally built ZeiraCorp headquarters over the site of a future Resistance base (wait, except that building was almost certainly there before the T-1001 replaced Weaver) or they reused a set and some props, which is not uncommon on scifi TV shows in the slightest.
...Actually, I'm leaning toward the latter here. That building just had an aircraft crash into it. It's not fit for habitation. The FBI will be going over it with a fine-toothed comb. ZeiraCorp will almost certainly be moving to a new headquarters in the interim. Would the same shelving still be there on J-Day?
(Wait, except that this is the future of the present where John timejumps away from that basement, so Sarah or Ellison might have set it up as a bomb shelter and possible future base site in anticipation.)
Yeah I'd say it's almost as coincidental as jumping 18 years through time and bumping into your uncle, father and the human girl your cyborg was modeled after are all walking through.
That I figure that Weaver did on purpose, or at least deliberately dropped him in a Resistance Base that she believed people familiar to him would be occupying. I'm not quite sure what she's up to with all this nonsense (I'm not quite sure that she really believes that John Henry went to the future, or if she just wanted to manipulating John into going), but it's probably best for her plans if she drops him near the people most likely to believe him instead of shooting him.
The news broadcaster says it was the 105 freeway and wikipedia has that as being completed in 1993. So I guess they could not have landed where the bank once was. Hmm.
Thanks for checking that. I figured that the odds of that area where the bank had stood being turned into a freeway in a mere eight years were slim-to-none, but it's good to have confirmation.
Do they just land in random places? Do they land where they left from?
Well, time travel also requires travel through space. The Earth doesn't hold still: in addition to the Earth traveling around the sun, the whole solar system is moving through the galaxy, the galaxy is moving through the supercluster on a collision course with Andromeda and the supercluster is moving away from everything else in the universe at speeds high enough to cause red shift. So "location" is something that can really only be defined in relation to something else... there's no fixed points in the universe.
I think that their arrival location probably has some degree of randomness. Even within the series, it doesn't seem like any two time travelers ever pop up in the same place. Some of them even pop up in really poorly-chosen places: in the path of oncoming cars on the highway in the pilot, in a speakeasy in "Self Made Man", in really exposed locations for Derek's team and the guy who'd been shot. Just getting them all to land on the Earth's surface and not underground or in space is probably a monumental task. It's possible that they have something they can fix to as a point of reference to make that easier--Earth's magnetic field or gravity well, perhaps--but it's still some pretty impressive precision that they always land in the right city. And Cameron got sent to Arizona in the pilot, unless she hitchhiked there from L.A.
The "you arrive where you left" thing just doesn't seem right to me.