TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES “Complications” (Season 2 Episode 9) Discussion

Tonight’s episode of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES was confusing to say the least.

It’s like I get the feeling that I just saw something that looked really important but I just can’t put my finger on it. The story was really convoluted and actually posed more questions than it answered. I usually don’t mind a mystery but it has to make sense.

Let’s just chronicle the list of things that just don’t make any sense:

- If Derek wanted to prove that the old dude was Charlie Fischer, why didn’t he scar the guy instead of pulling the fingernails? Hello, fingernails grow back.

- If Sarah wanted to make sense of her dreams, why is she going to a shrink whom she can’t tell anything? It’s like me going to the doctor and telling him “Hey Doc, I am sick. Guess what I have”

- What is up with Ellison being a dumbass? Giving up Cromartie’s body knowing what he knows is just idiotic. What do you think a multinational corporation is going to do with the body of a futuristic robot? Let me give you a hint: It starts with an R and ends with eanimate.

Overall, this was a somewhat dissapointing episode because it tried to do too many things at the same time and failed to do one thing well. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

By Americ Ngwije | November 17, 2008 | 7 Comments

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Alexander

Sorry your comments are not well thought out enough.

1). Nothing Derek does to the young Fischer will affect the old Fischer that is there. The old Fischer exists from a future that can’t be affected by the present – ie any change that Derek makes to the younger Fischer will only affect a different future timeline. This is alluded to in the same episode when Derek confirms he is not from a future where he was tortured etc. but his girlfriend supposedly came from a future where he was tortured. Read up on the theories of time travel if you don’t understand this.

2). Sarah went to see the doctor because she didn’t know what was troubling her. Her speaking to him and not getting an answer because she couldn’t talk about certain things helped her to understand what her problem was, i.e. something about John / Cameron / Skynet+future, etc. which she then realised she couldn’t talk about.

3). You are looking at it from too much of a black and white good versus bad perspective. Ellison is an intelligent guy and his own person. He would have to be a pretty shallow and 2 dimensional character to be so easily convinced that Sarah Connor and co. are the sole saviours of mankind and suddenly become their lapdog, regardless of any inevitable future. From his perspective he knows certain facts about the future and has teamed up with a woman who seems to have noble intentions from what he knows. Any rational person should really be doing the same things in his shoes.

I don’t think they have tried to do too many things, they have just touched on some things that were a little harder to understand than the awful writing you see on shows like ‘Heroes’. This is an intelligent show built around principles that lend themselves towards complexity.
Fish

The title of the episode is actually quite appropriate. COMPLICATIONS! Many a Star Trek episode has dealt with the possibility of alternative timelines. Up to this point, the Terminator franchise has flirted with the idea, but finally it gets adressed in the forefront.

Given: From square one, the series has dealt with fatalism vs libertarianism and everything in between. Remember the scene where Sarah first met Kyle in the first Terminator, when Sarah asked “you’re from the future?” and Kyle responded “one possible future.” Now he may have made the comment in an offhanded manner, but it is worth theorizing that Kyle understood that his actions could very well change everyone’s future, even his own…

The important thing is the message John makes Kyle memorize. ” Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can’t help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.” Did Kyle have this in mind when he called his future “one possible future”? Either way, Sarah came to that conclusion in T2 when she engraved the words “No Fate” on the table and then tried to kill Miles Dyson.

For this reason, T3 sincerely disappointed me; T2 ended on a note of optimism, that we can change our future, but T3 was centered around Judgement Day merely being postponed. Like T2 was a libertarian perspective, but T3 (the quest for more money, as I saw it) brought it back to a fatalist perspective, that Judgement Day was inevitable and John Connor was doomed to become the fearless leader of the resistance.

I had my hopes up that the show would not fall into the fatalist trap. So far, it’s flirting with it, but either way it’s keeping up the note of optimism, i.e. that the Connors can prevent Judgement Day (at least they’re trying).

I am reminded distantly of Doc’s oversimplified explanation of alternate timelines in Back to the Future 2. His explanation was full of holes, but it worked for the purpose of the BTTF series. Either way, one obvious hole is that if in T1, Kyle was born after the war and has no memories of Judgement Day (originally in 1997), and this is what present Sarah would remember Kyle saying. But then, since Judgement day was postponed to 2012, when Kyle was already nearing adolescence, would a different Kyle have been sent back to 1984, one who is old enough to remember Judgement Day?

To answer this, I am going to work with 3 timelines, (a), (b), and (c). Of course, there is an infinite amount possible, as more things change, but 3 is all I need.

(a) is the events as portrayed in the movie T1. In this variation, Kyle was born after the war, and we can guess that Sarah accepted her fate and just trained John to become the leader.

(b) assumes that T2 now happened. Miles Dyson died a martyr’s death, Cyberdine labs were blown up, and the arm and chip were melted along with the T-1000 and the T-800. In this reality, Judgement Day was merely postponed. So Kyle would now be alive to see judgement day. At this point, Sarah moved into timeline (b); in the words of Doc, Sarah’s point of view SKEWED into timeline (b), she still retains memories of being in timeline (a), but she now lives in timeline (b). So, the way things look, Kyle will be sent into the 1984 of timeline (b), he will tell 1984 Sarah of timeline (b) what it’s like to be playing baseball with his brother Derek when the rockets started falling and they went into hiding. Of course, Kyle of timeline (a) never mentioned having a brother to Sarah, and since Sarah’s memories of 1984 are from timeline (a), it would be as if Kyle never told her this at all. So what then of the Sarah of timeline (b) pre-T2, when the timelines skewed? The two Sarah’s would merge, forming one single Sarah, whose memories would incidentally be of timeline (a).

Now what about timeline (c)? Well, we know nothing of the Derek of timeline (a). We know that in timeline (b), Derek was sent back to the past to set up a safehouse and await instructions. This Derek has NO memory whatsoever of Fischer. In timeline (c), Fischer was the man who tortured Derek, and Derek was obsessed with catching him. We don’t know (yet) what caused the change from timeline (b) to (c), but it obviously happened before Jessie was sent back, because she clearly recognized Fischer. Derek and Cameron, meanwhile, retain memories of timeline (b)’s future, so they have no idea who Fischer is.

Given the Butterfly Effect, any good number of things that happened in the series could have caused this. I am willing to speculate that it’s Derek’s murder of Andy Goode; that’s the one big thing Derek’s done to seriously alter the future. Of course, Derek still has vivid memories of being chained to the floor with Billy Wisher, who then confesses that he’s really Andy Goode! So after he killed 2007 Andy, he has memories of Billy, even though in the future as he set it, it would be impossible for him and Billy to have ever met.

I hope this somewhat helps.
e allan shonk

What I believe is happening that nobody is mentioning, is that the robots evolve into something beyond the Manson version in the future. They evolve to the point that they begin to have emotions and can make some sort of peace with mankind. They understand that certain things must be allowed to happen for this to take place. They, of course want this peace, but also want to exist, since they eventually get emotions, they eventually get survival instincts. They know that mankind is waging a war against them in the past, which constantly changes the evolution of the robots in the future. The Manson character has been sent back to ensure that certain events take place which will allow the robots to evolve in this manner. As changes are made which will alter this future, the Manson character must counter those changes with actions which will alter the future back to the aforementioned circumstances. She is in the midst of learning about how the extinct versions of past robots evolved, therefore she has no understanding of their workings. How would this be possible if the robots evolve in a straightforward manner in the future. They have no linear memory of their own evolution, so they have to go back to the past and influence events to take place which will allow their past existence, which is the only way to ensure their evolution both in the past and in the future beyond where in time the Manson character came from. Perhaps she is the keystone robot which eventually takes the emotional evolutionary leap, which is why she was sent back in the first place. In the words of the Wu-Tang, “All of the these things must happen, they must take place, you are the creator of all of this. Everything that has been always will be, everything that will happen cannot change, because its got to be. If not, you would not be, and there would be nothing.”
Alexander

Perhaps you could try to make less sense? Actually …. no i don’t think that is possible
e allan shonk

Perhaps you could be a little less of a prick. Probably not. You probably can’t help it. You sound like one of those know it all kids in high school that I had to beat the crap out of.
Alexander

i’m a prick? let’s examine the evidence:

1. you make no sense
2. you confess to bullying ‘know it all kids’ (a clear sign you have confidence issues about your lack of intelligence)
3. rather than intellectual debate you resort to machismo

i challenged your rambling attempt to critique this T:TSCC episode where you went totally off topic and failed to respond to the OP’s review

i don’t think any further comment is necessary
Derrick VanDeraa

not to reinflame your…conflict….but,
This was my fav episode all season
OMG, when the past version of Charlie Fischer was looking at the future Charlie Fischer; I was tripping total balls
IT WAS GREAT,
N the torture scene made total sense, he was starting small, going to destroy Fischer piece by piece…While he should’ve just shot ‘em…