The T-888 in the Wall
I've been watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles, of course, and squeeing. I'd probably watch it for Summer alone, but I've been really enjoying some of the places they've been going for season 2. Both "Complications" and "A Self-Made Man" made me stop and think, and I had to sit down and make a chart of most of the significant time-travel we've seen so far.
Causality loops are in purple, history-changing events are in red, and indeterminate events are green. The yellow bar is Judgment Day.
Timeline A: Kyle Reese fathers John Connor, who goes on to lead the resistance. It seems likely, but not certain, that John knows what's up when he sends Kyle back.
1. The Terminator. A T-101 (Arnold) is sent back to kill Sarah Connor; Kyle Reese is sent back to protect her.(Causality Loop)
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A T-1000 (Robert Patrick) is sent back to kill John Connor; a reprogrammed T-101 is sent back to protect him. (History Changer)
Elements of Timeline A's future which persist into future timelines: 1/2 of John Connor's genetic information.
Timeline B: Sarah, John, and the T-101 take down Cyberdyne Systems to ensure SkyNet is never created, but only succeed in postponing Judgment Day. Sarah Connor dies of cancer.
3. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. A Terminatrix is sent back to kill John Connor; a T-101 is sent to protect him; John is maneuvered by fate into surviving Judgment Day and leading the resistance. (Causality Loop)
4. "Pilot." A T-888 (Cromartie) is sent back to kill John Connor. Cameron is sent back to protect him (so far as we know). Cameron takes John and Sarah several years into the future, tells Sarah that she died of cancer in the future she came from, and generally majorly frells up the timeline. (History Changer)
Elements of Timeline B's future which persist into future timelines: Cameron.
Timeline C: Sarah, John, and Cameron do TV-show things in 2007 California. Derek and Kyle Reese serve under John Connor post-Judgment Day. Note: in this and all subsequent timelines, John Connor knew Cameron as a teenager.
5. Derek Reese is sent back to pre-Judgment Day. Nobody really knows whether this is a causality loop or a history changer, with the possible exception of future!John. It doesn't matter, really, because. . . .
6. A bunch of other stuff happens too, none of it particularly important (and thus not shown on the chart) but the chance that at least one of them is a history-changer approaches unity. Indeed, the chance is 100%, because we know Derek has to come from a different timeline than Jessie and Charlie Fisher.
Elements of Timeline C's future which persist into future timelines: Derek.
Timeline D: Derek is tortured post-Judgment Day.
7. "Complications." Jessie and Charlie Fisher travel back in time. Toby!Charlie sets up Warren!Charlie. (Causality Loop)
8. "Self-Made Man." A T-888, planning to travel to 2010, ends up in 1920 instead, killing someone who was supposed to build the site his mission was to be accomplished in. He goes on to ensure that the site is built after all. (????)
I see a couple ways to interpret #8, which gives us particular difficulty because the moment where history may or may not be changed precedes all of the other places history has been changed, and thus presumably negating them.
One answer is to assume that the T-888 always built the tower, and history hasn't been changed. But the question is this: does this continuity loop exist in all the timelines, or just Timeline D?
One of my assumptions in interpreting the show is that the only piece of narrative continuity which has been retconned into oblivion, alongside the flash-forward sequences (and I have no frelling idea which timeline they are supposed to be taking place in), is T3. Or, to put it another way, what we've been watching from the beginning (again, sans T3) is actually some kind of ultimate timeline, a Timeline Z, even if we haven't yet seen the results of backwards time-travel from Timelines D through Y on that timeline, because they fall in John and Sarah's subjective future.
The reason is simple: if we're supposed to assume that, say, T1 (or worse yet, the Pilot) didn't actually take place because history was changed prior to that, then the strangers we are watching now have no background and there's no reason we should care about them.
Thus, while that teenaged Sarah Connor was waiting tables, was that T-888 slumbering in that wall? From the perspective of Timeline Z, which is the timeline we've been watching the whole time (except in T3), the answer is clearly yes, assuming this continuity won't be reset-buttoned the way T3 was. (Such a move would be cruel trick and would, IMO, constitute jumping the shark.) That doesn't mean we can't postulate a Timeline A where Sarah existed but the T-888 didn't, of course. (Or even a timeline to the left of Timeline A where Sarah never existed at all, but was brought actually into being when Marty McFly changed history. Or something.) Which timeline are we watching when we watch T1? Possibly both; in terms of what we are watching when we see T1, the machine in the wall is pretty much just a Schrodinger's cat.
If we want to assume that the T-888 in the wall did change history, I think we can handle it in a similar way--but the future the T-888 came from would have to, I think, be to the left of Timeline A.
If we postulate a Timeline A where the T-888 is not in the wall, which contains the seeds of its own self-destruction and leads into Timeline B in the ordinary way, and so on until we get to D, what happens if only then Skynet decides to put the pieces in place for the T-888 in the wall?
The effects of Timelines A through C (including John, Cameron, and Derek) would be wiped out, it seems to me. But assuming that the T-888 succeeds in changing history only slightly, the new Timeline E would be more or less identical to Timeline A--in fact, it would be our Timeline A, with the postulated timelines without T-888's in the wall existing to the left of Timeline A on our chart.
My other concern is Jessie's concern that if Cameron gets to know John (in the present), she'll pose an even danger than Cameron did in the future Jessie came from. Of course, this makes no sense: the chart shows that Jessie has to come from a timeline ("D") where John already knew Cameron as a teenager. Of course, Jessie doesn't necessarily need to know that, and her concern still makes sense: maybe in her timeline, John never re-activated Cameron during the second season premiere.
Causality loops are in purple, history-changing events are in red, and indeterminate events are green. The yellow bar is Judgment Day.
Timeline A: Kyle Reese fathers John Connor, who goes on to lead the resistance. It seems likely, but not certain, that John knows what's up when he sends Kyle back.
1. The Terminator. A T-101 (Arnold) is sent back to kill Sarah Connor; Kyle Reese is sent back to protect her.(Causality Loop)
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A T-1000 (Robert Patrick) is sent back to kill John Connor; a reprogrammed T-101 is sent back to protect him. (History Changer)
Elements of Timeline A's future which persist into future timelines: 1/2 of John Connor's genetic information.
Timeline B: Sarah, John, and the T-101 take down Cyberdyne Systems to ensure SkyNet is never created, but only succeed in postponing Judgment Day. Sarah Connor dies of cancer.
3. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. A Terminatrix is sent back to kill John Connor; a T-101 is sent to protect him; John is maneuvered by fate into surviving Judgment Day and leading the resistance. (Causality Loop)
4. "Pilot." A T-888 (Cromartie) is sent back to kill John Connor. Cameron is sent back to protect him (so far as we know). Cameron takes John and Sarah several years into the future, tells Sarah that she died of cancer in the future she came from, and generally majorly frells up the timeline. (History Changer)
Elements of Timeline B's future which persist into future timelines: Cameron.
Timeline C: Sarah, John, and Cameron do TV-show things in 2007 California. Derek and Kyle Reese serve under John Connor post-Judgment Day. Note: in this and all subsequent timelines, John Connor knew Cameron as a teenager.
5. Derek Reese is sent back to pre-Judgment Day. Nobody really knows whether this is a causality loop or a history changer, with the possible exception of future!John. It doesn't matter, really, because. . . .
6. A bunch of other stuff happens too, none of it particularly important (and thus not shown on the chart) but the chance that at least one of them is a history-changer approaches unity. Indeed, the chance is 100%, because we know Derek has to come from a different timeline than Jessie and Charlie Fisher.
Elements of Timeline C's future which persist into future timelines: Derek.
Timeline D: Derek is tortured post-Judgment Day.
7. "Complications." Jessie and Charlie Fisher travel back in time. Toby!Charlie sets up Warren!Charlie. (Causality Loop)
8. "Self-Made Man." A T-888, planning to travel to 2010, ends up in 1920 instead, killing someone who was supposed to build the site his mission was to be accomplished in. He goes on to ensure that the site is built after all. (????)
I see a couple ways to interpret #8, which gives us particular difficulty because the moment where history may or may not be changed precedes all of the other places history has been changed, and thus presumably negating them.
One answer is to assume that the T-888 always built the tower, and history hasn't been changed. But the question is this: does this continuity loop exist in all the timelines, or just Timeline D?
One of my assumptions in interpreting the show is that the only piece of narrative continuity which has been retconned into oblivion, alongside the flash-forward sequences (and I have no frelling idea which timeline they are supposed to be taking place in), is T3. Or, to put it another way, what we've been watching from the beginning (again, sans T3) is actually some kind of ultimate timeline, a Timeline Z, even if we haven't yet seen the results of backwards time-travel from Timelines D through Y on that timeline, because they fall in John and Sarah's subjective future.
The reason is simple: if we're supposed to assume that, say, T1 (or worse yet, the Pilot) didn't actually take place because history was changed prior to that, then the strangers we are watching now have no background and there's no reason we should care about them.
Thus, while that teenaged Sarah Connor was waiting tables, was that T-888 slumbering in that wall? From the perspective of Timeline Z, which is the timeline we've been watching the whole time (except in T3), the answer is clearly yes, assuming this continuity won't be reset-buttoned the way T3 was. (Such a move would be cruel trick and would, IMO, constitute jumping the shark.) That doesn't mean we can't postulate a Timeline A where Sarah existed but the T-888 didn't, of course. (Or even a timeline to the left of Timeline A where Sarah never existed at all, but was brought actually into being when Marty McFly changed history. Or something.) Which timeline are we watching when we watch T1? Possibly both; in terms of what we are watching when we see T1, the machine in the wall is pretty much just a Schrodinger's cat.
If we want to assume that the T-888 in the wall did change history, I think we can handle it in a similar way--but the future the T-888 came from would have to, I think, be to the left of Timeline A.
If we postulate a Timeline A where the T-888 is not in the wall, which contains the seeds of its own self-destruction and leads into Timeline B in the ordinary way, and so on until we get to D, what happens if only then Skynet decides to put the pieces in place for the T-888 in the wall?
The effects of Timelines A through C (including John, Cameron, and Derek) would be wiped out, it seems to me. But assuming that the T-888 succeeds in changing history only slightly, the new Timeline E would be more or less identical to Timeline A--in fact, it would be our Timeline A, with the postulated timelines without T-888's in the wall existing to the left of Timeline A on our chart.
My other concern is Jessie's concern that if Cameron gets to know John (in the present), she'll pose an even danger than Cameron did in the future Jessie came from. Of course, this makes no sense: the chart shows that Jessie has to come from a timeline ("D") where John already knew Cameron as a teenager. Of course, Jessie doesn't necessarily need to know that, and her concern still makes sense: maybe in her timeline, John never re-activated Cameron during the second season premiere.