The T:tSCC Rewatch Continues

[alixtii]

CAMERON: You sent [Derek] back to wait for us. (in "Queen's Gambit")

This reaffirms the notion that Derek and Cameron come from the same timeline. (Or does it?) But when and why did John send Derek back

Comments

[kurosau]

One thing that I think gets overlooked in time travel storylines are the close-but-not-quite-the-same parallels. Namely, you can have two people from two different timelines who have had all the same experiences when conversing with each other in their own timelines, because the only major difference between the two timelines is that a button got colored red instead of green

[alixtii]

There are places where the "Why is there only one Derek?" question becomes a problem, but I don't think that's the case here. The first Derek would have been set back in time to, say, 2007. We can either assume that a causality loop is created within Cameron's timeline, or else Derek changes history, creating a new timeline with a new John, John-prime. Either John or John-prime sends back Cameron to 1999, Cameron changes history, both John and John-prime never exist to send back Derek, and it falls on the shoulders of John-double-prime to send Derek back. Outcome: only one Derek.

It's when we ask ourselves why subsequent changes in history don't result in more Dereks being sent back that we begin to have issues. But Cameron's (John's or John-prime's) Derek isn't really a problem that way

[kurosau]

I concur. But at the same time, that idea of temporal inertia, that's the thing that's always made me wonder, why don't people explore the idea of a reverse butterfly effect? That even massive changes can only nudge the timeline a short distance.

And when you consider the idea of timelines collapsing together like waveforms, what if one person can be technically from several simultaneously different timelines?

[alixtii]

Explore how, exactly? I mean, I'm familiar with the concept from various sources. I tend to dislike the idea of temporal inertia, though, because to me it feels more like mysticism than science.

I have been wondering about simultaneous causes--if, instead of having a history change result in certain uncaused phenomenon (which don't bother me because they still have cross-temporal causes in the perpendicular temporal dimension), they could actually be replaced with a new looped cause. Very precise conditions would have to apply however--for example, the Kyle Reese in The Terminator can't be the same as the Kyle Reese in "Dungeons and Dragons," because they have different dates for Judgment Day. Someone coming back from multiple futures at once would either a) have to have exactly identical life histories, or b) never so much of think of the portions of hir life history which diverge, so those portions can remain in the state of Schrodinger's cat. I'm not a human being could ever be capable of it--maybe a thing could, or a memory-wiped