Completely random slice of pop culture
Come on, people, the time travel in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" isn't as complicated as you make it out to be. You don't even need a Ph.D. in Time Travel in Fictional TV Shows and Movies to figure it out.
Every "Terminator" story begins with time travelers - usually an evil Terminator and a good Terminator - appearing from the future of the previous story. For example, in "T2," Ah-nuld and Robert Patrick come back from the "T1" future. And in "T3," another Ah-nuld and Kristanna Loken come back from the "T2" future.
Thomas Dekker plays John Connor in the "Terminator" TV series. Associated Press
"Chronicles" gets under way when the good Summer Glau and the evil Cromartie come back from the "T3" future.
Whenever someone travels back in time, they "overwrite" what happened in the previous go-around. Interestingly, the person who sees the time traveler off - as John Connor sent Reese back in "T1" - immediately ceases to exist, because they just overwrote their reality! It gives double meaning to the term "farewell party."
So every time an evil Terminator "comes back" in "Sarah Connor," it is from a timeline that is promptly erased by the act of "going back."
"Chronicles" takes place in the year 2007, so if someone from the future were to travel to a time before 2007, they would "erase" our heroes, just as "T3" John Connor (living in 2003) got erased when Summer Glau and Cromartie popped up in 1999. As a nice bonus, Sarah's death was also erased (temporarily, at least).
Another fun bit of trivia: The John Connor from the future battlefield scenes in "T1" isn't the whiny John Connor that we've followed in the films and TV series. Our John's parents are Sarah Connor and Reese, but the original John obviously had a different dad. So the two John Connors are actually stepbrothers with the same name!
See, it's not so complicated.
- By John Hansen, Entertainment Editor