He is sent back in time to install future-tech based programming back doors into numerous government and Defense Department computer systems, to ensure the ability of the rising Skynet to seize control. Charles Fischer (future) is a member of the Grays faction of Skynet, instrumental in the instruction and improvement of the T-888 infiltration protocols. In a return to the tropes of the franchise, during the events of " Complications", it is revealed that Charles Fischer is yet another character embroiled in the Skynet creation myth and the problems of predestination paradox. If Skynet never existed, then Kyle Reese would never have been sent back in time to father him, Sarah probably would have married someone else, and Derek and Kyle would probably be baseball players. If they were to succeed in this mission, then it would stand to reason that John Connor would disappear from existence. Predestination paradox has been put aside again, while Sarah Connor and her son John Connor themselves travel through time in an attempt to change the future.Īccording to the Voiceovers in Season One, Sarah and company are fighting to stop Skynet from ever being created.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles embraces the mindset of T2: "There is no fate but what you make" as it is possible to change the timeline. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles See also: The Sarah Connor Chronicles timeline T3 does establish that the timeline has been changed by the events of T2 as the development of Skynet was delayed by the destruction of Cyberdyne Building, but the fate is eventually inevitable as Judgment Day can not be prevented, only postponed. The theme of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is fate as Judgment Day is destined to happen and nothing John Connor does can stop it.
Here, predestination paradox was not enacted by causal loops requiring time travel to become reality, but rather as a force to resolve paradox by re-establishing a specific end state, intervening differences being irrelevant. Once temporal interference created multiple parallel realities, the space-time continuum pushed back and continuously sought to realign with the original unaltered timeline as closely as possible. The T2 Trilogy posits that there is an original timeline without temporal intervention that saw the rise and fall of Skynet before any time travelers interfered. That it's the dualism, the dynamic between good and evil that's eternal." T2 Trilogy And you can't do it with a single stroke. Cameron explained his reasoning in an interview: "But there was a sense that, why tie it up with a bow? If the future is changeable, then the battle is something that has to be fought continuously. However, in the end, director James Cameron went with the more ambiguous ending that shows up in the theatrical release. Sarah Connor, her son John, and the T-800 made an effort to prevent Judgment Day by destroying headquarters and it lead to an alternate future that shows Sarah Connor as a grandmother, proving that the future had been altered. A key quote from The Terminator was retconned to include the phrase, "There is no fate but what we make for ourselves."