Post by TrekGuide.com on Jul 11, 2003 7:10:38 GMT -5
The paradoxes between the three movies arise not from multiple timelines, but from the fact that each movie uses a different type of logic to explain the effects of time travel.
I think the three time travel theories from the three movies can be summed up simply with single words:
T1: Destiny
T2: Free Will
T3: Fate
In the first movie, the characters simply acted out their destinies through time travel, doing nothing but what they were going to have done.
In the second movie, the characters knew their future and changed it (i.e., killed a man they knew would live and invent the Terminators).
In the third movie, the characters learn that despite their seeming free will, their Fate is being controlled by "divine intervention" so that the Universe's grand plan will proceed without interruption. The Fates use irony and coincidence to counteract the free will of mortals and set the future back on track as it was "intended" to be.
These are three quite contradictory theories that cannot logically exist within the same Universe, much as every Star Trek episode involving time travel uses a different method with a different theory and a different logical outcome. (When you hear Captain Janeway complaining about how temporal paradoxes give her a headache, that's actually the writer of the script saying, "I don't know what I'm talking about, so I'm just making up a bunch of paradoxes to make time travel seem complicated to the audience -- that way I won't have to explain it logically.")
Now, a well planned time travel story would pick a single theory and run with it, exploring the premise to its limits.
But since each Terminator film reinvents the wheel, with no consistent theory running through any two of them, viewing all of them as a single story leads to perceived paradoxes, since each movie is contradictory and mutually exclusive to the logic of the other two.
Time travel, in any single theory, does not create paradoxes itself. A logically written time travel story makes some kind of logical sense within its own premise. Paradoxes arise when conflicting theories are forced to coexist within a single narrative -- paradoxes are a product of logical flaws in the writing process, not of time travel itself.
I think the three time travel theories from the three movies can be summed up simply with single words:
T1: Destiny
T2: Free Will
T3: Fate
In the first movie, the characters simply acted out their destinies through time travel, doing nothing but what they were going to have done.
In the second movie, the characters knew their future and changed it (i.e., killed a man they knew would live and invent the Terminators).
In the third movie, the characters learn that despite their seeming free will, their Fate is being controlled by "divine intervention" so that the Universe's grand plan will proceed without interruption. The Fates use irony and coincidence to counteract the free will of mortals and set the future back on track as it was "intended" to be.
These are three quite contradictory theories that cannot logically exist within the same Universe, much as every Star Trek episode involving time travel uses a different method with a different theory and a different logical outcome. (When you hear Captain Janeway complaining about how temporal paradoxes give her a headache, that's actually the writer of the script saying, "I don't know what I'm talking about, so I'm just making up a bunch of paradoxes to make time travel seem complicated to the audience -- that way I won't have to explain it logically.")
Now, a well planned time travel story would pick a single theory and run with it, exploring the premise to its limits.
But since each Terminator film reinvents the wheel, with no consistent theory running through any two of them, viewing all of them as a single story leads to perceived paradoxes, since each movie is contradictory and mutually exclusive to the logic of the other two.
Time travel, in any single theory, does not create paradoxes itself. A logically written time travel story makes some kind of logical sense within its own premise. Paradoxes arise when conflicting theories are forced to coexist within a single narrative -- paradoxes are a product of logical flaws in the writing process, not of time travel itself.
