Time is like water. You can block its flow temporarily by causing or preventing certain events, but time always flows downhill to the Sea of Entropy, and it will always, inexorably, reach its final destination.
That is the premise of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," which is any paranoiac's wet dream: cyborg assassins from the future (2029 AD) come back to our time (1984, 1995, 1999, 2004, and 2007, so far) to kill John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance army fighting Skynet, the sentient military computer defense system which controls an army of machines which are attempting to exterminate the human race.
Brilliant and believable, which is what makes it so scary.
In 1984, a serial killer began murdering every Sarah Connor that he found listed in the Los Angeles telephone directory. This was the first Terminator, attempting to kill John Connor's mother before he was even born. This was a T-800 Terminator wearing a human skin, which came to be called the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101. Kyle Reese, a soldier from 2029 AD, is sent back to protect Sarah from the Terminator, and winds up impregnating her with John Connor. He also explains the future as follows:
On August 29th, 1997, the Skynet defense system, a sentient computer network which controls the United States' nuclear arsenal, has been online since August 4th. It has been learning at a geometric rate, and reaches the conclusion that humanity must be exterminated in order to ensure its own survival. It launches its nuclear missiles at its predetermined targets, knowing that the retaliatory strikes will destroy most of mankind. August 29th, 1997 becomes known by the ragged human survivors of the nuclear holocaust as "Judgment Day." Skynet begins manufacturing robots in automated factories, and begins rounding up the human survivors into death camps. John Connor emerges as a leader of the human resistance, and starts a war among the ruins of civilization, a war which is going badly for the machines by 2029. Skynet sees that its only hope of surviving in its present day of 2029 is to change the past so that its adversary, John Connor, is not around to defeat it. And so it begins sending Terminators (robots sheathed in living human skin, undetectable except by dogs who bark insanely at them) to kill John.
Thus the future causes its own birth via a time loop, because if Kyle Reese had not come back to 1984, John Connor would not have been born. Kyle is killed while trying to protect Sarah, who leads the Terminator into a factory and crushes it in a metal stamping press. Unknown to her, parts of the Terminator are later salvaged and given to Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, which reverse-engineers them and ensures that the Skynet computer system will be built. Thus, Skynet ensures its own birth in the past, just as John ensured his own birth via Kyle Reese.
Moments after sending the Terminator through the time portal in 2029, Skynet realizes that the 1984 Terminator failed in its mission, because 2029's timeline remains unchanged, and Skynet is still losing the battle against the humans. Skynet sends another Terminator, a shape-changing T-1000, back to 1995 to kill John, who is now a sullen pre-teen. John Connor in 2029 captures a Model 101 Terminator, reprograms it to protect him in 1995, and sends it through the time portal after the T-1000. After much mayhem, both the T-1000 and the Model 101 are destroyed in a vat of molten steel, along with the salvaged parts of the 1984 Terminator.
Judgment Day of August 29th, 1997 has been averted, at least temporarily.
Skynet in 2029 realizes that the T-1000 in 1995 has also failed, and sends a new, female-appearing T-X Terminator back to 2004 to kill John. Meanwhile Skynet succeeds in killing John in 2029 with a Model 101 Terminator, which John mistakenly trusts based on his experiences in 1995 with the Model 101 who protected him. John's widow, Katherine Brewster, reprograms yet another Model 101 in 2029, and sends it back to protect both John and herself in 2004. More mayhem ensues, and the Model 101 and the T-X are mutually destroyed. Meanwhile, a worldwide computer virus infects all networks, and John and Katherine take shelter in an old government fallout shelter in the mountains. The computer virus turns out to be Skynet itself; the system is not hardware, but software. Judgment Day occurs anyway on July 24, 2004, but John and Katherine survive to lead other survivors in the coming war against the machines.
Time is a river which cannot be stopped. But it can be diverted.
Now we have "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," a new series on the Fox network. It picks up the storyline in 1999, a few years after the events of 1995 and the battle with the T-1000. Once again, Skynet has sent a Terminator (model unspecified; perhaps a Model 102, since the Model 101s all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger) to kill John. A new, female-appearing Terminator of an unknown model is sent to protect him and his mother Sarah. The female Terminator helps them escape via a home-built time machine to the future (our present day) of 2007. At this point, Judgment Day is scheduled for April 21, 2011.
So far, the new series has done a very credible job of carrying on the Terminator storyline, with good casting, a passable plot (which is basically, "never stop running, because no one is safe from the Terminator") and excellent special effects. I think this series has a lot of potential, and I'm looking forward to watching it religiously.
