Terminator I’s timeline is not the “second timeline.” Its the single “unchangeable time” model, where the past and future interact with each other. The best example of it was 12 Monkeys, but it works in Terminator I as well.

That’s true from the standpoint of the first movie. However, I was looking at this from the persective of the series, which is definitively about a flexible and changing future (proven above all else by the death of Andy Goode). From this POV (which I like far better), the timeline of the first movie can’t be the original timeline. Instead, we have a continually changing series of timelines, of which we have at least 6.

Just my $0.02.

Terminator I’s timeline is not the “second timeline.” Its the single “unchangeable time” model, where the past and future interact with each other. The best example of it was 12 Monkeys, but it works in Terminator I as well.

Heron61 is trying to shoehorn the Kyle Reece story into a more “Back to the Future” view of time travel, which I just don’t think works.

I agree that T:SCC is awesome, though.

Wrong, and shows a total misunderstanding of time-travel and paradoxes. What changed from movie to movie is the concept of he timeline as immutable/mutable.

In the first movie - it was immutable: Sarah’s son was born to grow up and send Kyle back to father himself and grow up to send Kyle back to father himself etc. etc. worlds without end. That’s called a “paradox” and it’s a concept as old as SF. There IS no “original” timeline, as timetravel and the paradox and the father from the future are all an integral part of the timeline, which ain’t all that linear.

In the second movie, we get the “time is mutable” theory, also familiar, in which knowing about future events enables you to change the timeline, neccessarily creating multiple timelines, since the paradox is no longer a closed loop: if the war is prevented, how and why does Sarah’s son grow up, meet his father, send him back etc.

The third movie plays on a “flexible within limits” timeline that we saw in John Varley’s Millenium or Connie Willis’ time travel stories: you can change small things- but somehow, What IS Meant To Be Will Happen. If the hero failed to meet his wife at age X, events will conspire to insure that meeting at a later date. When people change variables in the timeline, The Universe adjusts other variables to arrive at the Destined Destination.