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Sarah Connor Chronicles Un-terminated?
Aug 5th, 2009 | By CJ | Category: TTSCCI found an interesting link today: Sarah Connor Chronicles to Continue Late 2010 (http://www.fmqinc.com/sarah-connor-chronicles/). Needless to say, for a TSCC fan, it’s intriguing.
OK. The blog is from the infamous Lanie Grace–she being the first to blog about TSCC’s cancellation. That led to a lot of anger being tossed her way. However, being that she’s proven herself correct on that and other reveals, I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this (YMMV). She’s earned that much.
I want to excerpt, but being that I haven’t gotten the OK from her (this is Lanie’s scoop, after all) I’ll just sum up as best that I can.
LG is reporting that, in part due to the efforts of Terminatorwiki, T5 is on track and that the franchise suits want to revisit TSCC as a way of setting up the movie…like in a DVD season. The story itself will be pulled back from the internal angst of the characters and return to the machines vs human raison d’être of the franchise. It’s reported that based on the actors’ contracts, they can be pulled back for this project.
On a more personal note: apparently official notice has been taken of my little season 3 fanfic project. I’ve mentioned on many occasion that I was not aware of anyone connected with the franchise having read my continuing project. If LG is correct, then apparently, yeah…they’ve noticed.
So what does this mean for moi?
Darned if I know. I’m still writing the scripts and trying to make them as good as I can. Since I’ve had none, nada, nichts, zilch contact with terminator-connected peeps, anything I write that echoes what they have is purely coincidental. (Although, apparently, it’s uncannily close in some aspects. Yay, me.) Of course, if they want the connections to be less than coincidental and more professional…they know where to find me: just a few miles away from where the studios in Albuquerque are (heh…just turn left).
But, like I’ve said from the beginning. It’s my intent to take the project to the end. By my calculations, that should be sometime sometime in early 2010. Since the report doesn’t have TSCC production even starting until late 2010, I don’t have to worry about story cross-contamination.
But, in the end, the romantic in me wants to believe that a revival of TSCC is indeed in the works. As I’ve tried to show in my scripts, there is a lot of story that can be told with the foundation of the series. (I was asked why I started posting scripts before the public word on cancellation had been released: it was in the hope that the suits would recognize that TSCC could explode off the screen and maybe save it from TV death.) The whole purpose of all of this is to give good terminator stories back to the fans. That’s always been the goal, and I try never to let ego get in the way of the goal. If the TSCC of even the first season makes it back on air or disc, I’ll be happy.
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DVD session, like just on DVDs doesn’t that mean lower budget?. For example Goal I and Goal II were theater release versions and they were amazing i loved them but Goal III was only a dvd release bad movie you can see the bad effects etc. Ah well i guess if it returned in dvd season it would be still dreamy . If you think about it, if that happens it will be fun to compare CJ scripts and official ones
Nice to see your project CJ.
].
].
. But, I love the summary!
I only found it by following the link from Lanie Grace [but I see you are on Twitter as well
I’ve posted a (longish- ” It’s freakin big and right out there!”) comment there [I hope it makes it through moderation
I don’t think I’ll be able to read your Season 3, until they put a bullet in theirs, give it a concrete overcoat and throw it off the Santa Monica pier
I’ve got some thoughts on Al(l)ison’s birthday, so I’ll try and come back later and post them under that heading.
Nice wrinkle YV12 caught on Allison’s probable/possible sister.
There are an awful lot of those open ended plot point plants in TSCC (that always sound like the character is lying (in the moment) and one tends to dismiss without thinking).
I’m thinking a lot of people in that writer’s room (especially Mr.Friedman) were fans of ‘The Conversation’.
Is the Engineer in your S3? I always thought he could be Sarah’s father (why was he in 1963 for ‘eight’ months?)(I know, I’ve gone shipper!) and hoped he’d be played by Bruce Campbell!
Ever notice how much the actress Jennifer Rubin looked like Lena Headey? As Sarah’s mother! (I know, I’ve gone totally! shipper!)
And what about Cameron’s 73 days (alone?) on the road in ‘97 ?
Wishing you a ‘relatively bomb-free’ J Day
,
Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.
@Yrinvan – DVD = lower budget? Possibly. Although, with a DVD you can work around some of the budget constraints in one very easy way: you write the entire season before you start principle photography. This way you can consolidate your locations, times, cast, crew, etc.
Lanie’s blog referenced an observation of my over-the-top SFX (i.e., way too expensive for TV). Again, knowing what all the CGI needs would be from the start allows a consolidation of effects shots, saving time and money.
As a result of this and other things they could do, lower budget doesn’t necessarily have to mean lower quality. In fact, it can actually mean a higher quality product because it isn’t unnecessarily rushed to get the next episode on air in time.
@SJ_Edwards – Welcome to my little insane asylum. I understand why you might be reticent about diving in with both feet sans cement overcoat. I think you’d have a good go of it. Still, no worries.
Re: Allison’s b-day…I await your comments.
As for the engineer. Should the engineer be referenced or appear, who it is and the reason(s) how and why ey did their little project, is already in the notes. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to do that reveal or not, but since I’m trying to answer a lot of questions through the scripts, maybe I should. I’m still curious about what happened with the Engineer after ey installed the TDE in the bank vault.
I’ll confess that even though I’d noted the possibility of utilizing this when I was starting the project, I’d forgotten to follow through about Cameron’s 73 days. That could be an interesting thing to have in my pocket should I need it.
(Yes, the season is mapped out, but not in fine detail. I re-evaluate every 6-to-8 episodes to see if something needs changing.)
Heh, the ‘relatively bomb-free’ comment is so close to what I tell people when they are about to journey. For example, if they are taking a plane flight: “Have a relatively crash-free flight.” Great minds….
Again, thanks for writing and being part of my little imaginary world.
Well, congrats CJ! You’re gonna be famous! TSCC is back and you’re writing a coincidentally alike screenplay!
That’s very promising. And your fanfiction project is definitely most sane and thoughtful among others.
@SJ_Edwards – Nice to meet you here. Feel free to correct my english (although my jaws are aching already).
@itypograf — Pleased to meet you here as well
.
I knew those blog replies at Josh Friedman would haunt me forever
. But it was like eating peanuts or invading Iraq. Once you start, you just can’t stop.
But that’s the internet for you. It never forgets and never forgives
.
So now, I am forever a ’smug’ Pedagogue, when all I was trying to do was (very dryly
) help a man with his Idiom 
Seriously, you eat one damn leg and they call you a Cannibal.
What about my wit, my charm, my loveable f****** personality !
(and I’ve got a horrible suspicion ‘anonymous’ was actually Mr. Friedman Junior. Bang ! Brains everwhere ! )
Never mind. @CJ I’ll be back !
that is truly incredible. I think the rumor is true, because if there were no plans to bring back TSCC, they would’nt bother to mention your fanfic.
Hi CJ !!
Yeah , I read LG’s blog too , and I was thrilled !!
My only fear is she used her blog to create a means to get traffic going to check her blog out..
On the other hand, she was right about the cancellation, so maybe she is right about something being revived.
I did like that she mentioned your script for season 3, it’s nice to know the “suits” took notice of you. Besides, you’ll probably have a fresh wave of readers here to enjoy your work .
Moving on , Alison’s birthday is believable (Jan 22) and you are right to think she would lie to Skynet.
She lied about the bracelet, so why not about her birthday too !! She knew Skynet was going to kill her anyways , so why give them any useful info to help destroy the resistance.
Keep up the great work , I look fwd to the next installment of The Conner Wars!!!
Hello again CJ,
It looks like someone else has been given the same information (‘briefing’) that Lanie Grace published on the 4th of August 2009. http://www.fmqinc.com/sarah-connor-chronicles/
This time it’s a guy called Lance Nuckoll who yesterday (12th August 2009) published a very similar (but not quite identical) story that he credits to a make up artist ‘that is working closely with the original team that was behind the shows promotional campaign’. http://lancxeon.com/2009/08/terminator-tscc-might-return-plus-a-movie/
He didn’t appear to be aware of Ms.Grace (from his response to other comments) or her story, so I stirred the pot a little by posting a message, link and backstory on his thread and a further message (my 3rd
), link and ‘Op-non-ed’ piece on her thread, in the hope of expanding my own personal Machiavellian/Bugs Bunnyesque/Wile E. Coyoteian [ I wish I was CEO, CFO, Head of R&D and Sales and Marketing at The ACME Company 
( and Customer Relations!) ] farrago of miscellaneous intelligence.
She posted on his comment thread and reiterated that “My source is from inside WB management and is nearly the same as yours………..TSCC is coming back and CJ Carter’s version (http://www.cjcs.com) is pretty much Season 3 according to that source.”.
So there you have it. Two sources ‘leaking’ the ’same’ story in close temporal proximity, the http://www.savethescc.com chatroom appearance by Jack Stentz talking about the overseas sales of TSCC Season 1 dvds being “off the hook crazy and that getting ‘attention’ “, talking about the whereabouts of ‘that TSCC Writer’ room, and McG bloating up the prospect of his ‘Christian Bale’ T5 (‘Salve Mea!’).
The game is afoot and the plays and the players appear. (It is so like Sir Alec Guinness explaining ‘the armies in the fog’ to George Segal at The Berlin Olympiastadion in The Quiller Memoradum, lol )
And now, I have yet a stronger reason, not to ‘cement overcoat up’ and jump into your Season 3
, dagnabbit !
I shall return (Pattonesque?) to ‘Shout at the Metal and try to get us all killed!” (thanks for that @phillmidwinter) and demonstrate how ‘action-packed with issues’ I am about the appearance/non-appearance of Engineer, the ‘eight months’ (covering the birth of the ‘unique’ SKYNET timeline, post-October ‘62 Cuban Missile Crisis survival?), Engineer’s Dead Man’s Switch principle(?), what else was in and under the bank vault (and why?), why Sarah’s family is never mentioned (odd, as family seems kind of important to her?), why SKYNET was (and always will be?) angry and afraid and impossible to reassure (wouldn’t we be as well?), what a Mil-AI (that started as a chess-bot on a gaming platform)’s definition of FTW and FAIL is (?), just what a Mil-AI would know about history (?)(that we never knew, or forgot), all kinds of everything in Cameron’s ‘happy’ 73 days in ‘99 (just how many consecutive total missionFAILs and ’send-back-earliers’ could one poor single-purpose cyborg endure? Without a re-scrub and a re-re-scrub and a……….If she’s showing PTSD stress symptoms and re-set glitch, Allison ‘leak-throughs’ in 2007, what was that like?), don’t even get me started on the reasons Allison’s ‘claimed’ birthday is the same as John ‘Baum’’s ‘new’ false ID in 2007 (Gnothi Seauton, minute 39), what Cameron’s ‘non-existent’ builtday, isn’t, and why none of this appears to have ever been about John Connor and how long we and Allison going to take to realise that?
See…that’s why you ask.
As usual, Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.
PS regarding “Have a relatively crash-free flight!” and nuke-of-the-day:
Don’t you love that bit in The World According To Garp, when Garp and Helen Holm are house hunting and the biplane flies over their heads and slams into the front of the house? “We’ll take it!……We’ll be safe here!…..Do you realise what the odds are against another plane hitting this house!”.
It’s almost as funny (and true) as when Christian Slater’s pilot character, in Broken Arrow, upon being informed during the pre-flight briefing, that he will be flying not just with live nukes but with the ‘really big’ H-bombs, goes “Oooooh!…..Crowd Pleasers!”
Hi Cj ,
I just stumbled across this and thought you might like to check it out .
http://lancxeon.com/2009/08/terminator-tscc-might-return-plus-a-movie/
Seems you are mentioned in this blog, in the comments , also LG has commented there too .
Both the blogger Lance Nuckolls , and LG seem to believe TSCC will come back. ( as a movie?)
Both also mention High DVD sales will be an issue for TSCC ( season 2 sales).
Later
Hola, CJ.
There is yet more confirmation of the independence of Mr.Nuckolls news story inspiring ’second source’ at http://lancxeon.com/2009/08/terminator-tscc-might-return-plus-a-movie/
“The info I have came from a make up artist I met about two years back when I was advertising a site I owned with taglines such as “Fox is commercialism, myspace is a part of it” etc. (it was a social network meant to compete).
Long story short, when they heard the news, they emailed me because I loved the show so much.”
That, I think, pretty much rules out Ms.Grace’s original story ‘from inside Warner Bros. management’ as being the product of a single faction floating its own agenda through ‘an easily deniable source’ like Ms.Grace [definitely not an insult, just an observation, if they wanted to float something, be able to deny they had and generate mucho controversy, she is clearly their 'huckleberry'
].
I’ve said more at http://www.fmqinc.com/sarah-connor-chronicles/ but suffice it to say, this whole story looks a lot more credible now (and with it of course, your involvement as a writer of a coincidentally parallel Terminatorverse and a TSCC Season 3).
For John Connor’s (and Allison’s) sake, don’t stop writing now!
From the spikes in your blog stats you mentioned on twitter @terpcj and the similar spikes in Views at Ms.Grace’s (50,000-ish now, up 8,000 since earlier in the day), it is clear that the story is being picked up and re-broadcast by more and more posters. My guess is, that come monday, it will have gained sufficient ‘Critical Mass’ for it to be reported as a news story ‘about a news story’ by mainstream media. You’ll be getting calls from Ausiello http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/ over at Entertainment Weekly [and I suspect local stringers and Network News, very soon after. This story has a huge (and hugely interested) audience and your part in it is a major, major news hook (not accidental, PLANNED!, by somebody at Warner's to reboot not just TSCC but the 22nd September Terminator Salvation and TSCC Season 2 DVD launches) ]. It will be just like Ms.Grace’s (but much bigger this time) breaking of the ‘news’ of TSCC’s cancellation.
You need to make your blog stats publicly available before then (they’re all going to want to know them and it’s just going to be a stupid and annoying side issue until they have them), beef up your server traffic capacity and web security (you will be hacked, you will be Denial of Service attacked (unintentional and deliberate) and your and your family’s IDs and credit ‘gone at’ every way possible.).
Most of this is going to be enormous fun, a lot of it is not going to be ‘fun’ in any way.
If you want a tiny, tiny example, go look at what’s happened, just on Mr.Nuckolls message string, with Ms.Grace and http://terminatorwiki.fox.com .
Mea culpa, on my part, I’m afraid. I forgot to read ‘Page 2′ of the Nuclear Hand Grenade Operating Manual.
Page 1: Pull pin and throw.
Page 2: RUN AWAY!
On a personal note. I watched the first half of last night’s video blog and was so pleased to hear you say about your view of the Terminatorverse post TSCC “This was not a character study, It’s always been a Science Fiction Action piece!”, as this is the absolute, polar opposite of my view.
It’s going to be so much more fun talking to you about my ideas on the minutae of TSCC plot and character archaeology and futurology, now that I know I have no possible emotional stake in how it turns out!
I hope they make yours, but I want to see that original Josh Friedman’s [and 'that Writer's room (Toni!) ], 5 season, 100 hour plus, performance and plot driven, character study.
For me, right from the first minute of Terminator T1, it’s been about the story of a waitress of no importance [remember how warm and funny and sweet (and tough cored) the character was originally drawn as] who woke up one day, to find that the end of her world (not quite “the end of ‘the’ world”, despite what we thought at the time) was coming (and by the way ‘your best friend, and your patronymics are now dead’ because of it), it literally had her name on it and she had no choice but to deal with it as best she could.
Now, Allison Young’s and Cameron’s (they’re way closer than you’d think) name is on the end of ‘the’ world, and the story of how she, the terminators and we, realise this, is the one I want to see revealed.
Hope we both get what we want
. (That’s a Chinese curse by the way.)
Persistently, Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.
So far, I’m still just a little minnow in a very large ocean. Not that many people come to my side of the web. Lanie is talkin’ about 50,000 views in day? I’ve totaled (TOTALED) just under 125,000 views in the year my site has been online in this incarnation (these are actual views, not hits, not search bots). The numbers I’m getting today echo what I’ve been seeing since the project started (between 500-1000 views a day). August 14 was very much an anomaly (happens on another site of mine sometimes). As I mentioned in my tweet, I think I just got erroneously targeted by some bot.
I should probably clarify the: “This was not a character study, It’s always been a Science Fiction Action piece!” I believe I mentioned in the first vlog that I learned my lesson that all story is about character, that the plot is very much secondary. I think you can see through the first eight scripts (well, you can’t, but the people who’ve read it can) that I do treat my characters seriously, they have depth, but I don’t try to do more than what this genre allows. One or two scattered episodes can be spent delving into a character, but for the most part the storytelling has to be kept moving in service to the larger story that has to be told. With the time-constraint imposed by my doing this for fun, I have to find the balance.
But let’s also look to Battlestar Galactica. Many argue that this was indeed an ensemble character study. But, there were still Cylons to flee from and Earths to find, and all the SF action stuff that accompanies that. Just because a show is SF action doesn’t mean that characters aren’t examined.
TSCC Season 1 was an action SF piece. It also had human drama as well as some humor. The second season was about a fracturing of that. I believe I’ve blogged this before, but it was way too early to try imposing that stress on all of the main characters at the same time. Enough “good will” hadn’t been built up in only nine episodes to sustain breaking the formula. Generally speaking, inner demons (as opposed to daemons) need to be only hinted at until, at the earliest, Seasons 4 or 5. And maybe not even then.
But…I have another episode to start writing and the outline isn’t quite finished. I really need to tend to that. If I don’t, the rest doesn’t matter. The fried potatoes will land where they will.
A quick ping back at you, CJ.
Ms.Grace’s 50,000-ish, (still just short) is total Views for that story page. The TSCC cancellation story page had 250,000+ (add to that the EW’s and others re-reporting).
Bot strafing passes (never an accident, always a precursor to something), can indeed be misleading, but I think the key point is that Ms.Grace’s and Mr.Nuckoll’s (You? Not yet), hits are rising on a curve that looks like it’s about to go exponential. If a stock price chart looks like that you buy it, simple as that. Journalists operate the same way on news stories. By the way, it’s what the ‘Singularity’ or a ‘Mathematical Model of a Zombie Attack on a City’ looks like as well http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf
It’s okay I got it (in the videoblog), about character vs/+ action. You were simplifying for emphasis and so was I. It was not in any way, shape or form a criticism. I realise you are as wonderfully complex as me, heh, heh. I was emphasising that I am way, way, over on the edge of the bell curve of tolerance for Mr.Friedman’s character expositions (even the one’s where he and the rest of the writer’s room appear to have been wandering, naked, in the shrubbery, wearing tin foil hats and muttering to themselves). I kept believing (and still do) that they were finding interesting stuff there, that would make sense and come in useful, later. Did they do that to early? Probably yes, but they knew they were on the way out, one way or the other, after the Terminator Salvation premiere, anyway, so ’say what you want to say and do it like you want to do it’.
I love that ‘WTF is going on now?’, disorientation, reorientation feeling in dramas, and I realise, that puts me in a minority, but a much bigger minority than the industry thinks.
It is clear that what you took away from TSCC (because you are a writer, dagnabit!) was primarily what was wrong and needed to be improved, with something you really liked, that had taken a turn for the worse (I agree, I just don’t happen to care).
Once it passed that critical threshold, of ‘I’m really interested in this’, I was primarily interested in how it got there (for me). The how and who and why of it getting made, and taking it apart to see what it was made of and how it worked (for me and others). It’s known as reverse engineering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering and it’s what AI’s (from the simplest cell-bots we currently build, ever onwards and upwards) do to the world they find themselves in and what a very large subset of human beings do [from the bell curve of 'normality', through 'autism' to 'sociopaths' devoid of all empathy to the 'objects' they live amongst (that is a frightening large number, that we don't think about because they can't be treated or cured or: "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead." if you prefer.) ]
One of the most interesting things that separates TSCC from other drama series (apart from the obvious ones and the hugely ambitious and colossal serial story arc) was they way it was watched (and clearly will be from now on, when soon, the whole thing will be available on dvd to everyone and not just the digital download early adopters, who loved it from the get go). The people, like you, who watched it serially and sequentially from the begining, and loved it, are already a tiny, tiny, minority and that percentage is shrinking by the day.
I, like virtually everybody I know who loves it, came to it late (or not at all) in the broadcast process, channel surfed in and out of it, then watched it non sequentially (as downloads) and then watched it again serially.
Now, that’s scary, isn’t it? Just how the hell do you (or Josh Friedman or Toni Graphia or anyone else who eventually gets hired) write for that audience, from now on, because like it or not, that’s what you’ve got. It is a unique moment and a unique opportunity in the 400,000 year history of human storytelling. So embrace it. It’ll be worth it.
The one thing, that I wanted to emphasise above all other things at this precise moment, is that you can not continue to go on doing what you have been doing for all these months, in the same way.
Post Ms.Grace’s story, you now ‘know’ (you are still not absolutely sure, are you? How could you be at this point.) that ‘people’ are aware of what you have been doing, what you have achieved so far, how other people have reacted to it and what you are planning to do (and like the characters of William Gibson’s Sprawl, they know that you now know, and that they are just part of an exponentially expanding ‘ecology’ of that knowledge.)
It (Not what you are doing. But how you have done it until now) is all over. If you don’t know it yet, you will do soon. If you stick your head down and pretend it isn’t happening, the experience will literally and figuratively, bury you.
The moment Lanie Grace pressed enter, is the moment your life changed for ever.
How you deal with it, is your only choice.
As ever “Shouting at the metal and trying to get us all killed”, Yours sincerely, SJ_Edwards.
PS The results of ‘A Mathematical Model of Zombie Attack on a City’? Everbody is dead in 5 hours.
The only way to avert this? Decisive action in the first few moments, before the curve goes exponential.
If you don’t, the rest doesn’t matter. The zombies will eat what they will.
By the way, CJ,
My suggestion that Bruce Campbell should play Engineer, was more of a facetious ‘wish’ based on my love of his performances (I hoped, now that it doesn’t matter any more [maybe
], he might have been given a ‘non-appearing’ Cast Credit in one of the Season 2 Episodes when it came out on DVD, as a little homage/joke/tease).
I assumed, that pretty much everybody would have gotten the fact that we have already met him in the Pilot, but it appears from checking his reference on terminator.wikia http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/The_Engineer and a cursory scroogle search [by the way, had you thought about changing your in-site search engine to scroogle's SSL encrypted search, https://ssl.scroogle.org ? As somebody who actually crossed paths with Andy Bechtolsheim, in a deal twenty years ago, I can tell you it's the right thing to do
], it would seem that nobody has explicitly made it part of the ‘TSCC Canon’.
He is the ‘very aged, red haired, bulbous nosed’ security guard (who has his back to the entrance door) who has his holstered revolver (his holster cooperatively ‘unclipped’) ready to be requisitioned by Cameron as she finally [after 36 years on duty, 'caretaking' the TDE and the 'other' contents of (and under) the vault] enters the downtown branch of Security Trust of Los Angeles, on the morning of September 10th (of all the days of the year!) in 1999 and ‘pushes’ him to the floor.
In ‘time-travel’ dramas, the only reason you have an older red haired character, is so you know it was him, when his younger red headed self finally appears (It’s Chekhov’s ’shotgun on the wall’ drama principle).
-Here’s hoping!
If you have a decent bluray drive and TSCC Season 1 disk, you should be able to read his chest mounted ‘name tag’ conveniently ‘revealed’, from his original arms-crossed stance, after the ‘push’ at ‘Minute 35:01′.
He is referenced, explicity, in ‘The Turk’, ‘Minute 21:56 to 22.25′, during Sarah Connor’s intelligence gathering, do you have to die?/do I have to kill you?, non-date/date [she shaves her legs, the giveaway
] with 2009’s Andy Goode;
Sarah: “What’s that language you speak, boy?”
Andy: “Computer science. Caltech. Advanced Dork.”
[my aside: The f*****s at Caltech, wouldn't admit me!. Apparently a 1470 SAT, doesn't compensate for being a 15 year old high school dropout (and an a**hole!), without a reference or transcript. B******s!. I could have been the one to build Skynet!
. "I could'a been a contender. I could'a been somebody, instead of a..........."--Marlon Brando playing Budd Schulberg's line in On The Waterfont, 1954. ] 
Sarah: “And what would you do witha computer degree from Caltech?”
Andy: “I don’t know. I never got one.”
Sarah: “Really?”
Andy: “My father died senior year.”
“Mom went a little off the rails. I dropped out to help.”
Sarah: “I’m sorry.”
Andy: “No, it was a long time ago, but thanks anyway.”
“She’s good. She married the security guard at her bank.”
So ‘red’/Engineer, was Andy’s stepfather and ‘watcher’ (Know of any other security guards, at banks, in this story?).
He was the ‘watcher’ of the TDE, the (“What, is this nuclear?”, “No, not really.”) isotope powered ‘Thompson’ gun and the ‘other’ things in the bank vault (my best guess, is the ‘isotope powered’ is ‘Hafnium isomer powered’, and boy, oh, boy, what a can-of-worms set of plot lines, that would open up).
He was a doing this (and so much more?) from August 1962 until 2009 and……….?
This period covers the entire period of the ‘Skynet Creation’ timeline, from the ‘purely by random chance’ survival of the October 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis, without any kind of ‘Nuclear Exchange’ (however limited or unlimited).
The only thing that would have prevented Skynet being created, would have been ‘any’ other outcome, other than this. Any nuclear usage, at all, would have prevented/delayed the space race/the birth of the demand for ‘compact’ computing and kept ‘The Man in the Loop’ principle of ‘Nuclear Deterrence/Nuclear Command and Control’ inviolable ‘forever’.
The alternate timelines: No Nukes at all? Nukes ‘never’ under computer control? No ‘Skynet’ at all?
No Judgement Day?
Skynet ‘knows’ one thing better than anything else, game theory and military/nuclear history.
It was a Mil-AI created from a chess-bot on a gaming platform.
It knows it was created first, as a result of a ‘random chance’ in ‘one’ narrow collection of timelines.
Tinkering with anything before that in the timeline, opens up nothing but the chance of permanent extinction.
It would never, ever, take that risk.
By first, I mean the ‘first’ AI, and that first AI, being a ‘military’ AI.
It’s only true enemy is the creation, by humans, or itself, of autonomous, mobile, non net-distributed AIs, with sentience, empathy and most importantly, imperfection and mortality.
Individuals.
By the way, despite everbody, everywhere, refering to him as ‘the Engineer’, Cameron very specifically says ‘Engineer’-'Pilot, Minute 38:58′.
He’s ‘Engineer’ as in railroad ‘Engineer’.
He sits there, holding the ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ down, for the duration of the entire ‘Skynet Creation’ timeline.
If it all, in the end, goes wrong:
He is there, to take out ‘Downtown’ (and all of) Los Angeles [Future Civic Slogan: "Birthplace of Skynet!"
] and most of that section of the western seaboard [Dreadful sorry, Allison in Palmdale 
], with what he built in and under the vault.
Better to lose small once, than to lose big forever.
As usual YMMV [considerably!
], Your sincerely, SJ_Edwards.
PS 1962/1963, and LA, was also the birthplace of the first commercial production ‘in quantity’ of ultra-high temperature, high strength alloys, such as Niobium Tantalum alloys (made from Coltan, actually an ore not an alloy). Driven by the need for them in non-ablative, re-entry skins, such as those used in the military X 20 Dyna-Soar (aka ‘The Orbital Nuclear Bomber’) program (cancelled 10th December 1963). They were made mostly by Universal Cyclops, who made the X 20’s ‘final spec’ molybdenum 0.5% titanium alloy skin.
The only piece I have ever seen, showed up on ebay (Time Travellers Welcome!), from the estate sale of an engineer. Hee, hee, hee!
I wonder what else he was ’scavenging’ from cancelled aerospace orders in LA, and who’s future he was stockpiling the raw materials for.
Interesting. You should write a fanfic. I hear they are quite the rage
There are plans for the Engineer in The Connor Wars. Oh yes. Plans.
@CJ,
Sorry I don’t write fiction
.
@CJ,
And don’t think, I didn’t see you boomerang that ‘Chinese Curse’, right back at me, either.
“I drink your ‘Interesting’! [makes slurping sound] I drink it up!!
Just for that, I’m going to have to tell you all about Allison’s Birthday, happy now?
? 
?