Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

SF: discuss futuristic sci-fi series, ideas, and crossovers.

Moderator: NecronLord

Post Reply
User avatar
MKSheppard
Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
Posts: 29842
Joined: 2002-07-06 06:34pm

Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

Post by MKSheppard »

From the Dark Fate Thread:

chimericoncogene:
I've always been of the opinion that organized military force would allow for pretty rapid destruction of 800-series Terminators sent back into the past (one antitank rocket through the back and bye-bye endoskeleton), so Sarah Connor getting the drop on 800-series units as they chronoport seems entirely reasonable.

Maybe she was just late to the party this time, and the job usually consists of laying a few command-detonated antitank mines under the expected chronoport location (or not, GPS isn't quite accurate enough for that unless Carl has DGPS).
It's interesting when you go back and look at the original 1984 Terminator Gun store scene.

Lots of people over the years have gone over that scene:
The Terminator : The 12-gauge auto-loader.

Pawn Shop Clerk : That's Italian. You can go pump or auto. [hands the Terminator the pump action shotgun]

The Terminator : The .45 long slide, with laser sighting.

Pawn Shop Clerk : [hands the Terminator a .45 gun from the glass case in front of the clerk ] These are brand new; we just got them in. That's a good gun. Just touch the trigger, the beam comes on and you put the red dot where you want the bullet to go. You can't miss. Anything else?

The Terminator : Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.

Pawn Shop Clerk : [annoyed] Hey, just what you see, pal!

The Terminator : [looks around] The Uzi nine millimeter.
Why would the Terminator ask for a weapon that surely only exists in the distant future?

Why would T800 ask for a futuristic weapon

Basically, over the years the basic idea has been that this scene was to:

A.) Show that Terminators are not the cleverest things; being predisposed to direct action.
B.) Show fluff to fill in backstory: Silberman calls them ray guns; we get a small piece of the future this way.

But others have pointed out that it ties into the early mythology of the Terminator series regarding records destruction:

"Many records were lost, it was just being methodical. Skynet only knew the city and time that Sarah Connor was in."

Skynet's own records of 1984 military technology may not be the most accurate -- it knows that Westinghouse was researching them, but it may not know when exactly they became widespread military (and eventually civilian) issue.

When the shop owner says "just what you see," it passes the following information to the T-800:

1.) Plasma weapons don't yet exist on a wide scale. If they existed, the shop owner would have likely said: "Forty watt? The only thing they've got is that one watt thing by Westinghouse that weighs 500 pounds." since gun rags would have talked about it; and the implications of somewhat (vaguely) man portable quasi-energy weapons.

2.) Feeding from 1, it now has confirmed the threat level of the shop owner and organized forces (police/military) to be largely ballistic weapons only. Thus, it can reasonably begin active measures towards it's mission objectives -- measures that have a high risk of blowing infiltration. So it is now confident in killing the shop owner, and shooting people down in broad daylight.

As someone on reddit pointed out:
Imagine if the shop owner was a sarcastic asshole and said "we're all out of those, someone bought the last one." The T-800, not understanding sarcasm, would have been under the impression that there was indeed a threat out there, would have acted more covertly in his mission, and may not have attracted Kyle's attention until it was too late!
:mrgreen:
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
chimericoncogene
Padawan Learner
Posts: 335
Joined: 2018-04-25 09:12am

Re: Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

Post by chimericoncogene »

Hmmm... "Just what you see, pal" doesn't carry much in the way of information unless the Terminator can infer from tone and various other cues that plasma rifles do not exist, rather than just being unavailable in this specific gun store - which speaks to reasonable sophistication on the conversation software.

Odd that he didn't start his list of requests with the plasma rifle, too.
User avatar
tezunegari
Jedi Knight
Posts: 692
Joined: 2008-11-13 12:44pm

Re: Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

Post by tezunegari »

Or, it gives a nice retcon-foreshadowing considering the whole Genysis debacle:
The Terminator in T1 (and Kyle Reese) arrived in an already altered timeline in which Westinghouse never released the Phased Plasma rifle in, or before, 1984.
"Bring your thousands, I have my axe."
"Bring your cannons, I have my armor."
"Bring your mighty... I am my own champion."
Cue Unit-01 ramming half the Lance of Longinus down Adam's head and a bemused Gendo, "Wrong end, son."
Ikari Gendo, NGE Fanfiction "Standing Tall"
chimericoncogene
Padawan Learner
Posts: 335
Joined: 2018-04-25 09:12am

Re: Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

Post by chimericoncogene »

tezunegari wrote: 2020-03-20 06:35am Or, it gives a nice retcon-foreshadowing considering the whole Genysis debacle:
The Terminator in T1 (and Kyle Reese) arrived in an already altered timeline in which Westinghouse never released the Phased Plasma rifle in, or before, 1984.
While I know the Terminator 2029 site isn't canon, it always felt mighty convincing to me (well, the me of ten years ago, who thought Halo was hard sci-fi - in my defense, the only thing I had to compare it with was Star Wars).
The Terminator 2029 site kinda describes that timeline - a few years after 1984, where thanks to a certain Cyberdyne Corporation, the US military gets hypersonic drones, killbots, SDI and Skynet by the far-off year of 1997.
The science is all screwed up as usual, and Shep would tear the details a new one (although I still recall them as mighty cool), but man is the techno-wank cool.

EDIT: re-reading it today... the prose is as crisp and fresh as the day I first laid my eyes on it. It was a very good fanon site.

http://www.goingfaster.com/term2029/
User avatar
MKSheppard
Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
Posts: 29842
Joined: 2002-07-06 06:34pm

Re: Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

Post by MKSheppard »

tezunegari wrote: 2020-03-20 06:35am Or, it gives a nice retcon-foreshadowing considering the whole Genysis debacle:
The Terminator in T1 (and Kyle Reese) arrived in an already altered timeline in which Westinghouse never released the Phased Plasma rifle in, or before, 1984.
A lot of people have tried to use the fact that Uncle Bob, even before he encountered John in T2, behaved more "human" than the 1984 T-800 as proof of time cycle "loops" improving the Terminators by allowing more advancement and tech from the future to fall into past hands.

But, when you think about it; look at what Uncle Bob says in T2:
The Terminator: My mission is to protect you.

John Connor: Yeah? Who sent you?

The Terminator: You did. Thirty-five years from now, you reprogrammed me to be your protector here, in this time.
Think about that for a moment and try this on for size:

The resistance when they captured the Time Displacement Facility in the unshot scenes of T2 and reprogrammed Uncle Bob on his storage rack; they did far more than change some flags from "HUMANS = HOSTILE" to "HUMANS = NEUTRAL" in Terminator.ini

They basically wiped Uncle Bob's entire neural net from

Cyberdyne Systems
Series 800 Model 101
Version 2.6


and installed their own carefully modified version of Cyberdyne's Terminator OS, albeit an earlier version number = Version 2.4

Why?

Because Skynet likely placed all sorts of logic bombs and IF/ELSE/TRUE switches throughout the AI and it's pre-built neural net to trip up human reprogramming of Terminators.

So to be safe, the only way for the resistance to use a T-800 and have it not suddenly have a logic bomb trip and kill John Connor in the past, is to use a carefully vetted depreciated OS (version 2.4), which they've also improved to enable the use of reprogrammed Terminators with Resistance units -- i.e. they're a bit more understanding of human functional concepts since they have to interface with Resistance cells, as opposed to only faking humanity long enough to get close for Termination.

EDIT: This also ties in with the original theatrical release of T2; where Uncle Bob is an intuitively self learning system; as opposed to needing the CPU switch to be set to learn mode -- the Resistance OS has LEARN=TRUE from the start.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
chimericoncogene
Padawan Learner
Posts: 335
Joined: 2018-04-25 09:12am

Re: Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

Post by chimericoncogene »

MKSheppard wrote: 2020-03-20 07:21pm
So to be safe, the only way for the resistance to use a T-800 and have it not suddenly have a logic bomb trip and kill John Connor in the past, is to use a carefully vetted depreciated OS (version 2.4), which they've also improved to enable the use of reprogrammed Terminators with Resistance units -- i.e. they're a bit more understanding of human functional concepts since they have to interface with Resistance cells, as opposed to only faking humanity long enough to get close for Termination.

EDIT: This also ties in with the original theatrical release of T2; where Uncle Bob is an intuitively self learning system; as opposed to needing the CPU switch to be set to learn mode -- the Resistance OS has LEARN=TRUE from the start.
The movies and TV shows (I was a huge TSCC fan once upon a time) are a little inconsistent on Terminator missions. The movies mostly show Terminators acting as simple infiltrate-and-destroy units (similar to the average Special Operations wear-a-turban op), trying to avoid attention just long enough to kill individual units, whereas the TV shows occasionally portray Terminators as spies and saboteurs, with limited capability for long-term infiltration of resistance units and installations. The missions are very different, and to my layperson mind would seem to imply different requirements and specs regarding intelligence, durability, and longevity. An I-950 style unit, in particular, would be far more effective in the spy mission, whereas the T-800 series doesn't really seem to work for the spy mission (if the Resistance has plasma rifles and working trucks, do they still have metal detectors?).
User avatar
FaxModem1
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 7700
Joined: 2002-10-30 06:40pm
Location: In a dark reflection of a better world

Re: Modern Weapons vs Terminators and Terminator Intelligence

Post by FaxModem1 »

It's worth noting, that if you set up a kill zone, like Sarah Connor and Pops did in Terminator Genisys, you can pretty easily deal with a Terminator.

[youtube]www.youtube.com/watch=szSxq4pP4m4[/youtube]

Acid seems to work pretty well, after all, and if a Terminator doesn't know that you've set a trap, you can kill it quickly.

Makes you wonder why no one in Dark Fate did that to the Rev-9 with an appropriate acid once they were properly positioned in place. Especially as that would probably be easier to grab than an EMP from an USAF base.
Image
Post Reply