From: lb2e+@andrew.cmu.edu (Louis Blair)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.movies
Subject: Re: Mistake at beginning of T2
Date: 6 Apr 92 20:48:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: andrew.Yds=Y9i00VpPEDBnx9
	<l0zt36c@rpi.edu>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Ben Cushman writes:
>I have a quick question.  Was the T1000 organic?  If not, how  
>could he be temporally diplaced.

A large number of answers to this question have been proposed.
My favorite is to simply assume that like the Arnold from the
first movie, the liquid metal man was coated with a layer of
flesh that enabled it to travel through time.  After arriving,
this layer was discarded (thrown in a dumpster or something)
since the liquid metal man could pass for human without it.
Others like to believe that the liquid metal is capable by itself
of generating the necessary time travel field.  Another possibility
that has been suggested is that Reese was slightly misinformed
about what made time travel possible.  Maybe some quality of
life other than the surface skin layer was what made time
travel possible and perhaps living metal also has this quality.
Another school of thought is that the second movie depicts
the results of a second time machine with abilities different
from the one used in the first film.  There seems to be some
disagreement on which theory is endorsed by the novelization.
I have never read it.  In my view, everyone is free to interpret
the movie as they choose without any obligation to be consistant
with some book or other.  I feel the same way about scenes
discarded from a movie.  After all, the scenes WERE discarded.
They are not part of the movie.  It's a matter of making up
your mind what you are talking about.  If you are talking
about the movie released in the theatres, that is one subject.
The book is another subject.  Ideas that the film-makers may
have had at one time or another is a third subject.  These
subjects should not be confused.

Paul Jason Clegg writes:
>In T1, when they talk about how the time travel only allows organics,
>do they make any <specific> comments about the transportee being
>"alive", or just "organic"?

Just for the record, here is what Reese said in the first
movie:

_______________________________________________

D (on tape):
Why didn't you bring any weapons, something more advanced?
Don't you have ray guns?

Vl (watching and laughing):
Ray guns.

>D laughs, too.

D (on tape):
Show me a piece of future technology.

R (on tape):
You go naked, something about the field generated by a living
organism, nothing dead will go.

D (on tape):
Why?

R (on tape):
I didn't build the fucking thing!

D (on tape):
Okay, Okay.  But this cyborg.. if it's metal..

R (on tape):
.. SURROUNDED BY LIVING TISSUE.

D (on tape):
Oh, right, right.

_______________________________________________

Here is my
own attempt to deal with some of the frequently
asked questions.
_______________________________________________

>Didn't the humans destroy the time-machine
>after sending Reese through in the first movie.

The most popular theory seems to be that after
sending Reese to the past, the humans decided to
delay the destruction of the time machine long
enough to send the reprogrammed Arnold into
the past in order to fight the liquid metal man.

Another school of thought is that the second movie
involves the results of a second time machine.

>if flesh covered metal can go
>back, why not send a phased plasma rifle back with Reese
>in T1?  Or with the T500 in T2?  Just cover it in synth-flesh...

This is a variation on the question for the first movie:  Why
didn't Skynet put a phased plasma rifle inside a kangaroo
and send it back for Arnold to use?  Numerous answers
have been proposed.  My favorite is to suppose that the
process of getting living material to take dead material
back in time is more complicated than a simple matter
of surrounding.  Perhaps it takes months of preparation
to properly link living tissue with a metal object so that
they both go back in time together.  With its defenses
crumbling, Skynet may have been in too much of a
hurry to bother with this.  Another idea is that Skynet
weapons depend on broadcast power, not available in
the past.  Some people have suggested that Skynet
may have been afraid of causing too much disruption
of the past time-line with technology from the future.
Finally, some think that Skynet simply thought that
sending a weapon back was not necessary.

>Also, why do all Terminators look like Arnie.

They don't.  We saw one in the first movie that didn't
look like Arnold.  Terminators may have been made
in batches with only a few having the same face.  If
they were sent to different geographic areas and seldom
left survivors, the chance of trouble with terminators
being recognised would be small.

>After the T-1000 has Sarah cornered and is torturing her to
>cry out to John why doesn't it kill her when it assumes her
>shape? How does she get away?

The liquid metal man is about to kill Sarah when Arnold
attacks, almost splitting it in half down the middle with
that metal bar.  By the time the fight with Arnold is over,
Sarah is no longer around.

>Ok, why doesn't it kill her outright as soon as it can, after all,
>it 'samples' her in the lift in the assylum.  It could have killed
>her, and pretended to be her, crying out to John, as opposed to
>torturing her.  (I don't believe it gets some weird kind of pleasure
>from this!)

As far as I know, two explanations have been proposed for
this:

(1)  After having been frozen, some of the liquid metal man's
systems were not working as well as before.  Rather than
try something that might not work, the liquid metal man
decided to try and use the authentic mother's voice to lure
John back.  Later, with the mother no longer available,
and after having had more time to do detailed system repair
the liquid metal man decided to go ahead with an attempted
imitation.

(2)  On an earlier occasion, the liquid metal man had tried
to do an imitation of someone close to John and John had
become suspicious.  The liquid metal man may have felt
that rather than risk giving itself away because of some
subtle nuance of human behavior it would be at least worth
a try to use the authentic mother to call John back.