Missing Scenes, Good Anyway

Rating: 8/10 (14 September 1999)

There were two scenes cut from the final release that I think would have made this movie notably better, since they explained things that were somewhat ambiguous as it stood. If these two scenes were left in my vote would have been higher than it was.
The first scene was from the opening of the movie. John Connor, in the future, finally breaks into Skynet. When he gets there he finds that the machines have developed a time machine. Computer logs indicate that it has been activated twice. The first time was to the early 80s, where we first met the CyberDyne model 101. The second to the early '90s. John gets a volunteer (His father whether he knew it or not) to go back in time to combat the first terminator. While his crew is working on sending Kyle back, another crew is working on programming a terminator for the second trip.
The second scene was cut from the scene where Sarah, John, and the Terminator are hiding out in a gas station for the night. In this scene the Terminator explains that the chip that powers all the CyberDyne model 101 terminators is a "learning" chip. He went on to explain that when terminators were assigned to a field duty, such as this one, their chip was set to "read only" mode. Their learning function disabled. This was to prevent the terminator from becoming a rogue and threatening Skynet. On hearing this, John decided it would be best to set the switch back to "read-write" mode. The terminator allowed John to shut him down in order to reset the chip. THAT is why, the following morning when they broke into the station wagon and the Terminator smashed the steering column to hotwire the car, John flipped the visor down, revealing the keys and said "Are we learning yet?" Also, the resetting of the chip to learn mode was the ONLY way the Terminator could see that in order to assure the safety of the human race from machines like himself, he had to be destryed at the end. If he were left in read only mode, he would have simply carried on protecting John for the rest of John's life.
It is my opinion that these two scenes wrapped up what I saw as a couple of loose ends in the series. I'm hoping that there will be a later release with both of these important scenes restored. Even so, the series was VERY well thought out and written. Its a keeper for certain.