Weird idea for a Dr. Who / Terminator crossover

[ffutures]

The whole basis of the Terminator franchise is a stonking huge time paradox. The Terminators and Skynet appear to exist solely because time travellers take Terminator technology back to the past - there is very little real evidence that Skynet will ever exist without Terminator intervention. John Connor only exists because future John Connor sends someone back to keep his mother alive. And so forth.

Now, if this was a Doctor Who story you'd have big problems with a time paradox like that - the Reapers would start to appear to destroy it.

In a DW / Terminator crossover why isn't that happening? The answer has to be that Sarah Connor and John Connor are still making changes - "no fate but what we make" - and until there's a definite outcome the time change hasn't gelled.

So the whole thing will continue in flux until the humans win (fat chance) or John Connor is killed. At which point the Reapers start to appear, destroying all evidence of the paradox and blotting it out from history. With John Connor gone he can't send people back to the past, which means that he will never be born, which means that there is no reason to ever send a terminator back to kill Sarah, which means that there is no real foundation for Skynet's existence... The whole time loop vanishes forever. Back in nineteen-eighty-whatever Sarah has a boring evening at home, comes back to find that her flatmate and her boyfriend have left a horrible mess, has a huge row with them, and generally goes about her normal life. There is no John Connor, no terminators, nothing. It's all gone, edited out of time by the Reapers.

I pass this along for anyone who wants to use it.

Comments

[beccaelizabeth]

Reapers appear when something didn't happen that did.
When something did happen that did it's more like Blink, where he could only send her messages cause she'd written them down already.
Not a paradox, just a loop.

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

I think it would be neat if at some point in the timeline John figures out how to get rid of the time paradox and sacrifices himself to make it happen. Then the last episode of SSC could end like you describe with Sarah's boring evening. But Hollywood wants more money and more sequels so it will never happen.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Mm. I hated the Reapers as the stupid unnecessary plot device they were, and was glad they never appeared again. But the whole Terminator thing is explicable in the "Proteus Operation" model of time travel. Follow.

Original "real" timeline - Skynet comes to exist a few decades or centuries down the line, develops time travel, sends Terminator tech back knowing that humans will implement it and thus bring about their conquest a lot earlier, maybe before the machines started consuming each other for metal. This creates

New timeline 1: Skynet sub one comes to exist in 1997. John Connor, who had a different father at this point but the same surname, heads the revolt and inconveniences Skynet sub one enough that they send a Terminator back to before their previous drop point, to stop him being born. The rebels use the same cycle of the machine, or ride the same time-eddy or something, to send back Kyle Wotsisface. This creates:

New timeline 2. The remains of the first Terminator become the trigger for Skynet sub two. John and Sarah survive, so Skynet sub two send the Silver Surfer--sorry, I mean the T1000, back to kill them, and the rebels rinse and repeat with a reprogrammed Arnie. This causes

New timeline 3, which branches off after the destruction of the first Terminator. And so on.

All four timelines, in this model, are still proceeding on track, but because we are in new timeline 3 (or whatever number it is by this time) we don't know what's happening in other timelines. Even had there been any way to get back to the future for the time travellers, the future they got back to would have been the one in the timeline they caused--the first Terminator would have travelled back along new timeline 2, the T1000 along new timeline 3, and so on.

I wouldn't bother trying to make sense of time theory as nuWho has it. The original series was sketchy enough. Just bug your eyes, puff out your cheeks, mutter "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" or some such magic words, and say "that's just the way it is."

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a much more likely model of time, and one I like better, but it explicitly isn't the Dr. Who model, which is why I thought of this.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

As Larry Niven once pointed out, if it is possible to go back in time and change the past, then time travel will never be invented, because every time it *is* invented, someone goes back in time and changes the past, until someone makes a change that results in no one ever inventing time travel.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

The Reapers don't show up to stop all paradoxes, they just show up when a paradox occurs at an already damaged bit of space time. Rose effectively let them in when she created two paradoxes in rapid succession; 1) by being in two places at once, and then 2) saving her dad.

DW already supports the "predestination paradox" already; intervention by the Doctor has caused the burning of Rome, the destruction of Pompeii, the Great Fire of London (twice), the abandoning of the Mary-Celeste, the burning down of the original building upon which UNIT HQ was raised etc.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Maybe. But sometimes predestination paradoxes _shouldn't_ happen, and given how many times the Terminator franchise has changed time I suspect it's one of them.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

It always amused me to note that the best way for Sarah Connor to defeat Skynet was to let it kill her in the original movie :-)