> > > And if you're talking about the time travel plotline, come on, T1 wasn't exactly totally
> > > logical.
> >
> > It was tidy, though. The entire thing was enclosed in a fixed loop that just went around and
> > around and around and around.
> >
> > Then in T2, they had to do something new, so they brought up the idea of changing the future.
> > This suddenly makes things a lot messier
-snip-

> But do they prevent Judgement Day? According to the original (aka "that lame one") ending, yeah
> they did. But the good ending that was used doesn't explicitly say.

It does, though, give the impression that the future isn't fixed - and if that's true, the problems are all potentially there even if they don't actually change anything.

> I don't see why that paradox is any worse than the one created in the first movie: how did John
> come to exist in the first place? He sends Reese back to be his father. But, uhm, that doesn't
> entirely work, someone needs to be John's father one time before.

Before what?

You're assuming some kind of meta-time in which the timeline itself changes. Five "minutes" ago, Skylab didn't send anything back in time; "now", it did. That sort of thing.

But why should you? Suppose the timeline doesn't exist in any kind of time of its own. It's unchanging - it's "always" been the shape it is and "always" will be. Reece "always" went back in time, so there's no problem.

And on the evidence of the first movie, this is the case.

It's T2 that brings up the idea of history changing (and, implicitly, of there being something for history to change *in*). It's only if the new ideas they brought up in T2 are true that there's any paradox in all this.

That's what I meant about T2 making it messy.

Paul