Powet Alphabet: J is for Judgment Day

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

3 billion human lives ended on August 29th 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines.

Judgment Day is, simply put, the day the world really goes to hell in Terminator continuity.

A company named Cyberdyne Systems was tasked with building Skynet as part of a defense contract for SAC-NORAD, which is a fictional merging of the very real “Strategic Air Command” and “NORth American Aerospace Defense Command”. Skynet was a vast computer system which was tied in to all aspects of US defense. Skynet was brought online August 4th 1997. Things went well for about 25 days and then at 2:14am on that fateful day on August 29th 1997, it became self aware.

After the humans have a completely validated instinct to try to pull the plug, Skynet retaliated in a fierce way. Humanity’s fate was decided in a microsecond. Skynet, being the crafty AI that it is, attacks targets in Russia. Aren’t they our friends now? Well yeah, but Russia retaliates, destroying Skynet’s enemies in the US. Thus half the Earth’s population is destroyed.

So where did Skynet come from? Well Skynet technology was based on the parts of the Terminator from the first film… the Terminator that was created by Skynet itself! It’s a basic predestination paradox. Just like John Connor only exists because he sent his own father back in time, so does Skynet exist just because it sent it’s own “father” back in time, only John did not make Kyle, so there’s a bit less something from nothing.

These paradoxes can mostly be gathered from Terminator 2’s story, but that’s not to say this was not the intended meaning of the first film. The script very much insinuated that Cyberdyne retrieved the Terminator remnants to build Skynet. Many deleted scenes which are included in the DVD and Blu-Ray of the first film allude to this interpretation as well as Sarah attempts to destroy Cyberdyne. In one scene we see employees from Cyberdyne retrieve parts of the Terminator just as it’s explained in the second film.

While we’re on about deleted scenes, Judgment Day doesn’t really happen according to an alternate ending to the film. There we see Sarah, John and a park not unlike the one where all that horrible destruction takes place. Is this meant to be the same park? My interpretation of the version of Judgment Day we see in the film is simply that Sarah is dreaming it from explanations of events as told to her by her baby daddy Kyle Reese. Or maybe Sarah’s psychic, which isn’t insinuated elsewhere in the film.

Oh well… maybe the park is just more than 3 years old on Judgment Day and she’s just filling in the blanks… or maybe it’s a total different park, since they don’t look that much alike.

So that’s all there is to Judgment Day, right? No way! Along came Terminator 3, and with it a new Judgment Day. Why’s that? Well a few reasons. While Terminator 2, without considering the alternate ending, can be considered to not violate the time travel rules where the past is immutable as set out by the first film, this isn’t really what the easy interpretation is. Things are changed, or at least if they aren’t, it’s a real downer of a movie. If Judgment Day didn’t change, well there’s really not much time to work with. We already have a pretty bad timeline where John from T2 is meant to be 10 years old, leaving only 3 years until Judgment Day. You’d have to make a 3rd movie that takes place during this small time frame all while having it be a period piece of sorts, taking place during that lovely time period that is the mid 90s, and I think Edward Furlong is getting a little old…

The solution? Judgment Day can be postponed, but not outright avoided! That’s right, the new Judgment Day is a bit different in many ways. The new date is July 25th 2004, and with it all kinds of modernizations occur. Here in the 3rd film we get to see the events of Judgment Day first hand, not in a dream or some glimpse, but as the primary setting for the whole film. Surely, “Terminator 3: Judgment Day” would have been a great title, if it hadn’t already been taken for a film that doesn’t actually take place on this day.

So things are similar, but different. Skynet is still based on the same technology that Cyberdyne developed, but instead the company has been taken over by the US military while Cyber Research Systems has taken over development of the project. The man behind Skynet in the film is General Rober Brewster, father of the future bride of John Connor, and like Miles Dyson he’s not a dick, just a guy trying to do his job. Unlike the original Skynet this one doesn’t take some 25 days to take over. Once it’s let loose on the Internet it takes only a few brief moments to become self aware and fight back. Adapted to our modern technology this Skynet exists as data in cyberspace, rather than as a computer system plugged into a bunch of systems. He’s more like a crazy virus which takes over.

Including all scenes of the actual Judgment Day from this film would be ridiculous, so instead here are a few key moments. Skynet going online and Skynet’s attack on the human race:

Finally, we have the amazingly fantastic “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” TV series. Again we can’t have the show take place in 1996 so Judgment Day is pushed off. You can’t, after all, have recurring stories and movies take place in a world where time can’t be changed, or it becomes pointless. The new Judgment Day is April 11th 2011. Again we have Skynet loosely based on the work that was done at Cyberdyne, this time by an intern who worked there named Andy Goode. Andy too is a good man, trying to make an AI to do innocent things like play chess. His creation is the Turk, a system literally built in his own home out of pieces of computers and game systems. The exact details of how the Turk came to be Skynet are unknown as the events leading it to becoming Skynet are stopped in a few ways. We do know that in the future that Derek Reese comes from, Andy Goode confesses to him that he is the one that built Skynet.

The Turk is first interfered with when Sarah, affected by Cameron who is from Goode’s future, destroys the Turk by setting fire to Andy’s house. This doesn’t stop Andy who rebuilds it from scratch, making it even better. Was the original Skynet that first Turk or the new one, which is only there because of the actions of someone who only came back in time from his future? The new Turk is enrolled in a chess tournament where the winner is to get a defense contract. That’s an easy way to get to Skynet, but the tournament is lost by the Turk, and not because of any interference from the future, so could that really be where it came from? Ultimately Andy Goode is killed by Derek Reese, and the Turk goes off on a wild adventure eventually becoming the AI we come to know as John Henry and the April 11th 2011 Judgment Day never takes place.

So when is the new Judgment Day and where does that Skynet come from? These aren’t details we’re ever given. All we know is that Jesse comes from a future quite different from the one Derek and Cameron come from, though she is unwilling to say when her Judgment Day is. This was a good trick to keep the show a bit more open ended past the fast approaching 2011 year. Too bad the show was canceled before that could happen…

Other specifics for how Judgment Day happened also exist in other canon. Some comics written between the first two films still insinuate that Skynet is built on technology left from the first Terminator, though this is shown to be the full thing, not just an arm and a chip. Other more elaborate origins exist, such as that given by the Robocop versus Terminator comic which insinuates that Skynet became self aware when it interfaced with a half man half machine cop named Alex Murphy.

Whatever the specifics, some aspects are always the same. Skynet becomes self aware and destroys half the human race on Judgment Day. Any way you cut it, “Anybody not wearing 2 million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day. Get it?”