Apropos of cause and effect, JB wrote:
"So in fiction, all bets are off!"

Absurdly enough, I'd say fiction needs to be more believable than real life. If narrative logic doesn't adhere and sell the story, it's all the more likely to generate problems. In effect, I guess that it in part is a reversed notion to the old adage that fiction cannot match the strangeness of real events, in the sense that we would not buy some of the strangeness of real events if they were presented to us as fiction.  Verisimilitude is an interesting beast in many ways.

You think so? For my own part, while I really enjoy both films, I've always felt that the first one presents time as immutable, i.e. that the past cannot be changed, Kyle Reese needs to have gone back for John Connor ever to have existed in the first place.  T2 on the other hand has always seemed to me to imply that changing the past was suddenly an actual possibility.

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It's important to note that a deleted scene from the first film set up Sarah wanting to try to prevent Skynet's creation by taking action in the present.

Although it was cut, this still shows that Cameron was working with the notion of the timeline being flexible. He then found a chance to employ that idea in T2.

Although it was cut, this still shows that Cameron was working with the notion of the timeline being flexible. He then found a chance to employ that idea in T2."

I think I've seen the scene in question (or at least I've seen a cut scene) and as far as I recall it was strongly establishing where Skynet's creation would come from (which the second film follows up on).  However, outside of the characters (including in particular the Terminator's) futile attempts to alter history throughout the first film, the film serves the viewer a full circle view of time. John Connor was always conceived at that point in the past (i.e. Kyle has always travelled back in time, chasing the Terminator, who/which would never have gone back if Kyle had not already done so, because it is attempting to stop John Connor from ever existing). The fact that the players do not know that nothing can be changed (although the ending hints that Sarah has understood it in some sense), does not alter the fact that this parameter governs the first film's view of time travel. And such an approach to time travel doesn't really allow for any changes, since any and all changes would already have been made the first time around. Basically the past moment is always that past moment, travelling back to it has always occurred.

For a change to occur, time must be presented as if the past would in some sense be a room which allows for new entries into it (and entries which would then set new causes and effects and what not in motion and generate new future time ines).  As stated, I can enjoy stories of both kinds (though I admit that I'm a wee bit partial to the former), the attempt to combine the two approaches often muddles the waters and loses a certain sense of logic (narrative and otherwise). The sense of destiny which the first implies simply doesn't marry all too well with the sense of multiple or alternate time lines the latter is founded on.

Not using parallel universes, "can change the future" stories, imho, are almost always illogical and I don't like them.

If I can, from my point of view, T2 is another "Samarra-type" story: John Connors was not killed, but that's all, the future, too bad, was not changed.

Am I the only one that "Model 101" reminds Orwell's "Room 101"? After all, "T1" was in 1984...

JB,

Does this mean that you'll be sticking with the "cause and effect" style of time travel that you had already established in Next Men and 2112, or is that giving away too much???