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Here's what I figure Skynet was doing with the humans. Skynet was obviously working on it's "secret weapon" which turned out to be a time machine. Future John Connor knew what it was - he's the only one who would. Clearly Future JC knew that, at some point, Skynet would develop a time machine and he'd have to capture it to send people back. That's what Skynet was doing with the jet engines and jet fuel - they were parts to the time machine. At the end, you say a bunch of jet engines placed around it. It's odd that they know how to make a time machine with about a dozen jet engines in the future but those same people are able to make one that fits inside a bank vault from scattered 20th century parts... but let's forget about that for a while.

Clearly the future time machine can only send back living tissue (or things covered with living tissue). It seems the time machine used at the bank is different because it sent back Cromartie's bare metal head. But, I think Skynet was using the humans to gather blood and tissue from them so as to be able to use the time machine it was making. Otherwise, there would be no way to use it. Maybe the terminators at that point were not covered with real flesh, only a realistic substitute (but cameron was there... then again, she was with the humans... who knows).

Future John was able to capture the time machine and while it's unclear why the humans were freed, he is using it to save himself now. He already sent Kyle back on a "secret mission" that the black future guy refused to tell Derek Reese about. That's why Kyle never came out of the time machine building (forget what they called it).

So, that's what I think was going on here. We learned that jet engines are a major component of time machines. That's innarestin' at the very least.

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One more thing to note. We've learned that it takes human blood to somehow convert into synthetic blood which is used by terminators to generate their flesh. Cromartie's formula. So, Skynet was draining blood from the human prisoners down in the basement. That's why they were so tired - low blood. Skynet probably took just enough blood not to kill them (so they'd make more).

So, Skynet was working on its time machine (the "secret weapon") and part of that plan was capturing humans so as to take their blood in order to make real flesh to cover terminators with so that Skynet could send back terminators via the time machine.

Makes sense.

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"Kyle Reese also changed actors for the future-flashes. No doubt Michael Biehn was similarly unaffordable."

Michael Biehn is nearly 52. For him to play 26 again would almost be as big a stretch as Linda Hamilton playing 19 in the original movie. I thought they did a great job of finding an actor who not only resembled him, but sounded a bit like him as well--or was the voice manipulated?

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Its not a time paradox. The future is the future, which hasn't happened yet, by changing the future Derek is now from a different future, but he still remembers the one he was in because it's his past. See? Well it makes perfect sense to me!

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Also, you know what we have now? A quest! Andy Goode said that he was working with other people, which will obviously be a point later on. So the next task will be to find them.

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I looked away during the last few scenes and didn't catch what John's uncle was doing, other than shooting someone or something with a silencer. Can someone tell me what was going on there?

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Find them and kill them!

Great episode, glad to see things are starting to get interesting.

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I think Cameron pocketed the chip because it's one of her kind. It was an emotional reaction.

See, tactically it doesn't really matter. if she lost control of it, that would mean that she herself had been defeated, and the future is screwed anyway. keeping it doesn't necessarily mean she's evil either. I think she's part of a branch-off line of Terminators that exist in this new reality: thinking, feeling and *lonely* Terminators.

Hey, it's a theory.

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I actually enjoyed this episode. It seems the actors are getting into their characters and the story is starting to get interesting. Hopefully the show gets good enough to escape the axe.

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Ryan, we are shown Derek killing Andy Goode.

Now we have to assume that Andy Goode may have told Derek some of the names of the people he worked with building Skynet.

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"They all but set up her own turn to evil in the future-flash when one of the captured Terminators revert back to shooting people and Cameron responds after defeating it, 'Sometimes they go bad. We don't know why.'"

Actually, they just leave you guessing. The scene merely illustrates the risk, but we don't know where her path is. With Cameron pocketing the chip, I see a number of possibilities.

1. She's showing some type of emotional attachment.
2. She's acting secretly on future John's orders, doing something that past John and Sarah wouldn't like.
3. She is a double-agent for Skynet.
4. She's acting independent of anyone's orders and doing something that we can't foresee. Maybe she's doing something she thinks will help. Maybe she has ambitions of her own.
5. She's "gone bad" and is either acting erratically or choosing to create Skynet independently.
6. She's doing that is far less nefarious than what it looks like.

We should also note that she chose to bring that bar of alloy back with her. Why? Is she building another Terminator?

As was established in T2 and now has been established in TSCC (including this episode), Terminators can have personalities and emotions, though probably not the same as humans. In the director's cut of T2, there was an additional scene where Arnie's T800 talked about how Skynet would set their CPUs to "read only" to prevent them from learning and expanding their program. John and Sarah then proceeded to set his processor to "read/write" to allow him to change it, which explains why the T800 became increasingly inquisitive, questioning, and eventually, in a way, human.

Assuming that that's the case in TSCC, Cameron might be taking steps toward liberating the Terminators (who, though sentient, are deprived of free will), instead of simply destroying Skynet. Anyway, like Malren said, it's a theory.

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Am I the only one who is bothered by how mean Sarah is to the Glaubot? Sarah Connor should know better than anyone that machines don't think or feel, they merely do what they're programmed to do, and while Skynet as a whole is bad, arguably "evil", individual robots are not. They may be programmed for evil things, but the ones that are programmed to help them are not worthy of her hostility. It seems very misdirected. It was certainly understandable for her to be scared and suspicous of the Arnold-bot in T2 (same model that tried to kill her in T1). But by the end of T2, Sarah seemed to like and even respect the terminator, admitting it was the closest thing to a father that John ever had, among other positive statements.

So, to see Sarah be such a bitch to Cameron-Glaubot (I don't like that Terminators have actual names in this show, it's my only serious beef) seems uncharacteristic of her, seriously unwarranted, and bordering on stupid (why piss off the robot trying to help you?).

I get the impression that next week we'll learn a big, dark secret about Cameron Glaubot (something on the videotape?).

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"Am I the only one who is bothered by how mean Sarah is to the Glaubot? Sarah Connor should know better than anyone that machines don't think or feel, they merely do what they're programmed to do, and while Skynet as a whole is bad, arguably 'evil', individual robots are not. They may be programmed for evil things, but the ones that are programmed to help them are not worthy of her hostility."

Just a quibble here, but as sentient "cybernetic organisms," they aren't just carrying out a program any longer. They have an ability to truly perceive and comprehend, though as I said before, the limit with individual Terminators is that they have a hardware-based lock that limits what their minds are capable of. So, Skynet really is evil, but you could say Terminators aren't.

Nonetheless, I do find it odd. She knows first hand that Terminators can display some type of "humanity" ("I know now why you cry.") and that they aren't just mere hardware. Cameron, more or less, a person, with a mind and some of a personality, but Sarah refuses to acknowledge that.

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