Star Trek and Terminator parallels

Last updated on: March 2, 2009 at 10:30 pm by Peter T. Chattaway

Star Trek and Terminator parallels 2009-03-02T22:30:00-08:00 Peter T. Chattaway

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It’s beginning to look like the Star Trek and Terminator movies could have a couple of very significant things in common — and no, I’m not just referring to their ILM special effects or to their sometimes overlapping cast members. (Anton Yelchin plays Kyle Reese and Pavel Chekov in the upcoming Terminator and Star Trek movies, respectively; Paul Winfield played the ill-fated Captain Terrell in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan two years before he played the ill-fated Lieutenant Ed Traxler in the original Terminator.)

The newest trailer for Terminator Salvation went online today, and reports coming out of WonderCon 2009 indicate that a new trailer for Star Trek was shown to the masses there, too, and should be arriving in theatres in the very near future. And based on these trailers — or, in Star Trek‘s case, the description of that trailer provided by ComingSoon.net and TrekMovie.com — it sounds like each of these franchises is pushing in a direction that may be new to the franchise in question, but has already been well-covered by the other one.

Warning: There may be spoilers ahead, but they are all gleaned from the trailers that have already been made public (and, in Star Trek‘s case, some of these details are also gleaned from the Countdown prequel comic-book mini-series that is already out there).

Let’s start with the plot element that Star Trek seems to be borrowing from The Terminator, namely time-travel and attempted retroactive abortion.

As we all know, the original Terminator was about a robot that came back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she could give birth to the future saviour of humanity — and in the first two sequels, the arrival of even more robotic assassins from the future wreaked havoc with the timeline, such that Sarah’s son John can now be heard saying, in the trailers for Terminator Salvation, that the future he is living in is no longer the future his mother warned him about.

The new Star Trek movie, meanwhile, begins in the late 24th century and, if what I have heard is correct, concerns a Romulan who goes back in time to the mid-23rd century to kill the parents of James T. Kirk before the man himself can be born — but while the Romulan villain does succeed in killing Kirk’s father (a detail that is reportedly acknowledged in the new trailer), Kirk himself will still grow up to become a starship captain, even if he gets there by a different route.

And just as Kyle Reese and a couple of reprogrammed Terminators came back in time to protect Sarah Connor and her son in the first three Terminator movies, so too it seems that the elderly Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy himself, will come back in time to help the young Kirk in the new Star Trek movie.

The key difference between the two series, in this regard, seems to be that there are many universes and many timelines co-existing in the world of Star Trek, whereas there seems to be only one universe in the Terminator movies, and essentially only one timeline, even if it sometimes rewrites itself. The crew of the Enterprise-D once encountered many Enterprises from many different universes, but you never get the sense that the John Connor who lives in the timeline where Judgment Day took place in 1997 could ever visit the John Connor who lives in the timeline where Judgment Day took place in 2004, for example.

And then there is the plot element that Terminator Salvation seems to be borrowing from Star Trek and countless other science-fiction stories, namely its increasingly complicated view of human-robot relationships. You can get a sense of that element from the trailer that went online today:

http://l.yimg.com/cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/fop/embedflv/swf/fop.swf
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.

The original Star Trek series (1966-1969) frequently made the point that computers and robots were inferior to human beings and should never be given the privileges, esteem or authority that are given to human beings. But Gene Roddenberry’s attitude towards such things began to soften in the 1970s, as he produced TV pilots like The Questor Tapes (1974) and movies like Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), both of which were essentially sympathetic portrayals of machines that go searching for their creators. Finally, Roddenberry made the android Data one of the regular members of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), even going so far as to devote an early episode to the proposition that Data constitutes a form of “new life” that is entitled to what we used to call “human rights”.

A similar evolution in sensibility seems to be taking place across the Terminator movies as well. In the first film, the machines were all evil, period, especially the one played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The second and third films introduced copies of the Schwarzenegger cyborg that were re-programmed to fight for the good guys instead of the bad guys — but while both of these robots were capable of some character growth, they were still more machine than man, and their identification as “good guys” ultimately rested on the fact that someone had fiddled with their software.

Now, however, Terminator Salvation seems poised to go one step further, by introducing a character who sincerely believes himself to be human and is shocked to discover that he has a robotic endoskeleton just like all the Terminators. What is more, the new trailer seems to suggest that this character will become essential to humanity’s survival in some way. He is not a mechanical slave compelled to take orders from the person who re-programmed him; instead, he seems more like an ally.

How, exactly, this character came to believe he was human has not yet been explained — but on the surface, at least, it seems that the Connors, who once regarded the machines as their bitter enemies, and then found a way to bend some of the machines to their will, must now become partners with a machine who is apparently siding with them of his own free will. And no doubt the movie will raise the question of what makes this new character so different from the rest of us anyway.

So, interesting times ahead.

In the meantime, a few more tidbits about Terminator Salvation came out of WonderCon. In brief:

Hitfix and ComingSoon.net report that whether the film is rated R (like the first three films) or PG-13 may depend on whether the film includes a nude scene that is designed to show what makes flesh-and-blood humans different from the machines.

Hitfix also reports that director McG is still talking to original Terminator co-stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton about finding some way to fit them into the new movie. He adds: “If the first movie’s about saving Sarah Connor and the second movie’s about saving John Connor, our movie’s about saving Kyle Reese.”

Finally, Ain’t It Cool News reports that McG told the crowd at WonderCon that “Skynet is gathering all these people in order to rip their stem cells out of them, using that as their main study for replicating human tissue.” One can only wonder how that might play into current medical-ethics debates.

MAR 5 UPDATE: The Star Trek trailer is now online, too:

http://www.traileraddict.com/emd/9305
Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 2, 2009

Canadian box-office stats -- March 1

Next Post

March 4, 2009 Newsbites: The science-fiction edition!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Anglican Planet Articles BC Christian News BC Report Bible Movies Bible Review Blog Books & Culture Campus Times CBC Radio Christianity Today ChristianWeek Essays Faith Today Festival Cinemas Guide Film Journals Georgia Straight Interviews MB Herald National Catholic Register Salvationist Today's Christian Two Chairs Ubyssey Uncategorized Vancouver Courier Vancouver Sun

Select a Month August 2025 April 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 May 2024 February 2024 December 2023 May 2023 March 2023 November 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 January 2012 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 November 2003 October 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 April 2001 March 2001 February 2001 December 2000 November 2000 October 2000 September 2000 August 2000 July 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 January 2000 October 1999 August 1999 May 1999 April 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 August 1998 July 1998 June 1998 April 1998 March 1998 January 1998 November 1997 September 1997 July 1997 June 1997 April 1997 March 1997 February 1997 January 1997 December 1996 October 1996 September 1996 June 1996 March 1996 February 1996 January 1996 April 1995 November 1994 September 1994 September 1991

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What Christian group worships on Saturday instead of Sunday?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Pentecostals Presbyterians Baptists Seventh-day Adventists