What stops Skynet from just sending later cyborgs back to the same time they sent the first terminator?

In each Terminator movie, Skynet sends machines to kill John Connor, either directly or indirectly. Each time Skynet sends a cyborg, it does that at a later date than the time before.

If Skynet has a time machine and can travel through time, Skynet shouldn't care about a timeline and simply try to develop and use the ultimately successful cyborg killer and send it back to the time where Kyle Reese and the T-800 first traveled back in time (or even before Kyle Reese and the T-800 showed up… for example to a time where Sarah is 4 years old and unable to correctly fire a gun).

What stops Skynet from sending later and better cyborg versions back to the same time they sent the first terminator (or even earlier)?

Answer

It wouldn't have mattered if they had. Nothing they could have done would change anything. Notice that skynet's attempts to change the past failed. We know this because when skynet sent the terminators back to kill sarah/john, they did so because John was kicking their ass. This gets into paradox territory, so bear with me. If they had managed to kill Sarah & John, then they wouldn't have had to send anyone back, so they wouldn't have done so. But, if they didn't send anyone back, then John would survive and kick their ass, prompting them to send someone back.

Skynet's flaw was that it didn't realize that you can't change the past. Indeed, Skynet created John Connor by sending the first terminator back to kill Sarah. Remember that the resistance sends Kyle (John's best friend) back to protect her. He and Sarah end up... "getting it on" so to speak, and thus John was created. Had Skynet never sent the first terminator back, John would never have existed. The events that have happened in Skynet's "present" have happened, and cannot be changed.

Now, as for why they didn't send more back, they don't send more back because they didn't originally. It's less of a "why didn't they do this" situation, and more of a "they didn't do this".

Comments

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