well, there are two easily possible reasons to dislodge the paradox: "starter dad" like the boyfriend from the 1st movie that didn't show up to meet sarah... one time travel that creates a different dad self-propagates the "proper" conner kid in the movie iteration as it's no way to say that was the first time travel... other possibility would be that it's mistaken identity, and there was a different woman supposed to give birth to john, but the nature of the terminator plot shifts it to a new john conner because of the first time travel.
Actually time travel is quite easily understood. Read up on stephen hawkings theory on the subject and a few other theoretical physicists. Basically what it mostly comes down to is your current time line is your time line. Nothing can change that. If you leave your time you have effectively entered another reality where essentially nothing you do will have any bearing on you in that instant or your previous timeline(your original reality). You have been removed and become an x-factor as I understand it. This quite easily accounts for any of these paradoxes you are so confused with. It's funny you bring this up because on Lost they just went through the same sort of time travel paradox and it was a little difficult to grasp at first but when you look at it this way it makes sense. If Mr. Hawking says it's possible I will believe him over anyone here. Even einsteins equations predicted that time travel was possible.
the debatable thing even with Hawking's theories on the matter the lack of a working knowledge of dimensional shifting, we would have to have greater knowledge and understanding of higher levels of them beyond the 4 spacetime one's we're familiar with. now, if you want to look at it being a different "reality" and ignore dimensions, then you run the issue of "where is this other infinite universe" physically located? if its not in the same physical space but in a different higher dimension, then where?
Is reality different than dimension? Some say yes and some say no. I would tend to think that they are one and the same. On a side note I just picked up "A Brief History of Time" and am looking forward to reading it. I have heard it is pretty well but is difficult to wrap your head around in some areas without a fairly decent understanding of physics. We'll see how I do. After I am through with this book I plan on getting started on "The Universe in a Nutshell".
well, my point was that without giving definition to higher order dimensions, how can anybody's current theory on time travel and the inciting of branching realities exisit? would a branch become a phase shift in higher dimension? would that phase occur as a wave function like we observe in non-particle light and would negative shifts be possible? is the simple act of a single atom traveling causing a universe wide cascade before any "events" are altered and would the stength of shift be determined by the amount of mass/energy traveling? should a traveler only cause a branching cascade by altering an event, would that not require a defined conclusion of fate and predetermination of how events "should be" based on no time travel, but a linear view of time already can't sustain an altered rate of passage without the basis of large increases in physical motion (relativity). now, all these questions are based on time travel and reality branching occuring on perhaps 1 or 2 additional dimensions. Should String or M-theory be correct, that accounts for only half of them. perhaps on higher planes, portions of a multiverse are converging and universes are merging. perhaps that's even happened here and its been unseen or happens so often that deja vu is the only observation of it. now, i realize that i've gone way off topic to address temporal paradox exception theories, but it's just like the "Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs" measurement of speed... commonly seen as stupid or a mistake until the context is understood. that being said, i hope that we get a movie extending from the tv show instead of from this movie. i'd love to see what season 3 would have included and feel burned once again for getting hooked on a Fox show
nothing like a mama joke to pull the conversation back to "reality" though which one is the question.
I always enjoyed and hate the time travel discussion when the "parallel universes/alternate timeline" thing comes up. That just destroys all sense in the discussion. Why? Well, you know there is a timeline where Kyle goes back in time and his zone in is just before a garbage truck cross that location and therefore kills him instantly. And of course the general idea of "I'm going to send this/that and another back in time for this or that" but really, you know already if it works or not since you are where you are with what you have. Salvation 7/10. I went in with expectations, they weren't met. I wasn't overly disappointed though and thought it was fairly decent. I know, i know "what?" yeah, it didn't suck.