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Terminator
Machinima
Webisodes
Written by Andy Shapiro
Directed by Tor Helmstein with Ian Kirby
2009 |
A hacker referred to as the Ghost inadvertently discovers a method
of disrupting Skynet's signals.
Watch the webisodes at YouTube
Notes from the Terminator chronology
This story takes place during the future war in 2016, two
years before the events of Salvation.
Didja Know?
Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series was a
2009 series of 6 webisodes that appeared on the website
Machinima.com as a prelude to that summer's Terminator
Salvation movie. The episodes average about 12 minutes
each, telling a 74 minute animated story. For the purposes
of this study and the chronology, I have shortened the title
to simply
Machinima.
The term "machinima" is a portmanteau of the words "machine"
and "cinema" and refers to animated videos that use video
game animation engines to tell a story. In this case, the
story is told through the gaming engine of the 2009
Terminator Salvation video game.
Actress Moon Bloodgood here voices the character of Blair
Williams, whom she portrays in the Terminator Salvation
movie.
Didja Notice?
Episode 1
Episode 1 opens in the midst of the story and then jumps
back three days to tell how Blair got into that situation.
It's not until the final episode, Episode 6, that the story catches back up
to the opening moments seen at the beginning of this episode.
The four-legged walker HKs are T-7T Tetrapods, also called
Spiders by the resistance forces. They are somewhat similar
to HK-Centurions, but smaller.
The small, flying assault-bots are known as aerostats or
wasps.
Blair wears a necklace that appears to have a bullet as a
pendant.

At 4:54 in the episode, the license plate seen on the old
van has the letters printed backward!
According to "The Making of Terminator Salvation: The
Machinima Series" special feature on the DVD, the
new endoskeleton Terminators seen in these webisodes are the
T-600 Series.
At 9:07 in the episode, notice that the grenade thrown by
Blair says U.S. Army on it.
At 10:45 in the episode, a sort of Terminator motorcycle
is seen, an independently operating hunter-killer. These
appear again in various stories set in the Salvation
timeline, referred to later as Moto-Terminators. |
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As the Moto-Terminators speed through the subway tunnels in
pursuit of Blair and Ghost, they seem to ignore the fact
that there are a number of human survivalist tents along the
way. It seems as if Skynet could have easily wiped out these
underground survivalist enclaves before now.
At 11:09 in the episode, a couple of small, aerial HKs are
suddenly seen flying above the HK motorcycles, but Blair
doesn't seem to notice. And after she destroys the cycles,
the aerials just disappear!
Episode 2
As the beginning of the episode replays the
end of Episode 1, with the subway car crashing, notice that
the ruined yellow school bus, with a front-based engine and
hood, seen on the street during the crash, has now become a
flat-nosed, standard bus! |
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At 0:25 in the episode, there is a headlight on
a truck
near the subway car crash. Why would the light be on unless
someone had been driving it? It seems unlikely the subway car
would crash near where an endangered human just happened to be
driving in the Terminator-infested city.
Blair and Ghost appear to be carrying M16 rifles throughout
the story.
At 5:16 in the episode, the license plate seen on the
wrecked car in the background is SFCPL85, the same license
plate seen (in reverse!) on a van in Episode 1. In fact, the
same plate is seen a number of times throughout the series.
(Not to mention that the same wrecked vans (Ford E-350
variant) and cars are seen
over-and-over-and-over throughout as well.)
The crashed plane in the street at about 5:47 in the episode
is an A-10 Thunderbolt II, commonly
referred to as the A-10 Warthog, a military jet designed for
close air support, manufactured by Fairchild Aircraft from
1972-1984 and still in service today. Blair pilots this same
model later in the story and in From the Ashes and
Salvation.
At 10:45 in the episode, what appears to be an eroded and
stained
7-Eleven sign is seen through the gunfire.
At 10:52 in the episode, why is there a computer and monitor
set up on the roof of the building Blair and Ghost are on?
Conveniently, it allows Ghost to hack into the Skynet system
and disable the T-600s that are firing on them.
Episode 3
At 1:35 in the episode, Ghost drives the pick-up onto the
onramp of the North 110 freeway towards Pasadena. This is an
actual freeway in Los Angeles which passes through the city
of Pasadena.
At 2:22 in the episode, Ghost and Blair drive through some
tunnels on the 110 Freeway. These are the Figueroa Street
Tunnels. The latitude and longitude coordinates depicted in
the camera eye of the aerial HK chasing is approximately
correct for this area.
The coordinates depicted in the Terminator POV at 7:46 in
the episode of 34° 02 53.95" N, 118° 5 11.34" W, place the
scene in the city of Rosemead in Los Angeles County.
Episode 4
The helicopters seen in use by the resistance appear to be
Bell
Huey UH-1 models.
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At 12:22 in the episode, notice that Blair's eyes both
have the same pigmentation markings and iris lines in them.
Obviously, the graphics program just duplicates a single eye
design. |
Episode 6
At 2:29 in the episode, a freeway sign for the 101 Freeway is
seen. Route 101 runs from Los Angeles, CA north to Olympia,
WA.
At 2:59 in the episode, Blair
identifies the location of the resistance post by the symbol
painted on the exterior wall of an old building. The exact
same symbol, with the same paint drip streaks, is also seen
on a metal crate at 11:28. The symbol may be based on the
DNA double helix of organic organisms. |
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|
Resistance
outpost symbol |
DNA double helix |
By the end of the story, Blair's resistance cell has
possession of the key to use Ghost's program for jamming
Skynet and the cell's leader says they'll get it into the
hands of John Connor, who'll know what to do with it. But no
mention is made of this jamming technique in any of the
stories that follow. It's possible John did use it as much
as possible in the time in between Machinima and
Faith, but Skynet finally found a way to counteract
it. A quite similar "backdoor shutdown" method against the
Terminators is discovered during an operation in
Salvation.
When Connor's name is mentioned at the end, Blair does not
seem to know who that is. But in Salvation, it is
clear that John Connor's broadcasts to the survivors have
been heard around the world ever since Judgment Day and he
is well-known for them. I suppose since only his last name
is mentioned here by the cell leader, Blair may simply not
have made the connection to John Connor, who is not a
Resistance leader yet at this point, despite his popular
broadcasts to resist the machines.
Memorable Dialog
the rest of us weren't that lucky.wav
they
die for you.wav
you're
the Ghost.wav
Skynet was changing, evolving.wav
we were on the wrong end of evolution.wav
you even talk like a machine.wav
I'd rather have you walking.wav
Skynet and the resistance finally found something to agree
on.wav
one more chance to revise your response.wav
get that thing to Connor.wav
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