Terminator movies makes no sense & contradict each other.

[Onslaught Six]

And yet they never once showed how they got those levels up. Hence: magic!

The Matrix gave him "Energon" and woke him up and revived him.

That still doesn't answer how every other Autobot and Decepticon stays alive, but you know.

[JediTricks]

And yet they never once showed how they got those levels up. Hence: magic!

The Matrix gave him "Energon" and woke him up and revived him.

That still doesn't answer how every other Autobot and Decepticon stays alive, but you know.

That'd be the Matrix that sent dead Sam into Prime heaven? MAGIC!

[Onslaught Six]

Yeah, I don't...

Originally, Sam's weirdo vision was supposed to be the Primes telling him that the "energy of the AllSpark" had been transferred to Sam, which then got transferred back into the Matrix when it reformed...magically.

[Shockwave]

This is fiction, you cannot play "what if".

Uh... isn't fiction by definition playing "what if"?

[JediTricks]

Yeah, I don't...

Originally, Sam's weirdo vision was supposed to be the Primes telling him that the "energy of the AllSpark" had been transferred to Sam, which then got transferred back into the Matrix when it reformed...magically.

This is fiction, you cannot play "what if".

Uh... isn't fiction by definition playing "what if"?

For the author it is, but for the audience it is not - unless the author intends it to be. Fiction for an audience is a created universe, an audience can accept that universe's "truth" or reject it, but they cannot change it, a fictional work is what the author says it is.

You as an audience can discuss it and use it as a jumping off point for your own exploration of that fiction, creating your own personal fiction where you explore "what if", but that's not the same thing anymore.

[Shockwave]

Yeah yeah, I knew what you meant, I was just being a smartass.

[Sparky Prime]

Does it present a moral problem? No. There is no historical precedent for creating a sentient life form out of man-made materials and then enslaving it in real life, only explored in fiction. The exocomps aren't African or Israelite or Grecian or Armenian slaves, they aren't someone's children birthed from their bodies and invested in with love and attention and training from a village.

You're totally side stepping the issue here. Obviously there is no real world precedent, that wasn't the point I was making. The point is that enslavement is morally wrong and as is historically shown, going to end badly where ever it exists. Eventually any intelligent, sentient being is going to fight against it to get their freedom, regardless of their origins.

I was talking about the TOS Enterprise computer becoming sentient, not the TNG Enterprise computer. This shit happens a lot on Star Trek. Kirk had the TOS computer reprogrammed, not set free. Picard and crew may have ultimately been happy to take the computer's offspring to Vertiform City by trusting that it wasn't going to kill anybody, but they didn't free the computer itself, only let it drop off its kids at the pool and then accept that they could take the computer with them again.

Ah, well when you say the Enterprise computer becomes sentient, you have to be a little specific since there has been 3 shows based around a ship named Enterprise. Can't say I'm all that familiar with the TOS you're referring to to be able to comment on it, but for TNG, again, the crew had no control over the situation. They didn't have to free the computer because it went back to normal on its own after it 'gave birth'.

It was changed to exclude lab rats, mice, and birds in 2002:

Still doesn't mean there isn't laws and agencies that looks out for the welfare of those animals. The aforementioned office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) for example.

"Keep", as in Starfleet's order to move forward with the Hugh Borg brain virus, killing the queen in First Contact, killing the queen and collapsing their transwarp nodes in Voyager, and others probably I'm just not thinking of. Starfleet was very cross with Picard for not going through with that first one, and Voyager ultimately did pull off that last one.

Killing the Queen was never a plan to commit genocide on the Borg. The crew of the Enterprise E had no idea she was aboard, or even existed at that point. And as we have seen in every instance the Borg Queen has been killed, the Collective survived. You can't say with any certainty they didn't survive Voyager's last encounter with them. For all we know, only the Unicomplex and Transwarp Hub was destroyed, while the rest of the Collective remains.

That trial didn't grant Data the right of recognized sentience, only the freedom to choose to look for the possibility of having a soul, and in her ruling she clearly states she's not qualified to truly judge on this matter so it isn't a strong precedent in a court of law. Moreover, the exocomps are not Mr. Data, they do not express themselves and the only judgement claiming they have a "soul" in this matter is Data himself, not any human being, they only recognize the need to study further that possibility.

I didn't say it granted Data recognized sentience, I said it recognized Data as not being property of Starfleet and thus earned him his freedom to lead his own life with out someone else forcing him to do something he didn't want to do. That still creates a precedence for artificial life not to be treated as property and to be able to explore their own lives. The exocomps are still relatively simple machines, but that doesn't mean they wont eventually rise to a greater level of complexity and intelligence. Or other artificial beings like Voyager's EMH, who had a similar trial over his rights to ownership that he also won.

I don't need to use the benefit of hindsight, in the fiction the scientists running Skynet recognize the danger of the possibility of that computer system with as much control over national defense weaponry as it has getting out of their control, and they're not alone as we've cited several other fictions exploring this same concept and coming to the exact same conclusion: Star Trek with "The Ultimate Computer" and "The Changeling", and "2001: A Space Odyssey" - the amount of control over life given to a computer directly affects how much trust we allow it, the philosophy is strongly in that corner.

I didn't say you had the benefit of hindsight, I said you were only looking at it from a perspective of hindsight. Meaning you're only judging Skynet over what it did rather than why it did it.

This is fiction, you cannot play "what if".

As Shockwave said, that's exactly what fiction is. And the audience has the benefit of interpretation and analysis of the story for that purpose.

You just described how it's different, eventually, slowly gaining control; Skynet was born with instant genocide power.

How does that matter if it just takes a little bit longer for one to gain that control? Either way they could have killed everyone.

And yet they never once showed how they got those levels up. Hence: magic!

What? How is showing Optimus use the Matrix (which is explained as being able to somehow produce energon in this universe) to restore Sentinel's energon levels "never once" showing how they got those levels back up?

That'd be the Matrix that sent dead Sam into Prime heaven? MAGIC!

The Matrix was still dust at that point. As O6 said, Sam was sent to 'Prime heaven' because of the Allspark knowledge that was zapped into his brain near the start of the film.

[Onslaught Six]

What? How is showing Optimus use the Matrix (which is explained as being able to somehow produce energon in this universe) to restore Sentinel's energon levels "never once" showing how they got those levels back up?

What I don't understand is, how do the other Autobots survive?

[Shockwave]

The Borg are also shown to just promote a new queen once one gets destroyed anyway. In Voyager she tells Anika (7 of 9) that she was once a member of species 125. So killing the queen would only, at best temporarily disable them.

I assume the other Autobots were kept operational through their alliance with NEST. Assuming that the government gave them whatever resources they needed to remain at peak efficiency.

[Sparky Prime]

What I don't understand is, how do the other Autobots survive?

I'm guessing there are some other sources or methods of getting energon. Megatron just shows up in DOTM with some to feed the Younglings having apparently found some while scavenging around Africa.

The Borg are also shown to just promote a new queen once one gets destroyed anyway. In Voyager she tells Anika (7 of 9) that she was once a member of species 125. So killing the queen would only, at best temporarily disable them.

Also, when Picard remembered the Queen was on the Cube that had assimilated him and should be dead, the one on the Enterprise E said that he thinks in such 3 dimensional terms. Whatever that's supposed to mean, but suggests the Collective can more or less resurrect the Queen.