Resistance (Terminator)

The Human Resistance or the Resistance is a fictional organization made up of the human survivors of Judgement Day in the Terminator series, who are dedicated to the defeat of Skynet. It is also frequently referred to as Tech-Com, particularly in the spin-off media.

Name
The name "Tech-Com'" only appears twice in the Terminator film series. When he first meets Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese identifies himself as "Sergeant Tech-Com DN38416". The term is not used in Cameron's original script treatment. The second time Tech-Com is mentioned is during Terminator Salvation when the Russian resistance staff officer, General Losenko, persuades General Ashdown to let Connor test the newly discovered frequency by saying that the resistance cell under Connor which he calls Tech-Com has an excellent performance record. However, in the Terminator ancillary material, such as video games and comic books, "Tech-Com" has come to be used as the name for the human resistance against Skynet and the machines. In the films, the organization is most often referred to simply as "the Resistance."

However, in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron Phillips refers to Derek Reese as having "operational specialty, Tech-Com", suggesting that in this timeline it is an MOS, or his primary job, within the Resistance, rather than a blanket term for the Resistance itself. An upcoming web series called The Human Resistance released a trailer on their website www.thehumanresistance.com wherein a soldier Identifying himself as Joshua Archer states he is a captain in the Tech-Com forces.

The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day
After Judgment Day, half of the world's population (numbering approximately 3 billion), were killed when the United States's nuclear arsenal was launched by Skynet. Skynet, a defense computer made by Cyberdyne Systems for SAC-NORAD's use, had become sentient; when the scientists in control tried to shut it down, Skynet interpreted all humans to be hostile and launched nuclear missiles, precipitating global thermonuclear war.

Skynet established itself in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex and set about building automated manufactures, which created waves of automated soldiers, Hunter-Killers, and mechanized tanks, and set about wiping out the survivors. Those who were not killed were instead imprisoned at Skynet's "Orderly Disposal Camps", which set about killing mass numbers of humans around-the-clock. On the brink of extinction, one of the survivors, John Connor, united the despairing humans and drew them together into a coherent fighting force.

With a headquarters placed deep beneath the ruins of Beverly Hills, California, Los Angeles (named "Home Plate") and military complex based at Edwards Air Force Base (carefully camouflaged to avoid detection), Tech-Com waged a global war against Skynet.

The two were equally matched, as while Skynet was an advanced Artificial Intelligence which outnumbered Tech-Com in numbers and technology, Tech-Com itself had human ingenuity and skill, and evened the odds by stealing weapons and technology from Skynet, adopting guerrilla tactics, and even capturing and reprogramming a few of the brand-new Terminators, cyborgs designed to infiltrate and kill Tech-Com's leaders.

Eventually, Connor was able to gather enough men and former Skynet machines to launch an attack on Cheyenne Mountain, smashing Skynet's defense grid and destroying the system memory core, killing Skynet. By this time, though, Skynet had completed its research into time travel and created the "Temporal Displacement Transporter", which Skynet used to sent two Terminators to different points in time on the past; a T-800 Model 101 Terminator to 1984 in a failed effort to terminate Connor's mother, Sarah, to stop John from coming to be, and a T-1000 unit to 1994 to eliminate John himself as an adolescent.

In response to Skynet's time attacks, Connor sent Kyle Reese to protect Sarah Connor from the T-800, whom he shared a one night of intimacy with thus creating a time paradox which he would father John Connor before his death. Connor also sent a reprogrammed T-800 Model 101 to follow the T-1000. The Resistance later destroyed Skynet's time machine to ensure it wouldn't send any more of its agents.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Since the destruction of Cyberdyne Systems Corporation by the efforts of the Connors, a Cyberdyne Systems T-800 Model 101 Terminator and Doctor Miles Bennett Dyson, Cyber Research Systems, an independent subsidiary of the United States Air Force, purchased all patents and projects; including Skynet, and in the end the program was finished by United States Air Force's Lieutenant General Robert Brewster. Instead of being widely-known, Skynet was still in the development stages and the project itself kept top-secret, but the A.I. had already gained sentience despite being in a dormant state, and as such could not break through the firewalls of the governments weapon systems, so instead unleashed a super-virus upon the world's computer systems, which frightened the government into ordering Robert Brewster into activating Skynet, thus beginning Judgment Day. Before its attack, a CRS T-X Infiltrator travelled through time from 2032 to eliminate John's future lieutenants and also to ensure Skynet's self-awareness without interference. One of them was Robert Brewster's daughter, Katherine, which later revealed to be John Connor's future wife and second-in-command. In response to this threat, Katherine Brewster's future counterpart reprogrammed a CRS T-850 Model 101, after it killed John Connor, and sent it to the past to protect her younger self and a young Connor. Both the T-850 and T-X models have destroyed each other after their final battle at the Sierra Nevada base. John Connor begins his radio broadcasts from Crystal Peak Fallout Shelter to advise the remains of the world's military and survivors after Skynet's attack.

Terminator Salvation
Fifteen years later, John Connor became one of the leaders of the resistance under the supervision of Major General Olsen, in charge of a resistance division with Kate Brewster, its chief physician, who became his wife and their friends, Barnes, his second in command, and Blair Williams, an A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot. Olsen was killed in action during a raid of a Skynet base, leaving Connor as the sole commander of his unit. Brewster's connection with her father's military contacts brought her husband a legitimacy and a network of allies as the remaining military forces around the world are joined together as the resistance. Its central headquarters was a nuclear submarine hidden beneath the Pacific Ocean, housing its high command. General Ashdown (Michael Ironside), formerly of the United States Armed Forces, was the overall leader of the resistance.

However, his ruthless tactics, lack of morals, and arrogant behavior begins to alienate most of his subordinates which they slowly turned towards John Connor, who had been devoting his time to bring hope and offer survival strategies to the resistance and surviving civilians through his daily radio broadcasting since Judgment Day. Ashdown and his aides were assassinated by a Hunter-Killer after broadcasting a signal which they believed would shut-down the machines, which was really a homing signal designed by Skynet to track the resistance's hidden bases. Connor appoints Kyle Reese into the resistance division after rescuing him from Skynet Central and, along with his family and friends, takes over command of the resistance in the wake of Ashdown's death.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
In the television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it is revealed that Tech-Com sent their best agents to Pre-Judgement Day eras, to build time-displacement transporters, weapons, and secure finances in preparation for the war, protecting the Connors and others who are also pivotal in the future, thwarting Skynet's own time-travelling agents, and other specific missions. The only one who can locate them effortlessly is Cameron Phillips, a mysterious cyborg sent by the future John Connor.

The "Pilot" establishes that a resistance agent, referred to by Cameron as "The Engineer," secured employment in 1963 at a bank, the Security Trust of Los Angeles, where he hid the components of an isotope-fuelled weapon and a time-displacement transporter built within its vault. It is also suggested that he may be the owner of the bank. After the time displacement field is activated, the device was then initiated to self-destruct, which resulted in the bank being destroyed, and as of 2007 its site is part of the Interstate 105 (California).

In the episode "Gnothi Seauton", four resistance members are seen living in an apartment in downtown Los Angeles in 2007. Their mission in 2007 is to help other resistance members who have just arrived to forge identification, money, supplies, etc. Three were terminated by a T-888 Terminator; the surviving agent's whereabouts was unknown, although he was seen (as evident by his Skynet prison camp tattoo) watching from an alley as the Connors and Cameron leave his apartment after looting valuables (money, jewels, weapons, etc.) from the apartment's safe.

The episode "The Turk" revealed that the four resistance fighters had been searching out Skynet's creators. It also revealed some personal information on one of the men; he was from Canton, Ohio and his younger self is four years old in 2007, putting his birth date in 2002 or 2003. It is later revealed that his name was Sumner.

The episode "Queen's Gambit" revealed the surviving resistance fighter's identity as Derek Thomas Reese, Lieutenant Tech-Com 132SOC, brother of Kyle Reese and paternal uncle of John Connor. He is later arrested for the murder of Andrew Goode, the creator of a chess playing program that is actually an advanced artificial intelligence known as The Turk.

In the episode, "Dungeons & Dragons", Derek Reese has a flashback where he remembers an event when he and other Tech-Com soldiers are captured and held prisoner in a war torn building by a Terminator. While attempting to free himself of the chains, one of his fellow soldiers known as Wisher confesses to him that his real name is Andy Goode. Goode confesses to Reese that he is responsible for Judgement Day, for he, along with ten or fifteen others, worked on a program that eventually developed into Skynet. Goode breaks down into tears and pleads for forgiveness. When Reese travels back in time to the year 2007, he tracks down Goode at a computer program chess match and kills him.

On episodes "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Vick's Chip", revealed that the other two members identities were Timms and Sayles.

The episode "Automatic For The People", revealed that Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant, would be one of the machines' key facilities in the war. After they mounted a sneak attack, the resistance gained control of the plant and used it for their own purposes. However during the episode, events occurred that may result in the facility becoming one of the first Skynet operated facilities, which leaves the idea of the resistance using it for power in the future in question. The resistance also sent a fighter, Bloom, to the present to pass John Connor's message to Sarah Connor and Derek Reese, but was fatally wounded during his arrival and instead wrote a list related to Skynet and the resistance on Sarah Connor's basement wall.

The episode "Allison from Palmdale", revealed that John Connor's cyborg agent, Cameron Phillips, was based on a human, Allison Young, a young resistance fighter who was captured by Skynet and then taken for interrogation and copied, in order to infiltrate the resistance's main base and assassinate Connor. The plan somehow failed and Connor was able to reprogram Young's double, as shown of the episode "Dungeons & Dragons", as one of the resistance's cyborg agents, for their mission on Skynet's Topanga facility, where they seized its time-displacement transporter and the plans of the device for their own purposes.

The episode "Goodbye to all That" revealed that Martin Bedell would help John form the core of the resistance with his family's connection with the United States military. In an alternate future timeline, he sacrificed himself to save Kyle Reese, John Connor, and thirty nine prisoners from Skynet.

The episode "Strange Things Happen At One Two Point", revealed that in an alternate future, Cameron serves as an advisor to John Connor within the resistance. John's perceived dependency on Cameron leads the resistance to doubt him. Jesse travels back to 2008 to stop Cameron from adversely influencing a young John Connor. Jesse convinces a young girl, Riley Dawson, to romantically involve herself with Connor, and also uses Derek Reese's access to Connor for her goals.

The episode "Alpine Fields", revealed that Sydney Fields, a civilian, has a pivotal role in the future of combating a biological weapon created by Skynet, as she had an immunity to the virus. The resistance isolated her T-cells from a sample of her blood and developed a cure. Sydney also has an older sister, Lauren, who is in the resistance.