Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

[Darkmoon]

Caught the first two episodes. I'll get to my thoughts, but I'll recap some interesting bits.

Episode 1 sets up the action. At this point, it's 2 years after when Judgment day was supposed to happen. It didn't. There's been no more terminators, no more worries... although that hasn't stopped Sarah Connor from worrying, or expecting Terminators at every turn. It isn't long into the episode when it's revealed that her worries were well founded (of course, with "Terminator" in the title, it's to be expected that they'll be in the series).

When John Connor is attacked at the school he's just started attending, he gets help from a girl, a cyborg of some form (it's never established what kind of terminator she is, which I think is going to tie into later mysteries and revelations in the series). Although the evil terminator is temporarily stopped, the three (Sarah, John, and the Cyber-Chick) have to start running again.

But that's just the first half hour or so, as the pilot really ramps up the adventure and does what the movies never did (but easily set up)... The three of them jump forward in time in an attempt to avoid the terminator, find out when the new judgment day is happening, and finding a way to stop it.

Episode 2 wasn't as interesting. It was a lot of setup without as much action or revelations. A decent episode, but much more filler-tastic than the first ep.

All that said, there's a lot to like about the new series. For one, much of what made the third movie suck (non-stop brainless action with no plot and little logic to the proceedings) as been ditched for a more cerebral plot (that's also still heavy on the action, but action for a reason). It was obvious that the creator of the series really put some thought in how to reinvent the franchise to not only make it viable again, but to really push the ideas that made the Terminator series so intriguing to begin with.

To note, not everything from the third movie was ditched, although if you're following the plot of the series, that movie didn't happen. However, the idea that, lacking John Connor as a target, the terminators will instead go after other important people (and the network of future warriors sent back from the future to aid in the resistance across the timestream) was kept, which I thought was one of the few intelligent ideas the third movie had (sadly, the third movie ignored that idea after the first 15 minutes).

Also, (and this comes up in the second ep and I'm sure will be recapped for the next few weeks, so I'm not spoiling anything) Sarah will die from cancer (or at least did in an alternate future), which was exactly what killed Sarah in the third movie.

It's nice to see these touches, even if the third movie really had to be ditched to make a more viable concept for the series.

In other areas of discussion, the acting is pretty good to great. Sarah (played by Lena Headey of 300 fame) is great. Focused, strong, with just enough emotion to soften up the uber-woman Sarah was in the second movie. It's good to see they gave her character some depth, and it's great that Lena can play it as well as she can.

Summer Glau as Cameron the Cyber-Chick is great as well. She plays a nuanced performance, sometimes letting a little humanity through, while at the same time also giving us that cold, calculating, terminator style delivery in many of her scenes. The humanity is the intriguing part, indeed. Her character never comes out and states she's a terminator (in fact she evades the question the one times it's asked of her), leading me to think there's more to her than could meet the eye... much more.

The only weak spot in the series really is John Connor. Could be the script. Could be the performance (by Thomas Dekker). He's much more whiny than I care for, and acts like a dumb teenager a little too often for my tastes. Obviously, he is a teenager, but it'd be nice if when writers write a teen, they gave him more depth than "rebelious kid that hates blah blah blah..." Weak.

On the whole I really did enjoy the first two eps, and, so long as we get fewer filler episodes and more balls out episodes like the first one, this could my favorite new series (even edging out the tragically over Journeyman).

8.2 out of 10

[lucas marcone]

Meh I didn't like what I was able to stay awake for. Personally I havent even seen T3 out of fear it'll ruin my memories of T1&2

[Alondro]

The whole thing breaks down to time travel problems I just can't ignore.  First, if you stop Judgement Day, you either create a causality paradox, or the universe splits at that time point into two dimensions.  In which case the machines from the other universe cannot send any more terminators to the new universe's time line because it lies outside their space-time continuum.

Now, the reason they gave in T3, that it was really everyone's computers, doesn't make sense because you'd thing the future John Conner who sent the guy in the first Terminator back, and the good terminators in the next two films would have already known that and thusly would have kinda given a warning UNLESS he feared a causality loop and was only trying to make sure he survived in the first place.

But, as time travel is impossible, it all fails.   

[Valynth]

But, as time travel is impossible, it all fails.   

Technically, according to Einstein's theory of space/time it is possible.  Then again, getting struck by lightning 3,425,000 times in the span of an hour while wild pigs chew on you innards is also technically possible.  The problem is achieving it would require an ungodly amount of power, effort, energy, complete mastery of mathematics, complete knowledge of each variable from the speed of cosmic drift to the exact speed of each atom/subatomic particle in your body, and the ability to completely reverse all those factors as well as those not mentioned/undiscovered.

So you see, it's not that it's impossible so much as it has so much bloody red tape that it is very close to impossible.  In fact I'd say it's about as close to impossible as you can get while still remaining possible.

[Darkmoon]

Or you could just not care so much about the particulars and enjoy a fun show involving homicidal cyborgs.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Why would we want to do that, D? ;-]

[rabid_fox]

Unless it involves stackloads of Arnie, it's not a Terminator showpiece.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

He's stackable?

[Darkmoon]

Sure, if you freeze him and then cut him into chunks.

[Janus Whitefurr]

Eh, I liked the SM Stirling novels based after Terminator 2. I like to think that the third movie and its concepts never existed. Though I just may have to check this out, if only because the cyborg chick is an idea Stirling used as well...

And yes, I'm aware novels are questionable canon but hell. They were better than T3. :b

[Darkmoon]

Well, yes, but then, most anything is better than T3.

[GabrielsThoughts]

why don't they go back to a point before Sarah conner saw the first robot, or send one back to assassinate her in the hospital where she gave birth, or eliminate Sarah Connor's birth?

If they were highly intelligent logical machines on a mission to destroy mankind wouldn't the logical thing be to keep going back to a point before the last attack instead of the other way around?

[Darkmoon]

Well, two ways to look at it are this:

1) While a certain amount of paradox is apparently accounted for, maybe causing that much in the way of cross loops and overlapping timestreams could effectively bring the whole workings of the universe down on the machines' collective heads...

2) There's not to say eventually they won't try that. Logic would dictate that eventually, if the machines get "desperate" enough, they'll do anything to try and eradicate the target, no matter the cost to the universe.

Of course, if you want to carry the idea farther than I figure the writers ever will, you could conceive of a multiverse where not only are the machines going against the Connors, but they're also going against other robots sent from other timestreams, ones that will cease to exist if certain events change too far.

That's a bit I'd love to see, but I dunno that they could ever do it justice.

[Darkmoon]

I was thinking further on this, which, in and of itself proves how little I have to do, but I figured I'd share before we consigned this thread to death.

If you think, the Terminator coming back in the future caused it's own future reality to happen.

• Terminator is sent back in time, and is then destoryed.
• Parts from Terminator inspire the creation of the Skynet technology.
• Skynet rains down war on the humans.
• Terminators are eventually created as a way to combat the survivors.
• Terminator is sent back in time, etc etc.

Self-fulfilling. In essence, this causality loop worked because it caused itself to work. Time had to eventually correct itself (either in the SCC continuity, or in T3), and the Terminators were fated to eventually come about and come back in time (to various times and locales). If they didn't, the lopp wouldn't have occured, and then paradox would have really happened.

[thegayhare]

FX has been running T3 every other day for a few weeks now.

I rather like the look of the non humaniod terminators the T-02s and T-03s featured at the end of the movie.  the rest of the movie... ehh

[Darkmoon]

Agree. On both counts.

[thegayhare]

Interestingley enough I found a game in a bargain bin.

It's a first person shooter similer to  Battlefeild, and it lets you play out the human vs machine conflict.  you can play in both the far future and at the start of the war.

In the future time settings the machine units are the exoskeletal T-100s and the T-03a

But in the beginning of the conflict maps your forces are T-02s, and T-03s

And each side has special units they can use like the humans can send out the arnold model terminator

unfortunatly It has no single player mode, well no story anyway, you can run maps against the computer but it's not as much fun and no body else seems to play it

[Darkmoon]

Probably because it's too old by now.