This week's two-night premiere proved the Terminator franchise can survive, and thrive, in the post-Schwarzenegger world. This time, it's the mother of humanity's savior who is back. Don't spend too much time trying to fit this show into the established Terminator timeline or you'll get a headache. Let's just say that T:SCC picks up in the aftermath of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, with new threats and new protectors on the horizon. Is it wrong that there's sexual tension between young John Connor and his mechanical bodyguard (played by Summer Glau, below left)? Maybe - but it's definitely going to be an interesting dynamic to watch. I'll admit that the new bad guys are not nearly as menacing as Arnold's original T-800 or Robert Patrick's liquid metal T-1000, but I'm sure Skynet has some surprises up its sleeve.
Report Card
"The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Pilot
- Sarah Connor - Lena Headey (300) doesn't have Linda Hamilton's edginess, but she's shaping up to be a compelling heroine. B
- John Connor - It won't take much for Thomas Dekker ("Heroes") to out-act Eddie Furlong. Just try to keep the cheesy lines to a minimum and you'll be all set. B+
- "Bad Terminator" - Career stunt double David Kilde plays Cromartie, the latest cyborg assassin to target young John Connor. First off, it's weird that the Terminators in this show have names that don't sound like serial numbers. Second of all, after John escapes out of a classroom window, Cromartie pauses his pursuit to turn around and say (to the camera), "Class dismissed." Would the T-800 or T-1000 ever have wasted time with such a pointless comment? Negative. It would be inefficient. C-
- "Good Terminator" - Summer Glau plays Cameron, a "teenage" cyborg and potential love interest for John (as weird as that sounds). If the show's producers can get Kristanna Loken to guest as the T-X, we could be privileged to see the hottest cat fight of all time...fembot vs. fembot*, if you will. A-
* I hope their CPUs are KY jelly resistant.
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If there is anything positive about the Writer's Strike, it's that T:SCC now has the chance to build a solid audience. (The premiere episode drew nearly 20 million viewers.) Don't worry if you missed the pilot and episode 2, because you can watch them for free on FOX's website: http://www.fox.com/fod/player.htm?show=tscc
2.5 PB Jars
28 comments:
While I enjoyed the premiere and certainly have hopes for TSCC to partially satisfy the gap in my life left by "24"'s absence, I've got a few issues:
- If TSCC takes place post T2, why have we regressed in technology since the T-1000?
- For a plot that supposedly ignores T3, it seems as though TSCC will more or less follow the events of T3 (trying to get to Skynet and stop the "moment of self-awareness").
- I can't tell if Summer Glau is excellent at playing a machine, or a horrendous actress. Only time will tell, but I'd be far more optimistic if she was at least as hot as Kristanna Loken.
- Can we verify that there was a bank in LA in 1999 that was destroyed and built over with a freeway prior to 2007? I'm not buying it.
- Lena Headey better start kicking serious ass soon, because so far Cameron is picking up all the slack.
Good questions. Here's my take:
- The events of T2 changed the timeline, such that perhaps Skynet's technology never advances to the point of producing a T-1000 in this new, alternate future. (Paradoxical I know, but defininitely not the most disconcerting paradox in the series. How about the fact that John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to impregnant his mother with himself? Buh?)
- I don't think T:SCC ignores the plot of T3; rather, it follows an alternate path which includes Sarah Connor. T3 didn't include Sarah because Linda Hamilton wouldn't sign onto a sequel not helmed by her ex-husband/Terminator creator Jim Cameron. So John Connor has the same overarching goal in the show as in T3, but here we see how it would have played out with Sarah in the picture. Also, T3 skips over most of John's adolescene, whereas the show will play that up. Hence, the introduction of a young attractive female terminator as his protector.
- I think it's harder to play a robot than it seems, but I agree: the jury is still out on Summer Glau.
- I don't think the time displacement machine necessarily places you in the exact geographical spot (as in Back to the Future). In T3, the T-X appeared in the present in the window of a women's clothing store. Convenient for getting clothed quickly (for the sake of the MPAA censors), but not the most inconspicuous place to show up, not to mention the fact that her energy ball was kind of half in/half out of the show window. Seems like the time displacement is rather imprecise, all of which makes it quite possible that Sarah/John/Cameron time traveled from the bank in 1999 to a highway (perhaps nearby, perhaps not) in 2007.
- I hear there will be flashback scenes to Sarah Connor in the psych ward, so I'm sure she'll bust some heads there as she did in T2.
I think I really need to start watching this show. From your feedback and others, it sounds like the jury is still deliberating on the quality of the show and the various characters. Although the T-X was hot, Summer Glau dosn't look too bad herself. I'm interested in this time travel stuff- it sounds like there is a time machine in 1999 that they take to get to 2007? Great Scott, what would the Doc think about that? As Borat said, "You build a time machine?"
Hah! Good one about the KY Jelly resistant CPUs. I wonder if that was an original design or a later upgrade.
--POSSIBLE SPOILERS--
I just watched the pilot last night- pretty pretty pretty good. My one question so far is why didn't the good robot girl get John out of the school once she found him? Why did she wait until the bad robot guy shot at John and almost killed him to react and get him out of there? Maybe this is explained later, but it would seem to me that she would realize that if she could find him, the other guy could find him and she should get him to a safe place once she found out who he was. Maybe she didn't really know for sure he was who he was just as Cromartie guy wasn't totally sure until he called out John's name.
alec - not sure there's any real reason other than if cameron had gotten john out of school before the terminator had even shown up, then we wouldn't have been able to watch that sweet scene where cromartie pulls a gun out of his leg, shoots up the class, and delivers the silly quip "class dismissed!" i agree with your skepticism though. with all her technology, x-ray eyes and whatnot, it would seem likely that cameron not only knew exactly who john connor was but also knew that the teacher was a terminator well before anything started happening.
--SPOILERS--
Another thing I thought of yesterday- why didn't they wear ski masks when they went to the bank? They realized Cromartie would come because they assembled the super future gun first. But then wouldn't we get a repeat of Terminator 1 because the robot would be left behind for the scientists and engineers to play around with after shooting him? If they had gone to the bank with ski masks on they wouldn't have to deal with Cromartie ripping down the door and getting left behind. Again, probably for the action on TV, but seemed silly to me.
Going back to the classroom scene: Do you think the living tissue that covers the terminator body allows the terminator to mimic the heat signature of a human being? If not, you would think Cameron would instantly identify Cromartie as a terminator. I'm assuming that killer robots from the future have infrared vision, a relatively primitive technology by today's standards.
Arnold would not like being described as a robot, as he says in T3, "Cybernetic organism"
-possible spoilers- (none you haven't heard before though)
Alec, you were asking about the reason we didn't get a flashback to T1 after the bank-robbing incident. The reason was was because the gun that Sarah shot (the super-future weapon) vaporized everything but his hand. THAT was why there was still a hand left when they got to the future, that was why they were looking for it- because that was what was left of Cromartie.
And about the jury being "out" about Cameron: I think she's a pretty good actor, but I don't like how in the beginning she could blend in and was very human like and convincing, but then now she struggles to fit into every day life without acting exactly like a machine. Plot switch?
Manda - I think you made some good points, especially about Cameron and her surprising ability to act human in the pilot episode (an ability which she seems to have lost). I think the reason is: the show's writers attempted to make the reveal that she's a robot a surprise. Obviously anyone who watched the previews for the show knew she was a reprogrammed Terminator, so it seems kind of dumb of the writers to make her seem implausibly "human" just to pull off a non-surprise surprise.
As for the hand: I believe it belongs to a different Terminator (the one that killed the human resistance fighters and *SPOILER ALERT - SEASON FINALE* the woman who was building the computerized traffic system in LA. His hand got knocked off during a brawl with Cameron on a moving truck, and then the FBI investigator found it and made the Sarah Connor connection. As far as I can tell, the only part of Cromartie that survived the weapon Sarah shot him with was the head, which traveled through the time displacement field with the Connors.
Thanks for your comments!
That makes total sense, about Cameron;
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Pete, I agree with you on the hand thing. But if they were from two different terminators (cromartie and the other one that lost the hand) then why in the Pilot episode did a hand come crawling out of the debris to rebuild itself, and then later go retrive the head from the unlucky guy who had it?
I know that wasn't the same hand, but it's strange that the writers couldn't put something like the chip, or an eye or something in the debris of metal pile instead of confusing readers with another hand.
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[*SPOILER ALERT - FINALE*] And did she "survive" (not that she was ever techniqually living in the first place) the explosion? I'm afraid that it might revert her back from her programming or something stupid like that. (i hope not). I LOVED how Reese brought John to see his father as a young boy, that was so cute.
Manda, great questions! Here are my thoughts:
-I forgot about the Cromartie hand crawling out the trash pile, and you're right that the writers could have avoided confusion by using a different body part instead.
-[SPOILER - FINALE] I think the Cameron car bomb, while it acted as a season-ending "cliffhanger", wasn't that suspenseful. I heard that the writer's strike forced the show's creators to make this episode into a finale, even though it wasn't intended to be one. As for Cameron, we've seen terminators survive fire and explosions many times in the films. I'm with you in hoping that the writers don't use the explosion to "re-boot" Cameron (i.e., make her evil again). Though there were hints that she might have ulterior Skynet motives in keeping Vick's chip, I think that issue was resolved when it became clear how much useful info could be gleaned from that CPU. My guess is that Cameron and co. will have to find a way to re-grow her living tissue like Cromartie had to do this season. Thanks for the comments!
Well yeah, she'll definetly have to figure out some way to. Maybe she has some type of advancement that allows her to regrow that tissue quicker than it took Cromartie (let's hope so).
I think Cameron is all out e.v.i.l. on the inside, in the innerworkings of her brain, just like Reese thinks. In the episode of when john is seperated and sealed in the bunker with another terminator, toward the end when it shows her with the metal alloy used to create machines, an overvoice of Sarah Connor switches on. It says something like "it is the nature of all things, all mothers to create and protect their offspring."
-Cameron has vick's chip
-She has alloy
*It's like she's preparing things for her future 'children', creating life (in a sense). That may not be her mission, but it is her nature. Why else would Sarah's voice say that just as the chip and the alloy were hidden away?
Hopefully Reese finds the metal bar in time, so they figure out possible ulterior motives of the machine John sent back. Though that would make for quite the boring reveal if he just FOUND it, and all truths were unhidden.
I am SO happy the writer's strike is over. Hopefully now the season 2 premiere can be moved up a few dates because september is just too far away!
Manda, you're absolutely right - I forgot about the metal bars that she hid away. Keeping the CPU chip AND metal bars definitely hint at Cameron having a secret agenda.
I checked out the SkyNext podcast the other day and heard them joking about Cameron using the chip and metal to build a "robot friend"...or perhaps "more than a friend", since John hasn't been showing her the love. Funny and creepy at the same time...
I wish FOX had brought back the cast and crew to film some more episodes this season, the way ABC did with Lost. I'm a little nervous because I haven't heard anything about FOX renewing the show for next year yet. I'm pretty sure FOX will, but supposedly the ratings fell off after the initial success of the first two episodes.
To fill the time between now and September's premiere of season 2 (knock on wood), I plan on watching T1, T2, and T3 and discussing some of the connections to the TV show. So definitely keep your ideas and comments coming!
I still don't like the way the writers could have influenced people watching TC this season. In T2, Sarah and John Connor were trying to stop judgement day from coming, and in doing so they believed they had to destroy the hand and the chip that a company had stored and was working on. Which they succeeded in (if i remember correctly).
So, why would the writers of this season have vick's chip and cromartie's hand survive, when they knew damn well some would make the connection between the movie and the show? If it was intended, it's too discreet, but if it was not intended for followers of the show to make the connection, then they need to research their plotlines a little bit more.
Why can't it be another body part, like you said in previous posts?
*I guess it just irritates me a little*
Arrg, this season is taking too long to start back up again. When I find a show I like, I follow it religiously: and this happens to just be one of those shows, haha. With all the twists, turns, and references to the movies that I liked so much, I think we're all hooked ;)
It's coming back in September!
Found it out last night when I saw a commercial about it.
aaaaannnnnddd *SPOILER*
Cameron's shown as a "bad guy" for this season. DAMN! I didn't want it to turn out like that. I was probably right with the whole: blast changing her programming thing. Grr.
How about, she keeps stuff for her own repairs?
Yay! someone still remembers this place, lol.
And that would make some amount of sense, lashknife. Although I still get that baaddd vibe from her (and the previews for the next season don't look promising that she's any good [obviously]), but she could be trying to get all the alloys and materials to engineer herself, fix herself if anything were to get broken; that way she could recover quickly from anything.
You know what I hadn't been thinking about, guys? Who blew her up?
Could it have been Reese? Or Cromartie? Any suspects?
Okay, I just found this and have been reading the comments and after watching some of the FOX replays of the show this week, I have a different take on Cameron.
I think Future-John reprogrammed her in a way that no other terminator has ever been programmed. She sometimes looks at the young John as if she loves him or something. Whether or not she becomes evil this year due to the explosion or not, even from the beginning, when we saw that she eats, we've been told that this is NOT a normal terminator. I'm almost wondering if she is a true cyborg; if there isn't a human mind buried in her core chip somewhere..... we've seen stranger things.....
wyzarrd you are my new favorite person :]]
John & Cameron DEFINETELY have some type of "romantic connection"--if you can even call it romantic with a "cybernetic organism", but it's there and we've all seen it.
Cameron is different than any cyborg we've encounted from the T1, T2, T3 movies or from the SCC episodes before her; and the reason for her identification with John should be explained soon enough. Maybe she does have a component in her harddrive that John put there (since he is an amazing hardware and software whiz/hacker) that makes her stand out and show logic and interest in the ways of human compassion, and their interests (like her ballet O.o -ubber creepy for Reese- Did you guys see the look on his face when he saw her dancing? wicked).
I think I jumped the gun when I said she was going to be evil this Fall (the opening date is sooo close :DD), but she has definetely changed since the explosion.
We'll all find out soon.
[P.S] Anyone seen the previews that show John Connor's hair short? YUCK. Idk if you are all girls, but he was soo cute with long hair, and yeah I know he's supposed to be this big badass ruler soon and the shorter haircut gives him an older, tougher apperance, but STILL...-mutters to self-....I enjoyed him just the way he was X]]]
it is not possible travel in time but if u can some how jump out of the time stream and jump back in thus jumping you in a later time frame. you would see what the future would be but you wold not be able to go back to the time that you came from. picture time line like a river when you jump out you could not jump back into the same section of water that you left in the first place thus you travel in time but can never go back.
So you travel in time and see a disaster, but you only speed up your meeting with it, you can do nothing to change it.
That makes sense, but doesn't have much affect on the thread, does it?
Thanks to everyone for your Terminator comments! I hope you enjoyed last night's Season 2 premiere. (I only caught the opening but plan on watching the rest tonight.) Check out the most recent post (link below) and future posts for more discussion of Sarah Connor Chronicles. I'd also like to plan a Terminator film marathon and online discussion on this blog. Would be fun to have your help in looking at the TV series in relation to the 3 films.
http://pbandmovies.blogspot.com/2008/09/confessions-of-lazy-blogger.html
That would be awesome, P!
And yes yes, I enjoyed the season premiere! I was pretty close, with the explosion knocking back her harddrive.
Though I didn't expect she was going to say...that.....WOW.
Big question is: Did she mean it? Could she really feel that way? Or is it going to be the second time she's fooled John to think she is one thing, when she's really something else?
Next week we should learn a little more about Cameron, but yes, she is a very different Terminator, and I like her character. There is some "human" inside her. The question is; how did it get there and what form of "humanity" is it?
I'm not sure I like the new T-1001. She just seems too human.... but then again, the future has changed in this timeline, so who knows what is going on uptime anymore?
I cond't understand why John, Sarah, Cameron, and Derek go and make an underground bunker. You know, to prepare for the future, since there seems to be no way to stop Judgement Day as seen in T-3.
I would make couple bunkers, fill them with small arms, big arms and all the arms in between. Like guns and tank maybe even a nuke(which woulb AWSOME) if Cameron could steal one(*and see no reason why not).
I would start the resistance as soon as possible. Start recruiting, there are lots of cults and gullibles who would believe them. Any way I like the and have high hopes for it:)
...and after all that talk - IT'S ALL GONE AWAY.
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