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| Monday, January 14, 2008 11:00 PM |
| On the Viewer - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles |
 by Fëanor |
I just finished watching the second episode of this new series a little while ago. It's pretty rare these days that I can get it together to remember when a show is on, and then actually make the time to sit down in front of a TV at that hour and watch it, but I made sure to do so in this case, because I'm a huge fan of the Terminator films and I was hoping for something big and exciting from the show. And while it didn't turn out to be a masterpiece by any means, it's pretty decent, and I'm going to try to keep watching it regularly.
It's set between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, and as the first episode opens, John and Sarah have been staying in one place for a full two years, and Sarah has even gotten engaged to a nice guy who's an EMT. But a disturbing apocalyptic dream (with lots of fancy special effects) reminds Sarah that they'll never be safe, and she decides it's time to pick up and leave again. Apparently the dream was prophetic as soon enough the usual plot structure of the films kicks in, with one killer robot from the future arriving to eliminate John, and another arriving to protect him. The protector is a slightly more emotionally advanced model of Terminator than seen before, and is played by Summer Glau (River from Firefly). The terminators reveal themselves and face-off for the first time in a great scene in a classroom.
And then things take a rather interesting turn. The show picks up threads from Terminator 2 and plays with them a bit. How is Skynet going to be built again? Who's behind it this time? They check in with Miles Dyson's widow to try to find out, but don't get much of anywhere.
Luckily, their terminator has a little bit more information, and knows the location of a secret stash of future technology. And this is another interesting bit. The movies never played much with the time travel concept; pretty much it was used to get a couple of terminators in to the past, and then that was it. But the show becomes about a real war through time, with the terminator assembling a gun whose pieces were left in a bank vault in the past for them to find, and John and Sarah taking a short hop into the future using similar technology. There are even other time-travelling resistance members floating around in the past, and other terminators seeking them out to destroy them. It gives a lot more depth and breadth to the terminator story and opens up some interesting new possibilities.
Really there are a lot of threads that have been picked up in these first two episodes that offer interesting possibilities for the future. We've got a resistance fighter out there possibly looking for John and Sarah; at least two evil terminators, one who was recently reunited with his head in a pretty awesome sequence; the mysterious female terminator protecting them who seems to know a lot of other interesting secrets about the future that she's not coughing up just yet; Sarah's abandoned fiance who, although now married to someone else, is still haunted by her and John; and an FBI agent determined to track Sarah down and make her pay for her crimes. It's interesting stuff, there's some exciting action, and I like where they're taking the story.
Of course, it's not all good news. The dialogue is often a bit corny, and the constant narration from Sarah tends toward the bombastic, melodramatic, and pretentious. And then there's John. John is whiny and annoying. He keeps wondering aloud how he can be the leader of the future, and we keep wondering along with him. This constantly complaining fuck-up is going to save humanity? It's pretty hard to believe.
Still, like I said, I'm going to stick with this series for now, as the positives currently outweigh the negatives. I mean, it's pretty hard to completely ruin a show about time-traveling killer robots. |
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