Review: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Episodes: Pilot & Episode 101 (Gnothi Seauton)
Much of what had made the two original Terminator movies special was their ability to combine groundbreaking special effects with very well thought out stories. Both films were action packed but maintained a character driven thread that made them compelling and even to this day make them unique in a world of poorly written, special effects spectacles.
In 2003, Jonathan Mostow(Director) and John Brancato(Screenplay) brought James Cameron’s Terminator franchise back to the big screen with the lackluster effort, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. This time, Cameron stepped down from writing duties and the director’s chair. The change in leadership showed. This movie was everything that the first two weren’t. It was loud, clumsy and lacked the heart that made the first two special. Gone were the human elements, replaced by gigantic car chases, tons of robots, a hot blonde as the new Terminator and an aging Arnold.
Now, the Terminator franchise has returned (without Mostow and Brancato) to bring us a weekly hour-long drama, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The Sarah Connor Chronicles stars Lena Headey (300) as Sarah Connor and fills in the timeline between the event s in Terminator 2 and Terminator 3. Sarah has raised her son John (played by Thomas Dekker) on the run, moving from one town to another in order to avoid capture by law enforcement for acts committed during Terminator 2 and the ensuing years and to steer clear of a regular stream of Terminators sent from the future to kill John.
Pilot
**Spoiler Warning**
The pilot episode begins in 1999 with Sarah and John having found a home with Sarah’s boyfriend Charlie (played by OZ alum Dean Winters). Sarah and Charlie are in the process of getting married and John has grown attached to Charlie, having found the father figure that has eluded him for most of his life. With the relationship growing too serious for a mother and son who must live constantly on the run, Sarah grabs John and skips town to start anew. Charlie goes to the police to report them as missing where he is confronted by an FBI agent who tells him all about Sarah’s past in the mental hospital, he belief that the world would be overrun by robots and the people she had killed. Charlie is dumbfounded by this information and refuses to believe him.
Soon after Sarah and John setup in their new town, John meets a girl at his new school, Cameron (played by Summer Glau of Firefly fame). She shows an interest in John and before they have a chance to get to know one another, a new Terminator appears and attempts to kill John in his classroom. As John tries to escape, Cameron is shot and killed by the Terminator. A chase ensues with the Terminator baring down on John and just as he is about to terminate John, Cameron reappears crashing a truck into the Terminator and she opens the door to the truck and in classic Terminator form tells John, “come with me if you want to live”. Turns out she is the latest model Terminator, sent back in time to protect John, a la Arnold in the movies.
Meanwhile, Sarah is captured by the Terminator and used to trick John into returning home where he can ambush and kill John. However, a battle ensues between Cameron and the Terminator and Sarah, John and Cameron make their escape.
After their escape, Cameron explains to Sarah that while they blew up Cyberdyne (the company that creates Skynet) and Miles Dyson (the scientist who was largely responsible for Skynet’s creation in T2), someone else had continued on with Dyson’s research and that Skynet wasn’t stopped by the events of T2. Cameron explains that in order to stop Skynet, their best option is to travel to 2007 the year Skynet is created.
So they make their way to a bank where future John Connor has sent people back in time over the years to set things in place. Over the years and during the original construction of the bank they various people have put components for a weapon (to stop Terminators. Especially the one from back at the High School who tracks them down to the bank vault and attempts to break in and kill them) and a time machine to allow them to travel to the future and stop Skynet.
Episode 2 Gnothi Seauton
**Spoiler Alert**
We begin in 2007, where Sarah, John and Cameron escaped to at the end of the last episode. They’re living in LA, circa 2007 and are looking to establish new identities. Sarah and Cameron go to visit a group of freedom fighters who Cameron knows about, sent back from the future by John Connor, to obtain weapons and money. When they arrive they discover that all everyone has been killed. While Cameron searches the bodies to determine their identity and cause of death one of the bodies is actually the Terminator, laying in wait, which killed the whole group. They fight with one another and when the Terminator realizes that Cameron is a cyborg too, strangely, it runs rather than fight.
Sarah and Cameron return home to John. However, with no money or weapons, they must find an old acquaintance of Sarah’s from Mexico who she believes can help them get paperwork for new identities.
They meet with Sarah’s contact asking for new papers. He tells them he no longer does “those kinds of things”. However, he refers Sarah to his nephew who can obtain phony paperwork for Sarah.
Meanwhile John, dealing with a case of cabin fever, leaves the house and travels to the mall. He finds a computer and looks up Charlie, Sarah’s boyfriend from 99 whom he had grown close to. He finds Charlie’s house and breaks in. While looking around, Charlie returns home and immediately recognizes John. Charlie, obviously still very fond of John tries to talk to John and determine what had happened to he and his mother. John realizes that finding Charlie was a mistake and makes his escape.
While John is dealing with Charlie, Sarah and Cameron meet with nephew. He demands $20,000 for the phony papers they are looking for. They return home and grab John. Sarah decides their only option is to return to the house the dead freedom fighters were and search for their stash of weapons and any cash they might have. At the house, they find a safe in the wall and with some effort manage to open it. When they return home they open it to find it contains cash and a bag full of diamonds. Now they have the cash they need for the documents.
While picking up the documents from the nephew, he mentions something about his uncle being a “ratta” which sends up red flags in Sarah’s mind. She returns to the uncle’s house and confronts him. He gives her a story about how when he was in prison that his cellmate admitted to him that he had kidnapped and killed a little girl. He told Sarah he informed on the cellmate to authorities and was let out of jail for his help. Sarah shows signs of believing him when out of nowhere Cameron shoots him dead telling Sarah she was slipping and should have killed him herself.
The end of the show we see the FBI agent from the first episode(the one who told Charlie about Sarah) at the uncle’s house, standing over the uncle’s dead body and listening to a message left by the uncle on his voicemail. In the message, he tells the FBI agent he has some very useful information and tells the agent to call him back. It looks like Cameron was right to kill him.
The Good:
Summer Glau. Truth is I’d watch her read the phone book to me. Damn she is hot.
Lena Headey. She does a reasonable job of filling the shoes made famous by Linda Hamilton.
The focus of the show is a marked improvement over the last Terminator movie. Gone is the nonsensical, special effects-a-minute philosophy. This is a definite return to the character driven style of the first two movies and with only two episodes I think they have done a decent job of creating a real narrative and allowing the characters to be the focal point.
The Bad:
Nothing really stands out. That’s not to say this show is perfect by any means. If I had any real complaints it would be:
Thomas Dekker – He’s not horrible but he’s as interchangeable as any character in the show. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about him. And being that he’s suppose to be the leader of the free world in the future, it would be nice to have an actor with a bit more presence.
Cameron – Yeah, I know I said I would watch her read the phonebook and I would but the way the character is written seems a bit uneven to me. The terminators in the movies have all held a common thread, they had no real personality and what personality they did have was simply mimicry they had learned from those around them and more often than not, the things they would mimic would be used at inappropriate times. The Cameron terminator follows this thread at times but then at other times she comes off like a normal high school age girl who is full self-aware and has a real personality. That just doesn’t follow along with the mythology that I remember. It’s a complaint but nothing major.
All things considered, I liked both shows and will definitely stay tuned. I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars so far.
Hooper X
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