Sarah Connor Chronicles - Adam’s Little Mini-Review

“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” is a show I’ve waited almost a year for. I’ve followed it’s development since I first heard about it, and even saw the leaked pilot over the summer (the same one that aired tonight.) My initial impression a year ago remains the same: it’ll be cancelled in about eight weeks, thanks to the funny sounding name and lack of plot.

It’s not the show’s fault. I actually really liked it. It’s just that when the end of a story is everybody dying, it’s extremely difficult to give the characters any purpose.

Also, the Terminator franchise as a whole has two giant plot holes.

Plot Hole 1: If I’m a super-advanced machine from the future and need to send a robot back in time to kill the human resistance leader when he’s a child, I’m not going to risk it. I’m sending back 10. Maybe 20. With a nuclear bomb. Except in each movie, and now, in the series, they send back one robot at a time, with apparently enough advance notice for the human resistance to also send back a protector.

Plot Hole 2: If the machines actually succeed in killing John Connor when he’s a child, that presumably means there will be no human resistance. No human resistance means no Kyle Reese, who goes back in time in the first movie to protect Sarah Connor (John’s mother), and has sex with her, ultimately creating John’s existence. As Doc Brown says, this could concievably create a time paradox that could unravel the very fabric of the universe itself! (I take it to mean the machines have figured out that that wouldn’t happen.)

Worse, let’s say John and his mother succeed in taking down the first stages of the machine’s advancement before it gets out of hand. So, the machine consciousness is never made. Which means there is no machine war, no machines, nobody to go back in time and impregnate Sarah. No John. BUT, no John means nobody to fight the birth of Skynet, so there’s nothing to stand in the way of it’s birth in the first place.

Follow?

Time travel is a lose-lose situation, friends. But if you can suspend that disbelief, it’s an alright story.

The thing about making it into a series, however, is that they need to have enough of a unique story to carry it week to week.

The first Terminator movie was essentially a sci-fi love story between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, her protector from the future (and father to John Connor.)

The second Terminator movie provided John with the father figure he needed, and was also a love story between a boy and his father-figure who died at the end. It was also about a machine’s ability to learn the concept of humanity.

The third Terminator was an apocalyptic tale, and didn’t do as well because there was no human relationships really explored. It also appears the series has ignored this movie, which I am indifferent about.

This series, then, needs human characters relating to each other to really succeed. It should be a human drama first, a sci-fi show second, and a Terminator story third. So, this time around, they have the opportunity for John and his mother to really bond (before she is inevitably killed off).

What’s more interesting, I think, is the fact that John’s new machine guardian from the future no longer looks like a big burly Austrian guy. She’s now a pretty hot girl who happens to be around his age.

If the second movie explored machines learning human values, they should continue to expand on that. I really think John and this terminator girl (Cameron) need to have something happen. That might sound sick, but, sooner or later (2050, to be exact) analysts predict we’ll all be having sex with robots anyway.

So on second thought, maybe this show is ahead of it’s time.

FUN FACT: Bear McCreary, composer of Battlestar Galactica, also composes the score for this Terminator show. I had forgotten about this until the dream sequence in the beginning, when I said, “this sounds a lot like Battlestar Galactica.” Giggity giggity. Giggity goo.

The second episode airs tomorrow… see you then!