Sarah Connor, Meet Your Next Target

Apparently a company out of Boston has been developing the “Big Dog,” a robot with four legs that is surprisingly adaptive to it’s environment, and looks life-like as it walks. It’s purpose it to carry heavy loads, presumably during war, and scare the shit out of people with the noise it makes.

I mean, come on, if you saw this thing coming at you, what would be your first reaction?

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First of all: WOOT! to 20 RSS subscribers. Welcome. If you let me know why you subscribed, I can do more of that in the future. Also, how many of you found me through Google? I get 300 hits a day from people searching “Smallville” and “Sarah Connor Chronicles,” and “Lost Jacob.” Sometimes I find blogs through the same method so I’m just curious, is all.

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Spoilers below for the entire Sarah Connor Chronicles first season.

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So! Who would have thought that the Sarah Connor Chronicles would be so good? I didn’t expect much, honestly. I hoped for a lot, but expected it to end up like Bionic Woman. And it kind of did, at first. It sagged in the middle, until the introduction of Derek Reese (Brian Austin Greene), whose character really got the show going. But it wasn’t just him — toward the end of this season, Sarah seemed more like Sarah Connor (the ass kicking waitress), Cameron had layers added to her robotic-ness, and you actually saw seeds of leadership in John Connor.

He’s obviously not ready to lead a worldwide human resistance, but you see that maybe one day, he could, and that’s what so brilliant. I’m not even sure how to describe it. Just the little things–like his hand shaking in that one episode, and his interaction with Derek. If a 30 year old guy time traveled back to when I was 16 and started telling me all these stories, I’d be very intimidated. But John just rolls with it, and stays true to himself. John, as portrayed in the first three movies, is a fairly stubborn, weak character who wants nothing to do with his destiny. This John, though, is actually growing up to be the man he’s destined to become. At the end of T3, in other words, I was not convinced anybody would listen to the whiny guy buried in Cheyenne Mountain, just because he mumbled “I’m in charge.” If this John ends up in Cheyenne Mountain, though, I’m falling in line behind him.

If you’ve read my Sarah Connor blogs up to this point, you know I want something sexual to happen between John and Cameron. And it looks like it might. That scene from the finale where they remove her chip is so… sensual(?). She’s laying on the bed as he moves over her, practically trembling and asking “is this okay?” Then, at the end of the ordeal when they reactivate her, he’s brushing the side of her face. I get that she’s a robot, but… if it acts human, smells human, and potentially understands being human (dancing?), whose to say she can’t love like a human? In fact, I think she already does love the John from the future, but because she’s a robot, she’s so good at hiding it.

For some reason, people around the blogosphere (first time I’ve used that word, BTW) get all creeped out at the idea of a relationship between Cameron and John. Those same people, however, have no problem with Balter and Six, Helo and Boomer, etc. They are robots, too. They just look and act more human, is all.

I do have a (very, very minor) gripe with that chip extraction scene, though. It’s a bit dorky, so bear with me. The chip that all Terminators have in their temple is the “Neural Net Processor,” correct? Essentially, it’s a computer processor. It processes the data flowing through the rest of the circuitry. Processors don’t store any information, so you couldn’t boot something from a processor any more than you can take my dual core processor out of my desktop PC and try to retrieve my personal files from it. It doesn’t have anything on it, it’s just a conduit.

So, booting up Cameron from her chip alone and letting her get into the traffic light program was a bit of a stretch.

I also couldn’t help but feel bad for her. She’s a robot, after all, built by Skynet (as far as we know), and here she was being forced to do something that delivers a crushing blow to the development of Skynet. It’s totally justified in terms of the story, but I kind of felt bad for her in a way.

It had a bit of an eerie pay off at the end, though, when John asked her, “how was it?” (while laying next to her on the bed, no less, after stroking her face). She said, “I saw everything.” I think she got a taste of what it’s like to be Skynet, and I’m thinking that the endgame of the series could be Cameron’s evolution into Skynet, but this time one at peace with humanity.

Bear McCreary really did it again with the music in this show, just as he does with Battlestar Galactica. On his blog he describes the theme each character has, and how much thought goes into each one. I tried imagining what the show would be like with no music, and I did the same for Battlestar, and it would definately not connect as much. I think his Irish influenced “bagpipe” sound (which is as best I can describe it, having no musical background) resonates with the human spirit more than anything else (or perhaps just differently, since it’s so unusual, which is good enough). He also finally gives a way to describe the menacing industrial pounds I’ve been trying to describe in the theme so far: the breath of a dying robot. That music that plays whenever a Terminator turns a corner in slo-mo with guns blazing? Booowoowwwwmmm….. bowwwm…….. bowwwwwwwmm………. the death tones? Dying robot breath makes good sense to me.

And speaking of dying robots… Cromartie just won’t die. Which is good. The situation we’re currently in reminds me of Star Trek (bear with me). In Star Trek: The Next Generation, we were introduced to the Borg, who quickly became Star Trek’s most feared and creepy villians. They were mysterious, and terrifying, and posed a REAL threat. A Borg sighting was nothing to take lightly. If you saw the Borg, there was a good chance that, unless you knew Captain Picard, you were going to die. Then along came Star Trek: Voyager, who featured the Borg every week. At first, they were just as scary and menacing, but after a while they lost their threat. Voyager would just find a way to destroy the Borg cube from week to week, until a Borg sighting was just no big deal.

I’m glad the Sarah Connor Chronicles didn’t turn a Terminator sighting into an everyday nuisance rather than the promise of death, like Voyager did with the Borg. In the words of Kyle Reese from T1: “It cannot be bargained with. It cannot be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear. And it absolutely will not stop until you are dead.” I think that’s important to remember. A Terminator is not a robot dressed like a human for kicks. It is a machine whose sole purpose of existance is the termination of your life. That’s it’s programming: to kill you.

So when Agent Ellison’s FBI squad swarmed Cromartie’s hang out and tried to take him down, I am glad they all died. I was expecting them to be successful and kill him, but no, he killed each and every one of the FBI agents, because that’s what it does.

And I had no idea how much I actually liked Agent Ellison until he had that gun pointed at his chest. I have a wee lump in the back of my throat right now thinking about his reaction, after he realizes he’s the only one standing, and the Terminator is standing right in front of him. It goes all slow-mo, and the Terminator raises his gun, and Ellison doesn’t blink, he just looks at the gun, looks at the Terminator, and closes his eyes to accept his fate. I was surprised at how upset I got to see him killed… all this time I thought I didn’t really like him, but I realized all he wants to do is find the truth, and it would be a shame for him to get killed in the moment he finally found what he was looking for.

But, he wasn’t killed. The Terminator Cromartie lowered his weapon, and walked off.

There is lots of speculation about what that possibly means. Did Cromartie have a change of heart? Did he suddenly find Agent Ellison to no longer be a threat worth killing? My answer to both of those is NO. Because that’s it’s programming: to kill. It doesn’t matter if he’s a threat or not… it does not value human life. Killing a squad of FBI agents is nothing to blink at to the Terminator, and Ellison is one of them, so all it would have taken was one bullet to end a (in it’s eyes) inconsequential human life.

But he didn’t. Which means only one thing: as Cromartie looked at Ellison, the words “Do Not Terminate” flashed before him. Why’s this? Can only be one reason: Agent Ellison will be instrumental in the creation of Skynet.

We don’t know how, but he’s got a hand, just like Miles Dyson did in T2.

And RISKS! Remember my post about the show not taking RISKS? Consider that complaint gone. John Connor finally met his father. After all these years, he came face to face with little Kyle Reese of the present, the little boy who’d grow up and years later, after the machines took over, John would send back in time to protect his mother and become his own father.

TOUCHING SHIT. Derek Reese may be an ass, but damn if he’s not BADass. I love that guy.

And so we’re left to wait until Season Two (I really, really hope there is one) to find out the fate of Cameron. We all know she didn’t die in the car bomb, but it’ll be interesting to find out what she’ll look like. It will be creepy to go back and watch the car blow up due to a bomb meant for Sarah, only to see a glowing blue metallic skeleton climb out of the wreckage. My guess is she’ll end up looking like the TX model from T3. Who knows how she’ll get her skin back.

And is the silent Mexican girl another Infiltrator machine? What was up with that? Or does she just not speak so they don’t have to pay the actress as much money?

So, I thought the show would be canceled by this point, and it’s reassuring that Fox hasn’t announced anything yet. As far as I know, another four episodes were scheduled to be completed this season (bringing the total to 13), but due to the writer’s strike, Fox decided to make episode 9 the season ender. As far as I know, ratings have been strong despite the goofy title, and it’s definately developed enough of a back story to need more episodes to wrap it up. So I’m being optimistic and changing the title of these blog entires to prepare for a LOT more weeks of Sarah Connor Chronicles, hopefully under a new name. Something like Terminator: Fight the Future.

No fate!

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You know…

I’ve had a DVR for about two years now. In that entire time, I have never lost an episode of anything. It may have cut out a few minutes early from time to time (essentially ruining a few episodes of Lost) and it may record things I don’t tell it to record, but it has never, ever simply not recorded anything I’ve told it to.

Yesterday during a slow period at work, I just happened to be reading horror stories about DVRs. Apparently I’m one of the few, because people even double up their DVRs with VCRs, because they can never depend on their DVR.

Well, yesterday is the first time my DVR failed me, for no good reason. I sat down at around 9:30pm, after a long and depressing day, after eight long weeks of looking forward to the conclusion of this series, and found that my DVR did not have a recording started called “The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” I double checked to make sure it was set to record, and it was. But nothing was there. So I went to sleep.

I could have watched the last half hour of the two hour episode, but that would have been a waste. Instead, I’ll just watch it on a little 3 inch screen tonight, totally ruining the experience, unless anyone knows if Fox has plans to air it again within the next few days.

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Holy crap!

This week’s episode singlehandedly squashed my doubts about the show, and was leaps and bounds ahead of what came before it. I don’t know how the show managed to go from “mediocre” to “incredibly awesome” in one week, but it did. I’ll wait until next week to see if it maintains this new confidence or if it was just a fluke — but wow, even if this show ends up getting tanked, that episode alone is a fine hour of Terminator mythology that can stand alongside the movies. When it ended I immediately wanted to rewind and watch it again, and the only other show that makes me want to do that is Lost.

The storytelling this week took a cue from Lost, I think, in that it told the story of Derik Reese in a series of flash backs (technically flash forwards, I guess, since they occurred in his future). I really like this style of storytelling because I think it works best for the kind of stories I like… it gives you information from the beginning, information from the end, and then fills in the little details slowly over the course of an episode, or, on a larger scale, a season or even the entire series.

For example, what the hell was in the piano room in the basement? That was creepy as hell. They were all locked up in a room after the machines took over, and they pressed their ears against the floorboards… “is that piano music?” It reminded me of Battlestar Galactica, when the four remaining Cylons heard mysterious music… I thought that maybe they were just sharing a hallucination. But no. Derik was taken down there, and what he saw confused and scared him. But what was there? We don’t know yet.

And we finally saw Cameron of the future. I was pretty naive thinking they’d drop the ball on this one — I had even thought up an entire backstory for her on my own because I thought they would never explain it. Yet there she was, and she was there from the beginning of the entire Terminator story arc, too. Since this episode took place in the year John Connor sent back Kyle Reese to protect his mother (the first Terminator movie), she was by his side. What’s interesting is that in my little “backstory,” she was John Connor’s lover. They hinted at it this week, after some of John’s officers were upset that they were letting “one of them” roam around, even though she was reprogrammed. Then someone said, “it’s what John wants.” She was his aide, essentially, and it implies that he trusted her more than what would be expected if she was just brainwashed.

I thought it was amusing that they didn’t cast an older John, instead they just referred to his off-screen presence, such as “John will see you now.” I was hoping that when Derik met him, they’d show him, but I realized that it’s been 20+ years and we have not yet seen future-John. Throwing him in all willy-nilly (yes, willy-nilly) is a big step. Naturally, they want to build the suspense. However, the rumors for the Terminator 4 movie have Christian Bale cast as future John, so we’ll see what happens with that. Maybe the show won’t show him because they want it to tie into the movie.

And what the hell was in the room where John was? Maybe I missed something? It looked like some sort of super-computer, and for a split second I thought they were making John himself into a machine. It’s entirely possibly I got distracted and missed something — was that the time displacement machine?

It’s also interesting that Cameron blatantly lies and collects bits and pieces of Terminators she kills. Obviously there is more going on inside her head than she’s letting on — which is strange, because a robot would just do what it’s programmed to do. Which means either she’s not just a run-of-the-mill robot, or she was programmed by future John to lie for a reason we haven’t seen yet.

Other great things: the music, as always, by Bear McCreary. Battlestar would not be what it is without it, and this show would struggle without it as well. The scene in the future when a Terminator walks into their hideout and starts… well, terminating, had that metallic, industrial tone that made the movies so menacing. And the buildup of both the piano music room and the “John will see you now” segment really built the suspense.

It was also genuinely disturbing seeing the machines salvaging jet engines. What the hey are they up to? Do they need them for time travel or what?

I really hope this show gets a full season order, because as of right now we have two more weeks and that’s it. I would love to see more of the future and how these new characters were there all along. This whole “destory Skynet in the past to protect the future” thing is good, but it isn’t sustainable, because if they do that, then there is nobody to go back in time in the first place to stop it. You can’t go back and kill your grandfather, in other words. The name of the show is also still a bit misleading, and this week’s episode is an example: it wasn’t really a chronicle of Sarah Connor at all.

I’m not sure what it should be, though. Terminator 4 is going to be called “Terminator: Salvation,” so something along those lines would have probably worked better. I think the average viewer doesn’t really like a show with a tongue twister title, especially if it isn’t accurate.

Did you see it? What did you think? Best episode yet? Complete failure?

Best line?  Once again Cameron repeating what she’s heard.  I thought this gag might get old but it’s still really funny.  “It’s a big scary robot,” and “I freak him the hell out…”  I lol’d.

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For the past couple weeks this show has felt a lot like Smallville to me, in that it’s just mediocre enough to be enjoyable. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but then again it’s not really bad, either, because I’ve made a point to see every Smallville episode since day one. But while Smallville lasted this long because it’s on the CW, Fox has a much worse history of keeping weak shows around. They usually get canceled within weeks of the premiere, which is why I’m still saying there won’t be any more episodes after number 8.

It’s just that they don’t take any risks. Two of my favorite shows, Lost and Battlestar Galactica, take risks every week with their storytelling. You can tell when a show does this because when someone asks you “what is it about?” the answer is so easy, but so complicated. For example, what’s your initial reaction when someone asks you: “What is Lost about?”

Well, it’s about a group of plane crash survivors. But is that it? No, not at all. You can go on for hours with that answer. Same with Battlestar Galactica, and I’m sure a lot of other shows that I don’t know about.

Smallville and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, however, suffer from that answer being a bit too easy. “What is Smallville about?” Superman before he was Superman. But is that it? Well, uhm, for the most part… yes.

What is the Sarah Connor Chronicles about? A robot from the future sent back in time to protect John and Sarah Connor so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place. But is that it? Well, uhm…. yes.

So far, at least. I’m aware that it might take an episode or two, or three or six, to really develop the overall mythology of the show. Lost had it from the start, with the roars, the pilot, and the polar bear. BSG had a bit of it in the beginning because we knew Sharon was a Cylon, and it really picked up later when Baltar realized he has no idea how he knew where a Cylon installation was and accepts the fact that he may be getting played by the hand of God.

The good news is that the Sarah Connor Chronicles might have shown a bit of it in last night’s episode, specifically during the last fifteen minutes, when the mysterious girl at school gets in a car with an unknown person (she’s hiding something), John shows up with Sarah’s ex (just what did he say to him?), and Cameron collecting the Terminator chip then writing a grief note at the end (who was she writing to? suicide girl? and what did she say?)

It’s also interesting that we still don’t know why the girl jumped from the school’s roof and killed herself a few episodes back. Originally I just thought it was lazy writing but I’m smacking myself in the forehead now because it obviously is connected to something. It was both creepy and cool when Cameron replayed the event for the school’s grief counselor. I’m still frustrated, though, that she’s so different from episode 1 to episode 2.

So, what do I hope the Sarah Connor Chronicles is about? A robot from the future who is sent back in time to protect John and Sarah so they can stop the robots from taking over in the first place? Sure. But maybe it will also be about Skynet’s realization that they need John and Sarah, because without John and Sarah, the first Terminator (Arnold) has no reason to go back in time and therefore serve as the inspiration for Skynet itself. Therefore, Skynet should be sending Terminators back to protect John and Sarah, and the twist should be that future John is sending back agents to kill himself so the resistance that sparks this whole mess in the first place never happens… thereby ensuring Skynet never exists.

One of those “ultimate sacrifice” stories. If that really is what this show is about, I hope Fox keeps it around after week 8.

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Robots have always been interesting to me, but lately they’ve been on my mind more than usual. It has something to due with the Terminator being on TV (the name Sarah Connor Chronicles still makes me cringe), and this book, called Love + Sex with Robots, which I heard about somehow. I also just watched a special on the History channel about artificially intelligent machines, so it made me look into it a little more.

Basically, we’re a lot further along than I thought in creating a robot that acts human.

And once you act human, who is to say you’re not human? The above examples are far from perfect, and they are not “self-aware,” but once that happens (if it happens, I suppose), who’s to say what is alive and what isn’t? It becomes a very fine line.

It’s that fine line that I think a show like the Sarah Connor Chronicles has a great opportunity to explore. It’s too early to say “they’re missing it,” because for all I know they might jump into that concept sooner or later. It would be different than Battlestar Galactica or the Matrix at this point, because for the first time we’d see a self-aware machine before they decided to go all ape-shit. And since the robot in question (Cameron) is from the future and knows what happens, all the while learning about humanity and self-sacrifice and worth from Sarah and John, maybe she’d grow and learn and end up saving the world before it’s destroyed on her own, rather than just because she’s programmed to.

Then again, that opens up a pretty big plot hole. In the opening monologue of tonight’s show, Sarah says, “Today we fight Skynet so that it’s never created.” Let’s say they’re able to complete that mission. Great, right?! No Skynet means no death and destruction, no six billion dead. It also means no John Connor leading the resistance, and no one going back in time to make Sarah Connor crazy about saving the world. And since nobody went back to make Sarah crazy about saving the world, she doesn’t. She stands by and lets it’s happen. So she fails the mission and Skynet is created, starting the cycle all over again. It kind of shoots free will in the face, too, because no matter what John does, we know that he’ll live. If he doesn’t, there is no future resistance leader for the machines to worry about and go back in the past and get everything started. So Sarah might freak out when John runs off into an empty warehouse filled with Terminator-making materials in tonight’s episode, but she should really just relax, because if he were to have failed, they wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place.

Kind of makes you wonder if John’s purpose isn’t exactly what’s been established in the first three movies. Maybe his destiny is completely misunderstood at this point. Or something.

The bottom line is that Lost’s Desmond may be right about the universe “course correcting” when minor things happen in the past that aren’t supposed to, but major things, I think, would take a lot more time for the universe to correct. Destroying all the seeds of Skynet would send enough ripples through spacetime, I think, to destroy what was left of the universe at that point in time.

So, I guess I should shut up and enjoy the show for what it’s trying to be, right?

I like Cameron’s new outfit, and I like the story about the Gollum that Sarah told in the beginning and the end. I like Cameron’s T-model, whatever it is, and how pleasant she is when she says, “oh, thank you for explaining,” when learning something new. I like how Sarah Connor was her T2-badass self tonight, telling someone she’d “beat him to death” if he didn’t tell him what she wanted to know — and then essentially following up with it. I loved how Cromarty killed his new human counterpart, and while doing so studied his facial reactions to appear more human. That’s creepy as hell.

Most of all, I love how much effort the writers are clearly putting into the show, covering up cheesy scenarios like John tracking a truck using his cell phone by having a character say, “that actually works?” It’s such a small line and a bit of a cop-out, but Smallville could learn a thing or two from this show by not taking itself too seriously.

I still say the show would be 10x more interesting if it revolved around Cameron and her part in the birth of Skynet. But that’s just my opinion. It’s also my opinion, hence the blog title, that the show is still not strong enough to last past episode eight. I’d bet all the coltan in the world on it! (Don’t get me wrong, though… I’ll still watch all eight!)

*****
Would You Like to Know More?:

Sarah Connor Chronicles - Week 3 of 8
Sarah Connor Chronicles -Ep. #2 - Another Little Mini-Review
Sarah Connor Chronicles - Adam’s Little Mini-Review

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