Sarah Connor Chronicles - Week 4 of 8

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

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

There is a company out of California that has developed a camera that can actually see into the future.

Essentially, it has to do with tachyon particles. They’re apparently just as important here as they are in Star Trek when they’re employed every week for some new piece of technology. Something about the waveforms and how the light hits the camera… for example, imagine yourself taking a picture with a regular camera. The light beams (specifically, photons) travel forward through time, hit your lens (and your eyes) and an image is imprinted on the film. You essentially have a snapshot of the past, right? Well, operating along those same principles is the theory that tachyon particles actually travel backward in time. So when a certain company–in this case, EniTech Research–comes up with a prototype that uses tachyons instead of photons, you have the ability take snapshots of the future.

I’m not sure of the science behind it, but the properties of tachyons operate in a way that allows the camera to see exactly 1191 days into the future (3 years and some months, roughly).

How cool is that!? Imagine sitting in your apartment and taking a photo of your living room and getting a picture of a party the future tenants will have. Or taking a photo of a piece of land you just purchased to see what your future house will look like! Or, if you were patient and punctual enough, taking a picture of a mirror where you’d make a point of standing in front of 3 years later… you would see what you look like in 3 years!

But what if you took a picture of yourself in the mirror, wrote yourself a reminder to stand there in 3 years, got the picture, and nobody was there? What if you took a picture of your living room and saw a mysterious looking figure glaring back at you? What if you took a picture of your house-under-construction only to see a bare spot of land?

What happened?

Of course, EniTech is just a fictional company and another example of how television writers are branching their ideas across a lot of different media. Just as The Hanso Foundation’s website for Lost, or Slusho’s website for Alias and Cloverfield, we have EniTech Research for The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

They have developed a camera that can see into the future, and have been “concerned” at the results, because apparently every picture they’ve taken has shown something strange. When taking a picture of San Francisco, for example, the resulting image shows the city completely destroyed.

When taking a picture of a housing complex in 2008…

The image that develops from 2011 looks like this…

They don’t know it, but they’re looking at a post-Judgment Day world, where the machines have already taken over.

It’s going to be interesting to see if Sarah, John and the gang end up working with EniTech Research in the show, because they’d likely be a strong ally. Of course, if their name really is EniTech (as in, Initech from Office Space), it’s going to be hard to take them seriously.

Props to A Mike Life for bringing this to my attention!

As for tonight’s episode, nothing like that really happened (yet!?), but, it was still pretty good. (spoilers from here on out)

There continue to be a couple inconsistencies, like, if Cameron the Terminator Girl was really in high school before she found John, wouldn’t she already kind of know how to behave? She is a lot different than the girl from the first episode who smiled and introduced herself, then later caught up with him in the hallway and was all flirty saying things like “sucks for you!” But it was kind of funny to see her in the girls’ bathroom tonight trying to adapt to the culture, calling things “tight.”

Even though it’s the Sarah Connor chronicles I hope they’ll go into more of Cameron’s quest to appear more human. I don’t think it’ll be like Data in Star Trek who wanted to actually become human, but developing the desire to be someone’s friend doesn’t seem out of her… programming. I was hoping she’d save the suicidal girl before she jumped.

It was creepy to see the T-800 (Cromarty) looking for skin. This is, of course, the terminator that got caught in their temporal wake and traveled to 2008 with Sarah, John, and Cameron, unbeknownst to them and without skin. The scene in the bathroom with the tub full of blood when he’s just a metal skeleton standing there creeped me out. Even creepier to see that he needed to take the guy’s eyes.

And I know I keep talking about Bear McCreary (the composer) when I write these Sarah Connor blogs, but I have to point out that I really liked how he used that ominous industrial-sounding chord from T2 whenever the T-800 was doing something nasty. It was all T2 meets Battlestar Galactic-y sounding and gave the show a little bit of the credibility it still needs to last past week eight.

Did you watch it? What did you think?

Continue Reading...

Not sure why it didn’t click yesterday, but the name of the show is “Sarah Connor Chronicles,” not “John Connor’s Super Excellent Adventures,” so it would make sense that the show focus on her.

Spoilers follow, so watch ya step, kid.

I cannot imagine the apocalypse. I cannot imagine three billion dead. I can imagine planes hitting buildings… and I can imagine fire. If I would have witnessed it, I’m sure I would have thought the end was near. I’m sure I would have thought, ‘we have failed.’

That little quote was the highlight of the show, (second only to a scene that came later that I’ll get into in a second.) So now that John, Sarah, and Cameron, the Terminator girl, have skipped ahead eight years into the future to what is now 2007, they missed 9/11 and had to be filled in on the details.

Of course, we don’t hear the story, just that quote, spoken as a voice over during slow fades of the Mexicans telling Sarah what happened during the eight years she was “dead.” It stuck with me because, while watching the coverage of 9/11 that morning, I really did think the end was near, and I really did think we failed.

The other highlight of tonight’s episode was when Cameron walked past John and lightly brushed the back of his neck with her hand. Read my last post for clarification, but I’m sure you get the idea.

But then she said no, she was just running a quick skin analysis to see how he was holding up.

Seems to me she could have just asked. Seems to me that she might have just told that whole analysis story to his mother, because if you’re trying to hook up with someone, you’re not going to tell that person’s mother the truth. Seems to be, then, that if you are really just doing a skin analysis, you don’t turn around and smile.

And as we saw in the scene where she was mimicking the silent Mexican girl’s movements, she’s learning how to interact with humans… could she be learning how to interact with John? It would be cool, but kind of backward. John should be teaching her, not the other way around.

Rambling!

Some other quick thoughts:

• John’s trip to the mall of 2007. Think about how much technology has changed in the last ten years. Better yet, imagine traveling almost 10 years in the future and then going into a computer store. I didn’t consider this until he walked into the store and experienced Windows Vista and cell phones.

• The Tin Man reference. Okay, this isn’t award winning writing. But Cameron admitting later, “I know the story and I understand the reference… I need a heart,” was pretty ace.

• Enrique (from T2) is now an informant! “I got some interesting information for you, coppo! El Finito will not let you down.” He was going to sell out Sarah. I knew that sonofabitch was bad news since I first saw ‘im in 1992.

• The terminator that was chasing them in 1999 got caught up in the temporal wake and unknowingly traveled with them to 2007. I hope they keep the name “Chet” for him, and I hope he wears that creepy mask in the preview for next week’s episode all the time.

• John’s terminator girl’s name is Cameron. It just clicked that this is no doubt a reference to James Cameron, writer and director of the first two movies.

• Speaking of the movies, it appears that the third one is being taken into account after all. Last night I thought maybe that was being ignored. Tonight it looks like it actually plays just as much of a role as the rest of them with the realization that if Cameron had not taken John and Sarah into the future, Sarah would have died of cancer as was revealed in the third movie. The mind-bender (or potential plot hole) here is that if future-John sent Cameron back with those directives, he saved his mother, and therefore doesn’t experience the same events that caused him to send Cameron back with those directives in the first place. That’s how alternate realities are created, folks, and if you’re not careful, it’s also how you lose viewers.

• Did anybody else catch Penny from Lost as the current wife of Sarah’s ex? The photo that John saw upon breaking into their house reminded me of her photo with Desmond on Lost.

• “Know thyself.” The more time you waste watching movies and television, the more pieces start falling together. This was printed above the Oracle’s door in the Matrix, and came into play tonight when Sarah spoke the full quote: “Know thyself, and thou shall know all the mysteries of the Gods and the Universe.” Fits better in the Matrix, but… what if the Terminator series is just a prequel for the Matrix trilogy anyway? It could happen.

Bear McCreary, the composer, seems to be going with a more metallic/industrial feel for the score as compared to the Celtic themed score for Battlestar Galactica, which works. The action sequences and the scene where they tell Sarah about 9/11 all sounded very good.

I still believe that the show probably won’t last past week eight, despite the fact that it’s reportedly Fox’s highest rated scripted premiere in 8 years. Whether or not that’s a shame remains to be seen.

Continue Reading...

“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!

Continue Reading...