The Sarah Connor Chronicles: It’s Promising
Posted by Maggie
January 14th, 2008 at 11:35am
In Terminator
Last night, when I wasn’t fast-forwarding through the already abbreviated Globes (as Kyle mentioned, my goal was to never hear Billy Bush speak extemporaneously, and I succeeded), I caught the premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I have to say, I thought it was tops. A solid A- pilot. The second “premiere hour” is tonight, so do take a look.
The story takes place between movies two and three. For those who have only seen each movie once (or never), that means that future Savior of All Mankind, John Connor, is about 15. He’s played by Thomas Dekker, who you may remember from the Zach-is-gay-no-he’s-not controversy of early Heroes episodes. He has a good sense of earnest whinyness, and he looks convincingly enough like a cross between young Edward Furlong (movie 2) and youngish Nick Stahl (movie 3). His mother, as played by Lena Headey, maintains the suspicious toughness of the movie Sarah — and her horrible haircut. I was relieved that they cast someone who can pull off the toughness, unlike the pasty and meek Bionic Woman.
But all of that’s just window dressing for the plot, which I won’t get into here because it genuinely surprised me last night and I don’t want to ruin it. Like any story involving time travel, this one’s convoluted and paradoxical, but it’s trying something new — and it’s different enough from the movie to be fresh and interesting. Suffice to say, there are good robots and there are bad robots, and there are people who are going to blow up the world, and it’s exciting and full of questions. (For example — don’t read this if you don’t want a mild spoiler — why would Future John Connor send Young John Connor a sexy young lady robot to protect him? Is he messing with his younger self? He is, isn’t he?)
Also, a robot said “Come with me if you want to live.” Always a great line.
Spolier: Something I didn’t know last night when I was trying to figure out how John could go 8 years into the future as a 15-year-old and still end up as a 20-something in 2004. Especially since in T3, Skynet started killing everyone in 2004. It turns out that we’re dealing with one of those “alternate timelines” where they ignore everything that happened in T3. So there’s no guarantee that Sarah will die at the end of the series. And John probably won’t ever go back to 1999. One thing we do know, is that the machines are eventually going to take over, since there will be a connection between the show and T4 (with Christian Bale as John Connor) which takes place in the scary future with lasers and tanks rolling over human skulls and stuff.
Oh he is TOTALLY messing with his younger self. I think he knows if he doesn’t mess with himself, he’ll end up a mama’s boy.