Come with me if you want to be mildly entertained

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, for those of you who have never seen it1 takes place after the second film, and effectively negates the events of the third.

The gist? A computer gains consciousness, realizes what a horrible fate that is and seeks a long and overly drawn out revenge on those responsible. So basically, a low-rent Battlestar Galactica.


I wish I were a Cylon.

The computer in question, SkyNet, develops a time travel device and sends back cyborgs, which can pass for human, in order to eliminate any threats or nuisances to its eschatological schemes.

The few remaining human rebels gain access to this naked time gun and also travel back in time to thwart SkyNet’s plans and occasionally just to escape the monotony of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The leader of the resistances, John Connor, able to reprogram captured cyborgs or T-888s into submission, sends those back in time as well.

Spoiler Alert!

SkyNet, in a surprising insight into the minds of sixteen year old boys, creates a nubile young T-888, River from Firefly in order to seduce? John (which version of John is not entirely clear), but he of course captures and reprograms her. Which was SkyNet’s plan all along? Maybe? Anyway, she is sent back in time in order to protect a teenage John, and ends up posing as his sister. His hot, mildly autistic sister who is constantly implying she and his future self have roboboned.

You could cut the sexual tension with a diamond tipped circular saw or at least melt it with strategically placed charges of thermite. Worse yet, the creepy robosexual subtext is made even more disturbing, because if you think it through, the future John Connor is committing robotutory rape.

Besides a potential key demographic of registered sex offenders, the show is also beset by several problems endemic to most science fiction, namely the fine line between prescience and preposterousness. The series routinely comes up against the brick wall of its own ridiculousness. Suspension of disbelief being something the characters themselves have to deal with on a regular basis. Anytime the Connors have a new target to protect, they are invariably asked a version of “what the fuck?”

Responding with a variation of “Artificial Intelligence. Robots. Judgment Day. Time Travel. Governor of California.”

Time travel is a fickle mistress, just ask the writing staff at Heroes, but it’s still too early to tell if this show will fall into the same tired trap. That being said, there are still some prickly issues.

One is the unstated but necessary implication that time travel is a costly endeavor, or else I see nothing preventing an army of T-888s conducting a “surge” into the present day and raping humanity like a well lubed machine.

Then there’s the paradox of how many paradoxes you can arrange into a paradox fractal while still keeping the guns out of your audience’s mouths. All three films have always been steeped in the grandfather paradox and that’s been enjoyable up to a point, after all, John is a walking matricide, or whatever the opposite of matricide is. He did, after all send his own father back in time to impregnate his mother. T:TSCC, however, sometimes plays way too fast and loose with the implications of time travel.

In a recent episode, Toby from The West Wing and Warren from Buffy The Vampire Slayer played two versions of the same character. Not only were they in the same room, in flagrant violation of Time Cop time traveling rules, but another character from the future, this guy, was all set to murder the younger version with no regard for what this would mean for his own continued existence.

The films, while posing their share of moral and philosophical questions, steeped as they were in relentless action and reliably boner-inducing production values, at least in thirteen-year-old boys, for the most part skirted these types of thorny dilemmas. Which is good news for fans of the television show as the most interesting veins have yet to be mined.

John Connor is clearly Jesus Christ, a messiah destined to save his people from damnation or at least extermination. Which is all fine and good; as far as saviors go, we could do worse than this kid. Neo could learn a thing or two from him. What gives this story its extra juice are the further implications of a Biblical reading.

John is apparently the most important human being to have ever lived. For some reason, it seems that no one else is, or ever could be, remotely qualified to lead the remaining humans in the future. But the reason is there, hidden in plain sight.

John Connor would not be a threat to the robot race if they just left him the fuck alone. The only reason he is exceptionally skilled at defeating SkyNet is because he’s had to do it his entire life.

Of course if we take the metaphor to its logical conclusion, if JC is the Chosen One, then he was chosen by none other than SkyNet itself. If SkyNet had never tried to murder Sarah Connor, before she even gave birth, John would have never sent back his friend Kyle Reese in order to protect her and he would never have been born. If he is the son of god, then Kyle Reese is little more than Joseph to SkyNet’s YHWH.

Despite being engaging and occasionally thought-provoking, these “chronicles” typically have no swagger, resting too much on their pretty explosions and women. Summer Glau in particular, is as usual, gorgeously creepy and creepily gorgeous. While you never quite get the impression that they are not trying, you do feel they aren’t pushing themselves as far into madness as they might.

I want my science fiction to do what science fiction does best: blow my fucking mind.

Although, to their credit the writers are starting to explore some darker themes with Kendra from Battlestar Galactica: Razor running some sort of mysterious, racist counter mission to meddle with John’s nascent sexuality, and what is possibly a baby SkyNet.2

The trick, however, will be to create a reality conducive to those ideas while avoiding simply retreading the well worn territory paved by Philip K. Dick and more recently Ron Moore.

Speaking of worldbuilding, one of the most fascinating aspects of T:TSCC is the strange sideways reality it takes place in, quite similar to our own, but different in very telling ways.

In “Allison From Palmdale”,3 from the second season, Cameron, suffers some damage to her CPU and loses a swath of memories. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

John, not suspecting the extent of her Droidzheimer’s, sends her on some errands. Disoriented, she accidentally knocks over a fruit display, and when approached by a clerk and later a security guard, cannot remember her own name. She is promptly arrested and found guilty of committing high crimes against melons.

In all seriousness folks, these are stressful times to live in. Your new favorite show can be cancelled without any notice, usually leaving the narrative completely unresolved. The fate of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is secure, at least until the end of this season and it will likely be picked up for a third, but time makes fools of us all, and this is FOX we’re talking about here. As such, if you’re a fan of T:TSCC, it should come as some relief to hear that Josh Friedman has wisely chosen to film the final scene of his show in advance, should the need for a hasty ending arise.

Keeping in line with our long tradition of breaking stories4 we’ve managed to get our hands on that final scene. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

It’s not the best science fiction on television, Battlestar Galactica, or the most ambitious, Lost, but it is a reliably worthwhile 42 minutes with the promise of becoming required watching when the storytelling becomes bolder and more confident.

The show aired its “fall finale” earlier this week, so if you want to whet your appetite for the final half season of BSG, and the new webisodes aren’t quite cutting it, or if you just need something to fill the winter drought of television, now is the perfect time to catch up on this occasionally charming, usually earnest exercise in franchise exploitation. I mildly recommend it.

Also, it’s not inconceivable that I know this person!

  1. So 7 out of the 10. [↩]
  2. Aww, it wants to commit genocide. How adorable. It thinks it’s people. [↩]
  3. I wonder what happened to my one reader from Palmdale? Fucking SkyNet, persecuting and killing my visitors. Still worth it though. [↩]
  4. Not to mention hearts [↩]
December 17, 2008 | About: • •  
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Comments

2 Responses to “Come with me if you want to be mildly entertained”

  1. your friendly neighborhood brad on December 20th, 2008 11:33 am

    Much Props for both “gorgeously creepy and creepily gorgeous” and “droidzheimer’s” but i’m confused. Should I watch the show or is it retarded? Or should I watch the show because it’s retarded?

  2. Ricardo on December 20th, 2008 3:38 pm

    And here I thought the best part was the spoiler monkey. But to answer your question, should you watch the show or is it retarded? Yes.

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