Fox TERMINATOR series: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (1 Viewer)

[Doug Schiller]

The main problem with the show is not the bad acting, not following Terminator canon, and lack of good action scenes.
The problem is, unlike T1 and T2 (and to a small degree T3), there is no sense of real danger.
The movies gave you a feeling that this was humanity's last chance and Sarah and John were in real danger.
The TV show has none of that, they could fly to Alaska and you will know that in 2 minutes a Terminator will show up. Ho hum.
I was actually rooting for the Terminator at one point.

 

[Josh Dial]

Oh, I see, you'll be playing the role of "that guy," in this thread.

 

[TravisR]

So he could evade detection by the sleepy small town school's (off camera) metal detectors? Oh right, a Terminator might set off a metal detector. I guess the answer is yes, so we could see his robot leg.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

It would appear so, I get no pleasure from it believe me, i'm a fan of these characters and I wanted to like it but it didn't turn out that way.

I'm not depriving you of your opinions, allow me mine, please. You liked the show and I didn't, big deal, it's not the end of the world.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Personally I thought they should have had the Terminator proceed to throw school supplies at John, chalk and paperclips could be lethal if you hit a man in the right spot.

 

[Greg_S_H]

That would have made more sense had the show been set in 2007 at that point, but '99 was the year of Columbine, so the world was just waking up to the possibility of school shootings. Carrying a piece into a school in a small town probably wouldn't have been a problem. Then again, maybe the schools in the future are ultra-secure and this terminator was programmed with that in mind.

I could be wrong, but it seems obvious to me that the builder of Skynet is now going to be Dyson's son. "Could he have told anyone that he didn't remember telling?" "No, no one." Then, the skills and ideas got passed down to the kid. It fits that we first see him as a kid here and now jump ahead eight years.

After a quick check at the IMDb to determine that she's nearly 30 years old (!), all I can say about Summer is huzzow! I didn't like Firefly, so I only saw her in one episode of that, but I'm liking her as a terminator. My only complaint to Fox is, why did they bother to cover her up? She's a robot, so there should be no problem from the censors.

I'm not a huge Terminator nerd--have only seen one and two, and it's been years since I have--so I liked it. Much better than similar show Bionic Woman. I'm in.

Oh, and Sarah is pretty much an idiot here. I know in '99 camera phones weren't as ubiquitous as they are now, but still . . . a trained fighter and survivor looking at college kids like a deer in the headlights?

 

[Corey3rd]

They made a time jump to 2007 at the end of the episode. Those are camera phones of today.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Summer is very cute, i'll give you that, she's no Alizee but she's definitely a cutie.

 

[seanOhara]

Don't forget that Jonesboro had happened the year before. And if the episode took place in Fall '99, that would've been plenty of time for the school board to've had metal detectors installed.

I think the bigger problem with the scene is why the Terminator even used a gun. At that point John had no reason to suspect him, so why break cover? Why not just wait to get close to John and snap his neck?

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

So simple it's brilliant!

 

[Tony J Case]

Not a bad show. Not great, mind you - but it didnt offend like the Bionic Woman did. The only problem I can see is it's going to quickly become Terminator-of-the-week. "Tonights special guest Terminator: the Gas Station Attendant!"

Also, there's a strong Giligan's Island vibe coming off the show. Skynet will never be able to terminate John - that would end the show. The Meatbags will never be able to stop the creation of Skynet - that would scuttle the franchise. So it turns into a He-Man versus Skeletor stalemate, with one side unable to achieve decisive victory over the other.

Honestly, I dont see how they can get a season out of it.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

^^Great points, plus you get brownie points for finding a way to compare the Terminator to Gilligan's Island lol.

 

[seanOhara]

On Battlestar Galactica, we know the Cylons will never destroy humanity, and the humans won't reach Earth until a couple episodes before the series finale. And yet it hasn't descended into Gilliganism.

 

[Michael Harris]

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams "Mostly Harmless".

Not a bad show but not great. I don't judge shows based on their pilots. I'll give it a few more episodes. For me, shows like this requires me to shut down my plausibility meter.

I do like Summer Glau though. I hope they can choreograph a fight scene for her like they did in "Serenity" taking advantage of her dance training. She gave some serious whoop ass in that film, which is why I can see her as a terminator.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> I have a feeling that this show is going to have a lot of things that make you go hmmm...

It's all based on real events, right?

 

[Greg_S_H]

I know that. My point is, Sarah might not have realized what the guy was doing, since camera phones were not so common in her time of 1999*, but it was still weird for her to just stand there staring at the kids like that. Had it been a car full of terminators, she'd be toast.

* - And, maybe my memory of the state of cellphone technology circa 1999 is faulty. People were certainly comfortable enough with the tech two years later on 9/11, so maybe it was just me. I had a monochrome phone with few features to speak of at the time.

 

[TravisR]

The difference is that there isn't just two people that the Cylons are after.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I just thought of something, Robert Patrick is a big TV guy now, he should reprise his T-1000 role at some point.

But then again there would be no reason for a T-1000 model Terminator to look like that particular man since the T-1000 in T2 probably arrived as a mass of liquid metal and took his default human form from the nearest person, we just didn't see him do that.

 

[Corey3rd]

but the woman has been shifted through time and her clothes ripped off. She's probably a bit looped from such a moment.

 

[Tony J Case]

Not having seen the show (well, beyond the original series from 78), I might be talking out of my ass here, but it seems to me that there's more room to manuver with Galactica. With Terminator, we get:

1) Run from the terminator-of-the-week
2) Destroy the terminator-of-the-week
3) Run from the cops
4) Stop Skynet from coming into existance
5) Convince the FBI guy that Sarah is not nuts
6) Meatbag Drama with Sarah's old Love Interest
7) John falls in love with his Sexbot with angsty results

And really that's about it. We can start mixing and matching bits and pieces, but there's not a lot of variations they can do and stay fresh.