"TERMINATOR: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Season 2 Thread - Page 24

Re: "TERMINATOR: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Season 2 Thread

She seems to sort of disdain humans, but she also must see something unique in them. It would have been easy to let Savannah die, but she has made a genuine effort to do the best she can at approximating a mother given the circumstances. She brought in the psychologist and Ellison to specifically provide a counterbalancing force.

Re: "TERMINATOR: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Season 2 Thread

The only two characters that absolutely need to survive are Sarah Connor and John Connor. And, when hit comes to punch, they could kill Sarah and launch a sequel series with John Connor living off the grid a la "The Fugitive".

If it was written like last Friday's episode, I'd continue to watch.

Can't wait for tonight's episode (which hopefully is a season finale and not a series finale).

Re: "TERMINATOR: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Season 2 Thread

I'm going to be really pissed if this is the series finale. You can't leave things on a mind fuck note in which Derek Reese never went back and Kyle Reese has taken John Connor's place as savior of the human race and John himself is stuck in the Future War with John Henry and Cameron's chip. At the very least we need a TV movie or direct-to-DVD feature.

I'm not saying I'd prefer a show with Cameron -- I really like Glau's character and her performance on the show. I'm just saying that she's not essential to telling a story in this universe during this time period. Both of the Connors are. Sarah Connor isn't complex, because she has devoted the entirety of her being toward preparing John Connor to save the world. I would argue that John Connor is very complex.

Re: "TERMINATOR: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Season 2 Thread

Good call; I definitely wouldn't have thought of that. I kind of how it is Allison, though, only because it would be nice to see something good come out of all of this. Exactly. If you accept the events of T3 on the overall storyline, John would have had to find his way to the bunker and start forming the resistence. Even if he did not, he would have been in the trenches and slowly worked his way up to leader. It's possible that's what would happen in this new timeline.

The only thing that suggests that John was never born is that Kyle Reese somehow returned to the present. (Both real Kyle and Sarah's imaginary Kyle look notably younger than Michael Biehn did in The Terminator. Someone like Skeet Ulrich would have made a much better Kyle Reese) Therefore, it's likely that the future John jumped to was two iterations away from the timeline he came from: the first iteration was created as a result of John not being there to lead the resistence; since John wasn't humanity's messiah, he never sent Kyle Reese back to save his mom. Whatever time travel mission Kyle Reese just got back from, it was completely different than the one John had sent him on. As a result of John not sending Kyle back in time, John was never born. Yes we did, in the pilot episode, which was set in 1995 (I believe). Cameron led John and Sarah into the bank vault, where the time machine was hidden. The three of them in turn jumped forward to our present. Because after the damage sustained in the prison break, she was no longer entirely enclosed in an organic shell. Arnold at the end of The Terminator wouldn't have been able to time travel either. Presumably, John Henry (with Cameron's chip inside his person) are somewhere in the same future John Connor and WeaverBot are. This is why I'm angry if this is the end of the series. While the ending served as a terrific mind-fuck, it still negates everything that came before it. If the series gets a third season, I'm sure John Connor would find a way back to the present and restore a timeline in which he is the future leader of mankind and in a position to send Kyle Reese back to 1984 to save his mother. As it stands now, though, the series timeline exists as a really out there "What If?" for the Terminator universe. I would have almost preferred they shoot two endings, the current one if renewal looked likely, and a more simple one with John Connor living off the grid alone and preparing for Judgment Day a la Nick Stahl's portrayal in the early scenes of T3 if cancellation looked likely (as it does). WeaverBot proved her trustworthiness by saving their lives. The Connors doomed themselves by not taking a wait-and-see approach to John Henry. Had they all gone down to meet John Henry together, it's possible the jump to the future would not have been necessary.
When it occured, John made his choice and Sarah made hers. She was not willing to leap into the unknown for metal, even Cameron, but John was. Unfortunately, that decision seems to have screwed up everything. In both Terminator movies (and a couple key instances in the show), dogs have been shown to go crazy around terminators. Since the dog was completely calm around Glau's character, the assumption is that we were looking at Allison and not Cameron. It's possible that some decision made by John led to Allison beyond captured. Whatever leadership is making the decisions in his absence must have made a different strategic decision which kept Allison alive as part fo the resistence.
Unless that dog is really WeaverBot in disguise.

Re: "TERMINATOR: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" Season 2 Thread

I did:

Exactly. If you accept the events of T3 on the overall storyline, John would have had to find his way to the bunker and start forming the resistence.

Even if he did not, he would have been in the trenches and slowly worked his way up to leader. It's possible that's what would happen in this new timeline. However while it's possible, the likelihood that an already established human resistance would cede authority anytime soon to a teenage boy is slim to none. I could buy this except that Kyle is shown returning from the past looking exactly like Sarah remembers him. Had Kyle been among those who initially found John in the future, and had we not seen Sarah's hallucinations of Kyle, I could buy that an older Kyle (who looks more like Michael Biehn circa 1984) was sent back by John after rising up in the ranks over several years. This makes no sense, since each "hop" back to the past would create an entirely new future. All the risk he takes in the future would be invalidated by the changes he makes in the past. I suppose he could use the intel from each new future to shape the fight in the past. That being said, the more rare of a thing that time travel is the better. If this John were to make it back to the past (thus restoring the mainstream spectrum of timelines), he should stay there, in my less-than-humble opinion. I actually really like the idea of John falling in love with the real Allison. That would be the best justification for throwing John in the future, since something lasting could come out of it. It would also give Summer Glau a more substantial (though less interesting) in the show. Every character moment with Cameron was a revelation, but by the nature of being a terminator there weren't very many of them. With Allison, John could have the experience he clearly longed for with Riley (and, on some level, Cameron). Exactly. That's why I thought it was irresponsible for a show that knew it was probably going to be cancelled. Until that ending, I could have drawn a line in my head between this show and T4 (and even the key events of T3, if not the exact circumstances). It still wouldn't be a satisfying ending, but we could seek that out through other sources. This ending gives us all a lot to chew on, but still leaves the show well outside the Terminator mainstream. Weaver was disappointed by the crew of the Jimmy Carter, which lacked faith in John Connor and was paid the price for it. She said as much to John Henry in the basement, warning him that humans like Ellison can prove disappointing. Rather than betray humanity, however, she worked out her own unilateral solution for saving it. But Skynet figured out her intentions, and forced her hand.
Cameron is a terminator designed and programmed to destroy humanity, but later reprogrammed to protect John Connor. Knowing as she did the proposal future John offered to WeaverBot, she must have decided that joining Weaver and John Henry was in John Connor's best interest. John Henry implanted her chip in Cromartie's skull, essentially giving Cameron access to John Henry and vice-versa. Cameron -- in Cromartie's body, with John Henry's knowledge -- hopped into the future shortly before the rest of them arrived in the basement. WeaverBot and John Connor hopped through on the same time portal. It's possible that the Cameron he sends back will be built and programmed in Allison's image by John Connor himself, as Quentin suggested, in this new timeline. The difference being that the new Cameron wouldn't want to kil John Connor on some level. What they said was that the arrival of Cromartie and Cameron (which led to the first jump foward in time) changed the future as seen in T3. Somewhere in the show's universe, the nuclear bunker exists (as does Kate Brewster). However, John is no longer Kate's contemporary because of the jump foward and there's no reason to believe he would have ever ended up in that bunker to wait out Judgement Day (since the date of Judgment Day itself has also clearly changed).

As the self-destructing chips in the lastest generation of metal shows, the time travel creates a strange symbiosis: Each attempt to kill John Connor better prepares him to be the leader of the resistance. John Connor's more sophisticated tactics in turn make Skynet's methods more sophisticated.