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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 35 |
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the sarah connor chronicles 8-9 PM |
 LENA HEADEY ...as Sarah Connor |
 The TERMINATOR Ensemble From left: Thomas Dekker as John Connor: Lena Headey; Richard T. Jones as FBI Agent Ellison and Summer Glau as "Cameron." |
 SUMMER GLAU as "Cameron" |
A rousing action show gets
a second chance on FOX
of TheColumnists.com
Thanks to last season's writers' strike, Fox's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" didn't become the phenomenon it should have been. But Fox has faith in the TV continuation of the blockbuster movie series and so it's now back on the air, trying once again to seize the nation's attention.
Only nine episodes were telecast last season because that's all the scripts that were available to film by the time the strike crippled the TV season. The show premiered in January and was all over by early March. It made no waves and might have disappeared without a trace if Fox didn't think it had breakout potential.
And it does. I sat down and watched all nine of the first season episodes at a single viewing, making use of the handsome DVD boxed set now available from Warner Home Video to catch up on the show, then watched last week's season premiere episode. I'm hooked bigtime. I find it as addictive as "24," the Fox series that it most resembles in style and pace.
"The Terminator" without either Arnold Schwarzenegger or Linda Hamilton, the original Sarah Connor? Well, I suppose there are still holdouts who won't see any Dracula movies without Bela Lugosi, but the way the TV series has been shaped, you don't really miss them, as fabulous as they both were.
If you don't know the premise of the original movie series, here's a brief refresher course.
There were three "Terminator" movies: "The Terminator" (1984); "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) and "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" (2003).
The Premise:
Human life on Earth is almost extinct in the near future (2029
A.D.) because humans created "thinking machines" that
took over Skynet, a global missile defense system, and nuked
the planet, leaving the surviving humans living as guerilla fighters
determined to win back their planet from the robots. John Connor,
the leader of the resistance fighters, is beginning to make gains
in the future war, so the robots use a time machine to send a
cyborg "terminator," a nearly indestructible robot
"hit man" who resembles a human because it has an outer
coating of living flesh and blood, back to Los Angeles before
the nuclear holocaust. Its mission: To kill Connor's mother,
Sarah, before she can give birth to the future leader of the
human rebels.
Learning of this mission, Connor also uses a time machine to send his trusted soldier Kyle Reese back in time to try and save his mother's life--and, naturally, his own. John Connor may or may not already know that Kyle impregnates Sarah in the course of protecting her and becomes Connor's own father.
That robot mission failed, but human scientists recovered a microchip from the remains of the first terminator and, using reverse engineering techniques, used it to discover the remarkable technology that permits the creation of Skynet.
The TV series seems to fall into a time period roughly between the second and third "Terminator" movies. Sarah (Lena Headey) has given birth to her son John (Thomas Dekker), who's now in his early teens, but the future evil robot empire keeps trying to kill them before they can alter events and stop the annihilation of the human race.
In the first season of the TV show, the principal villain was "Cromartie," a terminator cyborg who takes various human shapes. Though Cromartie is still hanging in there, a new, more sinister villainess has surfaced: Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson), a ruthless female executive with dark red hair and a heavy Scottish accent. She seems to be one of those frightfully advanced T-1000 models of cyborg (first seen in "T2") who's made of liquid metal that can shape itself into virtually anything.
I'm happy to report that "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" continues to have the arch sense of humor that the movies often displayed. A prime example came at the climax of the new season's first episode when one of Weaver's subordinates challenges her and says he's "pissed off" at her plans. A few moments later, as he steps up to the urinal in the men's room, that innocent appliance suddenly morphs into liquid metal and Weaver emerges to slice and dice him appropriately. It's a scene well capable of permanently shutting down anyone's urinary tract.
In the first "Terminator" movie, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was the time-travelling protector of Sarah. In "T2," it was a re-programmed T-101 cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger). In the TV version, the future rebels send back "Cameron," a stunningly beautiful, but appropriately expressionless cyborg played by former ballet dancer Summer Glau. In last season's cliffhanger episode, Cameron was blown up when she started the engine of Sarah's car, which the villains had booby-trapped.
But these cyborgs are tough to exterminate and Cameron crawled out of the wreckage with only a bad limp and a couple of dings in her face, which almost passed as beauty marks. That's good news for me because I'm not sure how much interest I'd have lost in the series if the writers had red-lined Cameron and taken Summer Glau out of the ranks of TV's hottest dream girls.
There are many reasons to love this series. First, it keeps the roller coaster pace of the movies, seldom stopping for long chunks of dialogue. Like "24," it moves like a cliffhanger serial, but doesn't leave you dangling at the end of each one-hour episode. There's usually a wrap-up to the story of the night, although the ongoing plot usually teases you into the following week's episode, too.
I'm a big Linda Hamilton fan, especially the buffed version of herself in "T2," so I do miss her presence as Sarah. Lena Headey, who's English, hides her accent and is fine as Sarah dramatically, but she doesn't look as if she'd last long in the kind of rough fights Sarah so often gets into. The "Cromartie" cyborgs really don't have much personality, so they come off more like the "Jason" monster in the "Friday the 13th" movies. I have high hopes for Shirley Manson's evil Catherine Weaver, though.
Weaver has dark red hair and porcelain skin. She's a really offbeat-looking villainess and I wonder how they'll develop her as the second season progresses. In one of the most satisfying episodes of last season, the writers took advantage of Summer Glau's ballet background and had her Cameron character infiltrate a ballet class. Watching her glide through just a few simple moves made you realize that those darned future robots sure can learn fast.
The TV series also is loaded with in-jokes that refer to the whole "Terminator" canon. Good robot "Cameron," for instance, is obviously named after James Cameron, the creator of the "Terminator" legend and the director of the first two films, as well as the Oscar-winning "Titanic." FBI Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) also is named for science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, whose own robot stories inspired Cameron's creation of the Terminator.
And I love the homage to the earlier films with the line of dialogue "Cameron" says to young John when she first appears on the screen to rescue him: "If you want to live, come with me!" Michael Biehn said that to Linda Hamilton when they first met in the original "Terminator" and Schwarzenegger used the line in "T2."
James Cameron has kept his hand in the TV series and his successors as producers have maintained the high quality look and sound of the films, utilizing special effects of a kind not normally found in regular weekly TV series.
If you, like many of us, missed the whole first season of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," by all means hurry out and get the boxed DVD set. With only nine fast-moving episodes, it won't take you long to catch up enough to really enjoy what looks like an amazing second season of this promising show.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Sept. 15, 2008. The photos are courtesy of the Fox network.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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