Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Review
Terminator:
The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the new FOX drama, is a worthy addition
to the classic movie trilogy that not only fills in the gaps between
the second and third films, but expands the mythology as well. High
school student John Connor is destined to lead the resistance against
a race of dominating machines in the not-so-distant future, and the
machines have sent human-like cyborgs, i.e., “terminators,”
back through time to kill their would-be vanquisher before that destiny
can be realized. Future John Connor, meanwhile, has sent a something
of his own to the past in order to protect his younger self: a female
cyborg with an initially secret mission to end the threat against mankind
before it begins by stopping the technological firm (Skynet) that inadvertently
creates the race of deadly machines.
In many
ways, the series is an amalgamation of two previous FOX shows, The
X-Files and the short-lived Firefly. Like Fox Mulder and
his belief in aliens and conspiracies, Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), John’s
mother, has had difficulty convincing anyone of the impending doom,
and her apocalyptic warnings fall on deaf ears. In the second Terminator
film, she is initially confined to a mental hospital and later wanted
for the murder of a Skynet technician who was destined to design the
deadly devices. Chronicles thus portrays Sarah as a fugitive
from the law, hunted by an FBI agent intent on bringing her to justice;
Mulder was treated as a fugitive in The X-Files’ final
season, remaining in hiding until likewise being accused of murder.
Sarah Connor
and Fox Mulder have other similarities, including being solitary warriors
fighting superior forces intent on annihilation. As sole guardians of
mankind’s future, they also realize the sacrifices that need made,
namely the trappings of a normal life, and the weariness of carrying
the weight of the world on one’s shoulders. While Mulder had Scully
for support, Sarah has future cyborg Cameron (Summer Glau), and just
as Mulder was skeptical when first paired with Scully, Sarah likewise
has a cautionary trust in her counterpart; it will be interesting to
see how their relationship develops as the series continues. And while
Scully had to deal with cancer, so does Sarah Connor—Cameron even
time-jumps them from 1999 to 2007 because Sarah dies in 2005 from the
disease.
In his
USA Today review, Robert Bianco compared Chronicles
to the “Buffy universe of Joss Whedon,” but it
is another Whedon creation, Firefly, that the series most resembles.
Much of this has to do with Glau, who embodies Cameron with the same
wide-eyed wonder and steely menace that she did with Firefly’s
River Tam; in fact, when she recites lines like, “They would have
found you anyway. They always do,” it sounds eerily similar to
River. Her performance likewise produces the necessary amount of comic
relief. When tracking down a terminator, for instance, Cameron is hit
by an oncoming car; with her body splattered on the hood, face through
the windshield, she looks at the passengers in the car and says, “Please
remain calm,” before getting up and resuming her mission. And
when Sarah ventures into “gang territory” to acquire new
identity paperwork, Cameron waits by a car in a rigid, soldier-like
stance. A neighborhood girl approaches, then leans against the car in
a “casual-but-with-attitude” style, which Cameron studies
before expertly mimicking.
There was
more to Firefly than River, of course, as the younger Tam and
brother Simon’s story blended with the saga of Captain Mal Reynolds’
struggle to eek out an existence beyond the reaches of a controlling
Alliance government. The same is true with The Sarah Connor Chronicles,
as young John Connor (Thomas Dekker) longs for a life far away from
terminators and the pressure of being a future savior. Dekker thus plays
John with both a youthful innocence and rebellious teenage angst, combined
with a longing for both a father and normal childhood. Despite knowing
he will one day be a leader amongst men, he is still the kind of kid
who gets nervous talking to a pretty girl, can’t find the turkey
in the refrigerator without his mother’s help and records multiple
takes of a cell phone message, trying to find that elusive “cool”
(he never does).
When Charley
Dixon, the man his mother is living with at the start of the pilot episode,
proposes to Sarah, it was John who picked out the engagement ring. And
when his mother believes it is no longer safe (marriage means ties,
and someone on the run cannot afford such a luxury), it is obvious John
does not want to let go of Charley. In fact, he sneaks away to see Charley
after the eight year leap only to find him now married, and the hurt
and disappointment are noticeable on John’s face. At the end of
the second episode he rehearses his new identity—where he’s
from, who is family is, etc. When Cameron states that his father, cited
as a fictitious police officer killed in the line of duty, is a “hero,”
John walks out of the room while saying, “My dad’s always
a hero. And he’s always dead.”
It is such
realistic portrayals of these characters as people that truly roots
The Sarah Connor Chronicles, from the longings for a family
to dealing with the threat of cancer to the struggles of protecting
a son. Sarah’s reaction upon learning about 9/11 for the first
time after time-traveling over it, coupled with her bleak knowledge
of the future, is both poignant and revealing: “I cannot imagine
the apocalypse. No matter what Kyle Reese told me, or others who have
come back, I cannot imagine three billion dead. I can image planes hitting
buildings, and I can imagine fire. If I would have witnessed it, if
I would have been here, I’m sure I would have thought the end
was near. I’m sure I would have thought, ‘we have failed.’”
Fortunately
for television fans, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
does not fail, both from a critic’s standpoint as well as the
ratings. And in this season of limited scripted series because of the
ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America, that is a something
to be thankful about.
January
21, 2008
