With its first season cut short to only nine episodes, thanks to
the 2007/08 writers’ strike, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles still
managed to impress enough of viewers to warrant its return for a second season.
And this is a good thing, because T:TSCC is one of the most wickedly awesome
science fiction shows to come down the pike since the revived Battlestar
Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel. Taking place several years after the events in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day, T:TSCC once again finds Sarah Connor (Lena Heady)
and her son John (Thomas Dekker) on the run from yet another terminator that has
tracked them down. But, luckily, they have help from Cameron (Summer Glau) a
female model terminator who’s been sent back in time to aid the Connors.
T:TSCC initially takes place in the year 1999, following the timeline of T2,
when Cameron first meets up with the Connors. Her solution to the Connors’
increasingly hairy fugitive problem is an ingenious one: take them forward
several years via a time machine that’s hidden in a bank vault (and thus erasing
the events of 2003's Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines). Sarah and John
are now prowling the streets of LA in the year 2008, just a few short years
before the evil Skynet computer system declares war on the human race by nearly
wiping it out. As with T2, Sarah Connor is no longer content with just waiting
for the future to happen; she now wants to prevent it by bringing the fight to
Skynet and its minions, elements of which are already here in the present, and
taking steps to ensure that their hellish future comes true.
Lena Headey is perfect casting as Sarah. She doesn’t make one forget Linda
Hamilton, who so memorably originated the role in the first two films, but
Headey makes it her own. She gives a powerhouse performance as a grimly
determined woman who will stop at nothing to fight the forces of the future that
are arrayed against her. Thomas Dekker is also very good as the young John
Connor, who sometimes rebels against his mother, but without coming off as being
too whiny. And Summer Glau, perhaps best-known to SF fans as River Tam from
Firefly, is a marvel to watch here as Cameron (named after James Cameron, the
writer/director who originated the first two films). She’s adept at handling the
physical combat scenes, as well as the more quiet ones, which show Cameron
struggling to understand herself.
The series manages to capture the fast-paced action of the films, but while maintaining a surprising intelligence as well. Just when you think you’ve got the storyline of an episode figured out, the writers pull a twist which changes the whole game. The DVD set comes with commentaries on three episodes, a three part documentary look at the creation of the series, and an extended cut of The Demon Hand (although this episode is left largely unfinished, with no captions for the hearing impaired). The nine episodes, when watched back to back, play like an extended film, and T:TSCC also maintains a haunting poignancy throughout, as this band of unsung heroes often wind up fighting the very society that they’re trying to save in their ongoing struggle to battle the ‘bots from the future. But thanks to a great cast, and polished writing, this is one struggle that’s well worth watching.
--SF
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