Tell me if this plot sounds familiar - A robot from the future has gone into the past to kill a teenager that will become important in the future, and to help, another robot from the future has come back to help said teenager. We’ve seen it before, twice actually, or three times if you count hard. And this time there’s no real difference. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the classic Terminator story sanitized for primetime television. Apparently rehashing a story that is now 23-years-old is supposed suffice in lieu of my absent “24″.
I’m a half-Terminator fan. I like the idea and the concept behind the story. I hated the first Terminator but loved T2. The third movie was just a farce and we’ll just have to see if the fourth movie can bring Terminator out of the gutter. As far as this TV show is concerned, I’ll just have to wait to see if it gets better. This first episode has me intrigued so I’ll probably keep watching, and since I’m a fan of the story I’ll probably watch all season. But I’ll probably watch it more so because it fits in good with my Monday TV viewing schedule: Gladiators at 8p, Terminator at 9p, then wrestling. Damn well close to the ultimate Man Monday.
This first episode drops us off after T2 but before T3. John Connor and his mom are on the run from The Terminator, although not in Arnold form but as just some big, tough guy. And of course we have the “good” terminator, this time in the form of a teenager girl. The best part though, is that we travel from 1999 to 2007 in the lightning bubble that makes time travel possible. Neat.
As before, the ultimate goal of the Connors is the rid the world of Skynet, the super AI computer that is responsible for the end of mankind. No doubt the bad Terminators will be on his tail why the good Terminator does what she can to fend them off. We’ll see how it goes. But I’m guessing at some point all Terminators end up bad and the Connors have to use the human cunning to survive. But let’s remember the reason Terminator is cool is because of the Terminator, not the humans.
The production is pretty decent considering this is not the movies. It all comes down to the story. Part of me feels like we’ve whipped this horse to the point where you can’t make any more glue. But we’ll keep trying. It might have been better if they had let the Terminator franchise lay low for a while and then bring it back with a new story, an new off-shoot all together, or a reboot.
Watch the show if you want to live…or kill an hour.
Well…I think I will declare Terminator the TV show officially unexciting. The second part of the premiere was lack luster to say the least. The action slowed to a snail’s pace and now that the Connors are in 2007 and supposedly safe I’m not sure what they’re doing.
We know the bad Terminator is alive and piecing himself back together, but shy of that the action that made the Terminator the Terminator is just not here.
But since there’s not much else on at 9p on Mondays (yet), this will just have to do.
I caught half of the first episode before it was deamed “too violent” (from another room) and I was forced to turn it off. It does seem to be a new version of the movies, but if Fox can keep up the action like they do with 24, the series should be pretty good. Only time will tell, and hopefully I will get to watch another episode. There are always pirated downloads though.
First, I will say that I loved how the 3rd movie ended. For me, it was the missing piece of the story (how did John Conner get into a leadership position?).
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Wow, a 9pm primetime FOX show was deamed to violent from another room. If must have been more violent on your TV, because I thought it fell well short of ‘24′ action levels.
Like V says, I will probably watch it because there is nothing else on Monday and I can skip through 20 minutes of commercials with the DVR. A lot of shows are a lot more compelling to watch sans commercials.
Violent? Bah. Far from violent. The two - count them, two - blood splatters I saw looked like someone squeezing a ketchup bottle too hard. If anything, the show isn’t violent enough… at least they are not up to Terminator standards.
Having watched the end of T3 the other night, I admit the last 20 minutes of the movie is the best part and does connect all the dots. It served a big purpose in the storyline, but is otherwise a waste of time.
Christian Bale will be in T4, so that’s a plus for the franchise, assuming he stays on board. I don’t think it’s a reboot - I’m guessing it will show John Connor after the end of the world and show how he becomes a general and leads the human resistance — now *that* is a part of the story I’m interested in.
I didn’t think it was bad at all, but I’m not the boss.
I’m in luck, itunes has the pilot episode as a free download.