Terminator

[iainjclark]

My review of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles series is up today at Strange Horizons. You don't have to read it, but I may kill you with my brain.

Comments

[fba.livejournal.com]

Am I allowed to wait until the series has finished showing in the UK? :p

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Oh, if you must. :-P

I've been fairly careful to avoid specifics in the later episodes but better safe than sorry! Where are they up to by the way?

[fba.livejournal.com]

It was was obligatory 'Summer Glau shows off her ballet' episode last night. Erm, episode 6 is it?

[snowking.livejournal.com]

7. Two more to go. Dunno if Virgin will run them together like Fox did.

And while it was a bot "oh here we go" with the ballet, I think the look on Derek's face at the end IS AMAZING.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I just went back to check that look at the end, and you're absolutely right.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

That was fairly shoe-horned in, wasn't it? (No pun intended). Fortunately they made it work for the character.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

The thing that The Terminator most reminded me of isn't the Harlan Ellison episodes of The Outer Limits (which I must admit I know only from plot synopses), but "The Day of the Daleks".

I really like the shifting timelines in the Terminator series, and I quite like the shifting theories of time between the three films too (in the first, all is already determined in a perfect causal loop; in the second, the future depends strongly on our choices; in the third, the broad shape of the future is less amenable to change than its details).

It would be a really neat twist if agents of several possible future Skynets - or other malevolent AIs derived from the same research in the present - ended up battling against each other and the various human resistances, each trying to make actual their own potential existence. But just thinking about the causal implications of that too much gives me a headache.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Any second now Niall will turn up and berate us for not discussing this in the comments thread of the review, so if you want to go and post something over there feel free. ;-)

Now that you mention it 'The Day of the Daleks' is strangely similar. Of course, given Who's magpie tendencies it may itself have been inspired by the Outer Limits episodes (which I'll admit I also know only from plot synopses.)

You're right about the differing views on the mutability of the timelines in the three films, although given how often the date of Judgment Day is altered I'm inclined not to read too much into the outcome of T3. Just because they don't alter the future that doesn't necessarily mean it was impossible. They didn't exactly get a lot of prior notice in that film! So T2 and T3 arguably share the same outlook.

As for the timelines, I like that idea lots. There's a great quote from Josh Friedman in one of the links from the review where he says: "I've been in the writer's room and there will be points, it happens at least once a day where all of a sudden we just go quiet and everyone stares at each other because we completely tilted like a pinball machine because we can't wrap our brain around what we're trying to do."

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

I'm not afraid of Niall... much.

I also keep thinking about the introductory voiceover that clearly states that Skynet sent Cameron back through time. If that's not just sloppy writing, it suggests that her version of the future is pretty strange, and perhaps not even the same future as the one from which Cromartie and the other terminators originated. (I haven't seen anything past "Heavy Metal" yet, so I'm aware that I'm not drawing conclusions from all the available data.)

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's just a side-effect of the opening narration having to condense the explanation (although in a sense it was Skynet which developed all the time travel equipment in the films so it was arguably 'responsible' for all the time travel. From a certain point of view.)

However that's another nice idea.