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The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Pilot (series premiere)

Terminator, the Sarah Connor Chronicles(S01E01) TV Squad has already done an early look at this series. What follows is a more in-depth review of the pilot episode.

To recap, the episode begins in 1999. It takes place between the second and third movies in the franchise. Sarah Connor (played by Lena Headey) and her son John Connor (played by Thomas Dekker) are on the run from the future.

In the future, John Connor saves mankind from a supercomputer called Skynet that was built by a human creator and financed by the military. Shortly after going online, Skynet became hellbent on making the human race extinct. Unfortunately, future John wasn't able to finish the job before Skynet invented a working time machine. Skynet also uses cyborg foot soldiers called Terminators to do its dirty work.

Sarah and John have to be careful not to leave any clues to their location while they're on the run from both the law and the future. If they do, at best they'll be arrested. At worst, Skynet can find them and send Terminators back in time to kill John before he saves the world.

Episode spoilers after the jump...

Terminator, the Sarah Connor ChroniclesIn 1999, Sarah and John are hiding out under the false last name Reese (which any Terminator fan would know is the last name of John's father). John is going to high school and is befriended by a woman named Cameron (played by Summer Glau). The director of the first two Terminator movies is James Cameron. Coincidence? I think not.

An error is made a Terminator is sent back in time to kill John. Before the halfway point of the episode, we learn that Cameron is a Terminator sent back by John to protect him.

To protect them from an immediate threat, Cameron assembles a time Terminator, the Sarah Connor Chroniclesmachine in a bank vault that resistance fighters from the future hid there. The Connors and Cameron are projected forward in time to 2007 (ironic that the premiere is in 2008) where they arrive naked. The show is on Fox, people. Expect rampant nudity.

There are subplots galore. Sarah leaves her boyfriend suddenly when she is discovered by the Terminator in 1999. He sees her photo on television in 2007 looking no older. The team is also being pursued by FBI agent James Ellison (played by Richard T. Jones) who is a regular on the series although his appearance in the first episode is more of an extended cameo.

Terminator, the Sarah Connor ChroniclesI think Terminator purists are going to dislike this series. It blatantly contradicts the existing Terminator mythology of the movies (as did Terminator 3. No surprise there since both the series and the third movie are by the same production company).

The pilot episode isn't bad. I've certainly seen worse pilots. The saving grace of the pilot is the brilliant performances of Lena Headey and Summer Glau. Lena Headey is the latest of a series of British actors on American TV playing roles with an American accent. I guess since so much filming for American TV is done in Canada, they find the British actors to be cheaper to get. She's best known for her role in the movie 300 ("You will not enjoy this.").

Terminator, the Sarah Connor ChroniclesSummer Glau is best known as River Tam in the series Firefly and the movie Serenity. She plays the "robot wanting to be human" character very well and still can do kick-ass fight scenes. Who knew robots had such grace?

I would give the series a chance. They are trying to build a more complex mythology than the movies could. However, between the writer's strike and the fact that this is a science-fiction program on the Fox network, I can only hope that it makes it to a second season.

Should the Terminator franchise have died with the movies?

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