(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...
In 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
machine 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.
I 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.").
Summer 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.















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
1-13-2008 @ 9:33PM
Jake said...
Two things work in the series's favor. First, they can develop the terminator mythology much more than the movies. Secondly, as many sci-fi purists know, time travel muddies up timelines and events. So the mythology that has been established thus far isn't necessarily set in stone, but is forever changing.
Personally, Aside from T2, I never got into the Terminator mythology much. The first one was a bad b-movie. The third was okay, but not the kind of movie you love to rewatch like T2. Maybe the Terminator purists can shed some light on what they think of this series, but I will give it a shot but it won't have many chances.
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1-13-2008 @ 9:50PM
Joshua Olsen said...
This series is gonna rock like no one else. I am a Terminator junkie in that after seeing the movies I got stuck on the books. I think they can pull this off convincingly. I mean, writers strike? so what; too many explosions and hot girls kicking butt, never enough; and bad actors? thats a load of bull. Anyway, rampant nudity?, i have no problem as long as they dont do full body shots of Summer, cause that would kill her rep; not that I wouldnt like to see her nude or anything, but i would rather have her retain her reputation as a straight flyer. This series will do well as long as Fox does not pull a Firefly on poor Summer again. For those who dont know, Summer Glau who plays the terminator sent back to help John, played River Tam in the show Firefly. Well, they put Firefly up against who wants to be a millionaire, and the Bachelor; as well as not showing the series in an orderly chronological fashion. They put the show in the kill spot and played skip around with the order of the show. Which in turn killed the series even though it rocked. Inasmuch I am saying that if people watch the show, give it good ratings and stop complaining about everything that doesnt appeal to them, then this will work out all right.
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1-13-2008 @ 10:22PM
Kat said...
I have one little itty bitty nit pick. The show does not take place 'between' movies 2 and 3, as many many reviewers keep stating in almost every review I've read. It starts after 2 and ignores 3 completely. This has been stated by the producers in interviews.
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1-14-2008 @ 12:05PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Thank you for pointing that out. T3 was unwatchable so it was wise to just ignore that version of history.
1-13-2008 @ 10:40PM
dukrous said...
Holy hell...I couldn't stand this episode. Summer Glau was absolutely terrible, the deus-ex-machina bank vault solution was just stupid, and I dare anyone to explain how in hell a bank does not know a time-machine has been in its vault for 36 years. That's just as dumb as Spielberg's underground alien machines...
I'm done with the series, and here's hoping for a very quick cancellation.
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1-14-2008 @ 12:42PM
Boomstick said...
If you don't like it - don't watch it. I'm not sure why you would wish it to end. Other people like it.
1-13-2008 @ 10:47PM
Dave said...
How does the series contradict T2?
Remember, part of Terminator time travel rules is that "there is no fate but what you make," but disruptions in the time line eventually right themselves. That means that the future's past is in flux. There are a multitude of events that could have lead to this point.
Does this show have scripts in the can, or are we going to get hooked and then disappointed in a few weeks at a strike induced lack of new episodes?
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1-13-2008 @ 10:57PM
Keith McDuffee said...
The series contradicts what was said in the previous two movies because it was mentioned, I believe, that time travel to the future wasn't possible, and this was why Reese said he wasn't able to return home.
1-14-2008 @ 1:41AM
Dorv said...
Dunno, Keith. I think one could reasonably argue that time travel back wasn't "invented" yet when Reese came back, but whose to say they didn't figure it out a couple of years later..... (Then, one could reasonably argue "why didn't they go back and give it to Reese?" Damn, time travel turns things around :) )
1-14-2008 @ 1:49AM
Shaun said...
While that was true in the first movie, I believe that one can argue that the engineer was sent back to the 1960's to build the time machine AFTER Reese was sent back to save Sarah.
Lame I know, but this time travel business is full of paradoxes
1-13-2008 @ 11:21PM
ac said...
It wasn't bad and can give a better follow up to T2 that that POS T3 movie did. Maybe when they sent Reese back they didn't have the technology to move forward but when they planted the stuff in the bank they could.
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1-13-2008 @ 11:56PM
J said...
Time travel always muddies things up. It's a stretch, but remember that they eradicated an entire timeline in T2. So, we know that skynet is still constructed (this time in 2011), but is it the SAME skynet? Maybe their technologies are different, and this time they figured out time travel forward? Who knows? Gives the writers almost complete freedom to make up their own mythology, doesn't it?
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1-14-2008 @ 12:27AM
Oreo said...
I wish they showed more nudity, should have been on HBO.
My only complaint is very minor. Someone robs a bank and within them being in the bank 5 minutes the squat team is there and the FBI is alerted to the Connors? That's even far fetched for a sci-fi show about time travel. :)
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1-14-2008 @ 4:33AM
KenMo said...
I am willing to give this a shot.
I am a fan of Terminator (not a fanatic though), and I love Summer from Firefly.
When (not if) Fox cancels this, I am hoping there is enough of a following that SciFi picks it up.
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1-14-2008 @ 5:24AM
Ronan said...
I don't think the show can ruin the movies mythology. The second and third movies already did that.
The whole point of the first movie was the time loop: the future was not modified by the terminator or Kyle Reese, as everything they did while back in time had been done in their past: Kyle would not have existed had they not travelled back in time.
As good as T2 was, it did not use this kind of paradox, and travelling back in time did change the course of following events, à la back to the future. This was a big contradiction with the first movie.
T3 did in turn deny what we learned in T2, and brought some sort of mysticism in it: events will occur no matter what, because it is doomed to happen.
Each movie brought big changes from the precedent, but this doesn't mean they are bad (except T3, but not as much for its relation with the other movies than for the fact it was bad in itself).
I don't ask the show to be 100% accurate with the movies: it is not possible. I just want it to be good, and from this first episode I think it can be.
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1-14-2008 @ 6:03AM
Michael said...
First off, I absolutely LOVE that this show is finally on. I'm a fan and unless they screw things up royally, I'll always be a fan of this show.
My take on why this show will succeed is that in many ways it is similar to BSG. Basically, BSG was a reboot - it took the most important elements of the original series, lost the "camp" and turned it into a much smarter (and more sustainable) series in the end. This show has the potential to be the same thing. Sure, they've updated some of the mythology we all know and love but hey, its all good in my opinion. If they didn't, we'd be over in just a few short weeks, story told. This way the writers can expand on things and inject some new directions into where these characters are going. Frankly, I would rather have River Tam - I mean Summer Glau kicking some Terminator ass each week than to see Arnold in it again. I loved him in the films but she brings some much needed youth and freshness to the screen and make no mistake about it, she does kick some ass!
From what I've seen so far, this show looks to be on air for quite a while. The Terminator mythos is a comfortable one and I think most fans were put off so much by T3 that they are ready for this redux simply because it will fit what they know much better than the third film did. Time will tell... maybe. After all, there is no fate but what we make!
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1-14-2008 @ 8:35AM
Ras Thavas said...
Well I liked it.
When they were assembling the (I am assuming) plasma rifle I was reminded of playing the old PC Terminator game. You had to get 1 part of the plasma rifle from each level and assemble it to get a functioning rifle.
I feel much better about this show than I did about The Bionic Woman after watching that first episode.
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1-14-2008 @ 9:42AM
chadwick said...
I really enjoyed the pilot. Hope they didn't blow all their money on effects in the pilot episode. Pretty good for a TV series. The hell with following after T3. Very few shows follow exactly after a move anyway. Headey is hot and it's not a reality show filling the slot. Hope people enjoy the show. Looks like I will.
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1-14-2008 @ 10:16AM
MosquitoControl72 said...
I don't get how women don't find this show horribly insulting.
First look at the marketing. You have the ever-repeated line "You get the guns, I'll make the pancakes." On its own that's so horribly cheesy you'd expect it in Scary Movie, Date Movie, or some awful parody, not a show looking to be taken seriously.
Then you stop and realize it's just the producers desperate to get the female demographic to watch this. "Look, mom's, she's like you, with guns!"
Lame.
Worse, half the ads had the line "the only thing that can save the world is a mother's love for her son." Cheesiness drops a bit in this line, but still horribly patronizing.
I saw only about 10 minutes of the show. I saw them jump forward into the future, which made no sense (think South Park: "This isn't Back to the Future time travel, but seems to be Terminator time travel - one way only.")
I then saw the naked Terminator kick the ass of three fratboys, drinking while driving, looking to rape her.
Again, stupid pseudo-feminist patronizing bs. Do women actually buy into this? Terminator 2 had a strong female lead. She was a strong character and she was female, and it was left with that. Point made. This show has two female leads that they want to be strong and want to make sure you do not forget are female. What's next, Sarah Connor barefoot in the kitchen, making John Connor a sandwich, with a gun strapped to her apron?
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1-14-2008 @ 12:40PM
Boomstick said...
Actually I would think that the line "You get the guns. I'll make the pancakes" is an homage to women. The duality of women in modern society has always been as a mother first; a business person, a teacher, a factory worker, or even a soldier, second. That line expresses how even tho her priority is as a soldier first, her motherhood will never be taken away.
Later in the episode, when Sarah has the epiphany, that she HAS to attack Skynet, it was because she was afraid that John would leave her. I think that for a first episode her character is pretty solid in motivation. Protect her son.