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That whole last few scenes involving the late Season 2 Riley arc. It's really when John grows up and starts becoming John Connor. And also a revelation for us that being John Connor is not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe Future war John is having Cameron publicly execute mutineers and he has lost his humanity from fighting the machines too long. (Derek's speech about waiting for him to be human adds to this. And considering how hard Derek pushes John and how cold blooded Derek himself can be means that Future John must be very ruthless) I was starting to get the sense in season 2 that either Future John was a total recluse and only dealt with his machines because he did not trust humans any more. (Or send them to die) Or more interestingly John was killed and John Henry was running the resistance in his name. These scenes with Derek and Jessie really throws shadow on "The great military leader" and it's a great moment of development for Derek: "John Connor let her go" That last shot of John crying on Sarah's lap was pretty well earned despite the sometimes cheesiness of the show. The actors really sold it. He had just been through this horrible rite of passage and it damaged him. The fact Cameron sits there awkwardly is a nice touch. When Sarah's gone, he won't have anyone to remind him who he was before.
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Nov 30, 2016 03:31
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Lonos Oboe posted:That whole last few scenes involving the late Season 2 Riley arc. It's really when John grows up and starts becoming John Connor. And also a revelation for us that being John Connor is not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe Future war John is having Cameron publicly execute mutineers and he has lost his humanity from fighting the machines too long. (Derek's speech about waiting for him to be human adds to this. And considering how hard Derek pushes John and how cold blooded Derek himself can be means that Future John must be very ruthless) An idea that fascinated me about Future John was his relationship with Cameron. It was obviously an intimate one, if not a sexual one. She seems to act in his stead and with his authority in lots of future 'flashbacks'. But the idea Sarah raises, that Future John sent Cameron away from him because he no longer wanted her around - that's interesting!
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Nov 30, 2016 05:23
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T:TSCC seems like one of those properties that Dark Horse could do a comic book continuation on that was so big with other cancelled TV shows in the last dozen or so years if any of the showrunners were to come back with some notes on where they were wanting to go if the show had run 1-4 more seasons. We're nearing 10 years since the show ended, so its not like we're going to get a magic third season out of Netflix or something.
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Nov 30, 2016 11:25
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JediTalentAgent posted:We're nearing 10 years... Oh holy poo poo, gently caress you for pointing this out. 
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Dec 4, 2016 07:11
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On the plus side, I don't think anyone would notice if they brought everyone back with the magic of Hollywood makeup. I mean they'd have to recast young Savannah Weaver, but that's about it. And you don't even need CGI!
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Dec 4, 2016 12:05
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Savannah was the child, right? Why would you need to recast her? The series ended in the future, you'd need a new actor, anyway. I loved the series, but hated that ending. I never cared much about The Future in the movies...
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Dec 4, 2016 22:22
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I loved it because ~~~***D E R E K***~~~ 
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Dec 5, 2016 01:06
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Wipfmetz posted:Savannah was the child, right? Why would you need to recast her? The series ended in the future, you'd need a new actor, anyway. Except Sarah was still in 'the present'. I get not caring about the future in the movies, but they made it interesting in the show by giving it real depth.
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Dec 5, 2016 02:32
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They also really kept the look of the future war much than I expected. The T-600s are particularly great. They show up maybe twice. They are the guys that have rubber skin are all beat up and carry conventional weapons. I think Terminator Salvation missed a trick there. The T-600s in that are these huge 7ft unconvincing behemoths that had miniguns and grenade launchers and were supposed to be this generation 1 infiltrator. Maybe the idea was that they were repurposed or something. It really bugged me that they were meant to be the infiltrators. When Kyle talks about them in Terminator 1 he says that they had plastic skin and they spotted them easily. He doesn't mention them being huge and dumb. The mental image I had as a kid at that description was captured perfectly in the show. And that's when the show was really at it's strongest. When it expanded and fleshed out the world and used the ideas to it's advantage. Like John stuck in the warehouse with the T-800 that hired thugs or the concept of the time travel being messed up and a machine going back too far and becoming a 30's gangster. I think the Cromartie arc was made great by the incredible performance by Garret Dillahunt. It was like the damage he had was almost psychological and he became a little eccentric. I think the idea of the machine marrying was an interesting one, and if explored could have expanded the idea of the machines being super manipulators. "The perfect lover, the perfect husband. so giving, never thinks of himself it's always what I want to do. And when he buys clothes for me, they are always the perfect size" But it was not believable in the context of the show. One weakness the show certainly had was in the direction/performance of some of the Terminators. My favorite Terminator acting is Robert Patrick with his inch deep friendly cop routine. "Say, that's a nice bike." (T3 made me cringe with the "I like your gun" homage.) Cameron manages to pass for human well in the first episode and I think one of Summer Glau's most effective performances is the scene in the first ep of season2 "I love you, I'm fixed now" I think it's weak direction/writing, because in the first episode when she is casing John out she is expressive, hyper sensitive and knows what to say. And then a few episodes later when the girl kills herself she goes all "beep-boop what is this emotion you call love? What's wrong with your eyes?" I really would have liked to see that humanity come back properly. I know they tried it in an episode of season 2 when she "loses her memory" but that makes it worse. Maybe even if John and Sarah asked her why she acts so cold all the time and she could say something like she is programmed to act like a machine when she is not infiltrating so humans are not creeped out or start getting attached to her.
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Dec 5, 2016 03:59
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Lonos Oboe posted:They also really kept the look of the future war much than I expected. The T-600s are particularly great. They show up maybe twice. They are the guys that have rubber skin are all beat up and carry conventional weapons. I think Terminator Salvation missed a trick there. The T-600s in that are these huge 7ft unconvincing behemoths that had miniguns and grenade launchers and were supposed to be this generation 1 infiltrator. Maybe the idea was that they were repurposed or something. It really bugged me that they were meant to be the infiltrators. When Kyle talks about them in Terminator 1 he says that they had plastic skin and they spotted them easily. He doesn't mention them being huge and dumb. The mental image I had as a kid at that description was captured perfectly in the show. And that's when the show was really at it's strongest. When it expanded and fleshed out the world and used the ideas to it's advantage. Bingo. One of them shows up in the episode I'm halfway through doing. The show was very good at remaining true to the source material without being afraid to really dive into it, too. quote:Like John stuck in the warehouse with the T-800 that hired thugs or the concept of the time travel being messed up and a machine going back too far and becoming a 30's gangster. I think the Cromartie arc was made great by the incredible performance by Garret Dillahunt. It was like the damage he had was almost psychological and he became a little eccentric. I think the idea of the machine marrying was an interesting one, and if explored could have expanded the idea of the machines being super manipulators. "The perfect lover, the perfect husband. so giving, never thinks of himself it's always what I want to do. And when he buys clothes for me, they are always the perfect size" But it was not believable in the context of the show. One weakness the show certainly had was in the direction/performance of some of the Terminators. My favorite Terminator acting is Robert Patrick with his inch deep friendly cop routine. "Say, that's a nice bike." (T3 made me cringe with the "I like your gun" homage.) Both Cromartie and Cameron borrow from Patrick's performance of the T-1000. quote:Cameron manages to pass for human well in the first episode and I think one of Summer Glau's most effective performances is the scene in the first ep of season2 "I love you, I'm fixed now" There are a few times in the series where Cameron turns on the charming personality she exhibits in the pilot episode. As a character, though, I don't think Cameron cares about being charimastic unless it is required of her. The personality she exhibited in the pilot was, presumably, so John would find her attractive and not mind her being close to him. The moment he knew what she was, and what her mission was, she was able to drop the pre-text. John and Sarah both know why she acts so cold all the time - because she's a killing machine where everything she learns is filtered through a lens of terminating her target. I do feel there are a heap of inconsistencies with Cameron, though, and the John and Cameron relationship was kind of squandered. I might touch on it during S2E1.
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Dec 5, 2016 04:22
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Episode 6: Dungeons and Dragons So, the episode opens exactly where the previous one left off. Derek is bleeding out atop the Connor kitchen bench, with Charley working to stabilise him. He's not in a good state and we get a good idea of what hell the future is like. Derek's body is covered in tattoos and scars - puncture wounds, shrapnel, burns, and of all of it Charley points out how bad the medical care he'd recieved for those wounds is. This episode's an interesting one because it is the first time TSCC tackles the future war aspect of the franchise, something which can be difficult to handle well. For example, I tend to agree with the sentiment espoused by SuperMechaGodzilla in CD, that the future war is not so much a real place and time as it is a hellish nightmarescape and reading it literally is missing the point. It's a dark, terrible thing, replete with nightmare imagery of endless fields of skulls and wrecked cars with gleaming chrome skeletons stalking the ruins of the world. It is something that reflects the mental state of the people like Kyle Reese as much as it depicts a possible future. Salvation went for some kind of tacticlol take on it and missed the point. Genisys barely featured it. TSCC, I think, offers a fair attempt at depicting the robotic post-apocalypse. So, Derek and Kyle are sitting in one of the rubbish strewn bunker tunnels that are familiar to anyone who has seen Terminator 1. They are joined by a ragged but familiar looking fellow by the name of Billy Wisher (a reference to William Wisher who worked on T2) and the three of them share some good-natured ribbing at Kyle's history with John Connor breaking out of the Century work camp. The whole tunnel shakes as something, presumably a flying HK roars overhead. While everyone quails and stares at the ceiling, Kyle stares determinedly at the familiar photo of Sarah Connor (albeit reshot with Lena Headey which is a nice touch). Derek notices and isn't happy about it. Derek: I hate that thing. Kyle: It's just a picture. Derek: It's Connor's mother. Derek: I don't get why he'd give you that. Kyle: She's my lucky charm. Derek: That's what makes me nervous. Sayles - the fourth member of Derek's team - tells them that Connor's advised them to head topside and scout out the area. Outside the tunnel system, it's all ruins as far as the eye can see. Derek and his team hop from cover to cover, discussing the state of things. Connor is said to be looking for something big, some kind of Skynet secret weapon. While not confirmed, it is safe to assume that Connor is looking for existence of Skynet's temporal displacement engine. The team can only gape as they spy three Terminators dragging a huge jet engine through the ruins. But they are spied by a set of HKs and a Terminator and Derek is captured. Back in the present, Charley tries to come to terms with Sarah being back while John is in the next room over, freaking out that Derek Reese - his father's brother - is dying. He interrogates Cameron, asking her if she knows who that man is. She does, rattling off his dossier. But despite repeated questioning from John, Cameron does not seem to be aware of John's connection to the Reese family. Charley presses for more information and in order to 'uncomplicate it for him' they show him the body of the Terminator from the previous episode. All things considered, Charley takes it pretty well. In fact, the only thing that Charley seems to be upset about is that they didn't trust him enough to tell him this in the first place. I like Charley a whole lot. I think he's a stand out of TSCC's supporting cast. Anyway, back to the future. Derek is woken up in what looks to be an abandoned house. Above him, there looms a T-600, something which the TSCC team renders in all its rubber-skin glory and it is wonderfully hideous. It burns a barcode onto his arm and leaves. Some time later, Derek wakes up and blearily talks with another prisoner, Timms. It seems like Skynet is running some manner of experiment in the basement, involving music. Derek's loyalty to Connor is put against another prisoner, who claims that Connor is wrong and crazy and there's no secret weapon. But Wisher has been taken for whatever reason Skynet has them there. When he's brought back, later, he seems utterly catatonic, eyes open but not hearing Derek. In the present, Derek begins bleeding into his lungs. Charley manages to stop the bleeding but Derek has lost too much blood and there's no donor available. Cameron advocates for his death, given that he's a wanted fugitive. Sarah advocates for dropping him at a hospital and leaving him. But John wants to have his blood tested, to see if he is compatible. John wants to tell Derek he's his uncle but Sarah points out that John didn't tell anyone that Kyle was his father, something backed up by the fact that Cameron - seemingly part of Future John's inner circle - has no idea. We jump back to the future. Here, the following conversation takes place: Wisher: Can I confess to you? Derek: I'm not a priest... Far from it. Wisher: I'm a liar. And the devil. Derek: Oh, Billy. Wisher: The name's not Billy. It's not Wisher. Derek: What? Wisher: My name's Andy. Andy Goode. Derek: Alright, Andy. Wisher: I did this. All of this, it's my fault. Derek: What are you talking about? Wisher: I built Skynet. (A long pause. Wisher stares at Derek, somewhere between despair and terror. Derek's face goes strangely dark for a split second.) Derek: ...You need to rest, alright? You're very sick. Wisher: No, no. I'm not sick. I'm not sick. I did this. All of this. I was part of a team. A group. Ten of us. Maybe 15, I don't know. We- We used names. We were liars. I built computers. I built a computer. It had a mind. It became angry, and scared. And I couldn't reassure it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, please forgive me! Here's our very first indication that TSCC's future is not set in stone. Derek Reese came from a future where Andy Goode survived and his Turk became Skynet. The idea that one needs to teach an AI properly is something that runs through the entirety of TSCC (becoming a whole plot in the second season) and the Christian mythology that steeps the show, too, makes an appearance here. In the future, Derek is subjected to some kind of experiment involving a piece of classical music (Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor) but we don't see the specifics. In the present, as Charley infers that Derek is some relation of John's due to the shared name, Derek wakes up and in a delirium rage demands to know where John sent Kyle and what he did to him. "You owe me the truth!" John can only look on, utterly distraught, while Derek rants and raves and throws off his medical apparatuses. One thing I'll note here is that a lot of TSCC sites seem to indicate that Derek is saying 'My blood! My blood!" and link it back to whatever experiment that he suffered at the hands of Skynet in the basement. This is not correct. He's screaming for Kyle: "He's my blood!" So, Derek is hauled back up to, just as catatonic and exhausted as Fisher had been. When he wakes up again, there's a hatchet. Derek takes it up and cuts his chains, escaping with the others. They return to their bunker, finding it ablaze. Derek searches for his brother, finding nothing but the scorched photo of Sarah. In the timeline, this places it as the attack Kyle flashbacks to in T1. Luckily, though, a resistance squad locates Derek and his men, informing him that Kyle was not there at the time of the attack. Kyle was with Connor, hitting some Skynet facility as part of a big operation - presumably the attack that would lead to Kyle being sent back in time. Also, the resistance squad leader - Sumner - is Bubbles from the Wire! Sumner tells Derek that while Connor took Kyle into that place in Topanga canyon, only Connor came back out. Charley has a chat with Cameron while she flays the skin from the Terminator. He is, succinctly put, freaked out. The whole thing scares him but Cameron seems to scare him most of all, as she stands there with a bloody carving knife in hand. Cameron tries to put him at ease by telling him that the Terminator is not a guy, but a "scary robot". "Okay," Charley says, "But you? You're a very scary robot." Cameron sets fire to the Terminator chassis with a flare and thermite and, in the harsh light of the flames, her eyes are a brilliant electric-blue. Charley bails. Back in the future, Derek is trying to get any information he can on Kyle. But it's all classified. When Derek claims he'll talk to Connor himself, a soldier tells him that Connor doesn't talk to anyone and doesn't have any friends. He spies Cameron and freaks out, finding out that Connor has been reprogramming Terminators and giving them the run of the place. That Derek does not agree is putting it lightly. But the soldier he's talking to points out that without the machines they never would have been able to take Topanga and do what they did there, which is a pretty interesting idea. But whatever it is they did, Derek gets no idea. Later, one of the reprogrammed Terminators starts killing people in the base. As Derek prepares to face it down with a handgun, Cameron shows up with a grenade launcher and terminates it. "Sometimes they go bad, no one knows why," Cameron states, which is probably not what you want to hear as explanation. In the present, Sarah confronts Cameron, telling her that in no uncertain terms, if she harms Charley, Sarah will take her apart, piece by piece. Cameron swears that she won't, much how the Terminator in T2 would swear to John Connor. Afterwards, Sarah and Charley share a romantic goodbye, and Charley passes Sarah the card of FBI Agent Kester. Kester is, of course, the identity of Cromartie. The episode is winding down. In the future, John - through Cameron - calls Derek to come see him. Derek comes face to face with a TDE, a time machine. And, as Derek stares at it, John Connor looking just as he does in the present comes in behind him. While seemingly intended to be nothing more than an indicator of Derek's mental state, given that Present John is calling to him, it does somewhat mesh with the idea at the end of Season 2 - that Present John literally becomes Future John by hopping into the future. I also think, later, there's another point where we see a silhouette of Future John and it bears a striking resemblance to Thomas Dekker. Staring over the ruins of a city, presumably LA, Derek tells his team that they can go back and fix everything, disregarding that John didn't tell him about Kyle. "We can save everybody," Derek says, "We can fix all the mistakes," and he shares a pointed look with Andy Goode/Billy Wisher. It seems clear to me that both Goode and Derek understand that stopping Skynet would involve killing Goode in the past, something which both of them seem to accept. It's an interesting idea: could you travel back in time and kill yourself if you were responsible for the end of the world? Of course, as we find out, all of the resistance fighters are killed and Derek ends up with the Connors. John seems prepared to tell Derek that Kyle is his father, but Sarah enters and John settles on "he was... a hero." But what happened to Goode? As Sarah repeats Kyle Reese' famous warning, about how the machine will not stop and cannot be bargained with and does not know pity, remorse or fear, we see Andy Goode in his room at the chess tournament. Derek sweeps into the room and shoots Goode once and then again, leaving his body on the floor. The obvious point here is that it isn't just the machines who are here with terrible missions, the humans are, too. And Derek, coldly murdering the man who would become his friend in the future, his face a terrifyingly determined mask, is just as remorseless as any Skynet endoskeleton. Like others have said in the thread, it really is fascinating how the show was not shy about having an out-and-out murderer as a member of the main cast. But also a murderer who lied about it to Sarah Connor and will continue to lie about it until, if my memory is right, Season 2. Derek shows no remorse for killing Andy - and, really, would you feel anything if you killed the man who you knew would end the world? But the Turk is missing. And, as Cameron points out earlier in the episode, a Terminator hand is unaccounted for. Judgment Day is still a possibility. Maybe it's inevitable. In T1 and, arguably in T2, there is always an arm left unaccounted for. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 08:49
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I love that scene, monologue and music combo at the end of that episode. But it always bugged me how Brian looks at the AD for his cue to leave. Maybe it's something I picked up on from working in film. But it always bugged me.
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Dec 8, 2016 16:18
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After Salvation, I'm pretty convinced we're never getting another good Terminator anything until they inevitably reboot it in like 2050. It's very sad.
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Dec 9, 2016 22:01
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But it was "rebooted" with Genisys. ... I liked Genisys. 
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Dec 9, 2016 23:11
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Wipfmetz posted:But it was "rebooted" with Genisys. Genisys wasn't terrible. I think it was let down more by the actors they chose for the major roles.
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Dec 10, 2016 00:44
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Blazing Ownager posted:After Salvation, I'm pretty convinced we're never getting another good Terminator anything until they inevitably reboot it in like 2050. It's very sad. In theory, I think Genesys could have worked, but they were practically phoning it in, near as I could tell. They seemed to take for granted that there would be a sequel and so they could afford to try for mystery box crap (and got bit in the rear end for it). It just feels so superficial, like they came up with a bunch of ideas like 'what if there's two Arnolds' or 'what if John Connor is a Terminator' and then didn't develop them at all. I mean, on paper stuff like 'what if the terminator protector is a girl that John might be attracted to' or 'what if Kyle Reese had a brother who also got sent back in time' on paper also sound like lazy plot ideas, but TSCC put genuine thought and care into making them work. Also Genesys wasted Matt Smith and J.K. Simmons, which should be some kind of crime.
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Dec 10, 2016 14:31
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Milky Moor posted:Genisys wasn't terrible. I think it was let down more by the actors they chose for the major roles.
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Dec 10, 2016 19:15
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Wipfmetz posted:I liked Pops Schwarzenegger, too. I don't know anything about those other "major roles" you're speaking of. Jai 'Stop trying to make Jai Courtney happen' Courtney and Emily '2nd best Sarah Connor to come out of Game of Thrones' Clarke, presumably. I still maintain Jai Courtney's best possible casting for the Terminator Franchise would be 'generic Terminator that Cameron takes out in the cold open of a TSCC episode'.
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Dec 10, 2016 19:43
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Yvonmukluk posted:Unless Cameron lets the TSCC guys make the finale TV movie when he gets the rights back in 2019. Did James Cameron ever comment on the series? I know he had some fairly kind words for the last movie, but I figure the tv series is so below his radar he'd never consider allowing it to continue.
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Dec 11, 2016 00:13
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Yvonmukluk posted:Jai 'Stop trying to make Jai Courtney happen' Courtney and Emily '2nd best Sarah Connor to come out of Game of Thrones' Clarke, presumably. Kind of, yeah. I said earlier that they were fine choices of talent but they were just the wrong choices, if that makes sense. Emilia Clarke looks more like a young, inexperienced Sarah Connor than even Linda Hamilton does. I think from an aesthetics point of view, she was the perfect choice. Unfortunately, she had none of the fire or intensity that Hamilton brought to the role and used to make it a household name. This wouldn't have been so bad if Genisys Sarah was more of a waif, like Sarah had been, but they make her into a badass warrior and Clarke just can't do it. Courtney had a similar problem. When I think Kyle Reese, I think kind of boyish, wiry and incredibly intense, bordering on deranged. In Genisys, I'd say Reese is chiseled, huge and kind of dense. I think he did a fine job of acting but he was just wrong and it always felt flat. Jason Clarke who played John Connor had a very interesting role and I think he was a great villain, although very similar to Cromartie's role as the 'everyman Terminator'. But he had no charisma as John Connor and was clearly cast on being the villain, making the whole twist a bit obvious. Arnold was amazing, even if Pops Terminator didn't feel earned. But Arnold will always be a good Terminator and, in a way, Genisys felt worth it to me just to see him being the Terminator again. The biggest thing that worked against Genisys, though, was that the original Terminator is a classic film. Re-imaginings and reboots only really work when the original text doesn't make use of the premise or executes it poorly. The original Terminator nails both points, so, what was Genisys really going to add? It sort of did a Best Of Terminator film, showing off fancy new CGI and maybe doing cooler things with the fights to sell the weight and power and abilities of each model of Terminator, but that's about it. The twist with Connor, while novel, flies in the face of the entirety of previous entries in Terminator. It was a much better film than Salvation and better, I think, than T3. But I think the problem with Terminator is what stories are there left to tell? What would a re-imagining add?
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Dec 11, 2016 02:01
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Speaking of Genisys, I watched it again with my partner, who was seeing it for the first time, last night. Until a few years ago, she hadn't seen any part of the Terminator films. All she knew was that Arnold played a scary robot from the future. Yes, this means that she went into T2 completely blind and was blown away by the twist. The film is just wonky, and I think part of that is because it cleaves very closely to the Terminator mythos without sort of advancing them as TSCC did. For example, take the idea that John Connor has to essentially manipulate Kyle Reese to fall in love with his mother and then send him back in time so he can, in a way, make himself exist. It's pretty messed up, which TSCC acknowledged through the character of Derek Reese. Really, watching Genisys again made me appreciate Derek Reese much more. He's a character who acknowledges how messed up the situation is but has no real idea what any of it means. Interestingly, both TSCC and Genisys state that Skynet's temporal weapon was located in Los Angeles in a secret facility. I don't think T1 or T2 make mention of it. But there's also whole scenes in Genisys that you could replace Sarah and Kyle with TSCC Sarah and TSCC John and it'd fit. When comparing them earlier, it completely skipped my mind that Genisys portrays Skynet as a frightened child that grows into a determined, hateful being. TSCC does much the same with the Turk and John Henry. The John Connor as machine concept still throws me. The film doesn't make it clear that this is not a mind-controlled John, it's John deciding that co-operation with Skynet is the best form of survival ("Survival is what you taught me," he says) and he is forced to dehumanise himself to fight his mother and father. It's an incredibly good bit of acting on the part of Clarke that he plays John as having no real idea of what his capabilities are and how he has to psych himself up with Kyle's 'cannot be bargained with' speech. John Connor becomes the ultimate Skynet collaborator because Judgement Day is inevitable, so, why not live it out with your mom and dad? But everything else is just a mess. Kyle and Sarah spend the film being confused and arguing and it's hard to buy them as either a hardened soldier or a grim apocalypse prepper. The script is filled with fairly atrocious lines, too, which feel like they misjudge the franchise. "I'm going to use these hands for something other than killing," Kyle tells John in the future, which is not something you'd say when you're fighting robots whom you don't think have any right to exist. There's no killing there - just tech support with extreme prejudice. Moving on to The Demon's Hand, tomorrow, which is a neat episode that felt like a good little epilogue to the events of T2. "He came down the hall. He was a large man. I thought it was a man until... He threw the guard... through the window, like a rag doll. Not an ounce of emotion. Just blank, like a death mask. Then the other one came... The second was almost beautiful like perfect... like a changeling... the face of mercury."
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Dec 18, 2016 09:24
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Yvonmukluk posted:Jai 'Stop trying to make Jai Courtney happen' Courtney and Emily '2nd best Sarah Connor to come out of Game of Thrones' Clarke, presumably. I don't even hate Jai Courtney but holy poo poo was that miscasting for Kyle Reese. Like, holy poo poo. I could name like a hundred actors I'd pick for the role and literally not one of them is a Terminator-looking guy. Kyle's a scrapper drat it.
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Dec 18, 2016 09:34
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Blazing Ownager posted:I don't even hate Jai Courtney but holy poo poo was that miscasting for Kyle Reese. Like, holy poo poo. I could name like a hundred actors I'd pick for the role and literally not one of them is a Terminator-looking guy. Kyle's a scrapper drat it. My partner summed it up as 'He's too big, and she's too small'.
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Dec 18, 2016 09:51
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Episode 7: The Demon Hand In a direct homage to Terminator 2, the episode opens with Cameron pulling up at an unknown location on the back of a police motorbike. She's wearing the uniform of a highway patrolman, just as the T-1000 did, with the white helmet and big aviators. She's hunting for information on the hand of the Terminator from the episode prior to last. It's a bit awkward how she jams her arm into a power turbine and sustains no damage to her clothing or skin, but we can let it pass. With the blackout of the Los Angeles region in play, she wanders into a police station to find that the arm - the 'demon hand' of the title - is out of the evidence locker. In the possession of one James Ellison, even. Meanwhile, Sarah takes a trip to visit Andy Goode's grave, reflecting on how he's really no different from the T-888 that Cameron destroyed - he's gone, and the world moves on without him. Sarah returns to check Derek's wounds, although he's quick to grab at her wrist the moment she touches him. The T-888 might be gone but the Turk is still out there and Derek, while heady and out of it, seems somewhat distraught about this. After all, it's kind of the whole reason he killed his friend. Eating breakfast in the kitchen, John wonders if Derek will stay. Sarah points out that she's wondering if he'll live. Cameron returns, reporting that she's unable to acquire the hand because the FBI has it. Sarah is immediately rather agitated, telling John he's taking the day off school to help locate it. John disagrees, pointing out Sarah's earlier logic that being absent gets him on the radar, and leaves. Cameron, though, is happy to take the day off and Sarah puts her on task with tracking down Dimitri, Andy Goode's business partner. What I do like about this scene is we get to see a bit of Sarah's fervor and John's more grounded approach. Sarah is concerned with the fact that the arm leads to Judgement Day. John points out that they need an arm AND a chip. It's not said in the sense that it's unimportant, but more like that they can afford to take their time. One thing TSCC likes to do is invoke direct comparisons between man and machine. This is, of course, a particularly big element of the franchise but comes through particularly obviously in the next scene, where Sarah is putting on a voice to fool an FBI agent into revealing the location of the supposed 'prosthetic hand'. It works, but there's no mention of the FBI having the hand. It's only though sheer coincidence - or fate? - that Ellison happens to walk past the agent and get asked about the hand. Ellison shakes his head: "I never saw any hand, fake or otherwise." But the box he is carrying reads SUSPECT: SARAH CONNOR and VICTIM: MILES DYSON. Ellison's a busy man. He's going through Sarah's history at Pescadero Mental Hospital, watching footage of her. One thing I like about this footage is that it doesn't recreate what we've already seen, but creates things that are similar. Close enough to invoke familiarity without making it needless. On the screen, Sarah rants and raves about 'God or the devil' sending back machines to do 'one perfect thing', which is killing her and everyone she knows. Silberman, of course, plays the rational part and points out that surely there would be evidence of these machines. Ellison glances to his fridge at the mention of evidence. It's where he's keeping his own evidence of future murder-bots: the severed hand. From there, Ellison journeys to Pescadero, inspecting Sarah's room as if he could find some reason for everything from her room, the evidence she left there - the dent in the wall, the beating given to the security camera. He settles for information on Silberman, or any of the other staff. But after everything, Silberman retreated to a woodland cabin, isolated from the world, and everyone else left the workplace. Everyone who was there on the night where the T-800 and T-1000 showed up has run from the truth. While Ellison is investigating Sarah's former home, Sarah is breaking into his current home. The camera pays particular attention to an open Bible on Ellison's desk - Ellison is a man of faith, something which the series returns to, particularly in Season 2. Sarah finds that Ellison has been investigating her past and she picks out one of the video tapes he has, stealing it away, although we have no idea what is on it. Meanwhile, Cameron is on the trail of the Turk. She's taking a ballet class with Dimitri's sister as the instructor. Curious, Cameron asks what one of the dancers is doing. Cameron: What is she doing? Maria: Pas de Chat. Step of the cat. Cameron: Will you show me? Maria: That is the advanced class. You are a beginner, yeah? [Cameron pulls off an incredible ballet move. Summer Glau is, interestingly enough, trained in ballet.] Maria: You have taken ballet before. Cameron: No. Maria: The height is nice. Beautiful feet. But your upper body is a little mechanical, yeah? Remember, you are a cat. Cameron: I'm a cat. Maria: [takes a breath] Come next week. We need to develop your flexibility and your imagination. Remember... Dance is the hidden language of the soul. After that, Maria seems to worry about being extorted for money from a Russian gangster. Cameron lingers to listen in on the conversation. At the Connor residence, John finds Derek seemingly recovered, loading guns on the floor of Sarah's room. It's a neat conversation between the two of them, revealing how little the norms that John and Sarah take for granted mean in the apocalypse future. The fact that John points out that Derek should not be doing this in Sarah's room, because it is her room and for no other reason, seems laughable to Derek. Just as laughable as John trusting Charley and Cameron. It seems, in the future, there's tension between Derek, Cameron and John - but what sort of tension exactly is cut off by Sarah arriving home. The tension between John and Derek doesn't vanish, though - Derek stares John down until he turns away. Then, agitated by the apparent trust placed in Cameron, rails against her being used for anything except 'dirty work'. He's up and about but he's not recovered. John's right, though, but he's stalked out at this point - armed with the videotape that Sarah had secreted away, having spotted it in her bag. What he sees when he watches it, we don't hear - but it's enough to upset him. Sarah: [gesturing to Derek's handgun] That gonna help? Derek: You never know. Does it help to sleep on the whole trunk? Sarah: Go into my bedroom again, I'll bust your head. The next morning, Sarah has made pancakes. "We eat at the table," she tells Derek, as he skulks away with his plate. John stalks in, thrusts Silberman's address at his mother, and storms out, claiming that he's not hungry. Heady gives this great performance, looking absolutely distraught as she knows what John has seen, and as she watches it, we see what she already knows: John just saw his mother signing papers giving up custody of him. We know John didn't like his foster parents, and we know he was confused by the actions of his own mother, but regardless, when you're a kid, that's the sort of thing that sticks with you. "All parental rights will be terminated." Over the breakfast table, Derek and Cameron share an awkward meal. Derek stares at Cameron and Cameron stares right back. When Derek accuses her of not being hungry, she begrudgingly eats a portion of pancake. "I know you," Derek tells her. "I know you too," Cameron replies. Meanwhile, Ellison is meeting with Silberman. Silberman post-Pescadero is far more affable (and with far more hair) than he was in the mental hospital. Unfortunately, he also seems far crazier, and Ellison realises he's been drugged just in time to collapse to the floor. Cameron meets with Maria again, beating up a gangster when he threatens her. She's looking to help her brother, she tells Maria, and she's not police. Ellison wakes up, tied to a chair. Silberman, reading off a verse from the Bible, tells Ellison that he knows who he is - he's from the future. Ellison wonders how he could have been drugged if he is a machine. Silberman admits that it was a test, yes - but maybe Ellison is just advanced enough to trick him into thinking he was passed out ("FBI, that's a good touch"). Ellison tries to appeal to Silberman, just in time for the latter to stab him in the leg - and twist. Derek is outside, working his toes through the green grass - something he presumably hasn't done in years. He has a somewhat cagey conversation with Sarah where, given that Derek later mentions that he knew Kyle was John's father from the moment he saw him, he's obviously trying to get information on Kyle and let slip how much he knows without saying it. It's a nice little scene, although I keep trying to puzzle over some significance to the swingset which keeps appearing. Innocence lost? Reference to T2? Swinging back and forth like a pendulum? Any ideas? Back with Ellison and Silberman, who is calling it all an honest mistake, although he keeps Ellison tied up. Silberman equates Sarah's predictions to the book of Revelation, recounting his version of events from Terminator 2. Silberman: He came down the hall. It was a large man. I thought it was a man until... He threw the guard through the window just like a rag doll. Not an ounce of emotion. This blank, like a death mask. Then the other one came. Ellison: There was two of them? Silberman: They were different. The second one was almost beautiful. Like perfect. Like a changeling. The face of mercury. Ellison: What about Sarah? Silberman: She was there. She was on the floor. And the boy was with her. He was screaming. And then the, the first one, the big one, I'll never forget, he... he reached out his hand and he said, "Come with me if you want to live." Like God reaching out to man. Like... like the Sistine Chapel. The hand of God. It's one of my favorite bits of dialogue in TSCC and illustrates the paradigm I mentioned previously. The T-800 could blend in until he reached his target but, at the same time, is big and bulky and noticeable. The T-1000 is a fey-like being that could be anyone at any time. And Cromartie is so bland and unassuming that you'd never mistake him for anything beyond a human. Of course, it's not the hand of God. It's the hand of the devil, just like the one Ellison has in his trunk. Silberman states that without proof no one could talk about it. But Ellison has proof, proof that nobody is crazy. He's brought the hand of God with him which, after going out to Ellison's car, Silberman stares at it like he's found the Ark of the Covenant. But the overture of peace only feed Silberman's well-meaning madness. "Do you know what would happen if the wrong people got ahold of this?" Silberman asks, claiming that he can't let anyone stop Sarah, even if she's dead. Jesus was dead, too, for a time, Silberman points out, before jabbing Ellison with a needle. Back in the Connor residence, John chats with Derek. John has a certain fondness for Derek, given he's his only link to his father, but I think it's the video that pushes him to actually talk with him. Derek contributes nothing beyond vague 'I'm not really listening or caring' smalltalk while John talks about his past, sleeping on couches, and about his time with his T2 foster parents. It's only when John bitterly remarks "Yeah, you'd think," that Derek seems to realise that something's off and guesses correctly what that is. Again, John's ideals clash with Derek's battle-worn pragmatism. Derek never quite becomes a father for John which is something I like about his character. John: Some people always fight. Derek: Fewer than you think. Maria leads Cameron to Dimitri, who is frantic that they might have been followed. Dimitri explains what went down with the Turk: he owed money to the people who helped him get his sister over to the USA, so, he intentionally sabotaged the Turk and altered its 'endgame protocols' to make it lose. While Dimitri was given twenty thousand dollars for the Turk, it wasn't enough to pay his debts. Cameron presses him for more information, but that's all Dimitri has. She is immune to his frantic begging for more help, more money, even as the gangsters arrive. Cameron leaves, immune to the sight of gangsters breaking in and immune to the sounds of screams and gunshots. She was only assigned to find the Turk, and that objective is complete. Like Derek has pointed out throughout the episode, you cannot necessarily trust Cameron's empathy. Silberman sets about burning down his house, to eliminate Ellison. As he leaves, he comes face to face with Sarah and gazes at her like she's God. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you," he breathes, looking like he's about to get down on his knees. Sarah lays him out with one punch and snatches up the hand. "Apology accepted," she comments. Later, Ellison is free, staring down at Silberman. Silberman only laughs and laughs as he tells Ellison that Sarah took the hand. Cameron would not have saved Ellison, but Sarah did. The episode ends with John and Sarah discussing the tape. Sarah: I never wanted you to see that tape. I was gonna destroy it. But since you did, did you notice the date? The date on the tape. June 8th, 1997. Do you know that date? [Beat] John: I do now. [Pause] That's the date you gave up being my mother. [Beat] Sarah: That's the date I broke out of there. The day you came for me, I was coming for you. Because about three seconds after I signed that paper, I knew I couldn't live with it. I was coming for you, and I was gonna die trying. John: You almost did. Sarah: So did you. John: And you were mad as hell about it... Yelled at me. Told me what a stupid move it was. Sarah: I might have oversold that a little. I'll always find you. John: I'll always find you. But there's a divide there, now. John had always imagined his mother as invincible, godlike, even if she's a bit crazy. Like Silberman, Sarah Connor was a figure of deific power. This is an important note in John's relationship with his mother, where he's forced to acknowledge that she's imperfect, that she makes mistakes, and that she won't always be there for him. Like Derek said, given time, she'll break. As they burn the hand in their makeshift furnace, John and Sarah are shot as if they're standing on opposite sides of the fiery divide, even as they're standing side by side. There's a divide there, but one that's come as a result of maturity than of immaturity. Silberman, ranting and raving that 'they're here', is left in a Pescadero cell, while Ellison listens outside. Like Sarah before him, Silberman is utterly right. But the final sequence gives us Cameron dancing to ballet while Derek watches, seemingly enraptured, from the doorway. All the while, the classical music from Derek's torture session plays. Cameron's motions are perfect, as Sarah said about the machines earlier in the episode, and Derek says nothing as he watches. What is going through his head? It's not fear or anger from recognising the music. In fact, it seems nothing more than being incredibly moved by the sheer art of the performance. Which, as Sarah says in her closing monologue... "There are things machines will never do. They cannot possess faith, they cannot commune with God, they cannot appreciate beauty, they cannot create art. If they ever learn these things, they won't have to destroy us. They'll be us." Cameron rebukes this as she dances - she's appreciating something and creating art. No one ordered her to dance. She is far closer to humanity than Sarah thinks. And, perhaps, what Derek thought as well. And that, I think, is one of the most perfect summations of TSCC's approach to artificial life. They may not be like us, they may think in different ways, they may be more precise than us - but with proper education and understanding, there is nothing to be afraid of.
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Dec 20, 2016 06:09
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So, Demon Hand is basically a coda to T2. I think it's one of the better Season 1 episodes, with solid pacing and good character moments. Unfortunately, I think the next two episodes both suffer from Season 1 returning to its frantic plot pacing. The stuff with Silberman is good and I like how the series portrays knowledge of the future like it's some kind of transitive madness. First Kyle, then Sarah, then Silberman. As Huxley said: you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad. I also like how the series leans hard on Christian mythology. See, at its core, I think Terminator is more of a horror franchise than a sci-fi one and I think any good Terminator media embraces that side of things as opposed to eschewing it. Think back to T1, the T-800 in that film is equal parts zombie, vampire, skeleton, lycanthrope and Frankenstein's monster. It will find you and it will chase you and it will kill you and, in the future, it will do the same to the whole world. T2 doesn't acknowledge it as openly as T1 did because T2 is to T1 what Aliens is to Alien - once the monster isn't scary, you might as well do an action film. But that's a one trick pony. T3, Salvation and Genisys all went for action and all floundered. As a TV series, TSCC has more opportunity to focus on the philosophical questions and on the little details of the franchise, asking questions, like, how do you live with the knowledge that the world is going to end, seemingly no matter what you do? How does that strain the relationship between mother and son? What does the future war do to the people who aren't John Connor? What does it mean to be fighting a temporal war and to be stranded in the past with your future annihilated by every change you make? The only real weakness of the episode is the plot with Dimitri, I feel. It gives us a look at Cameron when she's away from the Connors and reminds us that she's not nice or pleasant but it's basically Cameron trying to find the Turk but getting a business card that might point her to where the Turk is in the future. It's an issue with the series that crops up again during Season 2 - this never-ending treadmill of chasing clue to clue and never really getting closer. I'm also not sure how I feel about Dimitri's comment that he sabotaged the Turk's programming, overall. But, as a whole, it's a good episode.
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Dec 20, 2016 07:23
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Episode 8: Vick's Chip Vick's Chip is another of the Season 1 episodes where a lot of things happen and where the episode might have been better if split into two parts. While I do like how TSCC commits to the frantic energy one might need to stop the apocalypse, it always feels a little bit rough. If there's a core to this episode, it's the issue of trust. Can the Connors trust Cameron? Was Vick's wife right to blindly trust him, despite changes in his behavior? Can Sarah trust Derek? Can you trust a being that thinks differently to you, that might not even be able to conceive of the world like you do? Despite the crazy pace of the episode, it is one of the more intriguing ones of Season 1 and it introduces a lot of ideas, some which might even echo out into Season 2. Anyway, the episode opens with Cromartie and a government clerk. Cromartie is attempting to gather information on all the new students within the local schools. What I really like about the beginning is how we see a Cromartie POV shot of the snowglobe, and how he has no idea of what the object is. So, he shakes it, obviously curious, although he stops having any interest the moment he begins talking with the clerk. It's a bit of comedy, like Arnold with the baby in T2, but it also points out that these robots have no conception of incredibly basic things. Skynet gives them what they need to know and nothing more. Think about the level of specialised knowledge one would have to not recognise a snowglobe. The clerk thinks Cromartie is there to bust some kid for having pot. "Look me in the eye and tell me you've never smoked a little marijuana," he tells him. Cromartie complies, and does so, bending down to stare at the man behind his desk as he repeats the words in his strangely even cadence. When the clerk asks if Cromartie has his paperwork, the Terminator is forced to admit he doesn't have it with him, and then breaks the clerk's neck. Cromartie remarks "Thank you for your time" as he drops the man to the floor, like an afterthought. He's learning, like Cameron is; what a Terminator might become without careful guidance. Speaking of learning, Cameron hasn't learned to cook and John's too busy doing the teenage thing of getting mom to do all the work. The roast is burning and, by all appearances, Cameron has stood there and watched it burn, only telling Sarah that it should have been taken out of the oven eighteen minutes ago. I'm reminded of the following conversation from Red Dwarf: Lister: They only do what you tell them to. Rimmer: Ah, but they don't do they? You say, "Keep an eye on that lamb," and they do. They sit there for three hours and watch it burn. Lister: So. They've got no emotion have they? It's not built into their software. Then Derek stalks in, Terminator CPU chip in hand. Cameron's been hiding it and it becomes a point of conflict - Cameron had told everyone that she had destroyed every part of the Terminator. Derek leaps on it, calling Cameron a liar, and points out that it is the truly important part of the Terminator. The chassis is just a platform - the chip is everything the robot is. So, a thought. In Season 2, Cameron begins gathering up endoskeleton parts and even has to sacrifice her own chip to John Henry - what's the possibility that she kept the chip knowing that she would need one in the future? Either way, she tells John that he can hack into it, and he has before. Later, John is gathering up some powerful computer parts, building a system to hack a Skynet chip. I'm not sure what's with the usage of Halo in this scene, as it is featured quite prominently. Is it evocative of the plasma weapons in the future war? Is it just an example of how much the world has changed since John's time? Something else? But Cameron clearly has an agenda - she tells John that she 'sometimes' lies to him, and sometimes about 'important things'. Cameron gets a bit of focus in this episode, but we'll get to that later. For now, John is working on the Terminator CPU. He's hitting it with enough power to instil what seems to be a dreaming state - get access to the visual memory without activating any 'higher functions'. This allows them to see what the Terminator, known under the alias of Vick Chamberlain, saw. By all accounts, it led a normal, if strangely literal life, with a woman named Barbara. And then killed her. When Derek and Sarah leave to follow this lead, we get to see what might be the high point of Sarah and John's relationship in this season, if not the whole series. For once, they seem like a normal family, with Sarah getting the information she read of the school newsletter wrong. But she's smiling and happy, a far cry from the pair earlier in the season. One little detail I liked when Derek and Sarah investigate the Chamberlain residence is that all the plants in the house are very overgrown. No one's lived there for a fair while. Another school scene. Morris awkwardly hits on Cameron while John awkwardly hits on Cherie, the mysterious and weird blonde who seems like she might have been a precursor to Riley. She's just as cagey with her past as John might be. Really, where would they have gone with this character? Would she have been a Riley analogue or something else? Meanwhile, Cromartie's on the hunt for John Connor. He barges into a locker room, disregarding social mores and any sort of shame. The coach, rightfully, says he can get Cromartie fired for that sort of thing. Cromartie hurls him aside. Is it a calculated move to quash any sort of response from the students, or a sign of Cromartie's own burgeoning self-awareness? It's not the only time Cromartie displays something that might be irritation. Later, the family Connor is searching for the body of Barbara Chamberlain. They find it, but it isn't Barbara - it's a lady named Jessica Peck, who was opposing a city intiative called ARTIE. ARTIE, as discovered by John, is a traffic control and surveillance system. If Turk is the brain, Cameron posits, then ARTIE might be the nervous system, what Skynet uses to communicate and to gather information. I like this little exchange: John: Well, I guess when they say, "you can't fight city hall", they really mean it. Derek: Yeah, well, whoever said that didn't have as much plastique as we do. Sarah: We can't blow up city hall. Derek: It's really not that hard. One thing this episode does is it reminds us that John Connor isn't just some great military genius, as Salvation took the character. John's a hacker. He's a whiz with technology. As Cameron points out, John's done all sorts of things with Terminator chips before - he's analysed them and he's removed Cameron's chip before. John might be a fighter but he's also a thinker, too. In fact, I'd argue that Sarah is far more of a fighter than her son is. Derek and Sarah case city hall. Derek starts drinking early in the day, it seems. He really is an interesting character - just utterly out of time and place. One thing in this scene that I like, and it comes up again in Season 2, is how TSCC talks about motherhood. Sarah has the following line of dialogue: "I had this regular, Tracy. She had two beautiful kids. She left her husband, moved her kids to L.A. To get 'em into show business. I'd bring her eggs every day and I'd hear what she said to them. That they had bad skin or crooked teeth. One lay after another. I swear sometimes I understand why they drop bombs on us." It can be read like how Battlestar Galactica might interpret it, that maybe we don't deserve to live. I don't think that's right, though. For this series, that line reads to me not as punishment for man's sins, but as another indicator that empathy and love is what will avert Judgement Day. She understands why the machines wipe out humanity because humanity is happy enough to belittle and dislike its own descendents. Back in the school. Cromartie has arrived, still posing as an FBI agent, and looking to see John. Cameron concocts a plan to have Morris pretend he is John, which fools Cromartie. As Cameron stalks after Cromartie - to attack him? - she is interrupted by John, forcing her to protect him than pursue the other Terminator. The next two scenes are very interesting. One concerns John, Cameron and Sarah, and is one of my favorites from Season 1. The second concerns Derek, Sarah and Andy Goode. I'll touch on the first one in a seperate post, but the second reveals that Derek's people were tracking Barbara, too. And someone killed Barbara, and it apparently wasn't Vick. Derek insists he wasn't his men, but Sarah doesn't believe him. That evening, Derek and Sarah infiltrate city hall. Things go wrong immediately: there's a wall where they shouldn't be one. Some people claim that Derek just misremembered that the hallway was clear, but it reads to me more like the past is different to what Derek remembers - which comes up in Season 2. Similarly, John's virus doesn't work and the system counteracts it. Sarah and Derek are chased from the building. Derek draws their attention and Sarah clobbers them from behind, although Derek is incredibly quick on drawing his gun to flat out execute a pair of security guards. Derek has no qualms with hurting people. He's an unapologetic murderer. In the next scene, John is still messing with Vick's chip, but 'something' kicks him out. I feel safe assuming that the something is Vick himself (itself?), particularly given that Vick proceeds to try and hack John's phone to make a call to... someone. We never find out who, but given that Season 2 indicates that Skynet was active at this point in the timeline, I'd wager that is what he was trying to reach. It gives John an idea, though. They can use a Terminator CPU to hack the traffic system - in this case, Cameron's. Derek isn't sure about it, believing that maybe her influence on ARTIE created Skynet. John displays one of his first indications of the man who'll become Future John and shoots Derek down immediately. He's nervous about it, though, Derek's nervous about it, and Cameron's nervous about it, too. And she has good reason to be. While the mission is successful, Derek almost seems like he's going to smash her chip. It seems to be a lesson on Derek's part, that a Terminator will kill John someday. T3 nod, probably, where John is revealed to be killed by a T-850 wearing the familiar Arnold skin. "Not this one," John insists. Later, as he plugs in Cameron's chip and she boots up, he strokes her face. Meanwhile, Derek is having a shower. Sarah storms in and wrenches the shower curtain away. Derek stands there, surprised but not ashamed of his nakedness, as the pair have a chat about the location of the Turk. But the real reason for her intrusion is that Sarah has come to believe (rightfully) that Derek killed Andy Goode. "You lie to me again," Sarah seethes, "I'll kill you." It's not the only shower cubible revelation. Sarah watches footage taken from Vick's chip. As Barbara talks about their imminent vacation in Tahiti, Vick murders her. Sarah watches it, utterly alone, and reflects that the true evil is one you never see coming, because you're too afraid to look under the mask.
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Dec 23, 2016 14:55
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So, there are a few things that stuck out to me in this episode. The first of these was a weird scene where Derek has been brushing his teeth, with Sarah's toothbrush, for twenty minutes. I'm not really sure what relation it has to anything, unless we think about Derek. I can only assume that it's an indicator that Sarah is wondering about Derek and his conscience, a stepping stone to her deduction at the end of the episode. I'd say it's a sign that Derek has a bit of a guilty conscience but I'm not sure he ever displays feelings of guilt, nor he would feel it given that Andy Goode basically ended the world and seemingly gave him permission to murder his past self. But, at his core, Derek is a good person. Hard to tell. The second of these is, of course, that it's another episode which could have been made into two but Vick's Chip isn't as bad about it as Queen's Gambit was. But really, much of the episode is about Terminator cognition, Terminator intelligence and Terminator sapience. It's nice to have a show that admits that a mechanical being would probably think differently to a human, unless we programmed them to be human - or based them off our neural architecture. Of course, it's a core conceit of the franchise: "I now know why you cry, but it is something I can never do." Terminators are fundamentally different to people, but that doesn't mean they're incompatible with them. It's sort of the running theme with Cameron and John. Does Cameron truly try to get to know John better, or is it all in the service of her mysterious agenda? Is she friendly or manipulative? We've seen Cameron being flirtatious with John in the service of another goal (when she strokes his neck to read his vitals in an earlier episode) but she was also answering to Sarah then. But the scene between John and Cameron, where she's painting her nails, is different. I do like how the series keeps Cameron somewhat ambiguous, it helps maintain the idea that she's a threat. In this scene, she lies to Sarah. Or, if not an exact lie, definitely withholds information. The scene in question is as follows: John, seated at his desk, turns to find Cameron on his bed. She has been sitting there a while, or she has just arrived silently - it's impossible to tell which. John: You scared the hell outta me. How long you been sitting there? Cameron: A little while. That was effective. What he did, when he touched her lips. John: ...effective? Cameron: I could see that she liked that. John: What are you doing? [Cameron shows John her fingernails - they're painted pink.] John: No... [John hunches over his desk, looking incredibly awkward] When you say things like that, what are you doing? Cameron: Just making conversation. John: Since when do you just make conversation? Cameron: I don't know. It just seems like something I should do. John: Well, was having Morris impersonate me with that cop also something you thought you should do, no matter what happened to him? Cameron: Yes. But it wasn't a cop. It was Cromartie. John: What? W- What? Cameron: He's going school to school looking for you. Trying to match your face. He's moved on though. He won't go back there. I wouldn't. John: The only way that I'm reassured by that is if I remember that in the core of your chip you're just like him. Oh, god. She'll move us so fast. You cannot tell her, okay? Promise me. Sarah: Hey. Do I smell nail polish? What are you guys talking about? [Cameron leaves. As she goes, she winks to John over Sarah's shoulder.] Cameron: Just making conversation. How much of Cameron is programmed behavior? How much of it is an earnest desire to connect with John? Does she understand what she's doing? When Derek finds the chip in her room, and Cameron seems indignant about it, is that anything except an attempt to exploit the idea that her room is her personal space? In the previous episode, after all, we've seen her dancing in her room, something which we can assume she doesn't do anywhere else. But still, there's not much reason for her to be painting her nails, nor to be in John's room wearing a dress and coming as close to flirting with him as she ever does at this point in the series - so why? It's obvious that John is attracted to Cameron. However, I think Cameron is also attracted to John, in some strange way that doesn't necessarily correspond to the human romantic drive 1:1. It's late and I need to sleep, so, I'll come back to this later. I'll also be busy with Christmas and New Years stuff for a week or so, but then we can move into the final episode of Season 1.
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Dec 23, 2016 15:27
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Cromartie was a good villain. I like me some good villain!
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Dec 23, 2016 22:39
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Tomorrow, I'll be running through What He Beheld, the final episode of Season 1 and maybe one of the best episodes of the series. We'll see!
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Jan 8, 2017 07:26
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Milky Moor posted:Tomorrow, I'll be running through What He Beheld, the final episode of Season 1 and maybe one of the best episodes of the series. We'll see! I'd love to see your take on that episode. In my opinion it's good enough to pay off all the flaws and missed chances in S1.
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Jan 23, 2017 03:27
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mllaneza posted:I'd love to see your take on that episode. In my opinion it's good enough to pay off all the flaws and missed chances in S1. It's coming, and it is really, really good! I got a write up about halfway done, then got run over by IRL. I should have it up tonight.
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Jan 23, 2017 03:36
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You're reaching the sweet spot for this show! I continue to get people into this show to this day! Having been a moody teenage Garbage fan in the late 90's, I especially loved Shirley Manson's "Catherine Weaver", a real highlight of the show for me! The speculation above about what might or might not happen when the rights return to Cameron is just cruel to think about! A proper ending would have done so much to complete the whole package. I don't necessarily think it needed another season, just resolution of a couple of loose future threads, primarily Derek, Weaver's plan and Cameron. I doubt it would work now, just another case of too many years having passed.
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Jan 23, 2017 04:51
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I loved this show, and I'm glad you've brought this thread back. I can't wait to read your take on the relationship between John and Cameron at the end of the series.
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Jan 23, 2017 05:55
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Zoran posted:I loved this show, and I'm glad you've brought this thread back. I can't wait to read your take on the relationship between John and Cameron at the end of the series. I'm probably going to touch on that during Season 2. I really want to talk about it. Dekker and Glau are great. What He Beheld is a longer write up just because I'm diving into some things I think the series does really well during some strong scenes. What He Beheld is such a good episode. The opening scene, the talk between Charley and Ellison... A lot of stuff to chew on.
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Jan 23, 2017 06:17
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Episode 9: What He Beheld If there's one impression that the Terminator series has left on the people that watch it, it's the nightmare of looking up into a perfect blue sky and seeing the contrails of nuclear missiles. My mom, who claimed Sarah Connor as an inspiration, has often talked about that imagery, wondering what she would do or how she would react if she was to look up and see those weapons streaking through the air, each one heralding the death of thousands. Really, what would anyone do? It's a situation that almost defies comprehension. It'd be seeing the end of the world and knowing it is coming. And knowing there's nothing that can be done to stop it. The reason I bring this up is because that's the imagery that the final episode of TSCC's first season opens with. We see the Reese boys, Derek and Kyle, playing baseball in their suburban front yard. Kyle wants to quit, Derek tells him to just do it as he practiced. There's a deep rumbling, like fireworks, which Kyle is happy to see (which is a morbid bit of humor because, yeah, there's going to be fireworks) but then he and Derek and standing there, staring into the sky, as missiles roar overhead. The roar intensifies and the screen goes white and- -we cut to another image of Halo 2. Specifically, of the Master Chief's flying-through-the-air-dead-flailing animation. I'm still trying to puzzle out the usage of Halo 2 in this series. Was it simple marketing? The Master Chief is a cyborg character who slowly comes to grips with his humanity - is that what they're trying to link to? A brief Internet search doesn't give me anything except Halo and Terminator crossover fan fiction, so, if anyone has any thoughts on it, feel free to comment! Sarah and Cameron are in a LAN cafe, looking to meet with Sarkissian, a man who claims that he can sell them the Turk. Both they, and the audience, do not know that Sarkissian is the unremarkable man who directs them to one of the computers. Outside, the following exchange between Derek and John takes place. They're staking the place out in the Connors' jeep, muscle if something goes wrong. Sarah said that the plan is to basically take the Turk and run, so, I don't imagine they are there to negotiate or pay for it. Either way, we get one of my favorite exchanges from the series. I feel like this is the high point of the relationship between the eclectic members of the Family Connor. We see it in Derek's admiration for Sarah, we see it in how Derek and John joke, in how open everyone is. The second season swerves away from this, and it feels kind of disappointing. But that can be discussed later. DEREK: Remind me again. Why... why are the boys out here and the girls in there? JOHN: Because one of the boys is still wanted for murder, and one of the girls is... Harder than nuclear nails. DEREK: And the other one's a cyborg. JOHN: You wanna know why we're really here? DEREK: Why? JOHN: Moore's law. DEREK: Huh? JOHN: Moore's law. The guy who founded Intel said that every two years, the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles. Thirty years ago, it was an observation. Now it's a law. Tech industry spent billions doubling chip power. DEREK: And? JOHN: And that's how we can go from a chess computer to the apocalypse in just four years. I learned that a lot can happen in four years. [John shows off his smartphone.] DEREK: A lot can happen in four seconds. One minute, I'm in the yard with my brother, playing baseball, and the next, we look up, and the sky's on fire. JOHN: Judgment Day. What'd you do? DEREK: The only thing to do: Took Kyle and went underground. JOHN: What was he like? [Derek tears up, ever so slightly.] DEREK: He was just a kid when it happened. Eight years old. I was fifteen. How do you tell an eight year-old machines have taken over the world? JOHN: How do you? [Pause.] DEREK: You don't. Inside, Sarah and Cameron get out-foxed by Sarkissian. Via an IM program, he tells them that they can come and get the Turk from him tomorrow, at a food court, for five hundred thousand dollars. Cameron points out that they don't have that much money. "Not yet," says Sarah. Meanwhile, Charley Dixon is busy with some chores in his home. He is soon visited by James Ellison, and we get another good scene. I've said before that one of the interesting elements of this series is how it is steeped in Biblical imagery and symbolism. It's very blatant in this scene, as Ellison reveals that he's looking for Sarah. Not to continue his operation against her, not to arrest her, but because he is worried about visions of the Rapture, of a black-clad figure named Death, of Hell following just behind him, and of what he, personally, has beheld. The episode refers to this exchange but, more importantly, towards the end of the episode, where Ellison has a direct encounter with the pale figure dressed in black. ELLISON: 'And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder. And I heard the voice of the fourth beast say: 'come and see'. And I looked. And behold, a pale horse. And his name that sat on him was death. And hell followed with him.' The book of Revelation. Charley's a good man, though, and still loyal to Sarah. He plays this off like Ellison's gone a bit crazy. Ellison tells Charley that Sarah is alive. Charley doubts it. Even when Ellison starts namedropping robots and Skynet, Charley tells him 'what he told the other guy', that he doesn't know anything. The other guy? Ellison is surprised to hear this. Who the hell is Agent Kester? There's one thing I really like about this scene, and it's something that I feel franchises like the Terminator need in order to succeed. It's something that I think the Michael Bay Transformers films do wonderfully - the conflict between the real and unreal. Ellison, who has lived in the real, is just now pushing through into the world of the unreal, of shining robot assassins from the future and insane nuclear skull-field apocalypses. We cut to another scene of a well-dressed man barging in on some people just living their lives, a man who the episode wants you to think is Sarkissian but never outright says it. He has intruded on Carlos and his gang, the people who helped out Sarah earlier in the season and are relatives of her friend Enrique, whom we met in Terminator 2. He talks about Los Ninos Heroes, six cadets who died attempting to protect the honor of Mexico. But the cadets died needlessly. For all that they held to their honor in the face of death, Chapultepec Castle was captured regardless. The meaning is obvious. It's that old tactic: never ask a question you don't know the answer to, and this man knows that Carlos knows where Sarah is. He then murders the entirety of Carlos' crew. It is, however, witnessed by Chola, the woman who gave Cameron a lesson in make-up earlier in the season. And Carlos talks. The weak link in any security system is always the human element. This idea is then basically espoused by Sarah when Charley shows up at her door, telling her that he thinks Ellison might actually be willing to listen to her. The tragedy, of course, is that he's right but Sarah isn't concerned about that. The FBI can't help them, not against the things that Charley himself as witnessed. Angry, Sarah points out that she is more worried that a Terminator could have followed Charley here. She tells him to take his wife and forget her and to forget John and just go. It's harsh, but Sarah lives in the unreal world, not the real world, which Charley still has both feet firmly planted in. Inside, Cameron is appraising the diamonds. They don't have enough money to purchase the Turk. Derek points out that it's a bad idea to trust that handing over, essentially, a suitcase of money to an unknown will get them the Turk. And that they're from his safe house, so, they're his diamonds. Derek makes a good point. Sarah claims they'll negotiate, and that the diamonds are probably stolen anyway. When she says negotiate, I think it's pretty clear that she means negotiation by way of Cameron. Sarah would pay if she could, and would probably offer the $246,000 they have in diamonds, but there's no way she will be leaving the meeting without the Turk. Which Sarkissian has anticipated. When Derek and Sarah arrive to make the rendezvous, Sarkissian is nowhere to be found. Derek reminescenes about what he and his men did on their first day back in the past - hit up a food court and ate until they puked. "The funny thing is," Derek says, "Is that, in the future, this place is a concentration camp." Sarah and Derek have to retreat as a pair of police officers come prowling through. It's unclear as to whether it is random chance, or whether Sarkissian tipped them off. Sarak and Derek return home and find the well-dressed man in their living room. Derek and Sarah immediately go for their guns, but Sarkissian's representative tells them that, if they want the Turk, they'll have to scrounge up two million dollars instead. Derek responds by shoving him against the wall, gun in his face. DEREK: You tell us where the Turk is, we keep our money, and I bury you in the back yard. Sarkissian may not have ancipated Derek's murderous sensibilities, however, he does understand that Sarah Connor, having read her dossier and noting the FBI's interest in her, would need to be controlled. If Derek kills him, his people will tell the FBI everything they know - which, given that Carlos has broken, includes the address of the Connors. And, perhaps more pressing, is that his people are watching John Connor even as they speak. Sarkissian: Yeah. My people. Same people who are watching your son. He's on a field trip, isn't he? With his class? Science museum, I believe? DEREK: [warningly/smugly] Your people have no idea what they're walking into. It's a nice touch that you can tell Derek knows that Sarkissian's people would have to contend with Cameron. It might almost be something that'd bring the man and robot a certain level of respect. But, like I said, this episode seems to be the point where everyone is almost a conventional happy family. The man gives them an ultimatum - twenty four hours to cough up the cash. Sarah has Derek follow him to wherever he's operating from. Outside, we see from the perspective of someone watching Sarkissian's man leave the Connor residence. They have a statue of the Madonna on their dashboard - it's Chola. We cut to John, Cameron and their science class at the museum, just as Sarkissian's man said. John stops and studies a T-Rex skeleton. The T-Rex was the so-called King of the Dinosaurs, but even it was wiped out by something no one saw coming. Humanity might suffer the same fate. John seems perturbed, but it's not any philosophical musing when Cameron, also studying the skeleton, points out he hasn't spoken for twenty-eight minutes. My birthday's tomorrow. Okay? I know that mom totally forgot. CAMERON: Birthday? JOHN: Yeah, you know what a birthday is? CAMERON: It's the day you were born. JOHN: Pretty memorable for a mother, right? CAMERON: But it was 16 years ago. JOHN: No, a birthday's like a holiday. Like once a year, every year, people just kind of... celebrate you, I guess. And you get presents and you eat cake and... it's fun. Hah, It's supposed to be. Last year, mom got me a flak jacket. CAMERON: That's a tight present. JOHN: No. It's not. Whatever... look, I don't know why I care. I've been driving since I was 12, and, technically, this is my 24th birthday. It's just I... time traveled over eight of them. CAMERON: Do I have a birthday? JOHN: I don't know. Were you born? CAMERON: I was built. JOHN: Well, then, maybe you have like a built day. The pair of them are wonderfully awkward in this scene. In season 2, John's second last line would be played more as an insult, a petty slight, but here, it is awkward teasing. I'd also like the point out Cameron's fashion. Sarah, Derek and John all wear very functional clothing, usually in drab military greys and greens. Like they got all their fashion from a surplus store (Sarah is something of an exception but she still sticks to a black/grey palette usually). Cameron, on the other hand, tends to have a bit more color. Later, in Season 2, we find out that she's quite attached to the purple leather jacket she wore last episode. It's an interesting little thing to note for all the characters. Morris - John's awkward friend - comes over to give Cameron a listen from his iPod. John intercepts him, but whether that's because he doesn't want Cameron to potentially say or do something strange or jealousy isn't stated. Either way, it frees Cameron to spot a suspicious looking figure watching John from the other side of an exhibit. Cameron goes straight into Terminator mode. But makes it about six paces before she is intercepted by the class teacher, telling her to stick with the group. Cameron flashes him a winning smile and apologises but, as she takes John's side again, she is still staring at Sarkissian's henchman. After a commercial break, Cameron is closing the boot of a fancy sedan. Morris finds her, wanting to talk to her, but is distracted by the car. He asks her whether that's her car. "No," Cameron replies matter-of-factly, "It belongs to the guy I killed and stuffed in the trunk." Morris doesn't seem to know how to take that. When John arrives he tells him what Cameron just told him. "Your sister's dark, bro!" "Yeah," John says, obviously thankful for Morris' infatuation with Cameron, "She's, uh, really goth." As they go to leave, though, Morris drops a bombshell of his own. He wants to take Cameron to the prom! There's a three-second pause as Cameron stares at him. "Just say yes!" John calls. "Yes!" Cameron snaps. And Morris' day is just made! He does this little half dance as he walks away from the car! And then we never see him again. When I was first watching this series, I was really looking forward to the event that this was foreshadowing. It seemed like an obvious bit of drama. Cameron said she'd go with Morris but obviously didn't understand what he was asking. John told her to say yes because they had to get home immediately, but I think he'd be upset about Cameron going to the prom with Morris. After all, they're play-acting as brother and sister, so, he can't go with her. But I think he'd want to, and I could see it being a weird point of conflict between John and his one and only friend. But like the plot with Cherie and the plot with the school counsellor, it is dropped. Unlike Cherie, though, which sort of reincarnated with Riley, there is no equivalent for Morris in Season 2. Meanwhile, Ellison is touching base with someone in the FBI office. He's looking up information on Agent Kester, Cromartie's alter-ego. The face that stares back at him from the computer monitor is Cromartie. Ellison has this resigned look at the development - he's tired of these shenanigans already. Cromartie is busy, too. As Agent Kester, he's trying to acquire the files on the Connor case. But they've already been signed out to Ellison. "James Ellison?" Cromartie asks. He knows exactly who he needs to find. The two trains are placed on tracks that will inevitably collide. But not yet. As Ellison ducks into an elevator, Cromartie steps out of one. They miss each other by mere seconds. Ellison won't behold Death just yet. But he will. Cameron and John return home with the body of the henchman in the trunk. Cameron killed him before thinking about getting any information and Derek lost Sarkissian at the overpass. Derek wants to move, stating the house is a target, but John refuses, angry. He's born to run, maybe fated to run, but will refuse. Things go from bad to worse when the well-dressed man calls the dead henchman. Cameron answers and fakes the man's voice, organising a rendezvous - the well-dressed man knew he was being followed by Derek. Derek gets more firm about needing to move: the moment Sarkissian's man doesn't turn up, things are going to get worse. But then Chola arrives, her clothing covered in blood. Chola drives them to where Sarkissian operates out of - the LAN cafe from the start of the episode. The Connors roll in and encounter Sarkissian at the front desk. They're asking for him and, unknowingly, he is right there. Sarah slams him into his desk face-first and Sarkissian points to the back of the building. When the Connors are out of sight, Sarkissian presses a button and a silent alarm is triggered, readying his man. His man runs straight into the Connors and then locks himself in a supply closet. It's a heavy door and heavy cinderblock walls. Sarah tells John to go check the office for the Turk, and then asks if Cameron can get through the door. "Yes," Cameron says, after a second's study of it, "But the wall would be much faster." She begins putting her fists through the wall, punching huge holes that go straight through. Inside the closet, Sarkissian's man is obviously wondering just what the gently caress he has gotten into. He lives in the real world and the unreal is here, quite literally battering down his fortifications. John doesn't find the Turk in the man's office. What he does find, however, is a little girl, coloring away on some paper. JOHN: Hi. What are you doing here? GIRL: Waiting for my daddy to finish work. JOHN: Okay, listen. I need you to stay in this room with the door closed, okay? Even if you hear loud noises or you get scared, you need to stay in here. Can you do that for me? GIRL: Yeah. Cameron breaks a hole big enough for the Connors to climb through. Unfortunately, the man has slipped the net via a crawl space in the wall, and he's nabbed John. Sarah pursues him into an alley outside the LAN cafe. There, she's faced with her nightmare, or one of them: a man with a arm around John's throat and a gun to his head. And then the well-dressed man is, perhaps, faced with his own nightmare. Derek comes wandering outside, very casually, with the girl. And his gun pulled on her. If you ever wanted to know Derek's brand of pragmatism, this is as clear as it gets. DEREK: Let him go. MAN: Not my kid. DEREK: Not mine either. [Derek bends down and whispers to the child. As he talks, he places his hand over her eyes, raising his other hand.] DEREK: Sssh-sssh-ssssh. You okay? Yeah, you'll be okay. While you doubt the show would be that cold to show Derek flat-out murdering a crying child, the fact is, Derek is a murderer. He probably would, if he thought he had no other choice. Derek's a murderer fighting to stop the end of the world. But then Derek swings upward and, employing his skills honed by a life that the well-dressed man could never comprehend, nails him with a bullet between the eyes. Sarah and John hug before going to retrieve a hard drive from the well-dressed man's office. Derek just sort of shrugs as he walks past them, having taken the kid inside. Guilt rolls off Derek like water on wax. When Sarah comforts the child, though, she mentions that the well-dressed man wasn't her daddy. Her daddy works in the LAN cafe. Her daddy is Sarkissian himself! Chola drives the Connors home but Cameron lingers in the car once they've disembarked. "Do I need to kill you now?" Cameron asks and Chola, in the face of mechanical death, rolls her eyes. What's a threat when your family has already been gunned down? For whatever reason, Cameron gives her a handgun and leaves her in the car. Ellison is taking his findings about Agent Kester to his associate, Agent Greta Simpson. Simpson doesn't seem to understand the concern. To her, that's just George Lazlo, the actor (whom Cromartie based his appearance off). Ellison is adamant that it can't be Lazlo because the blood isn't a match. Simpson, incredulousy and let accurately, supposes that, what, six people were killed by this Kester who then promptly found a plastic surgeon to change his facial features and then he killed Kester and stole his identity, even hacking into the FBI database to change the profile picture? For what purpose? But Ellison knows, although he doesn't say it: to find Sarah Connor. "What is he?" Ellison muses. "What is he?" Simpson asks. Ellison catches himself. "Yeah. What is he... What is he that... stands across from a man after killing two other men within thirty-six hours... and when asked of his involvement, cannot only lie, but lie well? And not only lie well, but not blink or twitch or perform one simple human reaction to the situation. The question is easy, to Simpson. He's a monster, and they can catch a monster. The Ellison Express and the Cromartie Coach are one a direct course now. John is hacking through Sarkissian's hard drive, although it's going to take a while. Derek shows up. DEREK: So, it's your birthday. JOHN: How... how'd you know? DEREK: [grinning] You kidding? I celebrated your 30th with you. JOHN: How was that? DEREK: You got drunk as a skunk. Come on. I'll buy you a beer. JOHN: I'm sixteen. DEREK: All right, I'll buy you an ice cream cone. Come on, it's your birthday. When there are things to celebrate, they should be celebrated. Let's go. Derek makes good on his offer. John and Derek wander through the park, eating ice creams. Here is the scene in full, as it is one of the best scenes in the whole series. DEREK: Your mom has never killed anyone, has she? You know, she's got murder in her eyes all the time, but her heart's pure. It's a good thing, you know. Keep a... keep a pure heart. [Derek and John sit down at a picnic table. In the distance, two young boys are playing baseball. DEREK: It's beautiful here, isn't it? You know, you stay long enough, you start fooling yourself into thinking that this is... how it's always gonna be. And you remember what this place'll look like when it's on fire, and... you realize you'll do whatever it takes to keep from watching it burn again. It's one part a view into Derek's mindset and one part Derek's explanation to John for what he saw the night before. It also reveals one of the specific reasons why Derek is so driven. When the boys hit the baseball a bit too far, and the younger one retrieve it from John, Derek is there, smiling knowingly. JOHN: Is that you? [Derek looks positively serene, it's enough of an answer for John.] JOHN: [on the verge of tears] And the other one? Is that- DEREK: [contently] Kyle. Throws pretty good for a five year-old, huh? Your father always had a nice arm. JOHN: How'd you know? DEREK: Every time I look at you, I see him. Besides, your mom's his type. [pause, while the boys play baseball] DEREK: Happy birthday. What must be going through John's head at this moment? He finally meets his father, but he's eleven years younger than him. But he exists, and he's safe, and Derek loves him. Sarah might not be good at giving gifts, but Derek just knocks it out of the park. Derek, of course, isn't being totally truthful - Sarah is Kyle's type because John made him that way with the photo. But Derek either forgives him or knows not to gently caress with the timeline. While Reese trains past and future collide through time and space, the trains of Cromartie and Ellison are minutes away from colliding. The FBI launches a raid on Cromartie's apartment. Through the magic of non-diegetic sound, Johnny Cash's song When The Man Comes Around plays. This is widely considered one of the best scenes in the series, so, here it is. Ellison, Simpson and a whole team of black-armored officers charge onto the premises. To anyone else, the sight of a dozen officers in body armor and toting sub-machine guns would be imposing. Cromartie looks up from his computer as they approach, looking unconcerned. What's half a dozen sub-machine guns to a messenger of the apocalypse? The song, of course, directly references Ellison's earlier comments and his reference to the Book of Revelations. Charley hears that the FBI are moving on a raid. He pays it no mind until dispatch mentions that they're hunting someone named Kester, and Charley, knowing what that means, immediately turns his ambulance around to go help. Ellison nods to his people and they ram the door in. Immediately, gunfire rings out. And, a moment after that, the first officer is thrown from the room and over the second-floor railing, as if hit by a freight train. He lands in the pool, broken and bleeding. And then a second officer crashes into the water with him. And a third. And a fourth. Five, six, more. The camera, underwater, hears the gunshots and screams and cries of 'fall back, fall back' from this position of horrific detachment. And the bodies continue to plummet into the depths, the pool turning red. Book of Revelations 16:3-5 posted:And the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it turned to blood like that of the dead, and every living thing in the sea died. Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and springs of water, and they turned to blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say: “Righteous are You, O Holy One, who is and who was, because You have brought these judgments." Cromartie stands there, the black-clad rider of Ellison's beliefs, and advances on Ellison, gun in his hand. His true nature shines through his broken skin and is obvious on his blank face. Ellison closes his eyes and prepares to die. And then the fourth member of the apocalypse stalks away. Charley arrives then, so, the battle didn't take long at all, and finds Ellison kneeling over Simpson's body - she's been shot in the face. Charley bears witness the the dozens of dead officers and the blood-red pool. But it's Ellison who truly beheld, even the audience didn't see what he saw. As Sarah points out in her ending monologue, slaughter begets a loss of innocence. Much like the idyllic imagery of Kyle and Derek playing baseball before the apocalypse, the Terminator mythos directly relates innocence to living in the 'real', of being able to believe in a paradise that'll never end. Ellison had one foot in the door and Cromartie has dragged him through. Meanwhile, John is still working on Sarkissian's hard drive and Derek is still at the park. Sarah wants to know what they were doing but John just says they went out for ice cream. He passes Sarah a bunch of photos. There were other people interested in the Turk and they may have bought it before Sarah could. Sarah has to pry John from the computer to get him to celebrate his birthday. You actually thought I forgot your birthday? JOHN: It's just we have much more important things to think about than my stupid birthday. SARAH: Your birthday is important. JOHN: No, it's not important. Finding the Turk, stopping Skynet, Judgment Day... that's important, that's... that's our life. SARAH: It's our mission. This is our life. If we stop caring about that, then we're lost. JOHN: Well, when you put it like that... SARAH: I sent Cameron to get a cake. [Both laugh.] SARAH: What do you want for dinner? JOHN: Well, not to insult your cooking or anything, but do you mind if we went out? SARAH: Yeah, we can do that. JOHN: Alright, let me shut this down. And then John begins closing down files and comes upon a passport scan. "The guy that Derek killed... in the alley..." "Sarkissian," Sarah nods. "I don't think that was Sarkissian," John replies, and he brings up the image. It's the clerk from the front desk. The one who Sarah slammed into the desktop. Cameron is outside, getting cake. As she climbs into the jeep, she spies a man walking in her rearview mirror. As she turns the key, the man turns: it's Sarkissian himself. The car is ripped to pieces by a huge fireball, and the episode ends with John and Sarah hearing an alarm sound, ringing in the distance. Happy birthday, John. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 11:08
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So, What He Beheld was the last episode produced before the series got hammered by the Writers Strike. It wasn't actually intended to be the series finale but was press-ganged into it. I think it came out really well, all things considered! It makes me wonder if the car blast was written in on the off-chance that they couldn't get Summer Glau back for Season 2. Anyway, the remaining ideas of Season 1 were to be put into Season 2, which is pretty obvious with Riley. Unfortunately, a lot of them are also dropped. Morris, for example. Despite looking a bit weird, he is dropped and John loses his only connection to the normal world. It's unfortunate because, as I've said, one of the things I like best about the show, and the franchise, is the conflict between the real and unreal. The title What He Beheld is a Biblical reference. While I believe it refers mostly to Ellison (whom has done a lot of beholding prior to this episode and does a lot during it, and is also a devout Christian), it could also apply to Derek (he beheld the missiles and the apocalypse), Charlie (he beheld the truth of what Sarah had been dealing with), and even John (beholds his father). These are all apocalypses, even John seeing his father. The root word of apocalypse is Greek and it refers to an uncovering, a revelation. Hence why the Book of Revelations is associated with the word. This was an episode of revelations and of Revelation. Cromartie is Death, the horseman of the apocalypse. He is, as all Terminators are, both its herald and its instigator. He is a shining being who dispenses judgement with fire and fury, enacting the will of an unfathomable intelligence. It might seem weird to associate Terminators with angels, but they work better than demons. It doesn't work perfectly, mind you, but it works well enough. I'll also admit I'm hardly a Christian scholar but I've generally had an interest in that sort of thing. The lyrics of the final song are interesting. The first verse could easily be talking about Derek seeing the missiles streaking through the air. Other than that, though, I won't go through it line by line. But give it a read and see what leaps out at you. And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." And I saw. And behold, a white horse. Derek's morality is shot to pieces by this point, thanks to living through the apocalypse. A lot of what he says in this episode is filtered by his recollection and his memory, of his need to make things fit. He has no problem with threatening to shoot a child, maybe even shooting a child, because he's lived through the end of the world, and he's doing all of this to save his brother and the world. Do not play chicken with Derek Reese. If the Connors had managed to stop Skynet, what would Derek do? He's left the real world totally behind, as much of a murderous machine as Cameron is. He can't go back and, I think, Derek understands that. I think it's why he's so prepared to do anything he has to. And what a contrast to Charley! Derek has no humanity, Charley has so much of it that he's going to race to help people as best he can when they go up against a killing machine. Dean Winters and Brian Austin Green do really well with these characters (of course, I think the cast is generally fantastic). Overall, it's a great episode that demonstrates the sheer amount of promise this series had. Unfortunately, the strike does serious damage to the series and it never quite recovers. Season Two does have a lot to talk about, particularly with John and Cameron, but it does, in many ways, feel like this is the apex of the series before it begins to fall into a spiral. My preliminary notes on much of the things introduced in Season Two are definitely much more critical. Season One, for all its faults of being incredibly frantic and rushing through plots that could be given much more time to breathe, is generally strong. Beyond that flaw, I don't think there's any part of it I truly dislike. In contrast, though, Season Two has some bad subplots and a good three episodes that are flat out terrible. As much as I like TSCC, I long for the series we could have got.
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Jan 23, 2017 12:57
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So, wrapping up Season 1, where the heck is everyone? Sarah Connor: Sarah Connor is a better fighter than mother, but that isn't to say she's a bad mother. She is, rightfully, more concerned with stopping Judgement Day than she is making sure that John has the right stuff for school. Despite this, she has warmed somewhat and her relationship with John is probably at its highest point in the season. She's the leader of the Connor family. She cares for Charley but has tried to warn him away from getting any further involved with the imminent apocalypse. Goode's death weighs on her, to the extent that she has threatened to kill Derek should he lie to her again. She doesn't trust Cameron, but I think he mistrust of Cameron has shifted from her being a robot to her being an attractive young woman who John hangs out with. Sarah is beginning to see that there is the possibility of conflict between her and Cameron over John's future, of who John will listen to. In contrast to the T-800, Sarah isn't nearly as deferential to Cameron, probably because Cameron is smaller and wearing the guise of a teenager. Like any mother, she struggles with the tension between wanting to protect John from the world and needing to ensure he leans self reliance. John Connor: At the end of Season 1, John is still the same young man he was at the start of the season - trying to cling to normalcy in a world where it is increasingly perilous. For the first time in a long while, it seems like he has settled in at high school, striking up a friendship with Morris and something of a curious interest with Cheri. His attempts at being normal in the shadow of Judgement Day are complicated by Cameron, whom John is clearly attracted to physically and, increasingly, seemingly attracted to her on a more romantic level. We've seen him demonstrate leadership potential, the kindling that'll start the fire of Future John, as well as kindness and empathy. Despite this, he still relies on the other members of the Connor family to handle things. Derek Reese: Derek Reese is Derek Reese. He's a man out to stop the end of the world and he will do anything to achieve it, which is about all we know of him. He has a respect for Sarah as a fellow warrior and has become something of a 'cool uncle' to John. We know that, in the future, he was not happy with Future John's Kyle-centric strategy, including giving him the photo of Sarah. Derek is probably canny enough to have figured out the reasoning behind it. He certainly doesn't trust Cameron and seems to have a particular type of dislike for her, but, perhaps due to seeing her practicing ballet, has let his hatred simmer down. Cameron: Cameron remains an enigmatic figure, often seeming to have her own agenda. According to Derek's memories, she works closely with John in the future, something backed up by Cameron pointing out that John has removed her chip before. By all estimation, she is a reprogrammed Skynet Terminator of unknown make and model (according to Vick's HUD). While overwhelmingly literal in everything she does, Cameron has shown indications of some kind of personality, picking up elements of slang, humor and fashion - even flirting with John and keeping it a secret from Sarah. Whether it is a personality and not just advanced programming to achieve whatever goal she has, isn't clear. In contrast to all other Terminators seen in the series so far, Cameron's optics are blue. She has lied multiple times, including keeping a Terminator CPU and about other "important things". James Ellison: James Ellison believes in two things: the glory of God and the truth of Sarah Connor. Once a skeptic, he has stared Cromartie in the face and survived. Beyond that, there's isn't too much else to say about him. Cromartie: Cromartie is still on the hunt for John Connor and appears to be more intelligent than other Terminators. At the very least, he is capable of enacting more covert strategies based on considered assumptions - he left Ellison alive because he knows Ellison is working on the Sarah Connor case. Like Cameron, he is also exhibiting elements of a burgeoning personality (typically irritation), but without the careful guidance that Cameron is getting. With his Kester alias shot to pieces - somewhat literally - he's going to need to work a different angle. Charley Dixon: In the aftermath of Sarah's jaunt into the future, Charley built a life for himself. Now, however, he's trying to help Sarah after having his own run in with Cromartie. Despite being warned to take his wife and leave LA by Sarah, Charley continues to involve himself. He's a good, kind man. In a deleted scene, he advises John to be careful around Cameron. The Turk: Location unknown. Sarkissian had it at one point but may have sold it. Skynet: Skynet has dispatched multiple Terminators into the past, most to hunt John, but some are conducting missions seemingly designed to tip the odds to Skynet's favor in the future. Skynet seemingly tortured Derek Reese in the future, however, the connection to Cameron via the Chopin music means it may not be what it appears. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 05:30
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Thank you ! Man, I'd forgotten how much I wanted to see Cameron at prom.
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Jan 24, 2017 05:59
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Glad this series is still getting attention, it was always better than it had any right to be. They made some wise choices about what the show would and wouldn't be capable of, hit the cast jackpot many times, and even survived the writers' strike (more or less). I also wanted to see the high school plot continue and Cameron go to the prom. Milky Moor posted:-we cut to another image of Halo 2. Specifically, of the Master Chief's flying-through-the-air-dead-flailing animation. I'm still trying to puzzle out the usage of Halo 2 in this series. Was it simple marketing? The Master Chief is a cyborg character who slowly comes to grips with his humanity - is that what they're trying to link to? A brief Internet search doesn't give me anything except Halo and Terminator crossover fan fiction, so, if anyone has any thoughts on it, feel free to comment! On the one hand, simple Xbox product placement is a big part of season 2- I can remember Gears of War and Small Arms (a weird indie game about animals shooting each other) and maybe some Call of Duty. So it probably was marketing that forced them to choose an Xbox game to use there. On the other hand, the opening segments of Halo 2 are concerned with aliens invading Earth and causing the same sort of death-from-the-skies apocalypse that happens in Terminator, so maybe they thought it meshed thematically. I wish I could find a video of the episode to try to recognize where in the game it's taken from, but I only have season 2 on hand. haveblue fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 06:10
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mllaneza posted:Thank you ! haveblue posted:Glad this series is still getting attention, it was always better than it had any right to be. They made some wise choices about what the show would and wouldn't be capable of, hit the cast jackpot many times, and even survived the writers' strike (more or less). I'm actually going to talk about as a missed opportunity. The moment Morris asks Cameron you want to see it because you can already guess at the dozens of ways it'll go wrong for John and Cameron. It'd be cute and funny and bittersweet. See, a prom episode would basically write itself. John goes with someone (maybe Riley? introducing her by having her ask him to the prom would be interesting) and Morris is going with Cameron, which is a source of tension. Sarah doesn't want John to go, ostensibly because it is 'dangerous' but secretly because she doesn't trust Cameron (and certainly doesn't trust John's teenage physiology). Derek argues that he should go, simply because it's important and Derek's world ended before he got one. Sarah argues that if Cromartie is there, and he's posed as a teacher before, then John is putting everyone else at risk, not just himself. Cameron points out that Cromartie won't be there because he's already searched all the schools. Either Sarah acquiesces, or John sneaks out. Of course, stuff gets weird and awkward at the dance, because Cameron doesn't care about Morris but keeps wanting to find John to protect him. Maybe John reacts badly and gets into a bit of a fight with Morris, which would be really weird because he and Cameron are supposed to brother and sister. Either way, it's hardly a fantastic night and the whole thing is a bit of a disaster because John and Cameron are living a lie. "Maybe I can't be John Baum," John might say as they head home. It drives the first cracks into John's eventual break from that part of life. Even if he gets to do all the things that make someone a normal American teenager, the very essence of who he is ensures that they'll never live up to what he wants, which I think would be a good note to end his Season 1 development on. Meanwhile, at home, Derek and Sarah talk about Kyle. Maybe Derek and Sarah bond over the shared worry of protecting a younger member of family and needing to let go. Elsewhere, we see how Ellison's faith is shaken by staring Death in the face and, for some reason, surviving. A big flaw of Season 2 is the removal of John from normal life. It is understandable, given the story they end up telling where every character ends up despondent and isolated, but it feels like someone decided that, hey, we don't really need the high school element, do we? So, they mention one line that John is being 'home schooled' and it's forgotten about. It doesn't feel like a very organic development, particularly given that Morris, Cherie and John's adamant refusal to run and hide aren't really touched upon. I won't even really point out that given that Cromartie has, according to Cameron, designated the schools as dead leads, the school hours are the safest times of the day for John! Basically, when you have a show built around masks and identity and growing up and fighting your fate, it's a serious misstep to not show the normal world that John must give up to take on the mantle of savior. Or, alternatively, the world that John never truly fits into. Or the world they're fighting to protect. After all, this isn't just a show about time-travelling robots and nuclear apocalypse, it's also a show about a mother raising her son and the issues that arise from that. The focus on motherhood is something I really dig about the show. Season 2 launches right into its plot from the very first episode and shakes things up immediately (which, given the end of What He Beheld, it kind of has to). The thing is, the show probably would have benefited from a few episodes which were character-driven as opposed to plot driven, giving the characters some time to enjoy the bit of genuine family they have going on, before blowing everything up. End What He Beheld on knowing that the real Sarkissian is out there, have a little character moments episode where the Connors enjoy life while wary of Sarkissian's revenge, do the prom episode where you see John/Morris/Cameron become a source of tension that begins to break apart John's few links to his normal life, then bring everything crashing to pieces when Sarkissian blows up the car. Hell, that could be the end of the prom episode. And maybe that was the plan before What He Beheld was turned into the season finale. It's hard to say! But I think having some fun would make the descent into isolation and anger and paranoia, the painful fracturing of the Connor family that takes place in Season 2, have that much more impact. Of course, that's just me and I'm hardly a professional writer! quote:On the one hand, Xbox product placement is a big part of season 2- I can remember Gears of War and Small Arms (a weird indie game about animals shooting each other) and maybe some Call of Duty. So it probably was marketing that forced them to choose an Xbox game to use there. It's definitely taken from early in Halo 2. Specifically, I think from the fifth level, Metropolis. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Jan 24, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 07:16
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