Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season Two Premiere

Posted by Dominic Messier Sep 14, 2008

In anticipation of the season premiere that aired this past week on Fox, I got my hands on a review copy of Season One, just to give myself a refresher, given that the freshman season's finale aired several months back.

Imagine my surprise at expecting some minor plot points from the previous season to be resolved, but instead find myself seeing what I enjoy most from this franchise overall: the recurring sense of inpending danger, when an unstoppable killing machine displays the awesome power it possesses, and shows you it can easily do the same to you in an instant. The following is what, in my humble writer's opinion, I enjoyed the most out of the Season Two premiere:

(SPOILERS FOLLOW, IF YOU HAVEN'T YET SEEN THE SEASON PREMIERE, STOP READING RIGHHHT....HERE)

1. As I fully expected, the bomb planted on the jeep Cameron was to drive off in, didn't kill her. When one of your main protagonists on the show is hinted at having been killed by the end of the first season, it's almost a dead giveaway that she'll somehow survive. A Star Trek red shirt, she is not. Also, she's a frickin' cyborg from the future, made of near indestructible coltan alloy. She can probably survive a head on collision.

2. Okay, kudos to the writers on this one, the bomb didn't kill her, but upon rebooting, her programming matrix was somewhat defective, and she reverted back to her original programming. Result: she immediately set out to kill the one being she was sent back to protect at all costs: John Connor. And so, whereas she was watching his back against terminator baddie Cromartie, now she too was going after Connor and his mother. How they both deal with her is ingenious, to say the least.

3. One of the story points I had argued with a colleague prior to the show's introduction last year, was why the adult John Connor would send back a young, nubile teenage hottie, when he could easily have sent back a reprogrammed model with, say, a bit more physical presence? An Austrian ex-bodybuilder type, for example? No, not necessarily Ah-nuld, but a character with more physical, in your face presence. All Cameron has, is a stealthy advantage at passing for harmless, when she'd just as soon turn you into a human pretzel.

4. My favorite part of this new season, is how they introduce a new character, Catherine Weaver, played by Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson. This Scottish vixen is playing the CEO of a computer company named ZeiraCorp, and was the one who had arranged to obtain the computer system known in Season One as The Turk, the thinking computer/chess program, that is destined to become part of Skynet. What I didn't expect, was that she isn't really a human like us, but the very much feared latest version of the T-1000 series of terminators, this one also made of liquid metal. The only apparent difference? This one can express emotions. This will be one to follow up on.

5. Having experienced the surprise of #4 at the end of the episode, it made me wonder why they writers bothered to write in the character of Cromartie into the show at all, when Skynet clearly has achieved T-1000 level technology. But, like all things fiction, 'tis a fickle thing, and so we'll just have to follow where they decide to take us next.