Review of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles - Undoubtedly, Pass

The pilot to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles can be found online through one of Fox's video websites. I can state, unequivocally, that absent a complete reworking, this show is going to flop. Do I recommend it? Absolutely not.

You can watch The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox on January 14, 2008 for yourself if you don't believe me (or find it online when Fox releases it on Yahoo to generate more interest). In either case, I suspect that you will be better off just popping in the movies and wishing that 24 was back on instead. My review of why the Terminator tv show is absolutely not worth watching, mild spoilers included, follows.

As a matter of background, I have previously stated my biases for and against this genre of television shows. Since this is a tv show spun off the movie, I will state that Terminator 2 is one of my most favorite movies, and I liked Terminator 1 for alternate reasons. I even liked Terminator 3, so my expectations for this show really weren't that high. In a somewhat related note, I would have liked the premise for the movie I, Robot to have been the premise for Terminator 3 instead of what that movie actually did, but what can you do.

As I stated a few months back, I thought this show would have some potential. Sadly, there is a reason this show was slated for mid-season, and it becomes obvious after watching most, if not all of the pilot. This is among the worst tv shows I have ever seen. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that Fox even picked it up. Even Heat Vision and Jack has more entertainment value.

Here are some thoughts I had as I watched the pilot. The terminators in the show are like the Arnold-terminators from the movies, not the T-1000 (as you would expect). The show presumably picks up where Terminator 2 left off, and ignores Terminator 3's plotline. The graphic shots of the future robots leave a lot to be desired. The plot itself is very slow, and there are multiple storylines, which supports my belief that the writers in Hollywood are risking more than they think they are gaining from this strike. The only plotline that resembles something from the movies is that the John Connor character is a whiny crybaby who doesn't want his life. Imagine the character from Terminator 3 and you will get the idea. The main plot, however, involves Sarah Connor and her quest to take down Skynet.

Basically, the show starts off in 1994. There is a female teenage terminator who is sent to meet up with John and his mother, and programmed to terminate the other terminators (such as the one in the pilot) that were sent back to kill our future world heroes. There is also an FBI agent who is trying to catch Sarah Connor for her actions relating to incidents from Terminator 2. The only thing that this pilot sort of gets right is that the computers and files (like the ones in Terminator 2) are backed up on remote servers. As Terminator 3 points out, it is pretty hard to fathom that blowing up one building will stop a government research project envisioned by James Cameron in T2. Philosophically, it's the only logical reason why John is still in existence in the end of Terminator 2 after they throw in all the chips and Arnold gives his thumbs up as he sinks to oblivion.

Although I don't presume to speak for him, I am pretty sure that James Cameron would not be proud of this pilot. After one episode, I think that will be just about all she wrote, for me anyway. I can only surmise that Fox hopes that by running it January, people will simply be too tired to complain about it and that they are hoping that maybe it can ride the coattails of American Idol. The fact that this is going to be the ride Fox is banking on with 24 temporarily out of commission, I think, has to be pretty scary for its sponsors, and the network for that matter (although that last part is probably a bit of an overstatement).

While the first 20 or so minutes of the pilot sets up all of this rather boring storyline, the real kicker, and where this show takes a nosedive away from any realm of suspended disbelief is with the time machine that is built into the bank. Basically, the last few minutes of the pilot have the teenage terminator telling Sarah and John that she opened a safety deposit box in 1963 in order to get a futuristic weapon hidden in the present. She then activates a time machine, built by a time traveling "engineer" (also "from the future") and strategically placed there in order to help them escape certain death in the past in order to jump to the present. Sadly, I am not making this up.

I'm not going to entertain this ridiculous pilot beyond this closing thought: If the good guys could bother to build a time machine (in the past), why wouldn’t the bad guys simply have gone back to Sarah’s childhood and kill her as a baby in the 50s. Or kill her grandparents? And a time machine? I know T2 explained this away by saying that records were spotty. But if Skynet controlled the machines and knew where all the defense capabilities and vulnerabilities were, wouldn't they presumably have had access to all of the governmental data to find his grandmother's social security number and residency from a less sophisticated time? I admit, I am being way too critical on a minor point.

Anyway, at the last possible second while standing in this bank vault time machine, they shoot the evil terminator and presumably, this futuristic weapon (also assembled in the past) kills him. Then they activating the time machine and leap forward to a highway in L.A. in 2007. Naked (but tame by Fox standards), they get photographed by a teenager with his camera phone (which every network appears to have picked up). The FBI agent who was tracking them in 1994 doesn't see this news broadcast, but obviously someone will fill him in, and he will have a new lead to go on in the future episodes. I will never know since I am never going to watch another episode of this show again.

I think I've made my point as to how terrible this show is. As a result, I will simply give it two thumbs down and say not to bother. Maybe Journeyman will have started making more sense by the time this show airs (and Heroes will have become better), and NBC will continue to corner that timeslot. Only time will tell. Bottom line: Pass.

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