Wednesday October 21, 2009
The last order
By MICHAEL CHEANG
It’s a shame the thought-provoking slow burning series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has gone up in smoke.
THE Terminator franchise made a loud comeback earlier this year with its fourth movie – Terminator Salvation. Unfortunately, that turned out to be nothing more than a loud, mindless action movie with no soul. It was content with appeasing fanboys with Easter eggs and digitalised versions of Arnold Schwarzenegger while contributing next to nothing to the franchise’s story.
Still, as disappointing as the movie turned out to be, it could not compare to the frustration I felt when I found out about the termination of the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (TSCC) after a mere two seasons.
In case you didn’t know, TSCC is set in the present day, before the supercomputer Skynet unleashes Judgement Day on the world and decimates mankind. It focuses on Sarah Connor (played by Lena Headey here, and by Linda Hamilton in the first two Terminator movies) and her efforts to stop Judgement Day from happening; while keeping her son – John Connor (Thomas Dekker), the future leader of the human resistance in the war against Skynet – alive and safe. Helping her is a human resistance fighter from the future – Derek Reese (Brian Austin Green), and a female Terminator named Cameron (Summer Glau), who was sent back in time by Future John Connor as a bodyguard for his teenage self.
After ending the last season with a cliffhanger in which Cameron is caught in a car explosion, the second season kicks off with a bang. The opening scene alone, depicting events that happened immediately after the explosion, contains a stark twist that sets the tone for events to come and gives you hope for the future episodes of the season.
Happily, the second season doesn’t disappoint at all. While the pace of the show is arguably not as compelling and exciting as the first, the stories explored in TSCC are a testament to the franchise’s potential.
Like other time-travel-heavy science fiction, the possibilities for the franchise are endless (as are the loopholes and paradoxes, but that’s another story altogether).
The show’s writers really took the opportunity to add sub-plots and intriguing concepts to the standard “time-travelling Terminator comes back to kill John Connor” storyline of the movies (and the early episodes of TSCC).
At the same time, TSCC is also the perfect example of an episodic series that does not rely on mere standalone episodes to draw the viewer in – the entire season is essentially one long episode.
It is one of those rare shows that takes its time to develop the characters (some more than others admittedly – John Connor is still pretty boring and whiny in the second season); and concentrates on story rather than cheap theatrics or gimmicks.
It makes you wish that McG, the director of Terminator Salvation, had paid more heed to the stories being told in this TV series. For the stories here may be slow-moving, but they actually add more to the canon of the franchise than a thousand exploding hunter killers or a hundred growling Christian Bales did.
While there are a couple of episodes in the middle of the season that are frustratingly slow-moving and decidedly lacking of exciting Terminator on Terminator action, these turn out to be a necessary evil. Especially when they turn out to be essential cogs in the build-up to a finale and twist that not only reveals the true purpose of Shirley Manson’s morphing Terminator character, but also some startling revelations of the role that Cameron would come to play in the future war against the machines.
That finale alone is enough to make you curse and swear at the powers that decided that the only gauge of a good TV show is its ratings, and thus signed TSCC’s death warrant.
Along with the demise of Life and Pushing Daisies, the termination of TSCC is a perfect example of good, smart television being sacrificed for shallower and mediocre shows that somehow managed to garner better ratings in the United States. Apparently, Americans seem to think that such shows are too taxing on their little grey cells.
This is a huge shame, because TSCC was more than just a normal television show. The Sarah Connor Chronicles proved that, unlike McG’s action-packed but ultimately feeble film, the Terminator franchise can be so much more than just loud explosions, state-of-the-art special effects, and fake Arnold Schwarzeneggers. Rest in peace, Sarah Connor.
■ Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2 runs every Monday night at 9pm on AXN (Astro channel 701).
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