Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season [Blu-ray]

There is still hope for American tv. It's small but it's still there. In the age of "we don't want to pay actors it is much more profitable to film idiots who can't sing or fall off giant rubber balls" or any of the other nonsense that passes for prime time programming nowadays we do have our high budget gems. Sopranos back in the day, Carnivale, Deadwood, Rome and now Sarah Conner. I was actually surprised to see this on Fox. It is so far beyond the usual idiotfest they normally feed the masses.

Summer Glau makes this work and alone redeems the franchise after T3.

Good stuff.

Well, i recieved my copy of Terminator season 1...... 3 weeks early on august 1st...i was only able to see one of the episodes when first run on tv...but am a big fan of the movies...have all of them on either hd dvd or bluray......ok...the review of the newest terminator to bluray....well after watching the whole series straight through....it's the best sci-fi on tv...great production......widescreen filmed and great sound...almost movie level special effects.....and the bluray totally shines....i'm talking picture quality 4.5-5 stars out of 5...and the sound quality not far behind at a solid 4 stars....if your a fan of the series so far..it's a must buy...if your wanting to watch the series...i give a strong recommend.....great upgrade with bluray!!!!!!

Warning! Spoilers ahead.

The first season of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES was a good one. Though fans are now brooding over whether the series will be picked up for a second season -- this is, after all, FOX, killer of shows -- the ratings overall were good, especially in the 18-49 demographic. While I would be the first to acknowledge that you should never underestimate FOX's ability to kill a good show, even FOX will hesitate to cancel a show doing this well in the most desired demographic. If the series is cancelled, it would definitely rank as the most dim-witted cancellation in FOX's history. At least some of the other very good shows that it cancelled were struggling with ratings. My guess is that they will bring it back in the fall and pair it with 24 on Monday nights.

A lot of fans of the original two TERMINATOR films (we can all pretty much ignore the third TERMINATOR film, which even the makers of the forthcoming Christian Bale-as-John Connor film is not going to treat as canonical) were bugged to no end with minor or (in their minds) major chronology issues. My response is: who cares? First, we are talking about two very good SF films, but they are not the cinematic equivalent of WAR AND PEACE. Second, fans of the TERMINATOR films need to learn the same sensibility that fans of comic superheroes have learned: change is good. I mean, what is canonical in Batman? What cannot be allowed in Iron Man? There have been so many variants in comics that if it weren't allowed, there would be no comics. Besides, in the history of story telling there have been an almost uncountable versions of various stories throughout history. If TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES plays around with thee films' chronology, this is the biggest "no big deal" of all time. The question is whether the adjustments lead to some great storytelling. I believe it does.

Casting is incredibly important in a series like this. Although by the end of the season more characters are introduced than one might have initially imagined, this is mainly a three-person show. Lena Headley, who is best known to mainstream American TV viewers from the film 300 (though she has been in a very large number of other films and TV series), does a great job in the title role, with one exception. She looks the role, acts the role, comes across as tough in the role. I completely buy her. But I really hope in Season Two that they decide to dispense with the opening narrations. Though she is a good actress, she doesn't sell the narration. Kristen Bell on VERONICA MARS and now on GOSSIP GIRL makes it seem so effortless, as does Jim Dale on PUSHING DAISIES. But it is an easy to underestimate skill. No doubt the writing hinders Headley in her narration. It comes across as too self-conscious, too aware of itself, too unnatural.

Thomas Dexter, who most know from a controversial character from early Season One HEROES (his character was initially Claire the cheerleader's gay best friend -- but when Christian groups started complaining about a gay character, they suddenly un-gayyed him -- I wonder if people who are so obsessed about saving America from gays and the dangers gays represent to marriage [though I've never quite grasped the connection between keeping two dudes getting married and how that is going to make heterosexual marriages healthier] spent more time working on their own marriages if the Bible Belt, which currently has the highest divorce rate in America, would have more successful marriages, heterosexual or otherwise), does a very creditable job as John Connor, the sixteen-year-old version. The challenge of playing John is that it has to be made creditable that this kid would sometime become the kind of leader who could lead a resistance. My major complaint with T2 is that this wasn't done. I think Dekker by the end of the season started doing that. Early in the season he seemed more rebellious, headstrong teenager. But by the end of the season he had started maturing.

The producers of the show say that they created the role of Cameron with Summer Glau in mind. To show how crucial she was in their conception of what they wanted to do, she was offered the role outright, instead of auditioning people for it. And it is obvious that they knew why they wanted her: they'd obviously seen FIREFLY and SERENITY and saw how she played the on-the-edge insane River Tam, who is simultaneously a genius, a psychic, a highly honed killing machine, and a crazy person. There is some legitimate complaint about her performance in the Pilot, but it is the fault of the writing and directing and not Glau. In the Pilot when we first see her, she is a super friendly, socially smooth, chipper, giggly high school girl in the first episode. But the rest of the season she seems to have the same social skills that Arnold did in his turn as your friendly neighborhood terminator. Once they got past the pilot, however, Cameron became one of the best things in the show. Most robots on TV are clearly persons, even if they are not human. Data, for instance, was clearly, for all his lack of emotion, a person. Sharon on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA clearly is, as is Caprica Six. Even the Doctor on STAR TREK: VOYAGER is clearly a person. There is a famous thought experiment known as The Turing Test, from a thought experiment proposed the famous Cambridge mathematician and super genius John Turing. He imagined a test in which a human being and a computer were separated from a questioner by a wall. A series of questions would then ensue. If the questioner couldn't, by the answers that were given, tell which respondent was the computer, then, Turing reasoned, that computer could be considered a person. Cameron is the first important TV cyborg, robot, or android since Robot on LOST IN SPACE who probably couldn't pass the Turing test.

Let me expand a bit on this. Although Cameron can attend school, hang out with people, and basically pass for human, she constantly exposes the gap between her and humans. This is incredibly unusual for television. As a result, this could end up being one of the most important cyborg characters in the history of TV, at the very least the one that could inspire some interesting reflection. She is the first cyborg character on TV who truly seems to be completely devoid of compassion. Early in the season, when a girl she has "befriended" is about to jump off a roof in a public act of suicide, Cameron refuses John's entreaties that they do something to help her. Later in the season she promises a ballet instructor, from whom she seems genuinely interested in learning some ballet (it helps that Summer Glau is a real life prima ballerina -- her first acting job was on an episode of ANGEL as a ballerina and she and ANGEL creator Joss Whedon are reportedly working together on a ballet film), that she will save both her and her brother from the people seeking to kill them if they will give her information that she is seeking. They give her the information, but instead of helping them, she coldly (not cruelly -- Cameron does not seem capable of cruelty, just as she is incapable of compassion) exits the building. When asked later why she didn't help them, she replies that it wasn't part of the mission. When John asks her if she lies, she admits that she does, even to him. And the season is filled with some wonderful Cameron moments, such as when she one minute complains about their looking for the remains of a dead girl, because she a dead human is merely "meat and bones," and a few minutes later is found sitting beside John, talking with him, as she applies pink polish to her nails. Her character is filled with incongruities. Oh yeah, she is blown up at the end of Season Two, but no one really believes that she won't be back, do they?

I liked the patience of the show in Season One. They very gradually brought along three supporting characters. Dean Winters in the Pilot played Sarah's fiancé Charly and I fully expected the guy I think of as The Beeper King (from his role as Liz Lemon's boyfriend on 30 ROCK) to immediately disappear from the show. Instead he has reappeared in several episodes. My guess is either that he will be killed off or he will end up as part of Sarah and John's little army of supporters. I'm guessing the same will be true of Richard T. Jones's Agent Ellison, who started off as someone after Sarah because he considered her a mere murdered, but as the season has gone alone has come to believe that she was not lying when she claimed to be chased by robots from the future. The finale saw Ellison and a substantial group of FBI agents attack and get mauled by the terminator after John. I would lay money on Charly in the first episode of Season 2 taking Ellison to meet Sarah and having him become another member of her cadre. The third character to emerge was Brian Austin Green as Derek Reese, the brother of Kyle Reese from the first TERMINATOR movie and therefore the uncle of John. I didn't much care for his character by the end of Season One, but that is mainly because he was so gruffly written. I also got tired of his endless suggestions that something needed to be done about Cameron, that she was a killing machine that couldn't be trusted, bladdy blah blah. I hope they either kill him off or deepen his character in Season Two. I suspect they will take the latter route.

My last comment is that this show managed to do what any good show need to: it got better as it went along. I enjoyed the first episode, but with each successive episode I liked the show more and more. I am very much looking forward to Season Two. And completely confidant that there will be one. Not even FOX would be so stupid as to cancel it.

While this show isn't James Cameron calibur stuff, for television it is really well done with some nice acting and top notch visual effects. I was never a T3 hater, but after watching the first season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I prefer this storyline and will happily ignore everything in T3 (at least until the fourth movie comes out in 2009).

Lena Headey makes a good Sarah Connor, but the real star is Summer Glau, of Firefly and Serenity fame, who plays the cyborg protector named Cameron. She is cute, funny when trying not to be, and downright deadly when in combat. Not to mention the fact that this series shows off Brian Austin Green's acting skill and succeeds. What did I just say?

If your a fan of the movies, you will find much to enjoy here. It isn't up to par with shows like LOST or 24 just yet, but who knows what the future will hold?

Terminator: The Sara Connor Chronicles Season One has not been released yet on Blu Ray, but I have pre-ordered and anxiously await for its arrival. However, I have downloaded the entire season from Unbox and the quality isn't bad at all, but rather good in fact, but not quite as good as the 720p hd version broadcast on Fox. I can't wait for the 1080p version on Blu Ray. I have already written one review about this series
for the Unbox download and mentioned then that I think the producers have done rather well considering that they did not have the budget to work with their big brothers' of the big screen had. I am one of those few,I suppose that didn't particularly care for T3. There was nothing technically wrong with it, but I didn't like the ending at all. The T3 ending sort of messed things up as far as the timeline coda was concerned which took the saga into a different direction than the television series. I think the producers were wanting to get another crack at Arnold before he ran for Governor of California, and they simply wanted to just get another script out there. That's okay though, because if you look at Superman, it has several different spin offs as well as the original theme; ie "Smallville" and "Lois and Clark." In T3, Sarah Connor alledgedly died from cancer. The writers of the tv series explained that away as mentioning that when Sarah, John, and Cameron time travelled eight years into the future, they by-passed Sarah's death. Okay, that makes sense to me, I guess. In doing stories about time travel, you have the flexibility to explore different timelines and this technique will probably be used here; an indication of that has already been shown introducing Derrick Reese, Kyle Reese's brother. The bottom line is, I don't think the real Terminator fans are going to care that much, because it's all just pure fantasy anyway and great entertainment fare.
Dan Casey