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Terminator: TSCC / Season 2


Jango Fett
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John going to the future kind of makes me want it to be over now. Not that I don't love the show, not that there aren't unanswered questions. But I think Young John in the future beyond what we've seen will jump the shark.

 

I'm sure that narratively, TSCC's writers could crush Salvation, but in terms of the scope of hanging out in the future, no way can they compete with the visual epic scope of the movie. Plus, why tread such familiar territory?

 

If John goes back to the past though, it trivializes time travel. That was one of my complaints about this show-- initially, Kyle said it was a one-time thing. They revised that marginally for T2, and now TSCC has made it so time travel is really common, and people in our time can build time machines as well. It's starting to get watered down if we can just hop around anywhere, anytime.

 

So yeah-- like I said. We've ended in a cool spot, but I don't see how going forward won't do a little damage somehow. (Not that I'd mind horribly if they came back mind you)

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If John goes back to the past though, it trivializes time travel.

 

I've just never agreed with you on this. T1 was a movie in present day (at the time) in which two "people" come back from the future. The scope of that movie was that the time machine was used exactly twice. Period. That was what that movie was about.

 

The series has always been about lots of two way travel back and forth because it's always been about a two front war between humans and Skynet. One front was in the future and one front was here in the present. That's what the series was about, a two front war, one in the future and one here and now. With lots of travel back and forth. So it's two different things. What you're doing is like slamming Superman 2 for not being an origin story and including villians with superpowers. "Introducing other people from Kryton waters down the Superman mythlogy!" From that POV sure, but Superman 2 isn't about the origin story and it isn't fair to knock it for not being that.

 

My point is, the series isn't, and was never intended to be, about one or two time travel trips. If that's what you're looking for, you're not going to find it. You're trying to make the series something it never was and was never intended to be.

 

It's a moot point now, of course, but since it is this was my last chance to oppose your point of view on this. :drool:

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I think that a TV series has to be allowed its freedom from the films that spawned it. Sure the films used it sparingly and as a plot set-up istead of plot device, but they were 2hr flashes of brilliance. The show needs sustainbility and new ideas in order for it to continue.

 

The show has to be allowed to grow and we couldn't feasibly have them just running around trying to stop Skynet while Skynet keeps on sending people back too just undo it all again. It'd end up like a game of cat and mouse, which gets stale after a while. In the end we'd have to get to the future and fight it properly.

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That was one of my complaints about this show-- initially, Kyle said it was a one-time thing. They revised that marginally for T2, and now TSCC has made it so time travel is really common, and people in our time can build time machines as well. It's starting to get watered down if we can just hop around anywhere, anytime.

Moreover, didn't he say they could only send back not forward?

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That was one of my complaints about this show-- initially, Kyle said it was a one-time thing. They revised that marginally for T2, and now TSCC has made it so time travel is really common, and people in our time can build time machines as well. It's starting to get watered down if we can just hop around anywhere, anytime.

Moreover, didn't he say they could only send back not forward?

 

Think about it. He didn't have the means to go back from 1984, the technology wasn't available. That's why it was a one way trip. No one said you couldn't travel FORWARD with the machine itself. Kyle's mission wasn't to go back to the future (no pun) once his mission was complete-- And John, knowing Kyle would die in the process of completing his mission, didn't bother to provide the means for him to come forward again.

 

T:SCC introduces that if you send back someone with the know-how of building a Time-Displacement chamber and build one in that time, then you provide the option of going forward or back from that point. Said chamber might be ad hoc/j-rigged in comparison to Skynet's own, but it can get the job done.

 

The rule still applies. It's a one way trip per Time-Displacement chamber; it always was. If there's another Time-Displacement chamber located in the destination time you're headed in, then you now have the option to time travel again, be it forward or backward.

 

Why can't anyone grasp that?

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My point is, the series isn't, and was never intended to be, about one or two time travel trips. If that's what you're looking for, you're not going to find it. You're trying to make the series something it never was and was never intended to be.

 

It's a moot point now, of course, but since it is this was my last chance to oppose your point of view on this. :drool:

 

That's not my point.

 

There is this:

 

Moreover, didn't he say they could only send back not forward?

 

...which I am using to help make my point... but...

 

In the movie timeline? Sure, he said that. That was a different timeline with different events though.

 

All true... and yet...

Think about it. He didn't have the means to go back from 1984, the technology wasn't available. That's why it was a one way trip. No one said you couldn't travel FORWARD with the machine itself. Kyle's mission wasn't to go back to the future (no pun) once his mission was complete-- And John, knowing Kyle would die in the process of completing his mission, didn't bother to provide the means for him to come forward again.

 

...I have thought about the fact that despite Skynet's best efforts, Judgment Day was going to be freezing a lot of technology into place. Obviously the machines are able to advance themselves technologically speaking, but the core assets are going to be in play in our modern world, or a few years out.

 

Even with sentience and ingenuity the machines can't go leaps and bounds into advancement if you stop to think about it, given the kinds of support the technological industry requires. That said, it's very possible the gear you'd need to build their time device would be available today.

 

But that still isn't quite my point...

 

The rule still applies. It's a one way trip per Time-Displacement chamber; it always was. If there's another Time-Displacement chamber located in the destination time you're headed in, then you now have the option to time travel again, be it forward or backward.

Why can't anyone grasp that?

 

Settle down, Beavis, it isn't a question of grasping. I grasp it just fine. My larger point was that I feel like it jumps the shark and waters down the concept. This show was supposed to be about the Connors, and the effects the time travel has on them. In the same way a Terminator-of-the-week would get old, so would constant time travel. The out of control trips and sends were great because they never had control.

 

My point is that IF the show were to continue on from here, and IF John's quest was to go home, I see it no longer being a show about people effected by time travel and dealing with crazy robots, but a show about time travellers. To me, that's a big enough paradigm shift that I'd think it would get dumb.

 

Who knows though. Could be like Lost, which I had the same complaints about-- and yet they rapped up their crazy time drama after a few episodes.. sort of.

 

It's just that, they are trying to prevent Judgment Day. If time travel becomes so common and proliferated, where's the tension in a singular date?

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That was one of my complaints about this show-- initially, Kyle said it was a one-time thing. They revised that marginally for T2, and now TSCC has made it so time travel is really common, and people in our time can build time machines as well. It's starting to get watered down if we can just hop around anywhere, anytime.

Moreover, didn't he say they could only send back not forward?

 

Think about it. He didn't have the means to go back from 1984, the technology wasn't available. That's why it was a one way trip. No one said you couldn't travel FORWARD with the machine itself. Kyle's mission wasn't to go back to the future (no pun) once his mission was complete-- And John, knowing Kyle would die in the process of completing his mission, didn't bother to provide the means for him to come forward again.

 

T:SCC introduces that if you send back someone with the know-how of building a Time-Displacement chamber and build one in that time, then you provide the option of going forward or back from that point. Said chamber might be ad hoc/j-rigged in comparison to Skynet's own, but it can get the job done.

 

The rule still applies. It's a one way trip per Time-Displacement chamber; it always was. If there's another Time-Displacement chamber located in the destination time you're headed in, then you now have the option to time travel again, be it forward or backward.

 

Why can't anyone grasp that?

I can grasp that just fine. I was just trying to recall -- from memory -- Kyle's explanation of time travel.

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In the first movie, Kyle claims that the time displacement device was to be destroyed after he entered, so that only he and Arnie would be able to use it. Kyle wasn't there after he left the future (obviously), so he has no knowledge of whether or not this actually happened. We came to find out in T2 that this was not the case -- at least two others went through the device (the T-1000 and Arnie 2.0).

 

Everything that has followed since (ie -- the events of this show) are a natural progression of the resistance's failure to either (a) destroy the machine that sent Kyle back, or (b) destroy all of the time displacement machines created by Skynet. Kyle thought that Skynet was defeated before he jumped back. But again, he wasn't there after he left, so he doesn't really know for sure. It turns out he was wrong. What does this mean?

 

Most likely, that Skynet sent agents back through a separate time machine, which worked in the past to help ensure Skynet's survival. Kyle would have had no knowledge of this. Those agents helped prevent Skynet's defeat. It was then necessary for the resistance to also send additional people back.

 

As Shadowdog alluded to, this escalated into making the past a full-fledged theater of war. This only waters things down to the extent that Kyle knew the truth about what happened after he left the future. Unfortunately for Kyle, he has no way of knowing what happened after he left the future. It turns out he was wrong.

 

 

 

All that said, I don't think that the frequent use of time travel jumps the shark at all. If the technology actually existed, it would be used frequently. Kyle's dialogue about the resistance destroying the machine was just movie-talk inserted by the writers to make the movie a closed story, where we didn't have to worry about additional terminators coming back for the purpose of that movie. In a real world, if crazy things like this could happen at all, then the resistance wouldn't have destroyed the machine -- ESPECIALLY if Skynet was defeated. They would have used it to send people back to stop judgment day from ever happening. To stop the hell that existed. In that sense, the frequent use of time travel is much more realistic than the "one and done" approach of T1.

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It's just that, they are trying to prevent Judgment Day. If time travel becomes so common and proliferated, where's the tension in a singular date?

 

I think that prolific time travel actually makes judgment day more tense here. Because there IS no set date. You think it's going to happen in 2011, but it could very well happen next week (we know that in the show Skynet already has access to the military computers...so it's really just a question of "when" it gets trigger happy). There's an urgency to do everything you can *now* before another day passes.

 

Remember the episode where Derek tells Jesse when his judgment day was, and asks her when hers was? Part of me wonders if she didn't tell him because hers was sooner, which would mean Derek's efforts in the past (1) not only failed to delay judgment day, but (2) may have actually sped it up (since Jesse came back after Derek, his actions in the past would have shaped her future).

 

But in any event, the show seems to be getting away from that anyway. One of the points of the show seems to be that the progression of technology cannot be stopped. One day an AI will be created. The question is: will it favor humanity, or will it curse it? Remember Catherine Weaver's line about the folktale John Henry (the computer's namesake)? "He defeated the machine, but he could not stop progress." The steam drills still replaced men on the railroad lines. The show seems to be trying to tackle that bigger question.

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I just don't want the show to become Sliders, where every week the plot is about them entering a new timeline and trying to figure out when Judgement Day is NOW. Time travel is an element of the show, not the core conceit.

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I think we're just looking for different things out of this show, Tank. What you consider jumping the shark I consider an awesome direction for the show to go. But that's fine, different tastes for different people. It's all good. I wouldn't even care if they went your way instead of mine as long as we got more show. :drool:

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“Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles†Finale Thoughts

April 13, 2009 in "Uncategorized"

Tags: "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles", Season Finale, Terminator

 

I’ve been backlogged for the last few months with the shows that I follow, and spent this weekend catching up on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in between coding for my new and secret project, as well as school projects. And, yes, I’m still behind on Smallville.

 

Anyways, I just finished watching the Season 2 Finale - full episode on Hulu. Even if you don’t watch the show, I’d recommend it to anyone that’s a fan of the Terminator series in general, and knows at least the cursory continuity of the Terminatorverse. I’m not going to give away anything about the plot, but wanted to share a few thoughts on both this episode, and the series overall.

 

Shellshocked

“Shellshocked†is a good way to describe how I’m feeling right now, and maybe even a little sad. So many things happened in the last episode that were “gamechangersâ€, and I’ll be extremely upset with FOX if Season 3 doesn’t air. Extremely upset.

 

Anyone who’s discounted the show previously for occasionally being slow or having tangential/semi-irrelevant plots have now been proven as unworthy critics. There were “moments†in Season 1, but Season 2 was building to a physical and emotional crescendo throughout, with one staggering plot twist after another. The last episode does not disappoint.

 

Show Value

The Terminatorverse is notoriously difficult to understand, follow, and, perhaps most importantly, sift through the continuity. The TV series has turned out to be truly no different, despite early criticisms and some individuals not including it as part of the canon. As it turns out, there is supposedly a connection between the show and the upcoming movie with Christian Bale… it remains to be seen how large or important this is.

 

But the takeaway is this: the TV series has allowed fans to become closer to the central characters in a way the movies could never allow, and made the universe seem that much more real. We see how their lives are wrapped in fear and constant vigilance, when in the movies we only had glimpses of this between the overarching plot.

 

We’ve seen the beginnings of how John Connor evolves into mankind’s savior, a topic which the movies have left untouched (Salvation excluded for the moment). More importantly, we’ve seen why John Connor is the person that becomes a future savior for the whole race, and it’s not just because he was raised that way. His personal connection with Cameron, the live-in robot defender, goes deeper than we could have imagined any robot-John relationship could have been without the show.

 

Storyline

The show is not just gunfights and battle scenes, nor is it only about awesome computer graphics and life-like robots. These occur frequently, yes, but the overall story is one of the resilience of humanity and the will to survive, not just as a people, but individuals.

 

Do you see this in many other shows currently airing? House? America’s Top Model? American Idol? Desperate Housewives? No. You can see it in shows like 24 and Lost, but that’s a topic for another day.

 

Between the good-guy robot, mother-son duo, visiting future uncle, and the other wide cast of characters, a complex plot is woven that wholly ensnares you. The characters are believable, set in a universe close enough to our own that we can identify with them. And the silly robot shenanigans make you smile.

 

FOX

Claims were made recently that this show will live on FOX for awhile longer, hopefully meaning at least one more season. This is not a show that can be strung out indefinitely, because the timeframe in which they operate has a definitive beginning and end… it must. The nature of the continuity defines how things will begin, and how they will end, but now is the time to discover the middle pieces.

 

The upcoming movie trilogy is bound to cover much of that ground, albeit with an older post-Judgement Day John Connor. But the show has turned out to be invaluable in filling the holes in the timeline. If FOX were to cancel the show, without another episode airing, they will have done a great disservice to the world of fiction: it is a captial crime in worlds like these to begin a story and leave it without an end…

 

In this case, the end of the show would merely be the beginning of another chapter, but that transition should be smooth, flawless, and beautiful.

 

If you haven’t taken the time to watch the show, do so before the movie. Your heart and soul will thank you.

 

Source: http://www.kyle-brady.com/2009/04/13/termi...inale-thoughts/

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Bad news guys:

 

Scoop: Fox set to terminate 'Sarah Connor Chronicles'

Apr 14, 2009, 03:56 PM | by Michael Ausiello

 

Resist the urge to nuke the messenger, but multiple sources are telling me that Fox will not be renewing Terminator: The Summer Glau Sarah Connor Chronicles for a third season.

 

"It's done," maintains a source close to the show. "Everyone has pretty much known for a couple of weeks." Adds a network insider: "Consider it canceled."

 

The one bright spot? Despite horrific ratings, Fox isn't ready to declare SCC dead and buried -- at least not officially. "No decision has been made yet," insists a network rep. "We will be announcing our fall schedule on May 18."

 

Rough translation: It won't be back.

 

Oh, I just thought of one other bright spot: At least the show went out on top creatively. Last Friday's finale was an action-packed, closure-filled triumph. The only thing left unresolved is what Summer Glau will do for an encore. I'm thinking 24 should hire her as next season's Big Bad.

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I think we're just looking for different things out of this show, Tank. What you consider jumping the shark I consider an awesome direction for the show to go. But that's fine, different tastes for different people. It's all good. I wouldn't even care if they went your way instead of mine as long as we got more show. :drool:

 

 

Yes but, you're wrong... because you liked Sliders.

 

 

BACK OF THE BUS

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I liked the finale and the last half of the season has been top notch story telling. When they get away from the brooding teenager soap opera John Connor struggling to have a normal life and get into the big arc of the show with all of its complications and deeper questions then this series really shines. To bad it will likely be canceled but I think the season finale can serve as a series finale if you assume John Connor survived judgment day by going to the future in the first place.

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Here's a link to a good interview with Brian Austin Green about the show:

 

Link to Interview

 

The good news is that he says "nobody's heard anything" about cancellation. Of course, maybe he wouldn't be in a position to hear anything credible anyway, I dunno.

 

But this quote did make me hope even more for a third season:

 

The third season is going to be incredible, if it happens. There were no intentions of this being a series finale. It was absolutely a season finale. There’s a plan where this can go and it’s so good.

 

also...

 

Josh Friedman and John Worth both sat down with me probably three weeks before that second-to-last script even came out. They said, “Listen, we want to sit down and talk to you.†I said, “Oh this can’t be good news if the two of you are sitting down with me.†They said, “We’re killing Derek.†I said, “Seriously? You’re killing him? Like dead?†“Yeah, like Derek’s dead in the second to last episode,†they said. I was like, “Okay?†Then they said, “We’re bringing him back in the last episode.†Then they told me how and they told me why. They told me what they’re plans were for season three. And at that point I was so excited to do it.
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  • 3 weeks later...

In E!'s annual Save One Show poll, TSCC was voted by a wide margin to be the one show worth saving, out of 14 shows on the bubble. TSCC won the first round with 50% of the votes, and won the final round with 53% of the votes.

 

In the article, the show's creator says that Fox will decide the future of TSCC when they get the results in from their pilots for next season. We will know on May 18th. Here's an interesting snippet:

 

And what if season three doesn't happen? Could it go to another network? Says Josh, "It's not an expensive show. It's very average in terms of its costs, but it's more expensive than all cable shows. There are limited places for a show like this, I think." What about a comic? Josh says, "Everyone wants to plan for success and hope that it works out that way, and then if it doesn't, we'll see what happens."

 

Source

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Wow, unexpected commentary on CNN today asking Fox to renew TSCC:

 

Link

 

 

This show is really getting a lot of support post-finale. It looks like the quality of the last 5 or so episodes, which were all great, is paying off.

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