Terminator: what you need to know before tonight
By fred | January 13, 2008
Reminder : Tonight is the night where the future begins to come back and fight for its survival, or something like that. Yes, people, Fox’s action hit drama with a way too long title, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, premieres tonight at 8.00 !!
I’ve seen the pilot already - you can read my review here - and let me tell you that you’re in for a great hour of entertainment, one that I highly recommend to anyone, and I would do so even if there was no strike and you already had lots and lots of shows to watch every day. It’s packed with action, obviously, but there is still an actual story, and no, you don’t need to be a Terminator fan to either get it or enjoy the show. (Truth be told, I may have watched the movies, but I’m not a fan.)
If you have never seen the movies, or completely forgot everything about them, here’s about all you’ll need to know in order enjoy the show tonight.
All you need to know, have you never seen any of the movies, is that in the future, robots get smarter than humans thanks to some AI, and with an even bigger Internet and speeds that we don’t even dare to dream of today, it doesn’t take long for them to know everything, and I do mean everything, literally. Quickly they realize they don’t need those pretentious idiots so-called “superior beings”, so they go on and start a war to get ride of each and everyone of them. It’s a real war, only in the future. So explosions are even bigger and things get really ugly, really fast.
Still, a resistance is organized amongst humans, and it has for leader some dude named John Connor. He’s a real important guy, and the most hatred of all humans by the machines. So they have this brilliant idea : why not use time travel ! They build a time machine, but unlike what you’ve seen in the movies they can only send humans, and robots. No cars, planes, or any other vehicles, oh and also no weapons or shit like that. I know what you’re thinking, isn’t a robot just some kind of advanced vehicle, or futuristic weapon ? Well, no. Why not?, you ask. Well, simply because they can travel back in time. Duh!
So the machines send back one of their own in the past, which happens to be our present, with the intention to kill Sarah Connor, John’s mom. The idea being that with her dead soon enough, her son is never born, and so he can’t lead the resistance and therefore machines can win their war in the future. Pretty smart shit, isn’t it ?
Of course, back in our days, humans weren’t as easy to kill as in the future, unless it’s all about the Connor family being real bad-ass, I’m not too sure, but results are the same : those robots can’t kill mommy Connor. Okay, truth be told, future John sent one of the machines back in time as well, after he reprogrammed it to protect his mother. I guess that helped a little, maybe.
Meanwhile, in the future, robots were pissed to see nothing changed : John was still fighting back, meaning he was born a few years back, so his mother didn’t die, so the mission failed. Hence their other brilliant idea : they’re now sending back in time robots in a most recent past, that’d be about 1999, which is when the show begins. By then, John grew up a little, he’s now a teenager (who looks nothing like a future leader, but who am I to judge?), so I guess they figured if they couldn’t kill Sarah years before that, they should have no problem killing a teenage-John now, even though his mother is still around and protecting him. Don’t ask me, that’s computer logic.
And that’s about all you need to know : John and his mother are fighting machines from the future, machines trying to kill them, or John, because of his role in the future war. Oh yeah, and it all started with Skynet, the company that created the first “intelligent computer”, the one that would go on to soon know everything, build his army and start the war. It’s important to know that, because in the past Sarah destroyed what would later become Skynet, trying to achieve what robots want to do by killing John.
Obviously, it didn’t work too well, as somehow Skynet was still created, and robots are still after her (son). Maybe it’s because no matter what you do, you can’t change the future if it already happened, or something, which would mean robots are doomed to fail, but really I don’t know.
Anyways, here we are. John and his mother - aware of this whole future mess - are trying to play it low key and never get noticed, always ready to leave everything behind and run away. Because she knows, because they know, that they must hide from the machines from the future, those robots who looks like humans and will find their way to them, wherever they hide, to try and kill John.
Of course, that won’t do it, machines will find them, they’ll have to fight, and from then on the fun starts, it actually beings at 8.00 on Fox, so be sure not to miss it !
Posted in Reviews
Shows: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
