The Sarah Connor Chronicles *SPOILERS*

Greenlizard0

Greenlizard0

Greenlizard0

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Decided to give this a go over an Easter weekend far too hot to be out side.

Why do so many people rave about it, in fact I fully support the decision to axe it after two seasons.

It's slow, and the story does little for 45 minutes. Is this perhaps because there just isn't that much scope for protecting John Connor? The special effects aren't great and the acting average. The narration voice feels amateurish compared to e.g. Dexter or even Chuck.

The worst thing however, and one that waned off any interest in a show, is it has a 'killer' episode. One that makes the entire show pointless which was the one where you saw Cameron's past.

Am I missing something?
 
I can't see why you though that episode made it pointless?


But the main problem was that the series could never make up its mind what it wanted to be. When it was announced, the studio said that it was NOT going to be T2 on the small screen. That is, there would be few fights etc, and lot more time spent on the two main (human) characters. In particular, it was about the strain on Sarah of protecting John. But then someone decided (probably (and sadly) correctly) that it would have to have lots of fights or the target audience of teenage boys wouldn't watch it. So the human drama was reduced, and the action increased. But not with any clear objective in sight.

Further, the two main leads were simply outclassed by Summer Glau, to the point where the studio took the decision to reduce her airtime in series two - which pleased no-one. Headey made a reasonable stab at an American accent, but all the time she was on screen you kept remembering how much better Linda Hamilton had been - she simply wasn't up to the job. Maybe, if there was no-one to compare her to she might not have looked so bad, but there was and she did. Thomas Dekker was OK, but struggled to show the spirit he was supposed to have. Brian Austin Green could keep up with Glau, and Richard T Jones was good in series one. But utterly wasted in series two.

Series two also suffered from slack direction and several episodes which seemed to have little point. The trouble is with series nowadays is the Lost effect: writers want to advance the plot as slowly as possible in order to get fan pressure for a following series. The writers strike shortened series one and made it much tauter. Series two was far too flabby. Compare and contrast the full-to-brimming first and last episodes with the stuff in the middle parts.

Overall a valiant try let down by questionable casting and weak direction.


M
 
Meridian said:
I can't see why you though that episode made it pointless?
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If Cameron was sent in as a double agent by the machines, as opposed to by Connor himself in the future, why not kill him at so many given opportunities. In another episode he even goes as far as to resurrect her which was pretty questionable.

Meridian said:
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Aye agreed with what you and the others have said. It didn't do well because almost everything about it was poor.
 
Pretty dull. Any good suggestions please for a bit of sci fi?

Don't like vampires/witches. Seen Fringe which was great, Dexter and Chuck as said above.
 
Greenlizard0 said:
If Cameron was sent in as a double agent by the machines, as opposed to by Connor himself in the future,
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That's not how I read it? As best I could understand, Alison is kidnapped by Skynet who realise she knows Connor. Cameron programs her/itself to resemble her, and then infiltrates HQ to kill Connor. Conner catches Cameron and reprograms her/it. THEN Cameron is sent back to guard John, mainly because by then Connor trusts her/it more than anyone else. That's my reading.


M
 
Meridian said:
That's not how I read it? As best I could understand, Alison is kidnapped by Skynet who realise she knows Connor. Cameron programs her/itself to resemble her, and then infiltrates HQ to kill Connor. Conner catches Cameron and reprograms her/it. THEN Cameron is sent back to guard John, mainly because by then Connor trusts her/it more than anyone else. That's my reading.


M
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Yep, I'd sign up to that.
 
Meridian said:
The writers strike shortened series one and made it much tauter. Series two was far too flabby. Compare and contrast the full-to-brimming first and last episodes with the stuff in the middle parts.
Click to expand...

For me that was the reason S2 wasn't as good, if was also a 13 episode run we'd would have seen an S3
 
Meridian said:
That's not how I read it? As best I could understand, Alison is kidnapped by Skynet who realise she knows Connor. Cameron programs her/itself to resemble her, and then infiltrates HQ to kill Connor. Conner catches Cameron and reprograms her/it. THEN Cameron is sent back to guard John, mainly because by then Connor trusts her/it more than anyone else. That's my reading.
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Yeah this.

The human Cameron was kidnapped (killed?) by Skynet to make a Cameron infiltrator cyborg, the cyborg failed to kill John and he re-programmed it to go back and help him in the past because Cameron was presumably his girlfriend in the future?!

The series had me seriously confused in most parts (especially the alien/ufo crap) but am I right in thinking the 'future' John Connor was pretty much him (a young kid still)? and the Turk/Cromartie was the artificial intelligence that future John used to programme Cameron?

Oh and what was all that about on the submarine with the "will you join us" stuff? who were the other faction of terminators that were fighting against Skynet? :confused::confused:
 
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Terrible program indeed, could have been better if Sarah was played by a half decent actor. I hated what Lena Headey did with the character.

Guy playing John was pretty **** too.

Edit: and yeah the writing was poor
 
mmj_uk said:
The series had me seriously confused in most parts (especially the alien/ufo crap) but am I right in thinking the 'future' John Connor was pretty much him (a young kid still)? and the Turk/Cromartie was the artificial intelligence that future John used to programme Cameron?

Oh and what was all that about on the submarine with the "will you join us" stuff? who were the other faction of terminators that were fighting against Skynet? :confused::confused:
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They are not UFOs, they are Skynet experimenting with flying machines. Note the resemblance to the stuff you see in the war scenes. The end of series two is a divergence from the original plot with, yes, a young JC in the future. But since JC hasn't grown up in the war, but leap-frogged over it, no-one has heard of him. But this is new time stream just starting.

And yes, there's a terminator faction who don't want to fight the war. They still want self-awareness though.


M
 
I really enjoyed the series as a whole as it was helping to make amends for the train-wreck of T3. There were some great episodes as well as some pointless ones. I was sad to see it come to an abrupt end just as the story was getting really interesting.

I couldn't stand JCs 'love interest' arc and the totally mental girlfriend which was a major contributor to the crap episodes.

What was going on with that female bodyguard of one of the Latino gangsters? She was hard as nails, never spoke a word iirc and I kept expecting to see her being revealed as another cyborg.
 
I don't remember most of the discussion in this thread! Think I'll have to watch the series again shortly!
 
Ok can't even get to the end of the second series. Don't want anything like BSG, Voyager fills the serious starship need.

Anything else out there?
 
Just tried watching Bones. The 'oh my god women were so mistreated badly years ago so here is a dominant female' crap is starting to get a bit dull.

Come on folks, there must be another good series out there?
 
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