Sarah Connor Chronicles 1x06-1x07, T2, T3

[oyceter]

Wow, this show is just wonderfully solid, isn't it? And eep, two-hour finale next week. I am not ready! I want more episodes!

So I finally watched T3 over the weekend, and I have to say, it's awful! I could try to go into the gender stuff, but I'm not even going to bother. Also, I growled at the first image of the human resistance winning, with a giant, tattered American flag waving over them. Because of course the victory is still American, despite the whole global nuclear war bit. (Yes, yes, I know, John Connor is American blah blah, but that shot was a pretty symbolic one nevertheless. Also, isn't there a handy-dandy resistance flag or something?)

I cheered a little when I realized the kids being killed were John's future lieutenants, particularly as at least one was a POC and at least two were women, though I will ignore how they are all in the same city. My small happiness over the 2IC being female was overshadowed by my extreme annoyance as Kate Brewster, Wife of the Hero. Also, getting married because the future tells you to? Really squicky!

I think the only parts that made T3 worth watching was Kate blowing away something with a machine gun and John reacting by saying, "Wow, you suddenly remind me of my mother," and the revelation that Skynet sent a T-800 to kill John because of his emotional attachment to it.

Unfortunately, T3 also lost all my sympathy for John Connor. Apparently I am very fond of young, scruffy boys doing a really bad job of hiding their need of parental approval, but not particularly impressed by older, scruffy boys being cynical and more cynical. It also helps that I had a huge crush on Eddie Furlong as John Connor (I was a kid when I watched it! I now feel somewhat skanky, though my current fondness for him is more related to hair mussing and annoying "awwwww" sounds).

Also, I hate the ending, which undoes everything I loved about T2, from making your own destiny to the STUPID voiceover line "Everything I learned about strength and fighting, I learned from the terminator." Um, John, did you perhaps forget your mother?

Anyway. That was a long way to say that I really enjoy how much the show is concentrating on John's parental issues, from looking for a father figure in both Charlie and in Derek, to his guilt over his foster parents, to his issues with Sarah. I love how he rebels by not cutting class, and the moment about the tape was nicely underplayed and subtle. I pretty much melted when you could see John forgiving Sarah as she told him she would have died to get him out, and as we got a callout to T2. I love how his voice cracks when he says the first thing she did was yell at him.

Cameron continues to be a very scary robot, and I love that the show doesn't soften that. Her confrontation with Charlie and Sarah in 1x06 and her walking away from the ballet teacher and her brother in this episode were both great.

The T2 fan in me loves Cameron on a bike, with the mirror shades and helmet, just like T-1000! Also, tiny naked police officer somewhere in the city!

And! OMG! They brought back Silberman! And he is batshit insane! I love Ellison's look when he wakes up, tied to a chair, clearly thinking "What. The. Fuck?" I particularly love the bits and pieces we're learning about Ellison, and I am dying to have him and Sarah as reluctant allies. I love love love the recontextualization of the classic Terminator line "Come with me if you want to live" as Sarah's line now: she's not someone to be saved anymore because she's now the savior.

I paritcularly love the non-interactions via Ellison watching tapes of Sarah in Pescadero, and I will keel over when they finally meet, because Sarah knows he's seen them, and I cannot see her being comfortable with that. There can be loads of hot UST and uneasiness and reluctant trust based on recognizing each other's intelligence and competence!

Richard T. Jones does such a wonderful job illustrating Ellison's interiority.

Also also, I really want to know what went on in the classical music room of DOOM, as it clearly broke Derek somehow. And oh, his look as Cameron dances. Is anyone else worried that Derek will go after Charlie now?

In conclusion: much love, still need to rewatch all the episodes, want DVD set, still very impressed with the writing and characterization and general intelligence, very happy.

Comments

[veejane.livejournal.com]

So I finally watched T3 over the weekend, and I have to say, it's awful!

Yeah, pretty much. When Kristanna Loken is breaking toilets over Arnold's head, you can't help but laugh.

In re Music Room O' Doom: I'm realizing that it's a very adolescent attitude in John, that he would never break (or anybody he admired would never break). It's the kind of egocentric exceptionalism that's normal in teenagers, and Derek's correcting him struck me suddenly as one of those cyclical things: that maybe Future John said the same thing to Derek once, and he didn't really believe it till he was in that situation himself.

I wonder, suddenly: does Cameron's being reprogrammed constitute the same kind of breakage? Probably not in the minds of the people who reprogrammed her, but, it's kind of the same symbolically, isn't it?

Heroism defined by layers of compromise, rather than extremes of virtue. I kinda like that.

[oyceter]

Yeah... and Arnold went straight into camp territory, which doesn't help much when you're supposed to be touched by him wrestling with his programming.

I did find it interesting that a terminator CPU can override... something. It sounded like the TX had gotten into T-800's limbs, but not the CPU? But that makes no sense, unless there is some sort of spinal-cord-esque programming. Even so (and assuming it's modeled on human physiology), how sophisticated can it be? All the "Terminate! No, save! No, terminate!" in the T-800's view looked like CPU reprogramming to me.

Anyway, yeah, I found that interesting wrt Cameron and her own reprogramming -- we now have two canonical examples of reprogramming failing (or is the TX's reprogramming of T-800 re-reprogramming? wah!).

I keep drawing parallels between Derek and Cameron in my head, and I wonder just how much Derek was "reprogrammed" in the Music Room O' Doom. And, of course, if or when it will surface. I love the multiple parallels between machines acting human and humans acting like machines, particularly after multiple viewings of T2 and director commentary on how they deliberately made Sarah going after Miles Dyson resemble a terminator going after prey.

Good point re: John's adolescence, and I like that he's mature enough to process that and have it in the back of his mind when Sarah tells him what she was thinking when she signed the papers. I like your theory of Future John telling Derek that!

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

TX?

I always wondered about reprogramming the terminators. I think the movies and TV series say they are neural nets, and those things I don't think are simple code structures that are easy to reprogram.

Since we discovered that Derek *did* in fact kill Andy Goode, that did make me think it was more likely that he, rather than Cameron, would kill Charlie.

The music room: I don't understand what terminators would be doing with music. Was that a John Connor operation? When we saw John's time travel setup, there were jet engines. So, the terminators salvaging a jet engine -- were they working for John? But John being in some sort of control of the music room doesn't really make sense to me, either.

I think Sarah is too harsh on Cameron. Sarah knows that terminators have learning capabilities. Are threats really the best way to teach them? Maybe with their cold, harsh logic, threats to them don't have the same sort of impact they do on humans, but still, I wish they showed Sarah thinking through her approach.

[oyceter]

Hrm, I thought TX was the model name for the Lokken terminator in T3, but I might have just made that up!

What are neural nets, anyway? I think when I watched, I just handwaved that.

I have no idea what the music room is! I suspect we're going to find out in the finale, since the show has been remarkably good at filling in blank spots (I love that we learn exactly who killed Andy and who took the Turk). My hunch right now is that the music room is a Skynet thing, but I have no idea. I keep thinking it's brainwashing, but have no idea for what.

I sort of like Sarah's harshness with Cameron, though when I watch, I read the show as being critical of her harshness as well. My sense was that she's very paranoid and still influenced by her first experience with a terminator (I keep hearing Sarah from T2 saying something like "'It,' John. Not 'him,' 'IT'); contrast that to John, whose first experience was pretty positive, reflected in his nicer treatment of Cameron. Also, ten-year-old John prevented Sarah from destroying T-800's chip and was fairly emotional about it. Sarah seemed to be as well, from the ending voiceover, but I suspect she's more reserved.

I keep going back to the ending of T2, where Sarah's voiceover says something about how if machines can learn the value of human life, humans may be able to as well, and given that the rise of Skynet seems almost inevitable in all timelines (especially seeing all the interest in AI in "Queen's Gambit"), my bets are on the series going with Sarah and John and Cameron parenting Skynet.

I loved Andy's line in Queen's Gambit on how scared Skynet was when it first woke up -- it remembers that Skynet activates in T1 and T2 history because humans try to kill it first (it seems more aggressive in T3, which is another reason why I don't like that movie as much).

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, how does time travel work in this show? If Derek killed Andy now, then will he still have met him as a resistance fighter in his (Derek's) personal timeline?

When Cameron first took the chip from the defeated terminator with the lost hand, she seemed to give it a meaningful look. I had interpreted that as meaning she was surprised at its configuration or something, but now that she continues to hide it, I wonder what's up with that.

What are neural nets, anyway?

Sort of an attempt to mimic brains. Instead of having the normal programs people know (using C++, etc.), there are lots of little processing units. Think of them as neurons. They have various input and outputs, and there is some sort of adjustable formula for the outputs based on the inputs. You train them on some data and try to adjust those formulas to improve the outputs, sort of like rewarding a dog for good behavior and punishing him for bad behavior.

I don't actually know much about them, but from that vague description, reprogramming seems to me to be kind of hard. (Probably there is both the usual programming and also a neural net. The normal programming part might be easy to change, but you still need to deal with its interface to the neural net part and reprogramming the neural net part.)

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

Is anyone else worried that Derek will go after Charlie now?

Yes. Because Derek, he is damaged. And understandably somewhat invested in this whole "prevent the apocalypse" thing.

[oyceter]

He is so broken! And of course, he killed a person for crimes committed in the future, and.. yeah. I am very worried for Charlie and for Derek both.

[seraphcelene]

Dude, this show totally wins and I love reading comments on it.

I tried to watch T3 and failed. It was so awesomely bad that I just couldn't do it. Huge fan of T2 that I am, T3 was just totally, totally wrong.

So, yeah, just a great big Yay from this corner of the room.

[oyceter]

T3 is soooo bad! Soooooo bad! I mean, I managed to glean bits of yay from it (John emotionally vulnerable to the T-800 model!), but mostly I hate it and the determinism and the extremely creepy way Kate has no say in her own future.

[seraphcelene]

I hate it and the determinism and the extremely creepy way Kate has no say in her own future

Boo! Hiss!! That kind of thing is guaranteed to piss me off. I can only hope that the do better with the 4th movie which I might have to see because, hello, Christian Bale. Still ... I am suspicious.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

My decision to not watch T3 has been firmly reinforced.

How does time travel work in this show? By handwaving, I figure. I don't think they'll show people's memories or the present changing; it's just too much of a narrative hairball.

(Same goes for neural nets, really. It's technobabble, and I respect that they aren't trying to explain it.)

Now, the "jet engines" are interesting, because it implied that Skynet can't build time machines to order -- they're salvaging parts. Which makes some sense, in that the present isn't flooded with robots on missions. Maybe the things burn out after one use?

(Maybe a time machine can only be used once, because once you go back then the past is different and your future where you went back in time doesn't exist in that form any more? But this kind of thinking only leads to _Primer_, followed by swearing off science fiction.)

[oyceter]

I have no idea how time travel works! Every time I try to think about it, my brain hurts too much and then I stop. Plus, so many paradoxes! I think right now I am going with the loop theory that an astronomy professor once tried to describe that separates causality from time, even though I have no idea how it works.