Terminator: "Complications"
As Charlie Jane Anders puts it: “Watching [Monday’s] episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I couldn’t help wondering why this show hasn’t become the new Lost.”
I’m telling you people (I presume few of you watch it), while Lost is still Adam’s Best Show on Television, Terminator is a show that takes itself seriously, and you should, too.
Monday’s episode was another one of the best. It featured a particular story line that involved a time travel scenario that took some time to think through properly even after the show ended.
Imagine you are 60 years old, and the world as we know it has come to an end. Our robots have rebelled and killed most of us, but for some reason you were spared. The robots put you to use, because you had spent lots of time in jail and know how to “work” with people. So you teach the machines the frailty of the human body, how to torture, etc. In exchange, once your work is complete they send you back in time to live out the rest of your days in peace. Except, when you’re back in time, you cross paths with someone else who has come back in time… one of your old test subjects. They tie you up and beat you, but you refuse to admit who you really are (this was a scene reminiscent of Henry Gale).
So, they bring in a younger version of you. Since you traveled back in time, you exist in this time period as, say, a 25 year old. They say they’re not going to torture YOU for answers, they’re going to start chopping off the younger version’s fingers until you answer.
You end up talking, they end up killing you, and setting your younger version free with the knowledge that if he follows the same path, then he’s just witnessed his own death. Your younger version takes the advice to heart, and sets off to do the right thing. Except the FBI shows up at his door, showing DNA evidence that he committed some kind of crime.
“It wasn’t me!” Your younger version says, though he knows the truth… his future self did something terrible and he’s taking the blame. But what do you tell the FBI investigator?
You could lie, but you know the truth, and they’re going to see that. But the story you would tell would make them think you’re crazy. “Sorry, officer, it wasn’t me, it was a 60-year-old version of myself from a future where machines have taken over the world!”
Well, that’s what happened, and when he tells them, he gets locked up in a mental ward, the same “jail” where he learned how to “work” with people in the first place. If our heroes had left well enough alone, none of it would have happened.
And that’s what makes the show so great. We have a show where the main theme is saving the world from a bleak future you know is coming. I think it’s why nobody wants to give it a chance: they know how it ends. The machines win, otherwise there’s no story. But as we’re learning, I’m not so sure that’s the central concept of the show. It seems like anything they do is only making things worse.
Makes me wonder if the whole franchise has been a ruse: maybe it’s John Connor sending back the evil robots, and Skynet sending back the good ones to save him, because if John Connor dies, Skynet isn’t born.
Also interesting was the realization that Derek came back from a different future than Jesse. Derek came back first, from a future where he was never tortured by the 60-year-old time traveler. But Jesse remembers him being tortured implicitly. So, either Derek has blocked the memory, or Jesse, having come back later than Derek, is from a different future because something Derek has done has changed his future for the worst.
The show still has a lot of unanswered questions that bug me, such as never following up on Cameron’s declaration of love for John, and never explaining if she’s constantly having to override the “Terminate John Connor” command, but maybe those answers are still coming. Once they consistently start dropping hints at stuff like that, just to let us know that they haven’t forgotten and an explanation is coming, they’re one step closer to Adam’s Best Show on Television.
Also, it’s fun to think that we’ve now seen the same amount of episodes in season two as we did in season one! But this time, the season is only half over!
