I’m sure a lot of you can remember the awe-inspiring tale of an evil killing machine wearing the skin of an Austrian body-builder, which came to our world with the intent of terminating the only person who could stop the planet from becoming a toxic, dystopian wasteland torn apart by conflict. But enough about Arnold Schwarzennegger polling for the Republican Party’s John McCain instead of Barack Obama in last month’s Presidential Primaries, let’s talk about his role in the TERMINATOR series. James Cameron’s THE TERMINATOR (1984) introduced Arnie as a nigh-unstoppable cyborg from the robot-controlled future, who travels back to 1984 to prevent the conception of the human who will grow up to overthrow the machines. TERMINATOR 2 (1991) sees Arnie return as a benevolent terminator; out to protect the now teenaged human leader and his mother from a renewed assault from a more advanced terminator, and possibly avert the nuclear holocaust that led to the machine takeover. TERMINATOR 3 (2003) sees Arnie comes back again to help humanity’s saviour reach a safe zone from the delayed-but-inevitable human/robot war whilst also protecting him from the evil, female Terminatrix (lesbian-ish model/actress Kristanna Loken, who gets to kick Arnie’s botoxed arse from here to Sunday). Confused? Think about how chronologically damaged the screenwriters must be after whipping up a new episode of this week’s cybernetic showcase TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (Nine, Tuesdays, 8:30pm)
TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES is a television spinoff of the film series that is temporally situated between the cinematic TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY and TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES. Sarah Connor (British actress Lena Headley, filling the boots, though not the muscles, of original actress Linda Hamilton) and her son/future saviour of the human race John (Thomas Dekker, taking over from Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl) have destroyed Cyberdine, the computer company that will eventually create Skynet, an artificially intelligent computer program that becomes sentient, launches a global nuclear war and takes over the planet. Sarah and John are horrified when a new, female cyborg (an organism that is part animal tissue and part machine, like Darth Vader, The Borg or Phillip Ruddock) arrives to protect them both – seems that Skynet didn’t die with Cyberdine Industries, and the desperate, evil AI from the future is still attempting to wipe the Connors out, sending numerous different types of Terminator after them as they and their protector Terminatrix (from TX – the model number – the higher the model number the more advanced the Terminator is – a similar system to the human models on MAKE ME A SUPERMODEL) attempt to survive long enough to establish an underground resistance to a war that hasn’t even started yet.
Needless to say that, unlike some shows that give new viewers a bit of leeway, you can’t really come into SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES a Terminator virgin; passing familiarity with the series is mandatory, so you might want to cut out the above synopsis of the three movies I provided for you above and refer to it during ad breaks, lest you are found in your armchair the next morning drooling and raving about ‘evil half-human robots’, ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘sentient software’, and get both committed to a mental asylum AND sued by Bill Gates for spoiling Windows 2008 for everybody.
An interesting controversy is the casting of Thomas Dekker as John Connor in the series. Dekker was originally cast in the smash hit sci-fi series HEROES as Zach, gay school-friend of super-powered cheerleader Claire. When he and his agent found out that Zach was to be gay, however, they threw a stink, as according to the sometimes reliable web grapevine, they thought that Dekker playing queer would prejudice his chances of scoring the pivotal Terminator role. The writers were allegedly forced to ‘de-gay’ Zach, making HEROES’ gay fanbase go as angrily loopy as the Skynet super-computer. Since the web controversy, the writers have written Zach out altogether. Amusingly, Dekker’s portrayal of John Connor is just as archly camp as he played Zach, anyway!
All in all, this is a worthy successor to the three TERMINATOR movies that features some decent acting (Summer Glau in particular is someone to watch), keen special effects action, and quite a bit of gratuitous nudity (only living tissue can travel through time, nothing inorganic, so people – and Terminators – travel naked). And I’m sure you’ll be pleased to note that production begins later this month on a new movie, TERMINATOR 4: SALVATION featuring Christian Bale as John Connor. That is unless fans get so Terminator-ed out that they travel back in time to stop the entire franchise being made in the first place…
