"The Sarah Connor Chronicles:" The Cyborgs Come to Television

There is an inherent flaw in the logic of the "Terminator" movies, which is especially true when you consider the second movie "Judgement Day." See if you can keep up here. It all involves the whole time-travel aspect of the movies, which was established in the first movie. In the first movie, a guy named Reese, played by Michael Biehn, was sent back by the human resistance leader John Connor, to protect his mother, Sarah. You see, the machines had taken over the planet through technology known as Skynet which controlled the United States nuclear arsenal. At some point, the machine got intelligent, thought of humans as its ultimate enemy and launched a nuclear attack on enemies of the US that retaliated and, well, that was the end. The machines took over except for John Connor and his rebels.

In the first movie, the Terminator was an unstoppable robot/human hybrid. It was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Terminator was sent back in time to kills Sarah Connor before she ever gives birth to John Connor. However, Sarah soon falls in love with Reese, the man sent back in time by John to protect her. They end up having one night of hot sex and, well, as usually happens in the movies, she ends up pregnant. So, the big twist ending of the first movie is that John Connor has to send Reese back in time to meet his mother just so he can exist, even though he knows Reese will die in the attempt to protect Sarah.

OK, that's all deep and everything, but the war was still coming and we knew it. That changed with the second movie. You see, in the second one, John has been born and now there is a second Terminator and another, older model, is sent back to protect John. Instead of just keeping John alive, however, this crew of three decide they will try to prevent Skynet from ever existing. They will stop the destruction of the human race by preventing the machines from every being built.

Do you see the flaw there? In order for John to exist, the machines HAVE to take ove. If they don't there will never be a reason for him to become a leader, meet the man called Reese, or send him back in time. If he doesn't send the man back in time, he can never be born. So, by that logic, if Sarah and John ever do succeed in stopping Skynet, John should just wink out of existence.

Well, now, the Terminator franchise has come to television. It stars none of the people from any of the movies and has, apparently, nothing to do with James Cameron. It takes place some time between the second movie and the third one. It involves a still-living Sarah, and a still-teenage John and now a new, female and also teenage-looking Terminator/protector.

Is the show any good? Well, that's kind of hard to say. You see, the basic plot of every form of Terminator is exactly the same. Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill either Sarah or John, while, meanwhile, the resistance also sends back a Terminator who is also a protector. This leads one to ask, of the Resistance has access to so many different Termintaors, why do they keep sending them back in time? Why not use them to combat the Terminators attacking them on a daily basis?

Then again,why quibble with logic in a series that cannot seem to follow its own logic.

The series opens with Sarah and John apparently fairly happy in a town somewher in California. Sarah is hooked up with a new dude and John even likes him. Then the dude proposes and Sarah realizes it's time to move on. We learn it has been at least two years since the last attack by anyone from the future.

Sarah and John set off, set up shop somewhere else and soon an attractive teenage girl seems to have a strange attraction to John, the new kid at school. The scene where the substitute teacher turns out to be a gun-wielding Terminator is just about every school-kid's nightmare, I figure. It's also intriguing how the Terminator manages to hide his gun

It turns out the teenage girl is also a Terminator. Soon, they are on the run. What happened to the liquid Terminator from the second movie? Apparently Skynet could only afford to build one of those or something. This new Terminator is more like the one Arnold played in the first movie but not quite as buff and without the Austrian accent. At no point does he utter, "I'll be bahhck!"

It turns into a standard chase show at this point. The stunts are OK. The action is pretty good. Then they decide, once again, to try to destroy Skynet and the whole thing kind of goes off the rails on its own logic once again.

It's is not original. It is a show that brings nothing new to the Terminator scenario other than a teenaged female cyborg. The writing is OK. The directing is OK and the special effects are decent. Still, you can't help but feel you might just want to watch the original again and get the same experience.

Still, I think I'll stick around for at least the second episode. Maybe they will get around to explaining and eliminating that pesky logic flaw in the time travel scenario I outlined above.