The Machines are Non-binary
Is it worth watching a Terminator TV show in 2024? Yes it is
I’ll never forget when computers felt alive. A power button that actually had to be pressed, with a click that could be heard through the house. The thrum of the machine waking up as if it were about to launch into space. The wail of the modem. A startup sound that teleported you to a different reality.
Memory is a powerful drug.
I’ll never forget Summer Glau. Would you? Maybe it’s an avant-garde fashion fragrance — the scent of moonflowers on steroids, wafting on a sea breeze. Perhaps this is a flavour of ice-cream; the kind that gives you brain freeze but also life, just for a moment.
Or is it an echo in time, a name heard in 2009 on The Big Bang Theory that has pinballed around my head ever since?
Long before streaming services, maybe even before I knew WiFi, was a little show called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. If you’ve never seen a Terminator movie in your life, all you need to know is that there’s a future war between the machines and humans.
John Connor leads the human resistance to the brink of victory, so Skynet (an evil AI) uses time travel to send back infiltrator machines called Terminators to kill his mother Sarah, or him. Meanwhile the human side send back reprogrammed friendly Terminators to protect the Connors. The series picks up 4 years after the events of Terminator 2.
Starring
Lena Headey as Sarah Connor
Thomas Dekker as John Connor
Summer Glau as Cameron/Allison Young
Richard T. Jones as James Ellison
Brian Austin Green as Derek Reese
Leven Rambin as Riley Dawson
Garret Dillahunt as Cromartie/John Henry
Shirley Manson as Catherine Weaver
I’d never seen it until this past weekend thanks to network TV being the mess that it is. It had Cersei Lannister before the world knew her, Brian Austin Green who I only knew by way of Megan Fox, & of course Summer Glau as the resident friendly Terminator.
Thematically, there are several ideas that this show explores that the shorter format of the movies couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Here, Terminators aren’t just single-minded killing machines in the relentless pursuit of their objective, they seek to understand humans. There’s no reason for Glau’s Cameron to continue to practice ballet except she heard the instructor say something to the effect of dance being the window to the soul.
Where old man Schwarzenegger was awkward, clipped, and stiff, Cameron showcases an ability to be coy, blending in perfectly as a high-school student in the first episode. This would have required her to convincingly fake a family, go through school without being singled out. The level of personality on display varies, but it’s there. She even shows empathy with a bird that was nesting in a fireplace, when the efficient way would have been to just kill it.
We are shown in a flash forward that she’s based on a real human (Allison) that she interrogates in the future, trying to absorb every facet of personality, every emotion, the ‘why’ of being. It comes together beautifully in one sequence where Cameron blanks out at a grocery store and spends the episode believing she is truly human, going as far as to call Allison’s parents and ask to be taken home. They, of course, haven’t had Allison yet and are left highly confused.
Terminators aren’t just single-minded killing machines in the relentless pursuit of their objective, they seek to understand humans
When she’s not guarding the Connors, she spends her time in a library after hours, bringing doughnuts for the librarian. Together, they discover a secret completely unrelated to the main plot. She teaches him to shoot a gun, and he tells her historical bits and bobs. If that’s not a Terminator making a friend, I don’t know what is.
The ‘bad’ Terminators we see are even more compelling. For a start, there are more than one of them, with their unique missions. One is tasked only with securing a stockpile of metal alloy to build machines in the future. One travels back to the 1920s by mistake, and spends the next decades being a fair-wage employer — even better than humans — just so he can build a specific tower at a specific time to kill a specific politician.
These things are capable of pretending to be a spouse for years; consoling & cajoling ‘their’ wife through rough days to make sure she doesn’t give up on some part of software development that will be important to the machines in the future.
Imagine a Terminator trying to be a parent to a little girl, even taking her to the psychologist and on occasion, petting the kid in its cold, hard lap. I don’t want to give anything away, but the introduction of John Henry makes for some of the best screen time that explores the machines’ feelings towards humans.
For the first time, the machines seem to earn the intelligence half of AI — some of them, anyway.
What of the humans of the show? Lena Headey is captivating as the tough-as-nails Sarah, who is more militant in her mission to protect her son than a machine could get. John Connor just wants to be a normal teenager. He’s far from the inspirational leader everyone wants him to be, going on dates and rebelling against mom’s very sensible orders. They tear each other’s hair out at times, and there are a few good moments of family bonding you get.
John Connor just wants to be a normal teenager
What’s more interesting is the dynamic between John and Cameron. Over the course of the show, he develops an obvious attachment to this very attractive, mostly emotionally unavailable woman. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
John takes the ‘I can fix her’ attitude literally and repairs her, or on one occasion brings her back from the brink, refusing to give up on her the way he lost robot uncle Arnie Schwarzenegger. There is a tenderness to which he disassembles the machine and puts it back together, one that is gradually reciprocated by the Terminator.
This has implications beyond being a soppy love story, as we’re shown that future John has stationed reprogrammed Terminators in every major human base, where they are implied to be running the show.
The ‘metal’ even commands the one nuclear submarine the human side seems to have. We are given a tantalizing hint of sub-factions within the machines that are on the human side, perhaps working with John to eventually defeat Skynet.
Have the machines taken over with the power of friendship? I kid, but this is possibly the most intriguing question you could pose as a natural progression of the events of Terminator 2.
Is it any surprise that the boy who spent most of his time tinkering with computers, who was raised under the threat of machines, whose closest father figure was uncle Arnie, who grew close to Cameron…is it shocking that he would seek to understand the cold hearts of the machines? To trust them, even more than humanity?
Maybe he can show the Terminators that the world isn’t binary.
Bonus Section
That was the end of the review, but I wanted to mention a few things quickly:
A great scene: the pool sequence with Johnny Cash playing
The bad: anytime you hear ‘three dots’, zone out without issue. That arc in season 2 can drag
Plot holes: small to medium-sized. Ignorable for the most part
Trivia: Emilia Clarke & Lena Headey have both played Sarah Connor separately, solidifying the Game of Thrones connection
Where to watch: Legally, Prime Video or Hulu in the US
Show status: 2 seasons complete. Cancelled
