Finally played some catch-up on this series, watching, um, several episodes back-to-back.
- Good premise — the ongoing time war between the Terminators of the Future, the John Connor of the Future, and John and Sarah Connor of the present continues. The Bad Guys keep sending back more (non-mimetic-so-far) Terminators, encouraging other paths toward the eventual construction of Skynet and hunting down future resistance leader John Connor. The Good Guys send back — Summer Glau, who takes her quirky-personality hard-fighting River role to new Termingating goodness, helping the Connor clan survive and keep fighting the war against the machines. Oh, and they’ve sent back a few resistance fighters to “lend a hand.” Maybe.
- Some good fish-out-of-water bits, with the Connors making a time jump from 1999 to 2007. (“What’s 9-11?” “Clear my browser history?”).
- John Connor is … a freaking emo whiner. Way, way, way too whiney. Part of that’s to draw a distinction between his future and his present. Part of that’s to provide some excuses for plotting (i.e., whiney, lonely, “I don’t want to be the Messiah” John to do stupid, mission- and life-threatening things. Thomas Dekker (Heroes, Honey I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Series) does a good job with a thanklessly annoying part. Though he looks more high schoolish than some of the others he ends up hanging with.
- Granted, Sarah is starting just as maniacally intense and offputtingly obsessive as in the movies. Lena Headey (300) does well, too — a match (dare I say it) for Linda Hamilton; I expect to see increasing nuance … something that starts to come out over the course of the first several episodes
- Summer Glau fighting is good. (Nekkid (no clothing through time portals) Summer Glau fighting, even from a distance, is also pretty good.) She does good non-fighting, too, with some “Tin Man” aspects which remind me a bit of TNG’s Data, but … better.
- We even have a Lt. Gerard FBI agent trying to pursue the Connors — and the truth.
- Lots of moral issues raised to date, though a lot of them center over things like, “What does it mean to be human” and “what is it acceptable to do in order to save humanity”?
- Even a fun flash-forward to the world after the war.
- Good weaving of small and large plots, and though most of it is Terminator-related … not all of it is. And, of course, plenty of “Hmmm, is that twitchy guy a Terminator or just twitchy?” mystery stuff. So far, a solid mix of all of the above.
Overall — good stuff. Plan on watching more.
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Following a campus appearance by Ray Kurzweil, we got into an office discussion of human/robot relationship ethics. I thought that if robots could exceed us in intelligence, if they in fact become sentient, they should have rights to autonomy and fair treatment. They cannot be slaves; some sort of economy beyond mere survival would need to be established if they are to do humans any favors. But we will be expecting the to clean our homes, harvest our crops, entomb our nuclear reactors, explore space for us without hope of rescue, have sex with us, chauffeur us, guard our children, diagnose our illnesses, perform surgery on us, and a thousand other duties.
One of my friends thought that it might to be possible to produce “a close simulation” of intelligence but not true AI, so robot rights would not be an issue. It seemed to me that our expectation that robots would always be logical and ‘selfless’ was not based on much. If robots have interests of their own it isn’t inconceivable if they might ask if we’re worth all the trouble.
Sarah Connor appears to dismiss the possibility that the teenaged terminatrichick might have any interests of her own. She treats her like chattel, even with hostility. Which raises the question: what was it that Andrew Goode’s ‘Turk’ became upset about, that it couldn’t be ‘reassured’? Had it just read up on human history?
Yeah, I think Sarah’s intentional dismissing of “Jennifer”‘s interests / thoughts / feelings is going to (beyond the extent it is already) be something that bites them all in the butt.
And yet Cameron is, by her own account, a “scary robot.” I’m not at all sure she sees herself as having interests of her own, although she does display such traits (encouraging Sarah to write a note to a deceased acquaintance to help deal with her grief comes to mind).
There haven’t been too many recent SF shows that held my interest through the first episode. I watched the new version of Knight Rider and certainly won’t go out of my way to catch any new episodes (not that the original was a masterpiece). This show, however, has been consistently entertaining, even to a casual Terminator fan such as me (I’ve seen all the movies on cable/video exactly once).
I watched the original a few times — a classic (and low-budget) monster movie. The second I’ve watched several times. The third (which is out of canon for this show, I believe) once, on DVR.
Cameron (named after James) has interests. I just don’t know that she knows what they are. They certainly seem to extend beyond simple obedience, even to just John-of-the-future. Certainly there are some existentialist questions she’s pondering — death, what death/deactivatoin means to her kind, etc. In some ways, she may have the most interesting arc of the series.
In that vein, tonight’s episode was just awesome. ***Dave, knowing that you TIVO or something like it, I won’t risk a spoiler but Cameron’s interests played into a poetic moment worthy of Asimov. Even though the Terminators don’t need no steenkin’ Three Laws…
I’m glad for the spoiler-free comment, as you posted before the show even aired here on the West Coast. 🙂
I have to say, this episode had as many “Oh, crap!” moments as a typical episode of Heroes.
Favorite line: “…but they can be useful.” 😀
Well, now you have me wanting to go right home and watch it … 🙂
I note with some dismay that Netflix has a “very long wait” for The Terminator.