DVD: Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles

If, unlike me, you don’t object to Hollywood gently desecrating the still twitching corpse of an otherwise fantastic concept then welcome – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is for you. After James Cameron neatly finished his 1992 signature film Terminator 2: Judgement Day with the coda ‘No fate but what we make’ it only took Hollywood twelve years to abandon all sense of creative integrity and go after a little more of that dollar-dollar, guaranteed by yet more future war shenanigans. How could Cameron know that with his inconspicuous little post-script he would be giving anyone with a half an idea carte blanch to spin-off two further films (at the time of writing) and a television series? After all, it’s time travel isn’t it? There’s no rules so we’ll just create our own..

Enter stage left (before anyone had the foresight to greenlight a proposed new trilogy of Terminator sequels and thus perhaps closing off any other errant timelines) a new weekly serial completely disavowing the events of Terminator 3 and as yet with no intended tie in to the forthcoming Terminator: Salvation. The Sarah Connor Chronicles, as you might expect, follows the titular anti-heroine still on the lam from all manner of cybernetic organisms all of which remain humbly intent on annihilating her son, John Connor – now a fully-fledged angsty 15 year old complete with this month’s teen-fashion hairstyle, his fringe gracefully styled with lobs of gel across his eyes for that wind-swept look.

Just as John was assisted in T2 and again in T3: Rise of the Machines by two different T-800’s played by Arnold Schwarzenegger (the bad guy gone good), The Sarah Connor Chronicles also has a ‘good Terminator’ in the form of Cameron, female model with the appearance of a teenage girl. See? They’ve really switched it up on us. Can there even be sexual tension between the pubescent saviour of mankind and his ultimate enemy? Tune in and find out.

The risk that a weekly serial based around a now completely confused mythology (simply adding the caveat that this is a restart would be easier to swallow if the previous entries in the canon weren’t so well crafted) is the critical problem that a ‘Terminator of the Week’ is going to get old very fast even if your central conceit lends itself well to a relentless chase across America. The show circumvents this by dipping it’s metal endoskeleton into the big concepts yet again, focussing on Sarah, John and Cameron’s attempts to frustrate the creation of SkyNet when they become aware of a rapidly escalating chess computer artificial intelligence known as The Turk, a progenitor to what will eventually become mankind’s nemesis. These guys aren’t just on the run from cyborgs, they’re on the run from the future! Oh god, it makes my brain hurt.

The funny thing is, it works. Just. Cruelly cut short by the Writers Guild strike that threatened most of American television, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. While the universe that Cameron et al built remains a guilty pleasure that you feel compelled to explore regardless of which timeline you’re in, the ongoing arc that runs prominently throughout the series became a chore to dip into. Great for your DVD boxset but not for episodic television which requires a certain penetrable density to remain accessible. Forced to truncate their season to just nine episodes, it has been widely publicised that season two will feature a few more standalone stories.

The series really gets going in episode four when John starts to embrace his destiny and the show begins to show flashes of longevity. Although the tendency to wade too far into what has gone before occasionally grates (Kyle Reese’s brother Derek played by 90210 stalwart Brian Austin Green shows up soon enough), it is fun taking a wilder walk with a creative team able to bloat a streamlined backstory any which way they like. It feels a little odd referring to a Terminator by name rather than model number but you’ll get used to it.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles can be bought by clicking here, or simply win a copy by clicking here.