The Sarah Conner Chronicles

Started by DocJon · 12 posts · 1,701 views

  1. #1
    I just saw the pilot episode for this series.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0851851/

    "Firefly" fans will recognize the actress in the role of "Cameron"

    I wasn't hoping for much, but the pilot was really QUITE good. They have done away with "T3" in this continuity, I think. At least, they pick up sometime after "T2" and before "T3". The effects are acceptable to very good. I thought a couple of the make-up FX were middlin', but they were brief and fleeting, and others were very good.

    Also, they introduced a very cool aspect or 2 of time travel they hadn't touched on before. The pilot shows some promising signs of inventiveness 🙂

    This series will be a must-see for me.
  2. #2
    I just watched this last night.

    Overall I liked it. I think it has potential. I will watch it. Does anyone know when the series will air?
    I loved the "Rage Against The Machine" Pillow he had in the beginning, that was funny.

    Now to the show itself.

    SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I did not really like the T actor all that much. referred as simply the T from here out as I am unsure what model he is.

    It was not horrible but his part just seem to be there in the background, not really played up and tense like you would think. Like a secondary character that did not matter much.

    I am unsure on the FBI guy. What does he not believe when the kids all spotted the guy with the metal leg.
    His character just seems plopped in to have an a human antagonist.

    How did all the cops arrive at the school so fast? then when the T started shooting he tore bullets through the police cars and should have take Sara out easily. She just ducks and reaches under where bullets just shot. That entire scene was kind of lame to me.

    Also why would the T sit in class pretending to be a teacher and go through the roster like that. He usually would just storm in, point the gun asking for Reese and (or not even ask) then shoot. He does not care about collateral damage. Why would he care about hiding a gun in his leg when he could have simply had it in a briefcase or under the papers he carried. Lame.

    What was with the bank vault?? At first I thought, oh they somehow sent people back to build it and store it there okay but A) it was in 1963 and that gun looked a lot more modern but they are from the future but 😎 would the isotope be okay after all that time like that?

    Then she pulls out all of those drawers and there is a working computer there just waiting for her all booted up for 40+ years?? Also those graphics on screen would not be there for a computer that old, it would be text ASCII based at the max. Come on they ha to work with 1963 technology, they did not have retinal scanners back then.

    I am all for disbelief in a show but as I discussed in the past with friends. "A show or movie has to be real within its own realm." So sure the T series android is believable but do not point back to weapons created in 1963 using technology from that era and expect me to believe it when it is way out of wack.

    Look at the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" that is said to be the best ST episode by many, me not one of them. Anyway Spock had to fix the tricorder with parts from that era and they did it right. He had tubes and simple circuits, it took him a long time to do it and was attached to a modern device. that was done correctly.

    With that all said they go from 1999 to 2007?? What was that about? Why jump 8 years?

    I kind of liked Cameron's part but one thing I did not care for was she acted totally human when he first met her but then after she was known to be a T she acted robotic. Tilting her head weird etc... COME ON it is in your programming, act normal!!! 🙂

    I will stop now. I will say I liked it all in all and will watch it. 🙂

  3. #3
    Major spoilage to continue

    Paladin wrote:
    I did not really like the T actor all that much. referred as simply the T from here out as I am unsure what model he is.

    It was not horrible but his part just seem to be there in the background, not really played up and tense like you would think. Like a secondary character that did not matter much.

    I am unsure on the FBI guy. What does he not believe when the kids all spotted the guy with the metal leg.
    His character just seems plopped in to have an a human antagonist.

    How did all the cops arrive at the school so fast? then when the T started shooting he tore bullets through the police cars and should have take Sara out easily. She just ducks and reaches under where bullets just shot. That entire scene was kind of lame to me.

    Also why would the T sit in class pretending to be a teacher and go through the roster like that. He usually would just storm in, point the gun asking for Reese and (or not even ask) then shoot. He does not care about collateral damage. Why would he care about hiding a gun in his leg when he could have simply had it in a briefcase or under the papers he carried. Lame.

    What was with the bank vault?? At first I thought, oh they somehow sent people back to build it and store it there okay but A) it was in 1963 and that gun looked a lot more modern but they are from the future but 😎 would the isotope be okay after all that time like that?

    Then she pulls out all of those drawers and there is a working computer there just waiting for her all booted up for 40+ years?? Also those graphics on screen would not be there for a computer that old, it would be text ASCII based at the max. Come on they ha to work with 1963 technology, they did not have retinal scanners back then.

    I am all for disbelief in a show but as I discussed in the past with friends. "A show or movie has to be real within its own realm." So sure the T series android is believable but do not point back to weapons created in 1963 using technology from that era and expect me to believe it when it is way out of wack.

    Look at the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" that is said to be the best ST episode by many, me not one of them. Anyway Spock had to fix the tricorder with parts from that era and they did it right. He had tubes and simple circuits, it took him a long time to do it and was attached to a modern device. that was done correctly.

    With that all said they go from 1999 to 2007?? What was that about? Why jump 8 years?

    I kind of liked Cameron's part but one thing I did not care for was she acted totally human when he first met her but then after she was known to be a T she acted robotic. Tilting her head weird etc... COME ON it is in your programming, act normal!!! 🙂

    I will stop now. I will say I liked it all in all and will watch it. 🙂

    The FBI guy is fine, for now. He's a new character, and we're gonna get to see him grow and learn that there are more things going on than some terrorist woman and child team running around. He's got overwhelming eyewitness accounts that the shooter had a robotic leg. He knows Sarah Conner's paranoid delusions about machines taking over the world. Allow the show to develop the characters and see if he begins to put 1+1 together.

    I thought the T was just fine. He IS a secondary character, merely a plot device to drive the show. The focus is on the three characters on the run. We're never gonna get much interaction or motivation from him. Reese gave all the character background we'll ever get for the T in the first movie.

    Acting like a teacher works just fine for me. He probably abducted, tortured, and killed the real teacher to get the info he wanted. The teacher might have resisted giving out the specific into the T needed to walk in and do the hit(protecting the student, figuring he was going to die no matter what), so he strode into the school, went straight to the classroom and had minimal interaction in order to determine who his target was. He used infiltration tactics, something that is basic to his model..

    The gun was hidden in his leg when HE WENT THRU TIME, to get around that problem they introduced in the first terminator movie: They can't bring back weapons through, as they're not flesh. Only flesh can go back. Ah-nold could go back because he was covered in flesh. This is a fan-wanked convention/question since the first T movie. I've seen comic books that demonstrate the weapon being hidden in the T's body. Why it was a simple firearm and not something really cool, I don't know. Maybe they figured that would be enough to kill one person if the T couldn't get within arm's length.

    I never understood how the shape-shifting T's can go through time - that's a huge-ass plot hole from the second and third movie.

    The terminators were programmed to infiltrate. I'm willing to believe they have better people skills than has been shown. A series will, by necessity, show things in more detail, and have many more situations to explore. I dunno how long Cameron was in place before John got the the school. If it was just a day or 2, keeping up the charade would be fairly easy - she's the new girl, shy, maybe a bit strange. I would image a longer deception would be difficult.

    I guess Cameron has some mimicking ability, able to take on certain personas for short periods (it's that infiltrating thing again), but I suppose we can equate that with an actor's "acting". They put it on as needed, but don't do it all the time. Yeah, it's a robot, it could stay in the identity indefinitely, I understand that. The Cameron character is not a teenage girl, so I guess the writers, director, and actress made the decision to play her a certain way to remind us of this.

    The technology MIGHT have been quite up to the task in 1960's, but we didn't know how to do it. The weapon she used appeared to have a chemical base to form the energy necessary. They were able to take existing substances and apply their future tech knowledge to them. I agree, however, it would've been more believable had they made the date 1973, when transistors were really hitting the consumer market.

    Why jump 8 years? The main reason is they wanted to characters to be a certain age, but they wanted to set it in the present day. It avoids hundreds of little problems per episode, like "That car in the background wasn't made before 2002!" Hats off to them for being so careful with the existing timeline to not simply introduce the show in 2007. If they are that careful with that, I have high expectations for the future of this show.

    Ostensibly, the show jumped them in time to thoroughly throw off the T's. In history, they suddenly disappear for 8 years. I don't necessarily buy that (the first thing they do in 2007 is get photographed by a cell-phone and make the news, which would screw over 1000 years of "Where are they?"), but I'm willing to go along with it because it's a necessary contrivance to get them to modern-day, plus, it was a cool scene!

    The computers looked old. It's story-telling shorthand, enough for the audience to understand it is an OLD computer. That was enough for the show. If you were to show something like an old Altair, most ppl wouldn't even understand that as a computer. Plus, it added a, "Hey, they did pretty damn good for 1963" aspect to it. It shows that the ppl from the future are pretty damn resourceful, which had been established in the first movie.

    Spock was transported back in time to the 1930's. IMO, they didn't do it right - they made far too easy for him - it only took him a couple weeks. Cameron explained that it took the person sent back to the 60's 8 months to do this, and one would assume the person was well-versed in exactly this task.


  4. #4
    I have never been a fan of the Terminator..... I think I was just too young for it....
  5. #5
    DocJon wrote:
    Major spoilage to continue

    Spock was transported back in time to the 1930's. IMO, they didn't do it right - they made far too easy for him - it only took him a couple weeks. Cameron explained that it took the person sent back to the 60's 8 months to do this, and one would assume the person was well-versed in exactly this task.



    I am not buying the computer part especially since, as you mentioned, the parts alone were primitive in 63.

    BTW where have the "people" gone that were sent back to build the stuff?

    So flesh can come through but so can anything else as long as it is covered in flesh. Then why not just bring back a small nuke and nuke the entire area to kill the kid? That would ensure he would not escape. 🙂

    Hell send a T type non functional body back stuffed full of cool weapons 😉

    Also he had lots of guns, why dig one out in his leg if it was not a cool future gun? Sorry but I do not buy the teacher act, all he had to do was walk in and shoot the place up. He has no morals and his mission is to kill the kid, period, no matter what it takes, no matter who he kills in the process. Not very efficient I would say 🙂 I will let it go for the shows sake.

    I also understand he is a secondary character but he needs a "bit" more.

    Also Kirk and Spock were there way longer than a few weeks. I cannot remember but it took many months for Spock to build that. 🙂
    Remember they works a long time for the lady to obtain the money to buy the parts. I personally never understood that part but that is another discussion. 🙂

    Do not get me wrong, it is cool and I will watch it. It is fun to pick some stuff apart just a bit.

    Much more to discuss here but that will be another reply 🙂
  6. #6
    Atomm wrote:
    I have never been a fan of the Terminator..... I think I was just too young for it....



    Oh stop it!!! What you never got into Star Wars because it came out in 77???

    That is a BS statement 😉 Besides you are not that much younger than us 🙂

    T2 was a GREAT movie. Almost a classic. I even really enjoyed the first one. The third was not bad but I really want to know what happened to the kitty..... (inside joke)
  7. #7
    Paladin wrote:
    I am not buying the computer part especially since, as you mentioned, the parts alone were primitive in 63.

    BTW where have the "people" gone that were sent back to build the stuff?


    They NEVER get shit right. Close, approximately, and fan-wanked is all the further they ever get.
    Good question about the "people". Maybe they're dead, maybe we'll see them again.

    Paladin wrote:
    So flesh can come through but so can anything else as long as it is covered in flesh. Then why not just bring back a small nuke and nuke the entire area to kill the kid? That would ensure he would not escape. 🙂

    Hell send a T type non functional body back stuffed full of cool weapons 😉

    And now you understand the hole in the theory that has been there since the first movie. Gotta be careful about killing TOO MANY ppl though, as Skynet has a history that it doesn't want erased as well. A nuke detonation that drastically effects government policy and/or diverts critcally-needed funding, someone gets sick from radiation poisoning and/or dies that was supposed to help Skynet come into being, even in some small way, would not be in it's interest.

    Paladin wrote:
    Also he had lots of guns, why dig one out in his leg if it was not a cool future gun? Sorry but I do not buy the teacher act, all he had to do was walk in and shoot the place up. He has no morals and his mission is to kill the kid, period, no matter what it takes, no matter who he kills in the process. Not very efficient I would say 🙂 I will let it go for the shows sake.

    He has only the weapon he pulls out of his leg at the school, and at their house. No "lots of weapons". He may have some more later, but it's safe to say he had time to pick them up. Everything he did at the school was done only with a single handgun. Why not a cool future gun? I dunno the answer there, except maybe - it's enough to do the job, and Skynet doesn't want to affect things too much. Someone gets hold of a cool new future gun, suddenly the government is much more interested in that tech than Skynet. There goes the funding! It's a fanwank, but you run into that in a lot of sci-fi.

    The terminators have a pattern of blending in where possible. Every time a terminator appears for the first time, he approaches the target quietly, not arousing suspicion. It's only after his cover is blown that he charges after them in plain sight, shooting up the cityscape.

    Paladin wrote:
    I also understand he is a secondary character but he needs a "bit" more.

    I'm not getting this. There will be no past, no motivation, and no family/friends. What is left to give him? A dog?

    Paladin wrote:
    Also Kirk and Spock were there way longer than a few weeks. I cannot remember but it took many months for Spock to build that. 🙂
    Remember they works a long time for the lady to obtain the money to buy the parts. I personally never understood that part but that is another discussion. 🙂


    I remember it as being about a week to ten days. I was unable to find a good source of info on this. Wikipedia has an article devoted to this episode, but doesn't give the info. I found only 2 references, and they back up my recollections, FWIW. I found none contradicting what I remember. After I found them, I went back and added the relevant sentence to the search, so it would be nicely highlighted. 🙂

    http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:A2O9I...lient=firefox-a

    http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:IW6qE...lient=firefox-a
  8. #8
    DocJon wrote:
    And now you understand the hole in the theory that has been there since the first movie. Gotta be careful about killing TOO MANY ppl though, as Skynet has a history that it doesn't want erased as well. A nuke detonation that drastically effects government policy and/or diverts critcally-needed funding, someone gets sick from radiation poisoning and/or dies that was supposed to help Skynet come into being, even in some small way, would not be in it's interest.


    Ahh so there goes that. How come he kills teachers and shoots randomly around killing all kinds of people with no regard to this then??? 🙂

    How did he know that teacher he killed was not involved with building skynet or something? 🙂


    He has only the weapon he pulls out of his leg at the school, and at their house. No "lots of weapons". He may have some more later, but it's safe to say he had time to pick them up. Everything he did at the school was done only with a single handgun. Why not a cool future gun? I dunno the answer there, except maybe - it's enough to do the job, and Skynet doesn't want to affect things too much


    But in the very first scene he come out of nowhere shooting up the place with fully automatic weapons. he had a lot more than a single gun man.... 😉


    I'm not getting this. There will be no past, no motivation, and no family/friends. What is left to give him? A dog?


    Just conversation man. No need to get sarcastic on me here.
    😉
  9. #9
    Paladin wrote:
    Ahh so there goes that. How come he kills teachers and shoots randomly around killing all kinds of people with no regard to this then??? 🙂

    Perhaps a low likelihood of any one person being that vital. If you kill hundreds of thousands, or millions, that likelihood gets to be a little higher. It certainly will grab the attention of the nation, and have an effect on funding for projects, and maybe national policy. Shooting sprees happen every few weeks and the nation doesn't change policy, or change priorities on defense spending.

    Paladin wrote:
    How did he know that teacher he killed was not involved with building skynet or something? 🙂
    But in the very first scene he come out of nowhere shooting up the place with fully automatic weapons. he had a lot more than a single gun man.... 😉

    Also in the very first scene, John is killed, and nuclear explosions went off, shattering the building 20 yards behind them. I think it's the same scene you were worrying about bullets going thru the car, and her not getting hit. It never happened. It was a dream sequence. In the second scene, she woke up, not blasted to pieces, and John is still alive.

    Paladin wrote:
    Just conversation man. No need to get sarcastic on me here.
    😉


    I kinda like the idea of a terminator dog. . .something about rat terrier sized. It would give the terminator something to love and hug and squeeze and Hug and Squeeze and HUG and SQUEEZE 🙂
  10. #12
    DocJon wrote:
    God. . .70's TV was BAD!

    Your link has a brief mention of this show:
    http://www.70slivekidvid.com/rjr.htm



    HAHA yes I read that 🙂

    Who makes a wanted poster for a dog? $200 yet, what would that be in todays money I wonder HAHAHAHA

    What about the doggy!!! 🙂