In this week’s episode, “Queen’s Gambit,” Sarah. Summer Cameron, and John discover that a chess competition could have world-shattering repercussions.
Agent Ellison remains on their trail.
In this week’s episode, “Queen’s Gambit,” Sarah. Summer Cameron, and John discover that a chess competition could have world-shattering repercussions.
Agent Ellison remains on their trail.
Let’s Do The Time Warp Again
I haven’t seen this ep yet off my TiVo but let’s talk for a sec about last week’s ep – Heavy Metal. I thought it stunk. It must have been the T:SCC version of a starship "bottle" show with minimal external sets – this one was basically shot on the same set dressed up alternately as a civilian warehouse and… a military warehouse. There were so many stupid plot and script contrivances I could barely finish the ep. If humanity’s future depends on John we are all in deep doodoo.
That’s a shame, because Sarah’s continuing musings / dreams and the underlying theme in general of the show comparing 21st century advances in AI to those in atomic energy in the 1940s is timely, well worth presenting and considering.
What would be interesting would be if the jump from 1997 to 2007 presents Sarah and Co. the perspective (not shared by her new contempraries / us) needed to realize that the Internet itself is Skynet. Then she can go after the handful of semi-secret highly secure root routers or whatever they’re called across the nation…
Speaking of Terminators and the Singularity, anybody see the current article in Seed magazine about the facinating Blue Brain project?
Re: Let’s Do The Time Warp Again
I’m guessing this show has been allowed to keep going is because of the writers strike. I doubt it will continue too much longer. It’s painful to watch.
Setup, setup, setup, setup
The show is sagging as each episode airs, for me. Partially because they keep working on ‘setting up’ stuff, and not paying it off. We’ve had two episodes about our ‘ongoing adversary’ setup – the teacher terminator who followed them and is repairing himself – which is in fact anathema to the (more cool, imho) notion of a plethora of tinmen running missions, interchangeable, relentless in their numbers. Like the Borg used to be before the (hack spit) borg queen.
We have now had at least two episodes with setup regarding the EMT. We’ve had setup as far as temporally local allies. We’ve had setup regarding Cameron’s River-like mystery. We’ve now had setup involving John’s family and the everpresent FBI agent slowly clue-ing in (or at least, gathering bits)…
AND NO PAYOFF.
Either they’re hoping to have some really good Arc episodes soon, or they’re just writing themselves into a problem. That problem is either "we don’t know what happens now" or, almost as bad, "now that all the pieces are in place we can start writing one-off, ‘this story never ends’ plots".
Sigh.
Re: Setup, setup, setup, setup
This show by definition suffers from Gilligan’s Island Syndrome, so all it really has going for it is character development and exposition / expansion of its premise and universe. And occasionally there are indeed flashes of brilliance in this area. Cameron taking out the 888’s main chip, staring at it, then taking the broken pencil to write a note at the end? Brilliant. Why we are not focusing on THIS, the philosophical implications of artificial consciousness, and not all the other stuff?
I agree that there has been an ENORMOUS amount of setup which is still ongoing – like who is our Mystery Chick? for example, and Who Is Her Dad? and Why Should We Care? OMG, you don’t suppose it’s Adult John hiding out in time with his daughter, do you? Ick!
I am getting to the point where the endless plot deux ex machinas in this show about machinas is just starting to be funny instead of silly. TurkMan gets blown away, nobody hears a thing, Sarah is first on the scene, leaves the crime scene undisturbed without raising an alarm, manages to sprint and catch up to Mystery Future Guy in the dark alley, then suddenly we’ve got THREE SQUAD CARS with blue lights flashing to catch the perp on this murder? Talk about time warps….
Re: Setup, setup, setup, setup
There is only a thing I ask from these kinds of series:
PLEASE RESPECT YOUR OWN RULES!
The uncovered-in-fake-skin head should not have time-travelled.
The uncovered skeleton body would not go into the junk yard but into some CIA/DHS/NSA/… laboratory.
*sheesh*