Sarah Connor Discussion: “The Tower is Tall But the Fall is Short”

The show returns this week. How did we like this one?


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17 replies on “Sarah Connor Discussion: “The Tower is Tall But the Fall is Short””

  1. Curious and exciting developments
    I continue to find the SCC to be pretty exciting for the twists it’s adding to the Terminator storyline.

    Let’s look at what we learned last night, and where that might lead us:

    John Connor is putting more "reformed" terminators into human bunkers, these terminators are occasionally going rogue and the humans don’t like it.

    Derek’s ex comes back in time, won’t state what mission she’s on and is apparently taking surveillance photo’s of John.

    Skynet is taking measures to keep John from reprogramming more terminators.

    Catherine (the T-1000) is trying to ‘raise’ an AI. She is taking her human ‘daughter’ to a psychiatrist and decides she needs his help to bring her AI into maturity.

    A terminator is sent back to the same psychiatrists office. It’s motives are unknown as Cameron fought it before we could find out.

    Sooo.. where can all this go?

    First, is there a civil war brewing between John and the Anti-Metal survivors who are unhappy with his efforts to use the machines? Is John slowly losing the temporal war with Skynet?

    Then, if Catherine is trying to ensure Skynet gets built, then wouldn’t she already know the psychiatrist was necessary to that goal? Someone sent a terminator back for the doctor, to save or kill him, why didn’t Catherine know?

    Then again, what benefit would Skynet, who we’ve always been told decided the fate of humanity the moment it was turned on, get from a psychiatrist in it’s early development? So, is this early Skynet? Or is it an attempt to create an alternate Skynet? Could John have sent back a T-1000?

    So many interesting ways the writers could take this..

      • Re: Curious and exciting developments

        Catherine (the T-1000)

        Nit: She’s a T-1001 ( http://terminatorwiki.fox.com/page/Catherine+Weaver+(T-1001) ).

        Even odder. If her bio states she’s here to reverse engineer skynet by hunting down existing terminators in the present, then there’s even more questions.

        Why doesn’t she have the schematics to build skynet in her system? Or a backup of skynet? Why the need to reverse engineer something?

        Skynet has started booby trapping it’s terminators so won’t that create problems for it’s mission to have itself reverse engineered? Why not just send some terminators to Catherine, why does she have to hunt them down?

        • Re: Curious and exciting developments

          Even odder…

          Odder still is the stilted English used all over that page, which is an official FOX website. It sounds like something put up by outsourced Chinese…or Indians…or maybe….Terminators themselves !?!

          Examples: Referring to Cromartie and Cameron, "It is one of the T-1001’s intending preys to reverse engineer Skynet technology in the present." Also, regarding Savannah Weaver: "The young daughter of the real Catherine Weaver. T-1001 currently raise the child after Weaver’s death." Regarding John Connor: "It is assumed that the T-1001 is also programmed to search and eliminate Connor as other Skynet infiltrators in the present."

          I tell you, this show is just weird around all its edges.

  2. Want To Know A Secret?
    This episode was like an old TV ad for a woman’s deodorant. "Stong enough for a man…made for a woman". Check the credits…this ep was written and directed by women for a change.

    And it showed – this was one of the better eps so far. Instead of the macho plot and action driven sequences we have come to know so well (which often are jumbled continuity and logical messes in this show), this time around we had stories about…well, feelings. An A storyline on kids and maternal instincts in robots and humans, a B storyline on suicide in teens and robots and vets. And how the latter can be pulled back from the brink by hot babes making fly jokes at crucial moments, leading to huge coincidences and multiple secret meetings where clothes get ripped off practically in slo-mo…

    Well, maybe women can go a little overboard in other directions themselves.

    It is a mistake to keep ramming more and more characters thru the bubbles in this show. Blood List Man. Silent Stupid Bald Robot. Silent Stupid Female Robot. Hot soldier babe. No no no no no.

    We need a tight story that focuses character development with the too many people we already have. This story is ultimately about Sarah. Then John. Then the Skynet AI. If you want to develop somebody/something else, I vote Cameron. Derick is great for flashforwards. Cromardie is the Big Bad and needs to stay that way. Ellis the FBI guy is interesting but how can there be screen time to developed him along with all the rest? Much less the redheaded T-1000. Or the new child shrink. Or the secret hot soldier babe. Or the military academy guy. Or whoever gets introduced next week.

    This isn’t the character of the week club. This show got a miracle back nine eps in view of its ratings and they now need to sit down and block out a story with a nice clean ending and then TELL it and leave the stage.

  3. Still watching
    This is a show that started with great promise, lapsed into mediocre continuity-breaking stories, then restored its promise and kept getting better. The character-developing stories have been pretty strong, and I hope they continue that through the rest of this season. We’re not yet half-way through the season, so they’ve got plenty of room to make this show grow. Here’s to hoping they can keep it up.

    • Re: Still watching


      lapsed into mediocre continuity-breaking stories, then restored its promise and kept getting better.

      I’m curious.

      Could you expand a bit on exactly when and how the series has restored it promise?

      I’m not trying to be confrontational. I seriously want to know your thinking behind this.

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      • Re: Still watching

        Could you expand a bit on exactly when and how the series has restored it promise?

        I’m with Cerberus on this one. For me the show’s strong points include its style, the strength of its characters, the (general) decent quality of writing, and there’s nothing that’s so jarringly different from what we knew about the Terminator universe that it turns off this fan of the movies.

        For me this series fits in well with the movies without requiring an entire rethinking or rewrite of what has gone before (Enterprise is an example of a series that did *not* follow that example.) It presents interesting takes on established characters, provides some interesting new characters (Cameron, John’s uncle), and in general fills an hour with a better produced higher caliber of entertainment than most other shows currently on TV. :)

        Please note that I am also a Summer Glau fan, and anything that gives Ms. Glau a reason to appear on screen is, in my book, a good thing.

        :)

        -Joe

        • Re: Still watching

          Please note that I am also a Summer Glau fan, and anything that gives Ms. Glau a reason to appear on screen is, in my book, a good thing.

          Agreed. And it is the John / Cameron dynamic that needs to be explored here. So far the show has highlighted three different high school girls for John to pay attention to (one kept saying mysterious things and getting in big cars, one jumped off a roof, and one has just hung around) and not ONE of these has gone anywhere. This is a TRAGIC waste of screen time and storytelling power – John shouldn’t even be going to a public school, for crying out loud. Meantime Cameron is shown hoarding materials to build a new Terminator (herself?), comtemplating the Meaning of Existence on several levels, killing the friend of John on whom she is based, and (holy cow) telling John she loves him.

          I totally agree this show needs to drop its endless female red herrings, focus on the gem they have in Ms. Glau, and Tell Cameron’s Story.

          • Re: Still watching


            Meantime Cameron is … killing the friend of John on whom she is based, and (holy cow) telling John she loves him.

            Actually those points are not inconsistent. Both of those were while she was running the anti-John SkyNet programming. John’s reprog came AFTER she killed the person she was modeled after, and the "love you" was while she was damaged and just trying to get John to lower his guard.

            That said. … Heck yeah; more Summer Glau, please.

            • Re: Still watching
              Huh. You think the "I love you" was a false flag statement to get John to lower his guard? I actually thought it was meant to be sincere and have been puzzled why the writers haven’t followed up on it. Maybe that’s my mistake, looking for logic and consistency…

              As I recall, Cameron was not working right and trying to kill John, got big-time clobbered by a truck, had her chip removed while pinned, and then the chip was reinserted with no further action which would have resulted in a "repair". This implied that the truck impact caused the "repair" (like kicking a soda machine to get the can to come out) which would mean that actions occuring after the impact (including fear of disconnection / death and expressions of loving emotion) were true good Cameron actions, not bad Cameron head fakes. Yet Cameron has shown no further incidents of feelings or emotions at all, much less towards John….another loose end blowing in the wind on this show.

              • Re: Still watching

                Huh. You think the "I love you" was a false flag statement to get John to lower his guard? I actually thought it was meant to be sincere and have been puzzled why the writers haven’t followed up on it. Maybe that’s my mistake, looking for logic and consistency…

                As I recall, Cameron was not working right and trying to kill John, got big-time clobbered by a truck, had her chip removed while pinned, and then the chip was reinserted with no further action which would have resulted in a "repair". This implied that the truck impact caused the "repair" (like kicking a soda machine to get the can to come out) which would mean that actions occuring after the impact (including fear of disconnection / death and expressions of loving emotion) were true good Cameron actions, not bad Cameron head fakes. Yet Cameron has shown no further incidents of feelings or emotions at all, much less towards John….another loose end blowing in the wind on this show.

                It seemed to me that getting hit by the truck did no more than immobilize her, allowing John the chance to get at her chip. The show of emotions seemed to be a fall-back tactic to try and stop him from removing the chip. The removal and replacement seemed to cause a reboot in which she reset to protection mode.

                • Re: Still watching

                  The removal and replacement seemed to cause a reboot in which she reset to protection mode.

                  When she rebooted she was still in "Terminate" mode. She did the override to that herself, maybe because she really did love him.

                  • Re: Still watching

                    The removal and replacement seemed to cause a reboot in which she reset to protection mode.

                    When she rebooted she was still in "Terminate" mode. She did the override to that herself, maybe because she really did love him.

                    I think she’s still a full blown, evil Terminator, who’s mission isn’t to kill John, but to subvert him and make him go soft and sympathetic to the machines.

          • Re: Still watching

            Agreed. And it is the John / Cameron dynamic that needs to be explored here. So far the show has highlighted three different high school girls for John to pay attention to (one kept saying mysterious things and getting in big cars, one jumped off a roof, and one has just hung around) and not ONE of these has gone anywhere.

            I totally agree this show needs to drop its endless female red herrings, focus on the gem they have in Ms. Glau, and Tell Cameron’s Story.

            I suspect the red herrings may be intentional, to increase the audience’s desire to see exactly what you’re talking about.

            I have noticed that scenes involving John conversing with girls invariably have Cameron somewhere nearby, and somewhere in the scene we get a close-up of Cameron’s eyes. I think the episode where Cameron temporarily became the girl she was patterned from, Allison, is preparing us for a Cameron (or super-Allison) that is capable of feeling and expressing emotions.

            I’d bet towards the end of this season (or series :( ) we’ll see Allison revealed to the other characters. At that point an interesting question arises: will Allison have free will?

            -Joe

  4. I was right
    Just for the record: I predicted that the unseen fight back at the beginning of the season was significant, and deliberately unseen in order to setup later character development: that john had to kill a man for the first time and didn’t know how to deal with it…

    https://bureau42.com/view/4674#23091

    • Re: I was right

      Just for the record: I predicted that the unseen fight back at the beginning of the season was significant, and deliberately unseen in order to setup later character development: that john had to kill a man for the first time and didn’t know how to deal with it…

      https://bureau42.com/view/4674#23091

      Good call!

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