One of my absolute favorite (current) actresses is Summer Glau, the fantastic & freaky major character from Firefly and Serenity. So, when I heard she was a (good) terminator in a new Terminator, I was tres excited. This seemed to be right up my alley. Too bad I’d never seen any of the series (although I did read the graphic novel of the second movie when I was a kid. It didn’t make much sense). So I Netflix’d the Terminator, which is classic ’80s, from the chain jackets to the night club; it arrived damaged, but I was undeterred! Netflix soon sent me a new copy, which showed me crappy special effects (who was in charge of the eyeball scene? seriously.), bad lines, and all around cheesiness. Then I watched T2: Judgement Day, which was vastly better, especially when compared to the original! I was prepared, then, for Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles

Spoiler Alert
The Terminator franchise is based around the premise that, in the future, machines attack humans & win. The resistance is lead by one John Connor. In the first movie, the Governor of California is sent back to kill John’s mother, Sarah Connor. John, however, sends his right-hand man, Kyle Reese, back to protect her. Kyle Reese, incidentally, becomes John’s father. In the second movie, the Governor is sent back to protect John & Sarah both from the T1000, a puddle of metallic goo. This movie finds John considerably grown up and Sarah considerably more Rambo-ified. The TV show takes place sometime after these two.
/Spoiler Alert for now

My reaction to the poster here at the left was a very visceral “ew” when I first saw it. It seems very objectifying: here is a naked female torso. The objectification of the terminator is common and they are most often shown by their creepy metal skull, since it drives home the twin facts that make up the terminator: (1) it is a machine and (2) it is going to kill you. “Cameron”, the only terminator thus far who gets a name, rather than a designation, is a protector, so the second argument might well be fixed by not showing her as a skull (oh! with glowing red eyes). She is also still a machine. So I can see where they were going with this but still think it was a little over the top, from a feminist perspective. The poster with missing flesh is much better, methinks, if less shocking.

The story of Sarah Connor should appeal to feminist scifi fans on another (non-Summer-Glau-related) level, because it is fundamentally the story of a single mother trying to make it in a big, bad world where she routinely deals with robots sent from the future to kill either (a) her, (b) her son, (c) both, (d) random other people, or (e) any combination thereof. In the second movie (brief spoiler), she starts out in a mental institution. And from that standpoint, this has a very interesting basis in reality: she believes that robots from the future were sent to kill either…well, you know the drill…but everyone around her thinks she’s batty. Everyone except a random compound of Mexicans where she keeps her guns. And who knows, they may, too think she’s batty but, having many guns, allow her to be so.

There are many moments in the two-day-series/season-premier-extravaganza that underscored the single mother aspect of it, and I enjoyed that for what it was. There were so many hat-tips in the two episodes that it was hard not to: there were references aplenty to appeal to even the most dense of fankids (the address of the computer store that John hangs out in at one point is 1337), be they nerds, fans of the movies, or feminists.

That said, my husband’s response to Summer Glau as a terminator is that future-John said, “I think I need a hot robot chick. When I’m 15. *zap*” And it is very strange that this terminator is neither male, Austrian, nor particularly muscular. She is a hot robot chick, however. In addition, my husband and I both agree that Sarah & John’s relationship in the TV show is a might creepier than it should be for a mother-son team. Perhaps this is why future-John decides he needs a hot robot chick: to protect him from his hot mother.

She is hot. But she is also very thin. A little too thin. She has calmed down since the Ramba of T2 (compare & contrast the black & white Sarah of the ’80s and the “mother of all destiny” of today), but is still mistrustful of terminators and of John’s ability to make his own decisions. He has not yet gone teen-angsty on us about how he’s supposed to be the leader of humanity and his mom won’t let him tie his own shoes without her go-ahead, but I’m waiting for it.

All in all, a great series and true to both the film technology of today and the story line of the 80s. If you liked either of the first two, I recommend at least the two-hour premier. If you’ve never read or heard about them but think you might be interested, I don’t think an intimate knowledge of the first two movies is necessary (or even, given the first one, recommended). I’ll have to check John’s new website to see what religion either John, Sarah, or the terminator is.