Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

UPDATE - see below...

Last night, Fox let loose it's seasonal man eater - the much hyped Sarah Connor Chronicles.

A sci-fi series based on the wildly successful Terminator movies, it stars British actress Lena Headey as the titular paramilitary mom and Thomas Dekker as her fifteen year old son (and future savior of mankind,) John.

Summer Glau, the pretty young actress who played sexy sociopath River Tam in Joss Whedon's ill-fated Firefly series, joins the cast in pretty much exactly the same role. Okay, she's meant to be a robot in this one, but the ass-kicking, frequent nudity* and awkward social interaction are all lifted directly from her previous role.

On the surface of it, Sarah Connor Chronicles seems to be a deeply cynical retelling of the Terminator movie mythos - but it actually didn't turn out too badly.

Plot Implausibility

The first issue any fan of the Terminator movies will have to process is the absence of any sort of continuity between the movies and the series.

For people of my age, growing up in the years between the original Star Wars movies and the second lot of Star Wars movies, the seminal action/sci-fi film of our generation was Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Sarah Conner Chronicles carries on directly from the plot of that movie - with commando mum Sarah Connors zooming off into the sunset with her teenage son. They'd been successful in eliminating a murderous Terminator and blowing up the lab that would later develop the lethal Skynet artificial intelligence system.

It's a great setup for the series, if it wasn't for the fact that the recent Terminator 3 movie contradicts everything about it. In that movie, John Connor explicitly states that his mother passed away from cancer in the period between the two movies. The last contact he'd had with a Terminator was when he lowered Arnold Schwartzenegger into molten steel at the end of Terminator 2.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles neatly splits the 'canon' into two separate time lines and Terminator 3 (soon to be joined by a Schwartzenegger-free Terminator 4) is completely removed from the continuity of the Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Action Packed

But swallowing that discrepancy down, the series itself seems to be promising.

It opens with an action-packed gun battle between Sarah Connors (dressed in an inexplicably short shirt - hardly 'mum' attire) battling a murderous Terminator. Just as you start to get invested in the battle, the Terminator guns down John Connor and it's all revealed to be a dream.

God, I hate series that start off with a 'dream sequence.' It's a total cop-out. The only thing that prevented me switching off the TV then and there was because all three Terminator movies feature similar dream-sequences.

Then the plot-proper begins. It's 1999 and we soon learn that Sarah Connors is quite clearly a bit crazy. Her long-suffering son is sick of being dragged from one hick town to another in an attempt to outrun both the feds and any possible Terminator robots.

Inevitably, they run into trouble as an FBI bulletin is intercepted by a murderous robot, who's been spending months trying to track them down. John gets cornered in his school by the Terminator and is only saved when ass-kicking Summer Glau arrives to rescue him.

Sarah, John and the friendly Terminator go on the run - and the plot continues...

Good points and bad...

The series is a lot of fun. If you're a fan of hot chicks with big guns, you'll be thrilled to see both Lena Headey and Summer Glau rattling off bullets like US marines. There's plenty of gory Terminator action as the evil robot gets bloody chunks blown off him and you get to see the shiny metal bits underneath. The script is quite tightly written and some of the one liners are cute.

What's not so great are the Terminator cliches - like a robot who can outrun a speeding car (as we saw in Terminator 2) inexplicably walking slowly and deliberately when chasing his target on foot (allowing John plenty of time to run and hide.)

Similarly, the Terminator shoots without mercy when it's faceless cops, soldiers or schoolkids getting in his way, but isn't above taking lead characters hostage or pausing for vital seconds before delivering that fatal shot - but only when the main characters are involved.

Overlooking those details, though, the series is a lot of fun and packed with enough action to keep most of the PlayStation generation entertained.

Will it last? I'm not convinced. It seems to me that Sarah Connor Chronicles is a bit of a one-trick pony and even Summer Glau repeatedly shedding her clothing* will not be enough to keep this leaky show afloat.

Given the impossible task of making a credible Terminator show, I think the producers have done very well. It could have been a lot, lot worse. However, the fact that something's not as bad as it could have been doesn't necessarily make it any good.

I'll watch the second episode tonight and see how things pan out.

* 'nudity' of course refers to sanitised, implied nudity - all that's allowed on network television. Gory school shootings and murderous robots are fine. Nipples? It would cause the downfall of civilised society, if you'll believe the hype!

UPDATE - Second Episode

Last night's second episode picked up the story from where we left off - with John, Sarah and their new Terminator friend being cast eight years into the future - arriving in 2007.

Some may have considered that a cynical ploy so that the makers of the Sarah Connor Chronicles don't need to use late-nineties cars, sets and details. But overlooking that nasty streak of realism, it sets the scene for an 'anything can happen' future.

The second episode was considerably better than the first. More action, more characterisation and even some nasty scenes that reveal our heroic team's less heroic side. John acts like a typical fifteen year old brat, running off to explore 'future' Los Angeles and jeopardising everything by meeting up with his stepfather (who didn't stop to ask why John was still 15 when he should have been 23 by then.)

Our sexy, sassy Terminator lives up to her name by executing one of Sarah's oldest allies - reminding us that the wise-cracking little robot is actually a lethal and unpredictable killing machine.

And the divergence between the plot of Terminator 3 and the Sarah Connor chronicles is explained when the friendly Terminator reveals to Sarah that she would have died in 2005 had they not leapt into the future - from cancer. Exactly as the movie version of John Connor remembered.

It's all still a bit hokey. The beheaded Terminator from 1999 managed to survive the nuclear blast that allowed the Connors to escape - and once it's head bounced through the time portal into the present day, there was a frankly absurd scene in which the headless body journeyed across the city to rejoin it's disembodied noggin...

But it's fun, it's unpredictable and it's exciting. After a shakey start, the crew of the Sarah Connor Chronicles have managed to make a believer out of me.

The Ugly Truth About Beauty

America’s Top Model. Nip/Tuck. Extreme Makeover. How to Look Good Naked.

Switch on a TV anywhere in the western world and you’re confronted with images of beautiful people. Toned butts. Firm abs and teeth so sparkly you can see them from space.

All those lovely people - plus adverts for diet pills, exercise equipment and facial creams being crammed into our inboxes and mailboxes each and every day – make it easy to assume that The Way You Look is wrong and The Way They Look is what you should aspire to. After all, isn’t the message behind movies like The Devil Wears Prada that LOOKS are far more important than WHO you are?

In that movie, brainy Andy Sachs heads to Manhattan to begin a job at fashion magazine Runway. But before her boss Miranda takes brilliant Andy seriously, the brainy brunette has to shed the pounds and squeeze her size six butt into a skinny pair of Dolce and Gabbanas.

I mean, is it just me, or is the premise of a movie in which ridiculously gorgeous Anne Hathaway is considered fat just plain wrong?

But that’s the way the world is at the moment. Beauty is all important and if brainless-but-beautiful models like Miss Teen USA 2007 candidate Caitlin Upton have taught us anything, it’s that pretty people can achieve things regardless of their intellectual limitations.

But the result of this obsession with looks?

Scores of beautiful young men and women now think that they can succeed on looks alone.

That belief is flawed for many reasons – the main one being that beauty isn’t exactly uncommon.

If you’re willing to skip school to spend hours in the gym, or spend your savings on a boob job and teeth whitening, you too can become one of the ‘beautiful’ people.

Youth, exercise and diet are generally the foundation of good looks and the rest is just icing on the cake. But even after you’ve become ‘beautiful,’ the opportunities out there are limited.

There can only be one ‘America’s Top Model.’ James Bond only auditions for the next ‘Bond girl’ every three years or so. Sometimes, beautiful people have to take the opportunities on offer, whatever they are.

And that’s where you’ll find the real tragedy in being beautiful.

One infamous radio ‘Shock Jock,’ has beautiful young actresses on his show all the time (which seems pointless. Surely all cats are grey over the airwaves.) There’s a huge line of beautiful models and aspiring actresses clamoring for the chance to get into his studio and maybe hit the big time. But what is the price of this opportunity?

An example: A few months ago, he had beautiful young women on their hands and knees, attempting to catch meatballs (dripping in pasta sauce) between their buttocks. The audience whooped and hollered and the girls played along in good spirits – but what was going through their mind?

It must have been depressing. Their media ‘breakthrough’ involved kneeling like a dog with cold spaghetti sauce dripping down their thighs – and if they’d turned their nose up at this opportunity, there would have been a hundred other girls willing to do it in their place.

It seems in this looks obsessed society we live in, the only thing we love more than beautiful people is degrading them. It seems there’s no shortage of television programs, made for TV movies or raunchy frat-boy magazines willing to lead beautiful people through the meat grinder with the fleeting promise of fame. And worst of all? There’s no shortage of beautiful people willing to follow them.

If reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister has taught me anything, it’s that beautiful people risk their beauty becoming their defining feature.

So what’s the secret of the truly successful ‘beautiful’ people?

Being beautiful has never been their primary characteristic. It might have opened doors for them, but it’s never been the secret of their success.

Whether it was talent as an actress (like the wonderful Meryl Streep) or skills as a firebrand (like vile political pundit Anne Coulter) the ‘beautiful’ people who’ve made their mark had something going for them other than just their looks. That’s just the icing on the cake.

So if you’re a ‘beautiful person’ and you want to make it as a model, actress or just a diva like Paris Hilton, take one piece of advice from me (a fully qualified non-beautiful person.)

Have something that sets you apart from the rest. Skills. Talents. Opinions. Or a very rich daddy.

Be your own person. Set your own standards. Never let your (beautiful) reflection in the mirror reflect everything about who you are.