In this episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, we learn that the bully from A Christmas Story, Scut Farkus (played by Zack Ward), went on to channel his rage into becoming an anti-Skynet resistance fighter. He travels back in time to warn the Connors that Ralphie is actually a terminator, and that by no means should T-Ralphie be allowed to get its hands on a prototype Red Ryder Carbine Action BB Gun. Unfortunately, as Scut is dying from a gunshot wound to the chest at Sarah Connor’s feet, he realizes that the time travel bubble was about 60 years off. So to save face, with his last dying breath, he tells the Connors, “Stop Greenway, Serrano Point, Two Days”.
So The Sarah Connor Chronicles is back for a new season. And I have to say that I, for one, was not disappointed. Everything picked up exactly where last season’s finale left off — from the clever plot to the urgent tone to the fantastic use of spiritual music and slow motion to build an exciting opening scene. Here’s what FOX has to say about the music:
“The song is an original arrangement of a gospel spiritual called ‘Samson and Delilah,’ composed by the Rev. Gary Davis. The track is performed by Shirley Manson and arranged and produced by Bear McCreary … specifically … to fit the episode’s opening sequence.” For those who don’t realize, Bear McCreary is the composer for Battlestar Galactica, and has been the genius behind everything from that show’s opening credits to the adaptation of “All Along the Watchtower” used in the Season 3 finale. So I’m thrilled to hear that he’ll be scoring this show.
It’s that time of year again, when leaves will soon begin to fall off the trees, and DVRs will fill up with either new television shows or new episodes of old television shows. Here’s the new sci-fi stuff I’m planning to watch next week and why …
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Season 2
(Monday, FOX, 8pm EST) The first season of this show started off a bit uneven, but really hit its stride about midway through, particularly after the introduction of Derek Connor from the future. And holy crap, the last half-hour of the season finale? That pool scene? Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around”? I still get goosebumps. If you haven’t already seen Season 1, or just want to watch it again, FOX has full episodes up on their website. Or you can always just go back and read my recaps. Continue reading →
Back in January, several friends and I carried on a lengthy and completely ridiculous email debate about the Terminator universe that dragged on for several days. In honor of the new season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles starting in a few weeks, I’ve decided to share a chunk of this debate with the world. Some minor editing has been done to keep things coherent, and to protect everybody’s identities, I’ve enlisted a few of my other friends to act out the lines. Please to enjoy …
I watched the first and second episodes of the new Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles show, and enjoyed it. Great action and special effects for a TV show, and seems to be remaining true to the mythology established by the first two movies. The writers also found a really clever way to completely bypass the sucky third movie.
Why don’t the machines just send back a whole damn army and kill everybody if they’re that good at rifling back machines? Jeez, if I was Sara Connor I’d be crying foul at some point.
Was Terminator 3 the one with the cop in it and they made what’s her name a psycho survivalist eager to martyr herself? The cop alone could have killed everybody on the planet.
Just thought I’d tease you with a couple of trailers …
Looks like Cameron will be back (as if anybody believed for a moment she wouldn’t) — but she may be having a bit of an identity crisis. Also, we get our first glimpse of new cast member Shirley Manson (of the band Garbage). Here’s the second clip …
I’m running behind on my W.Y.O.S.T profile this week, but ran across a hilarious”Internet List” this morning, and decided to share it.
Topless Robot has compiled a list of “The 7 Biggest Asshole Computers in Science Fiction“. Conspicuously absent from the list are Autopilot from the recent WALL-E movie and “The Architect” from the last two Matrix movies. Can you think of any others they missed?
This week’s W.Y.O.S.T. subject is Brian Thompson. If you ever watched the original Terminator movie, then you’ve seen him. For a few minutes anyway. In one of the opening scenes, he and Bill Paxton play a couple of street punks who go up against a naked cyborg Arnold … and are promptly killed for their clothes. As first roles go, an actor could do far worse — although from the body of work that’s followed since that movie in 1984, one wonders how exactly Brian Thompson has avoided playing the role of a terminator himself over the years. After all, the square-jawed baritone actor has played just about every other kind of imposing bogey man you can think of — two different vampires, two different Klingons, a shape-changing Gotham City supervillain, an alien bounty hunter, an indestructible demon, and even a vengeful Greek Titan.
A child of two teachers, Thompson broke into Hollywood as a Terminator casualty, but has gone on from there to build a career as either a tough guy or an outright bad guy, mostly in sci-fi/fantasy projects. By the time the 80s were over, he had racked up more than 20 appearances in such shows as Moonlighting, Knight Rider, and Falcon Crest, as well as the classic movies Three Amigos, Miracle Mile, and Alien Nation. In 1989, he landed his first Star Trek role, playing a Klingon officer in The Next Generation, and his relationship with the franchise would persist over the years — he appeared in the Generations movie (1994), in Deep Space Nine (1993 & 1996), and even had a recurring role on Enterprise in 2005.
If you’ve seen Terminator, Aliens, Predator, The Thing, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands and even this year’s blockbuster hit Iron Man, then you know Stan Winston’s work. He is an Oscar-winning special effects and makeup genius, and more importantly, has been a staple of my geeked-out movie-going experiences over the years. Sadly, he passed away yesterday at the too-young age of 62, after a seven year struggle with cancer.
Thanks for the memories, Stan! You will be sorely missed.
To learn more about Stan Winston’s life and work …
“[The show] premiered in January as a midseason drama, but Fox is shifting the show to its fall lineup for next season. The network on Monday handed a 13-episode order to the sci-fi drama [which] will likely get a new time period next fall rather than stay at Mondays at 9 p.m. NBC puts the similarly sci-fi tinged Heroes in that slot, which was on hiatus due to the writers strike when [the show] aired this season.”
“The series could also get an early back-nine order… Next May, Warner Bros. will release the fourth ‘Terminator’ film, which could make for some ideal corporate synergy should the TV series survive the fall.”
“[The show], which launched in January, is the highest-rated new scripted series this season among adults 18-49 with an average of a 4.4 rating/10 share. The Warner Bros. TV-produced series drew an average of 10.5 million total viewers.”
Okay, so just for the record? What we saw last night was not really a “two-hour finale” for The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It was the next-to-last episode and the season finale, played back to back. I’m just saying. I enjoyed both episodes very much — more on that in a moment — but I wish networks would stop playing this particular marketing trick. Because some shows actually do go out of their way to create finale episodes that sustain and cohere over two hours, and that’s not what this was. There’s a way to advertise things like this without being deceptive.
Rant over. On with the nice words now …
In “Vick’s Chip”, we do NOT find out that Skynet’s grandfather is the Commodore VIC-20, if that’s what you were thinking. Because we all know that Turk is the illegitimate love child of an Apple IIe and a TRS-80 (Model III). No matter what that tramp Amiga 500 says. Continue reading →
In this episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, we learn that the bully from A Christmas Story, Scut Farkus (played by Zack Ward), went on to channel his rage into becoming an anti-Skynet resistance fighter. He travels back in time to warn the Connors that Ralphie is actually a terminator, and that by no means should T-Ralphie be allowed to get its hands on a prototype Red Ryder Carbine Action BB Gun. Unfortunately, as Scut is dying from a gunshot wound to the chest at Sarah Connor’s feet, he realizes that the time travel bubble was about 60 years off. So to save face, with his last dying breath, he tells the Connors, “Stop Greenway, Serrano Point, Two Days”.
So 
This week’s 
If you’ve seen Terminator, Aliens, Predator, The Thing, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands and even this year’s blockbuster hit Iron Man, then you know Stan Winston’s work. He is an Oscar-winning special effects and makeup genius, and more importantly, has been a staple of my geeked-out movie-going experiences over the years. Sadly, he passed away yesterday at the too-young age of 62, after a seven year struggle with cancer.
Okay, so just for the record? What we saw last night was not really a “two-hour finale” for