People have repeatedly said that Cameron mentioned that she was “different” as a terminator. Does she indicate in what way?
I don’t recall her saying anything like that… but I watched a leaked pilot early. Maybe they changed it a bit for broadcast?
People have repeatedly said that Cameron mentioned that she was “different” as a terminator. Does she indicate in what way?
I don’t recall her saying anything like that… but I watched a leaked pilot early. Maybe they changed it a bit for broadcast?
I’m liking the show so far. On a show like this, I don’t tend to nitpick the dialog too much. What I’m looking for is some action, some cool scenes, and a decent plotline. This show’s delivering that, so far.
As for why the Glauminator seemed so cool at first, and then so confused later - I thought it was obvious that she was programmed for 1997, and therefore knew all the slang, the mannerisms of the type of women she would be infiltrating, etc. All the ‘fish out of water’ sequences we’ve seen with her have to do with 2007 fads and speech that didn’t exist in 1997. The girls in the bathroom were talking slang, and she was trying to pick it up. The metal detector was unexpected, and shut her down for a minute. The scene where she mimicked the ‘lookout’ at the gang hideout showed a terminator adapting to its surroundings and learning to mimic something it doesn’t already know.
In the scenes where none of that is going on, she’s perfectly normal. She talks normal around the house. She’s clearly a more intelligent model than the old arnie-bot.
Here’s where I think there’s going with this: She’s a member of the next evolution in machine intelligence - and they’ve evolved a conscience. She’s hinted that there’s a lot more to her than Sarah knows. I think she’s self-aware, has emotions, and a sense of right and wrong. The ‘bad’ terminators are basically a step in the evolution of machines into the next generation of man.
She’s Commander Data in a skirt.
Or, maybe she’s a human brain implanted in a cyborg body. For all we know, “she” could be the future John or Sarah pretending to be a terminator. After all, a metal skull can protect a human brain from blunt force trauma and acts as a Faraday cage when shocked. Or it could be that a human consciousness was programmed into the Terminator’s memory. This explains how Terminators can act robotic and human and tell jokes and answer metaphorically with “hope”.
In a show that doesn’t reveal all its cards, we just have to patiently wait for more clues to be revealed about the true nature of the Glauminator. Same deal with the IDAN door mystery, the Cromartie plan, details about the 2007 human resistance travellers, Charley Dixon’s involvement, and Sarah’s health status vis a vis cancer. They’ve purposely left a few loose threads to keep viewers tuned in. In return, we should be happy if answers are forthcoming in a timely fashion, i.e. faster than the glacial pace that is Lost. From the preview of next week (this is my factory), it appears the answers are coming.
Also, I believe the time-travel component is well done and internally consistent with the rules they’ve set forth. For example, it is still ambiguous whether the destruction of the Turk was meaningful or not. If it was irrelevant, then its destruction had no effect. If it was a precursor to Skynet, then its destruction may have simply led to a delay of events which still play out.
I’m still cutting the show a lot of slack because of hot mom and hot borg, but I fear we may be dealing with a textbook case of science fiction being written by people who don’t get science fiction. Science fiction fans are extremely loyal, and honestly they don’t ask that much and will forgive a whole lot.
Rules
You establish the rules early on, and you have an explanation ready if you ever have to violate them. Hell, even a horseshit explanation will often do, though you should keep these to a minimum. It would be better to say that the Terminator skull was in a trash dump for seven years and just happened to activate around the time the Connors reappeared in the world than to violate the established premise of the franchise that dead things don’t travel. And that’s just assuming you want to leave the jumping ahead to the future as an arbitrary time rather than give a reason for the timing other than that they wanted to film in modern day.
You can hand-wave some rules. JMS gets away with spaceships that move at the ‘speed of plot.’ Joss Whedon doesn’t need to explain why the engine thingy spins. You can make mistakes. Vera doesn’t need oxygen around her to fire, unless she’s some kind of gyrojet rifle, but it was at least an attempt at applying rationality. We forgive Outland for the fact that people wouldn’t actually explosively decompress in a vacuum, because we love watching them run with the premise. I myself managed to choke back frustration at the premise that a Battlestar Galactica episode based on a slow leak in a space suit is made possible by the outrageous assumption that they wouldn’t have a repair kit in one of the pockets to deal with small tears.
What you can’t do is have no consistency. You can’t take it for granted that because it’s not reality that just anything goes. These nerds are paying attention, and their willingness to suspend disbelief is not infinite. They may enjoy squabbling over little inconsistencies, but ones that seem based on the writers not giving a shit and underestimating the audience’s intelligence will tend to break the deal.
Furthermore, depending on where they’re going with this latest twist, I suspect they also don’t understand epic. It’s a nice touch (though poorly handled) that the robot throws the lesson about not being a freak back in John’s face, but the show cannot help but be the bildungsroman of a future hero, and he’s got to actually do something heroic as part of that development.
Roommate took one look at Glauminator (I like that term! ) and immediately posited that she’s Future-John’s sex toy/bodyguard, programmed to have Fuzzy Feelings for FJ for that purpose.
The rest of the conversation, paraphrased.
Me: Or, maybe, I dunno, she’s a reproduction of a high-school sweetheart or something.
Roommate: Uh, John didn’t go to high school.
Me: He’s going now.
Roommate: Isn’t that the whole “self-fulfilling prophecy” thing you hate about time travel?
Me: Yeah, but I still think building a terminator would be too much effort if he were just boning her. Whatever happened to Rosy Palm and her five sisters, or Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell?
Roommate: It’s the future. Everybody gets to have sex with a robot.
Me: “Anatomically correct in every way”, huh?
Roommate: Yup.