Well…maybe it didn’t need to be THAT precise. I don’t remember the precise layout of the dots, but maybe the stars happened to be an easily-recognized pattern like an equilateral triangle or something.
Still, you think instead of everything he did write, he’d have put “Judgement Day, Sept 15th, 2009”.
I think the dots probably DO have something to do with the stars, because only Terminators have seen it, and Cameron isn’t the type to just bring it up to Sarah - and if she did bring it up, Sarah wouldn’t listen. It fits in with our whole mistrust and miscommunication themes.
First of all, the idea that a time travel error would take place and a terminator would end up in the 20’s is just plain cool. And there’s even a certain kind of sense that the day would be right but the year would be wrong, as the earth is in the same place in its orbit around the sun on the same day each year (yes, yes, procession of the equinoxes, movement of the sun through the galaxy, etc.).
And the idea that the terminator is so relentlessly dedicated to completing his mission that he first spends 4 or 5 years ruining another businessman and building up a business, then builds the building, then walls himself up in it, just so that he’ll be there to (presumably) assassinate a governor 90 years later, is just plain neat. Also, note that the evil terminator wasn’t racist! (Why would he be?)
And seeing Cameron interact with Eric was really interesting, if ambiguous. Does she actually “like” him in any meaningful way? Or was she just using him? My interpretation is that she did actually like him, but that was less important than her mission, so when he was gone she just moved on to giving the donuts to the new girl.
Oh, and it makes some sense that female terminators would be sexy but male terminators wouldn’t be… women get a big advantage at infiltrating and gaining trust if they look like Summer Glau. For men, it probably just makes more sense to be as big, and thus heavily armored, as possible. Although a really really interesting idea would be a child terminator…
Cameron has demonstrated a bunch of times that she’s perfectly capable of acting like a normal human being (before she came out to John, for example), but she usually doesn’t because it doesn’t contribute to the mission. I expect that eventually John will get the message through her skull that behaving like a scary robot all the time isn’t contributing, either, and if she behaved like a human being, they’d attract a lot less attention.
Maybe I missed a line - when Cameron showed up and gave the girl donuts, didn’t the girl say something like “I don’t know anything about this Eric guy you’re trying to visit”?
Yeah, the late-shift librarian Cameron encountered indicated that she had no clue who Eric was.
Apparently librarians are easy to bribe with donuts.
Who knew?
I’m not sure you’re distinguishing between the different roles these units are getting engineered for.
Dominant males in leadership roles tend towards tall.
Our instincts favor us paying attention to healthy males with muscular chests and a relatively modest waist. If the big guy tells you all to run and he’ll try to handle the lion intruding on your village, evolution favors listening to him.
“Tall, powerful and handsome” isn’t a terrible idea for a male infiltrator model, depending on what kind of role you’re expecting it to weasel its way into.
None of this matters, of course, if you’re just asking a unit to pass for human long enough to hunt down a subject you want turned into meat.
What we’re seeing with male terminators so far would fit either bill, although the terminator from the ‘boarding school’ episode was a little on the ugly side and probably wouldn’t work too well for infiltrating.
One also supposes that a male infiltrator unit meant for the resistance would perhaps wish to look distinctly “un-terminator”. Perhaps make him unremarkably below average height, 5’6" or so, and with a trivial but obvious medical issue.
It’s kind of like the movie spy phenomenon. Movie spys are always very good looking, dress in high end Armani and Versace clothes and really stand out. IRL, you want your infiltrator to blend in, not stand out. You don’t want everyone paying attention to the incredibly tall and attractive woman who just walked in the room or that scary monster of a man who just glares. Because the more they pay attention, the more likely they will notice something is off. Likeable yet instantly forgettable so to speak.
Then again, we also probably wouldn’t watch a show like that.
But then you have to start considering some of the Terminators we’ve seen.
While Arnold is built like a tank, he’s not actually a huge guy. He’s only 6’2". I’d imagine there are a lot of resistance fighters that are taller than that. Michael Biehn is 6’ even and Brian Austin Green and Christian Bale are both 6’1".
Then you have Cromartie, who looked like a pretty average guy, and the Dillengerator, who could have fit in really well with any of those “off the boat” pictures from Ellis Island.
Then there’s the women. Summer Glau is beautiful, but she’s not some impossibly unlikely beauty. There are a lot of women around you are just as good looking as she is. Especially in L.A. in 2007.