5 things that TSCC could really improve upon
POSTED BY: somaholiday
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 01:10
VIEWED: 6328
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Hey y'all
I just got done watching season 1 of TSCC, and I was really not that impressed. It's a good show, but its got a lot more potential than what it actually delivers, for a couple of reasons (I haven't seen season two yet, hopefully some of these things have been dealt with).
1. Acting- In my mind, Summer is by far the best actress on the cast, and I'm not just saying that because I'm biased (although I am). Especially in the first three episodes, I was appalled at the quality of the acting of everyone besides her. The FBI agent especially seemed like he was really bored with the roll and wasn't putting any effort into it, and I can't say much better for any of the others. Granted, this got alot better as the season progressed, but I'd still like to see it improve a bit.
2. Congruency in the characters- In the first episode, when you're not supposed to know that she's a robot, Summer acts completely human, even (it seems) subtly hitting on John. Then, inexplicably, once it is revealed that she's a robot, she has very robotic mannerisms and slowly learns throughout the season how to act more human (and some would argue, to be more human). However, by the end of Season 1, she still has not progressed to the level of humanness that she achieved at the beginning of the first episode... that just doesn't make any sense. This is not summer's fault (as I've said, she acts out her roll beautifully), but the fault of the stupid people making the scripts. There are other problems of congruency as well, but this is the best example.
3. Problems with time travel - Every show or movie that has used time travel has been prone to some of the paradoxes that it raises - no show (that I've seen) has ever been able to do it perfectly, probably because it cannot be done perfectly. However, I thought that the use of time travel throughout TSCC was incredibly sloppy. It seemed like they never even attempted to think it through. Since there are so many problems here, I'm not going to go into specifics (I don't feel like writing all day) but I will if someone disagrees with this point.
4. Not enough scenes in the future- getting to actually see the future, where the robots take over, is one of the coolest parts of this show. I understand that they probably don't want to step on the new movie's toes, but comon! They bait us with a short scene every now and again, then leave us hanging. For instance, I would've loved to see the actual battle where future John Connor and a fighting force took over the time travel station, instead of just hearing about it.
5. The season finale sucked- I was all pumped about seeing this really badass battle between a swat team and a terminator, and instead I just saw some goofball scene where a bunch of bodies get launched into a pool with music in the background. I guess this was an attempt to be either stylish or funny, but it failed at both. Also, Summer getting blown up in the car was a weird and stupid cliffhanger to end it on, in my opinion.
All this being said, I do think (as I've said) that there's a ton of potential for a top notch show here, and also that in general the show vastly improved from the beginning to the end of the first season. I can only hope that it continues to do so.
Your thoughts?
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Completely agree especially on the quality of the acting (Summer rules), I actually think the FBI guy is now one of the best characters & I can't say anything on Thomas Dekker (John Connor) acting skills since there seems to be none, though strangely did love him when he was on Heroes.
I wasn't too disappointed by the finale of the first season, though not great the actual episode was pretty great. I was much more disappointed by what happened afterwards at the beginning of the second season.
The biggest problem I have is the quality of the scripts. The first half of season 1 wasn't that interesting, suddenly around episode 6 the rest of the season became really interesting & the addition of Derek worked really will. But no the second season starts & it becomes a bit lacking in the story department, Derek becomes boring & I'm still undecided on the addition of the new Terminator played by Shirley Manson. There were 3 episodes in a row about half way through which I thought were really good this season but after that in went down the drain again. And Derek's new friend Jesse is both a non interesting character & a really bad actress, almost un-watchable.
Poorer than Terminator 3 = YES
Holding my interest = Only Just
Summer Glau is 90% of the reason I watch it now = YES
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This season is much better than last year. Summer is taking over the show, and it's really something to see. She's had more dialogue and action in the last couple of weeks than all of Firefly combined. Plus she's getting more gorgeous by the minute, and they are playing to that aspect in a big way.
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Season 2 is much differet than seaeson 1, (I think) the girl who kills herself because of the paint of the doors in school, the nerd who wants to take Cameron to prom, not going to happen. The story line of them in High School in the 1st season has been scraped. I was looking forward to them looking into that mystery, along with what could have been a funny episode of Cameron at the prom. I do'nt think every episode has to be so dark.
I'm going to microwave a bagel and have sex with it - Peter Griffin
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My main problem is just the writing. Sub plots that go nowhere, or even worse - abandoned, and characters doing dumb things to keep the plot movieng.
I like the acting, I actually think Summer is one of the weaker members sometimes (ducks). Though that's probably a limitation of the character... and writing.
I havn't had any problems with the time travel element, in terms of paradox. My only beef there is that they use it a bit too often.
It would be nice to see more of the future, but as they explain in the making of doc for season 1, it's really outside of their budget range to create that world for more than just snippets.
As for the finale, well, you can blame the writer's strike for that. The show was slated to run for 18 (I think) episodes. That was not the planned finale, it was just the last episode they got to shoot.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree with all your points.
1. Acting: I actually think the acting is pretty good, especially considering that it's sci-fi on network TV. I love sci-fi but so often the acting is campy and melodramatic. This is the first sci-fi show since Star Trek: The Next Generation that hasn't made me cringe to watch (excepting of course our dear Firefly, and not counting Heroes as sci-fi). In particular I think the acting of the four members of the Connor family -- Sarah, John, Cameron, and Derrek -- has been especially strong. There have been moments where they really hit on some of the unspoken parts of the entire Sarah Connor myth, such as what it would have been like for John Connor as a teenager, and the constant, never-ending stress that Sarah is under to keep him alive and teach him what he needs to know. The reveal this season about what John did when he and Sarah were captured in the season finale last season (trying not to give a spoiler) hit me particularly hard.
2. Congruency: I think the characters have been fairly consistent, with the exception of the part with Cameron that you pointed out. But my impression from those first episodes is that that whole first bit with meeting John was pre-programmed behavior, set up by John in the future specifically so Cameron could get John's attention and trust. They've also dropped muliple hints that Cameron is not a normal terminator, and that her relationship with John in the future is much deeper than the normal protector-bot situation. I would have prefered that they spelled out the pre-programmed bit a little clearer, but I haven't been bothered by congruency at all.
3. Time travel: You may have to spell this one out much clearer, because I'm really not seeing it. If you mean the time travel to bring John, Sarah, and Cameron up to the present day, without messing with the timeline of T1 or T2, I think the show can get that one gimme. They do seem to have a lot more people coming back from the future, but Derrek specifically says that they had captured an entire facility. In the first movie Kyle makes it sound like the facility was destroyed, but how would he have known after he went through the gate? In any case, I haven't found the time travel in the show to be sloppy in the slightest. The two recent episodes that revolved around time travel (last week's with Cameron at the library, and a week or two previous, with Jesse holding the guy in the shipping container) I thought were both very clever subplots, and good uses of time travel.
4. Scenes in the future: Not having enough scenes in the future doesn't really bother me. Even in the movies, the future scenes were always really short, just glimpses really. The show obviously is going to have even less of a budget, and I'd rather they spent the budget elsewhere. Again, this is sci-fi on network TV, so I'm willing to forgive a few things. Secondly, it's The Sarah Connor Chronicles, not The John Connor Chronicles, or even The Connor Chronicles. This is Sarah's story, even though her life revolves around John. And every version of the story has included Sarah not living to see the resistance.
5. Season 1 Finale: I didn't think it sucked, but again I'm not judging this against the movies but rather against other network sci-fi shows. Given the writers' strike and the way so many other shows ended abruptly, I can't really fault them. The fight sequence with Agent Ellison didn't seem like it was suppose to be the big reveal of a terminator in full action, with CG effects to rival the movies. Rather it was Ellison realizing for the first time that there was something otherworldly going on. For him to see it all first hand would have ruined his character arc, *and* required a higher budget. I liked the season finale for the tension between John and Cameron (something horribly missing on all the other shows I watch recently), and the reveal later on about what happened to John that episode. But given the writers' strike, over all I think they did an outstandi
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Well, in response to your bit about the time travel, I'll say the following things.
1. If the machines have a facility for time travel, why not just send back a ton of terminators and kill everyone more quickly? They're supposed to be super smart, learning robots. If humans could build skynet, they could definitely do it. After all, they seem to know about the components needed to build it (they sent that one robot back to convince that woman to build the traffic system).
2. The whole subplot with andy good is rife with problems. The reason derek killed him was because he told him that he was partially responsible for skynet in the future. But if derek then went back and killed him in the past, then he wouldn't have been around in the future to tell derek he was responsible, so derek wouldn't have known to kill him in the past, etc.
3. The fact that a robot was sent back after derek and the team suggests that the robots have other time travel facilities, besides the one that john captured. If this is the case, why not just send robot reinforcements back in time to stop them from capturing the time travel facility?
4. This may have been explained in season 2, but what the hell was going on when derek and that team got captured in the future and then suddenly the robots were gone and they were all let go?
These are some of the glaring errors I was referring to, and there are tons more... these are just the ones I can remember offhand (its been a couple of months since I watched season 1)
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Quote:
Originally posted by somaholiday:
Well, in response to your bit about the time travel, I'll say the following things.
1. If the machines have a facility for time travel, why not just send back a ton of terminators and kill everyone more quickly? They're supposed to be super smart, learning robots. If humans could build skynet, they could definitely do it. After all, they seem to know about the components needed to build it (they sent that one robot back to convince that woman to build the traffic system).
That may not be possible. We don't know how many they can send at once, or how often. Might be few and far between. And, they cannot come with weapons. So, sending an all-out assult force, or even a larger contingency of infiltrators (say, enogh to create Skynet themselves), could backfire by alerting the world at large, which could endanger the creation of Skynet. And Skynet still needs to be built, or none of it would happen anyway.
Quote:
Originally posted by somaholiday:
2. The whole subplot with andy good is rife with problems. The reason derek killed him was because he told him that he was partially responsible for skynet in the future. But if derek then went back and killed him in the past, then he wouldn't have been around in the future to tell derek he was responsible, so derek wouldn't have known to kill him in the past, etc.
Not really. Since they established a couple weeks back (with the collaborator Jessie captured, I forget his name) that Derek didn't know, that they were creating alternate timelines by their actions. The Derek in 2008 is not quite the same Derek that the Jessie in 2008 knew in the future. She is likely from a timeline where Derek didn't know Goode, either.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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ahh, well I haven't seen the new season, so I didn't know about that plot line and can't really critique it yet... All these points I'm bringing up are just based on my reaction to viewing season 1
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